AUSTIN — Texas cities won a last-ditch fight to keep their annexation powers intact in the recent legislation session, but lost on issues such as regulating ride-hailing services during the biennial tug of war.

Overall, said Lindsey Baker, who handles intergovernmental affairs for the city of Denton, she was pleasantly surprised that local governments held their ground in a number of key battles, including a successful effort to fend off a property-tax revenue cap.

“We are extremely relieved that we made it out without a revenue cap,” Baker said. “We survived.”

Scott Houston, the Texas Municipal League’s deputy executive director and general counsel, said that for cities, it was the most challenging session in recent years.

Perhaps the biggest setback for cities was a bill, backed by wireless companies and industry vendors, regulating installation of towers and small cellular “network nodes” in municipal rights-of-way.

The push for new cell sites comes as providers seek additional bandwidth.

As defined by the bill, a public right of way is the area on, below, or above a public roadway, highway, street, public sidewalk, alley, waterway, or utility easement in which a municipality has an interest.

“We basically lost control of our rights of way,” Baker said. “If they want to install a pole in front of someone’s house they can do it.

“It looks like a telephone pole. It’s pretty sizable.”

In addition to loss of control, cities also stand to lose potential revenues under the new law.

Denton was charging about $2,000 per site to access a city right of way for the installation of network nodes, Baker said.

Under the new law, the charge is capped at $250 per antennae.

Baker said that the 5G installations are just beginning to roll out in her city, but that once residents “see them in their backyards … there will be backlash.”

Cities did, however, beat back other efforts to stem rule-making powers.

Bills that would have preempted city ordinances regulating short-term property rentals — the increasingly popular Airbnb service, for instance — were left on the cutting room floor. 

Cities also shut down bills to ban city red light cameras; a bill that would have preempted city plastic bag ordinances; and a bill to preempt any local ordinance prohibiting the keeping of up to six chickens.

But the chickens may yet come home to roost on property tax reform, and on what critics characterize as “forced” annexation. 

“Cities and counties scored a temporary victory,” on those issues, said James Quintero, director of the Center for Local Governance at the conservative Austin-based Texas Public Policy Foundation. “The game’s not over. 

“We’re heading into over time. I’m bullish on the fact that we’ll have a special session.”

As of mid-afternoon Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott had not announced a special session. 

But if annexation does come back in a special session, some version of the tax-reform bill, which died in a Senate filibuster will be “impossible to kill,” Quintero said. 

Cities say they need annexation authority to fund infrastructure and attract economic-development efforts that benefit entire regions, including those who nestle up to cities and enjoy the benefits they create without paying a fair share. 

“If you look at the bills, you have Republicans and Democrats coming together,” Quintero said. “This is not a partisan issue.”

Property-tax reform was a top priority for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and is also a prime candidate for a special session, should Abbott choose to act. 

Patrick said in a recent statement that he was disappointed that the House blocked proposals he favored.

Quintero contends that a groundswell of dissatisfaction on the part of home owners and businesses could put property tax changes into the win column during a special session. 

“We’re concerned that if the governor calls a special session, we’re most certainly faced with a revenue cap,” Baker said. “We’re not out of the weeds yet.” 

Regardless of the outcome this year, cities will in coming legislative sessions have to continue fending off what Bennett Sandlin, executive director of the Texas Municipal League, calls “Goldilocks” government: the notion that while the federal government is too big, and city government is too small, the Legislature is just the right size to fix problems.

“It’s a symptom of a much bigger problem: this idea that Austin knows best,” Houston said.

John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jaustin@cnhi.com.