Reading a recommendation before you decide

Most decisions in public service start with someone else's work. A staff report lands in the board packet. A department head sends a memo up the chain. A consultant presents a recommendation and a slide deck. Usually the recommendation is sound, because the people who wrote it know the subject well. Still, a recommendation is the start of a decision, not the end of it. Whether you sit on a city council, a commissioners court, a school board or a district board, run a department, or approve purchases for your unit, the person who votes, signs or approves owns the result. The habit is the same at every level: read the recommendation as the decision maker, not the audience.

What one city audit found

In 2015 the City of San Diego, California, began a series of building acquisitions that grew to more than $230 million. In July 2021 the city's Office of the City Auditor published a performance audit of how those deals were brought to the City Council.¹ The largest example was an office tower at 101 Ash Street, which the city took on through a 20-year lease-to-own agreement signed in December 2016.¹

According to the audit, staff told the council the building was Class A, in excellent condition, and needed about $10,000 in repairs. The auditor found it was classified as Class B. The staff report gave a purchase price of $72.5 million; the auditor put the true purchase price at about $92 million once a tenant improvement loan and the fees and profit built into the lease-to-own structure were counted.¹ The economic analysis did not total those costs and did not compare the building with other properties or with buying a building directly. The staff report also did not disclose the added risks of the lease-to-own agreement.¹ The city relied on condition assessments conducted by the previous owners, and those assessments left out an asbestos review. A preliminary 2020 estimate by city contractors put the improvements and repairs still needed at about $115 million, and when the audit was published the building sat vacant.¹

The auditor's first recommendation was a checklist for every building purchase or lease that needs council approval, including the business case, a funding analysis, supported tenant improvement cost estimates, a comparison with other options, a summary of due diligence findings, and a written analysis of significant legal risks.¹ Read that list again and it describes a complete recommendation, one that travels well beyond real estate. Each missing piece in this case was something a reader could have asked for: the full cost, the true condition, the other options and the risks.

What a complete recommendation contains

Whatever the format, a recommendation you can act on answers a short list of things. It says what decision is being asked of you and by when. It names the problem the decision solves. It lays out the options considered, including waiting or doing nothing. It shows the full cost, over the life of the decision and not only this year. It names the risks and who carries them. And it shows where each key number came from.

When one of those is missing, that is not a reason to say no. It is a reason to ask. Good staff welcome the question, because a decision that holds up protects them too.

Ask your questions in the open

For a governmental body covered by the Texas Open Meetings Act, where you ask matters as much as what you ask. Every regular, special or called meeting must be open to the public, except where the Act allows a closed session, and a meeting includes a quorum deliberating about public business the body oversees, or taking formal action.² A one-on-one conversation with staff is not, by itself, a meeting: the Attorney General has concluded that a private consultation between one member and an employee, outside the hearing of a quorum, does not constitute one.³ But a member commits an offense by knowingly joining a series of communications outside a meeting, each among fewer than a quorum, about an issue within the body's jurisdiction, while knowing the series would involve a quorum and amount to a deliberation.^2,3

The better habit is to put the questions that shape your vote on the record. Asked at the meeting, the answer reaches every member and the public at the same time, and it becomes part of the reason for the decision. For a department head or manager, the same idea takes a different form: ask in writing, so the answer stays with the file.

When to wait

Sometimes the right answer is "not yet." Waiting makes sense when a key number is missing or has no source, when a condition review or legal review has not been done, or when the alternatives were never laid out. It is a harder call when waiting has a real cost, such as a grant deadline, a price that expires or a safety problem. Ask staff what a delay would cost, and make that answer part of the record too.

If a body moves the item to a later meeting, it goes on that meeting's posted notice like any other item. One exception is a meeting recessed in good faith to the next regular business day.² Moving it to a set date, with a clear list of what staff will bring back, keeps the work moving. The San Diego auditor made a related point: the people who review proposals for the council need enough time to do it.¹

Write down the reasons

In Texas, a governmental body must keep minutes or a recording of each open meeting, and minutes must state the subject of each deliberation and show each vote, order, decision or other action taken.^2,3 That is the floor. A good record adds a sentence or two on why the body chose this option, what it relied on, and any condition attached. When the reasons are written down, the next board, the next manager and the next auditor can see what was known at the time. That protects the decision and the people who made it.

Five questions for any recommendation

1. What exactly are you asking me to decide, and by when?
2. What else did you consider, including waiting or doing nothing, and why this option?
3. What is the full cost over the life of the decision, and where does each number come from?
4. What could go wrong, who carries that risk, and has our attorney reviewed it?
5. What do we not know yet, and what would it take to find out before we decide?

A good staff report makes these answers easy to find. When it does not, asking is part of the job, and it is the part only the decision maker can do.

Reviewed against Texas law as of November 2026.

Sources

1. City of San Diego, Office of the City Auditor, Performance Audit of the City's Major Building Acquisition Process, OCA-22-002 (July 2021; transmitted July 22, 2021), Report Highlights and Findings 1 to 3, Recommendations 1, 2, 5 and 8, Appendix A. Read November 7, 2026. https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/22-002_building_acquisition_process.pdf
2. Tex. Gov't Code ch. 551, secs. 551.001(2) and (4), 551.002, 551.021, 551.041, 551.0411, and 551.143 (as amended by S.B. 1640, 86th Leg., R.S., eff. June 10, 2019); official text as read November 7, 2026. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/GV/htm/GV.551.htm
3. Office of the Attorney General of Texas, Open Meetings Act Handbook 2026, part VI (meetings, including the note on Attorney General Opinion GA-0989 (2013), and part VI.E, discussions among a quorum through a series of communications) and part X.A (minutes or recordings of open meetings). Read November 7, 2026. https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/openmeetings_hb.pdf

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