Amarillo City Councilmember Don Tipps weighed in on the city’s discussion of an abortion ordinance that has carried on for the past month.
The city council was studying the issue and having conversations on whether a citywide abortion ordinance is needed, but with a group of 11 citizens filing paperwork to initiate a petition in December, the council has been stuck in a wait-and-see mode. Tipps reacted to the citizen group not letting the council further explore the issue before moving forward with the petition.
One of the issues that Tipps felt prompted this was the work session not being very productive with insufficient open dialogue. He said one of the issues was that council members could not discuss the proposals limited by the Texas Meetings Act. He said that, to a great degree, councilmember Les Simpson was not privy to much of the information that would have been needed for the discussion.
“I hope that we would get everything on the table, but it did not work out that way,” Tipps said. “I was a little frustrated the way things worked out in that session. I think the citizens saw that this was not moving forward and decided to exercise this action. If they get the signatures, this shows that many citizens would like us to address this issue.”