In a city that’s known for challenging GOP policies its progressive residents don’t agree with, new Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones is calling on local leaders to take additional steps in ensuring that proposals coming out of City Hall don’t conflict with state and federal law.

Among the changes Jones is calling for is a requirement that City Council members submitting Council Consideration Requests (CCR) first obtain a signature from the city manager acknowledging he’s seen the proposal.

It would then go to the City Attorney’s office for an “initial screening” to determine whether the policy is “clearly preempted” or would lead to “non-compliance” with the law, according to an Aug. 8 draft of the mayor’s changes.

“In this legal environment, we need to minimize the risk to our community,” Jones told the City Council on Wednesday while laying out her reasoning for a host of procedural changes that many members have balked at.

As a blue city in a red state, past San Antonio city leaders have long taken a more adversarial approach to Texas laws they didn’t like.

The city joined a lawsuit to stop Texas’ Death Star bill in 2023, dedicated money to help women circumvent the state’s near-total abortion ban earlier this year, and famously fought the state for power to keep Chick-fil-A out of the San Antonio International Airport early in former Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s tenure.

Against that backdrop, Jones’ focus on minimizing legal conflicts with state leaders marks a change in the political discourse.

The progressive Democrat campaigned promising to keep San Antonio “compassionate” by protecting residents from harmful GOP policies at the state and federal level.

“I continue to think it’s important that we stand up for our community, for all members of our community, and I certainly will stand by that,” Jones said in an interview Wednesday evening.

But increasingly aggressive, Republican-dominated courts have made such actions more risky, she noted, and the city needs to take extra precaution to keep itself from becoming a target.

“You’ve seen steps taken at the federal level where rule is law is not what we knew it to be,” Jones told the Report.

Just this month, Gov. Greg Abbott asked the Texas Supreme Court to remove from office Democrats who broke quorum to stop President Donald Trump’s redistricting plan, while federal leaders have engaged the FBI to hunt them down and Attorney General Ken Paxton has suggested Beto O’Rourke should be jailed for fundraising violations.

“The legal environment has changed, it’s more charged. Legal risks are higher,” Jones said at Wednesday’s meeting, while stressing that council members can still file their policy proposals for consideration regardless of what the initial legal review turns up.

“As elected officials representing your constituents, you can review the written document that the city attorney has to provide … and determine if you would still like to sponsor the CCR,” Jones said. “It doesn’t stop anything. … It gives us more awareness.”

Pushback from council

So far Jones’ proposed changes to the council’s policy-making process have faced dramatic pushback from liberal and conservative members alike.

Councilwomen Marina Alderete Gavito (D7) and Teri Castillo (D5) both pointed to recent successful CCRs — Alderete Gavito’s dangerous dog policy and Castillo’s restrictions on metal recycling — which faced initial pushback from the city attorney’s office but eventually found a way forward.

“While I understand the intent, what we hear is that the policies that our constituents rely on and expect us to put forward, we’re often told they’re preempted,” Castillo said.

More broadly, Castillo and other council members expressed concern that Jones’ changes would negate council’s authority to set its own policy-making procedures, as members went to great lengths to do last year.

Current CCR policies are set by an ordinance that the full council voted on last year, under Nirenberg’s tenure, to ensure the mayor must give all members’ proposals equal and speedy consideration.

Previously the mayor had sole discretion over which policies advanced, with some moving quickly and others sitting untouched for months or even years.

Protecting that victory has pit even Councilman Marc Whyte (D10) — a conservative attorney who spent much of his first term begging colleagues to keep city government in its lane — against Jones’ proposal to screen for preemption conflicts.

“We definitely do not want city ordinances to be in conflict with state law,” Whyte said in an interview after Wednesday’s meeting. “[But] if you look at the current ordinance … there is a process [for legal screening]. If the mayor wants to change the process to have the legal review done sooner, we need to have another vote and amend the ordinance.”

It’s unclear whether Jones will agree. She reiterated Wednesday that her goal was to make the CCR process run more efficiently, and doubled down on the idea her actions are within her legal authority as mayor.

City Attorney Andy Segovia approved Jones’ ideas before she presented them last month, but indicated she and the council would have to sort out their differences amongst themselves.

“My legal analysis is this is a family matter,” Segovia said. “[The] family is the elected officials, and neither [City Manager Erik Walsh], nor I, nor the clerk, belong to the family.”

Whyte, Alderete Gavito and Castillo forced Wednesday’s meeting to be called through a three-signature memo, and nearly all members said they want adjustments to the council’s policy-making procedures to be achieved by a council vote.

Jones declined to say afterward how she planned to move forward.