{"id":447666,"date":"2026-09-25T19:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T19:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/447666\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T19:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T19:24:08","slug":"houston-city-council-passes-campaign-finance-ordinance-heights-river-oaks-montrose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/447666\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston City Council passes campaign finance ordinance | Heights &#8211; River Oaks &#8211; Montrose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Houston City Council unanimously approved an ordinance that would require election candidates to file campaign finance reports, or automatically be reported to the Texas Ethics Commission.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Breaking it down<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/houstontx.primegov.com\/viewer\/preview?id=0&amp;type=8&amp;uid=4683ea73-7534-4588-af9d-b493b6d46bf3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">new ordinance<\/a>, the city secretary\u2019s office must file a sworn complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission within five days when a Houston candidate misses a campaign filing deadline.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The ordinance was put on the agenda by council member Julian Ramirez using the city\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/communityimpact.com\/heights-river-oaks-montrose\/government\/houston-to-consider-repealing-campaign-finance-rule-that-caps-reimbursement\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Proposition A<\/a> rule, and co-sponsored by council members Joaquin Martinez, Amy Peck and Sallie Alcorn.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What they&#8217;re saying<\/p>\n<p>Some council members had concerns that it would be redundant with the current law.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn our system right now, if someone was to want to look up an individualized report, they just type in the name,\u201d District J council member Edward Pollard said. \u201dIf the report is not there, they could reach out to the city secretary&#8217;s office to make sure that that&#8217;s legit, and if it is, they can just make their own complaint to the Texas Ethics Commission instead of putting the onus on the city to do it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Pollard also questioned whether it would add extra responsibility to the city secretary\u2019s office. Mayor John Whitmire agreed with Pollard\u2019s concerns.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The current Ethics Commission rules allow a person to file a complaint if they believe someone has violated filing requirements. But Ramirez said it is not easy to do, and the city secretary already has a record of whether a person has registered for a campaign and whether they have filed or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA regular resident of the city would have to do the research, and figure out whether someone has filed a treasurer designation, and then look to see whether or not they filed a finance report by the deadline,\u201d Ramirez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Also of note<\/p>\n<p>No new penalties were made under the new rule. However, the new ordinance would require the city secretary to post the names of those who missed the deadline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston City Council unanimously approved an ordinance that would require election candidates to file campaign finance reports, or&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[63362,40621,56,4626,58,57,3743,30023,10048,27366],"class_list":["post-447666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-campaign-finance-reports","tag-edward-pollard","tag-houston","tag-houston-city-council","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-john-whitmire","tag-julian-ramirez","tag-proposition-a","tag-texas-ethics-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}