Austin City Council Democrats Lie, Ram Controversial Vote Through Like a Good Politburo

Late Thursday night, the Austin, Texas city council made a move worthy of Caracas or Havana.

Those are Communist-run capitals, for you millennials who got cheated out of a solid education by the public schools. And Communism is bad. It’s totalitarian. Government does whatever it wants, and if you don’t like it, in extreme cases, it’s off to prison for you.

Austin hasn’t gone quite that far. Yet.

The Austin American-Statesman reports that Austin’s city council decided that it doesn’t want to hear from anyone who opposes its policies, and doesn’t care about Texas open meetings laws.

Here’s what happened, according to the report. The Austin city council has been interested in imposing some harsh new environmental standards on Austin Energy. Austin Energy, the city-owned electric company, opposes those regulations because it believes that they will force energy prices to hike, by a whole lot. That will hurt the city’s thriving economy and take money out of residents’ pocketbooks. Businesses generally oppose the regulations, while the Sierra Club and other environmental interests support them.

At the city council meeting Thursday night, those regulations were on the agenda. The city council sent everyone home who had come to speak on the issue, which included many who opposed it, with the assurance that the regulations would not be taken up in that meeting. The council said that the regulations would come up in its Friday meeting instead.

So they cleared the room of everyone who opposed the regulations. Which they’re not supposed to do.

And then they reversed course and put the regulations on the agenda, and passed them. Representatives from Austin Energy had left the meeting, and were at a restaurant when the vote took place.

The Austin city council is dominated by leftwing Democrats. This is what they do when they have total control.

When Austin’s electric bills go up, again, we’ll have Mayor Lee Leffingwell, Mayo Pro Tem Sheryl Cole, and council members Chris Riley, Mike Martinez (the anti-Second Amendment crusader), Kathie Tovo, Laura Morrison, and Bill Spelman to thank for it.