You’re paying the legal bill in Keller ISD split, but you can’t see it | Opinion

Keller school district taxpayers are on the hook for a six-figure legal bill. But they’re not allowed to know exactly what it’s for.

Heck, even the officials responsible for paying the bill, including interim Superintendent Cory Wilson, may not be privy to the details.

Jackson Walker LLP, the law firm employed to represent the Keller school board, submitted an invoice May 23 seeking nearly $172,000 in payment and expense reimbursement. It covers legal work from December to mid-May, the period in which some trustees cooked up, pushed and ultimately abandoned a proposal to split the district in two.

But in every case, the description of the work done is blacked out. Legal advice? Research that sparked the too-clever-by-half attempt to cleave the district without letting voters have a say? Coffee service? Who knows.

It’s the latest poor-governance drama to stem from a few trustees’ divisive idea. The district has lost a superintendent, seen turnover in school board elections and deepened a rift among families who live in the city of Keller and those in north Fort Worth.

It’s not the only specious legal bill hitting taxpayers lately, either. Republican Tarrant County commissioners may soon approve a plan to spend up to $250,000 for outside counsel to defend their unusual decision to redraw county precinct lines in the middle of the decade. They have acknowledged that they’re doing it to flip a seat from Democratic to Republican, but in the process, they’ve drawn allegations of illegal race-based gerrymandering.

Pro tip for elected officials: If your scheme requires outside lawyers because the capable ones your governments already employ and pay can’t or won’t defend it, perhaps you should reconsider.

Keller ISD legal contract details almost totally blacked out

But back to Keller ISD. It’s unclear who, if anyone, gets to see the details. The copy provided to Star-Telegram reporter Cody Copeland under state open-records laws is comically sloshed with black ink blotting out any description of the legal work. The invoice is detailed enough that some work is billed in six-minute increments, but the substance of it? That’s a big secret.

Perhaps a few board members have seen the specifics. Perhaps several of them know the gist of the work, especially advice given in closed-door board meetings. But the district officials who have to approve the bill — and more importantly, the taxpayers forced to spend money on that rather than, say, teacher bonuses — are in the dark.

Sadly, it’s probably legal. State open-government laws contain broad exemptions that allow agencies to obscure details of advice from lawyers. It’s one of the most abused parts of the law, but it’s hard to prove and there’s usually not much interest in fighting for the information in court.

When trustees realized how the ill-fated division plan roiled the Keller ISD community, they pledged to try to heal and to be more open and responsive to voters. This is not a great start.

The law firm — Jackson Walker, based in Dallas but with a Fort Worth office — serves several government clients. Its lawyers should do more to guide them to be transparent. Yes, their first duty is to the client. But when the taxpayers are paying you, there’s an obligation there as well.

Tarrant County spending money to defend redistricting plan

We’d love to think we’ll see that from the lawyers hired by Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare and Republican commissioners. All have stressed that they never gave race a passing thought in dreaming up the plan to make Precinct 2 more Republican and practically ensure a 4-1 GOP majority. When the public pays to defend that in court, taxpayers deserve to know the details.

And as we’ve said before, on both counts, this is not the fiscal conservatism that members of either government like to tout. It’s duplicative and often surreptitious. If property taxes are the level of burden that these officeholders like to say, they should be trying to save every dime, not buying cloaked legal work from high-level firms.

Editor’s note: An earlier version incorrectly identified Keller ISD interim Superintendent Cory Wilson.

This story was originally published June 26, 2025 at 1:32 PM.