Tarrant County Commissioners unanimously voted on Tuesday to call for the removal of Jeff Law, Tarrant County’s chief appraiser.
Judge Tim O’Hare, Roy Charles Brooks, Alisa Simmons, and Gary Fickes were the four commissioners present who approved the vote of no confidence.
O’Hare said that the vote came after multiple issues and that the blame should only be directed at one person.
“This is not condemning the good men and women that work at the Tarrant Appraisal District, of whom there are many,” said O’Hare, per the Fort Worth Report.
“The buck has to stop at the top. The chief appraiser has been the common denominator throughout all of these issues and episodes, and it’s time to hold him accountable.”
Brooks agreed.
“It has to do with (Law’s) mismanagement of that agency,” he said, per the FWR. “He provides a profound lack of leadership to that organization, and it does not get better year over year.”
A vote of no confidence does not remove Law from his position as chief appraiser, but it does indicate the recommendation from the commissioners. Law has served in the position since 2008.
He recently finished a 90-day probationary period that began in April, during which he was issued a “letter of repair” detailing issues he needed to address, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Following the probationary period, Law won a vote of confidence with a 3-2 vote from the board, which allowed him to remain in his position as chief appraiser.
Moving forward, the Tarrant Appraisal District (TAD) board could choose to act on the vote at the next meeting, which is currently set for November 10.
“We never had the authority to make them do anything, but this will be an historic act that perhaps, if they ignore it, they will ignore it at their own peril,” said Brooks, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The commissioners will also draft a letter for the board of directors expressing the desire for Law to be replaced.
The TAD commissioners are not the first to express their disapproval of Law, as the mayors from Colleyville, Keller, and Southlake issued a letter to the board of directors on August 24 demanding that he be replaced.
“As Mayors of the cities of Keller, Southlake, and Colleyville, we refuse to sit complacent while the Tarrant Appraisal District tries to justify yet another scandal,” reads the letter.
The letter was sent in reference to a statement made by Cal Wood, TAD’s director of information systems, in which he was recorded saying he would support deceiving the public.
“I’m OK with creating a false narrative that distances the truth from the media,” Wood said in the recording, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Wood was subsequently suspended from his position and then fired on Friday, as reported by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The comments made by Wood were from a meeting regarding issues with TAD’s website, which underwent updates at the beginning of the summer and has been described as a “painfully slow site” by users, as covered by The Dallas Express.