A years-long battle over Fort Bend County voting precincts took a new and acrimonious turn last week as commissioners and the county attorney sparred over which legal firm should be hired to consult in the drawing of precinct lines.
The April 22 meeting of Commissioners Court saw some of the sharpest words in many months as commissioners revisited an item that had been held over from a previous meeting. At that March 28 meeting, a divided court failed to approve an item to transfer up to $60,000 to the county’s elections office dealing with the redrawing of the county’s voting precinct lines.
The item was meant to correct a problem that Texas Rep. Matt Mogan, a Republican whose 26th District includes portions of Fort Bend County, brought to the county’s attention in a letter in February. That letter (published largely unedited by the Fort Bend Star Independent newspaper) said that many of Fort Bend’s voting precincts were illegally under state law because they had too few voters…