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Matagorda County

Demand Letter: Matagorda County Failure to Respond — Bannert Employment Records — May 24, 2026

May 24, 2026 2 min read

Transmitted via email to rdeleon@co.matagorda.tx.us, CC: msloan@co.matagorda.tx.us (County Attorney), May 24, 2026.

TO: Matagorda County — Custodian of Records rdeleon@co.matagorda.tx.us

CC: Matthew Hardy Sloan, Matagorda County Attorney msloan@co.matagorda.tx.us

FROM: ████████████████████████████ DATE: May 24, 2026

RE: Failure to Respond — Public Information Act Request Submitted May 2, 2026 — Faith Marie Bannert Employment Records

I submitted a Texas Public Information Act request to Matagorda County on May 2, 2026, via email to rdeleon@co.matagorda.tx.us. The subject of the request was employment records for Faith Marie Bannert, a former Jailer who held a Temporary Jailer License and worked at Matagorda County from approximately December 6, 2023 through March 19, 2024.

Under Tex. Gov’t Code §552.228(a), a governmental body must respond to a public information request within ten (10) business days of receipt. That deadline was May 15, 2026. As of today, May 24, 2026 — nine calendar days and five business days after the deadline — Matagorda County has provided no response of any kind: no records, no written notification of claimed exceptions, no request for additional time, and no referral to the Texas Attorney General for an opinion.

This is a statutory violation. Tex. Gov’t Code §552.228 imposes an affirmative obligation to respond. A governmental body that neither produces records nor invokes a statutory exception within ten business days has forfeited the right to assert most exceptions. See Tex. Gov’t Code §552.302 (“If a governmental body does not request an attorney general decision . . . the information is presumed to be subject to required public disclosure and must be released.”).

I demand the following, no later than close of business May 27, 2026:

  1. Immediate production of all records responsive to my May 2, 2026 request; OR
  2. A written statement of the specific statutory basis for withholding each category of records, with a simultaneous request for an Attorney General opinion under §552.301.

Failure to respond by May 27, 2026 will result in:

  • A formal complaint to the Texas Attorney General’s Open Government Division under §552.3215
  • A civil penalty referral (up to $1,000 per violation per day)
  • A mandamus action in district court under §552.321

A copy of this letter is being transmitted to the Texas Attorney General’s Open Government Division concurrently.

Respectfully submitted,

██████████████████ 103 Irwin Dr., Columbus, TX 78934 ████████████████████████████ ████████████████

Correspondence #

Primary email correspondence for this record.

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