Austin City Council has been voting in secret for years

Austin Energy says Austin City Council members have taken secret votes for years on matters involving the publicly owned utility, and that those votes don’t appear in any public record.

The disclosure only came after KUT News reviewed more than 1,000 City Council meetings and challenged the utility’s claim that such votes “ARE indicated in council minutes.”

Last month, the council took what appears to be its first documented secret vote on Austin Energy, approving the purchase of gas-powered electric generators estimated to cost more than $1 billion.

The vote occurred in a closed session under a narrow carve-out to the Texas Open Meetings Act that allows elected officials who oversee power companies to vote in secret on "competitive matters.” The final vote tally was never released.

A record of the meeting on the city’s website simply says the measure was “conducted and approved.”

Council members and city staff have refused to disclose the vote breakdown, effectively shielding elected officials from any political backlash and firing up critics.

When KUT News asked whether the vote was unprecedented, Austin Energy insisted it was not.

The utility’s spokesperson, Matthew Mitchell, said council members have taken similar closed-door votes for years and they were “not infrequent.”

Erik Johnson, a spokesperson for the city, suggested that KUT should “review the voting record manually” to seek previous examples of executive session votes.

In an effort to show that secret votes are part of regular business, Austin Energy provided a list of 16 meetings from 2019 to 2025 during which it said “discussions or votes” occurred behind closed doors.

Such closed-door votes “ARE indicated in council minutes," Mitchell said.

But a KUT News review of every City Council meeting dating back to 1999 found no public record of such votes.

When KUT presented those findings to Austin Energy, the utility changed its explanation, saying the absence of records proves nothing because even the existence of a secret vote may be confidential.

“The fact that minutes do not reflect that a vote was taken, does not mean that a vote was not taken,” Mitchell said in an email.

With no public record of any vote and council members committed to secrecy, it’s difficult to know how many votes may have taken place since the 1999 law allowing for them took effect.

“It's an invisible government,” Joe Larsen, an Houston lawyer who serves on the board of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said of the secret vote. “It's a black box. You don't know what anybody's doing. You don't know who to hold accountable.”

While a single exception to the Texas Open Meetings Act does allow for closed-door votes, Larsen believes the City Council may be operating in violation of the City Charter and Code of Ordinances by voting in secret and not providing a record.

Keep votes secret with this one simple trick

Elected officials in Texas are supposed to conduct public business in public view. The Texas Open Meetings Act mandates that meetings be open to the public with the topics of discussion posted days in advance.

Through the years, state lawmakers have chipped away at those transparency requirements, adding more than 20 exceptions that allow certain deliberations to take place in closed-door hearings known as “executive sessions.” The exceptions cover sensitive topics like hiring and firing decisions, real estate negotiations or private advice from lawyers.

While those exceptions allow for secret deliberations by governing bodies, only one allows for secret voting. That’s what the City Council invoked to make a final decision behind closed doors on the power plant deal.

The carve-out, Section 551.086, was created by state lawmakers in 1999 as part of the deregulation of the state electricity market.

The exception was intended to even the playing field for city-owned utilities that suddenly found themselves competing in Texas’ deregulated energy market against private companies that had no obligation to share their business dealings with the public.

Read more: https://www.kut.org/politics/2026-06-26/austin-city-council-votes-secret-executive-session-austin-energy