The Lead’s Editorial: Rich Paces and the law he keeps forgetting

There is a pattern here, and it has a name.

Kerr County Commissioner Rich Paces has now been present for at least three documented incidents in which the Texas Open Meetings Act was either violated or plausibly circumvented. The first dates to March 2023, when he exchanged emails with fellow commissioners about a voter integrity resolution before it ever appeared on a public agenda. The second came in February 2025, when he showed up unannounced as part of an undisclosed quorum at a Headwaters Groundwater Conservation District meeting — two days after the Commissioners’ Court received specific training on the Open Meetings Act. That one was referred for outside investigation by the county’s own attorney.

Thursday, Paces was at it again. He was among the three commissioners present at the opening of the Kerrville Public Safety Building — a facility that handles 911 calls and deploys ambulances for every resident of Kerr County under a contract his court oversees. A quorum. No notice posted.

The city of Kerrville posted notice. The county did not.

This is not complicated. The county has posted the correct notice before — for a disaster relief center opening, for a monthly meeting of a right-wing political organization. The county even maintains a dedicated “Possible Quorum Notices” section on its own website, with dated listings and downloadable PDFs for events as routine as a groundwater board meeting in Kerrville and a regional planning session in Boerne. The Public Safety Building opening is not on it.

The procedure is known. The requirement is known. The infrastructure to execute it exists. It simply wasn’t followed.

County Judge Rob Kelly told us the Public Safety Building opening may qualify as a social event and referred us to County Attorney Heather Stebbins. Stebbins has not returned our request for comment — though we understand her position. When this happened before, in 2025, she did the right thing and referred it for outside investigation rather than prosecute her own clients. We respect that decision.

But here’s the question that decision raises: how many times does this have to land on someone else’s desk before the commissioners responsible simply stop doing it?

The Texas Open Meetings Act exists for one reason: the public’s business belongs to the public. It is not a technicality. It is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. It is the law, and it is the floor — not the ceiling — of what transparency in government should look like.

Rich Paces has been on this court long enough to know better. At some point, the question stops being whether he understands the law and starts being whether he intends to follow it.