The Death and Rebirth of Local Control

How Ending the “Tyrant’s Veto” Can Help Cities Thrive Again

In San Antonio’s affluent North Side, a 4.5-acre lot along an arterial road sits vacant where housing was supposed to rise. A development group including the city-backed San Antonio Housing Trust and the local Essence Preparatory Public Schools had a vision for the site: Vista Park would provide 85 subsidized apartments for workers like teachers, nurses, and police officers, with rents affordable to households earning 20%-60% of area median income—and an on-site pre-K, to boot. Meanwhile, the project was awarded $20 million in state tax credits to support the subsidized rents. Some residents of the adjacent single-family neighborhood had concerns, so the developer worked with them to reduce the height of the building to three stories, to change its shape to face away from their neighborhood, to increase the buffer between them and to add trees and a fence, and to build a detention pond to manage drainage.

But it was never enough—the neighbors blocked the project’s rezoning.

Although the Planning Commission recommended approval, neighbors triggered a “valid petition” in protest. While Vista Park had majority support on the City Council—with 7 out of 11 members in favor—it wasn’t enough to overcome the 75% supermajority required under Texas law. The project died, and San Antonio lost the tax credits.

Thanks to a new bipartisan law signed last weekend, future Vista Parks won’t face the same anti-democratic gauntlet. House Bill (HB) 24 strikes at the heart of urban stagnation by curtailing the power of a vocal minority to block new housing on land they don’t own.

Under the old law, the valid petition allowed just 20% of nearby landowners—sometimes a single one—to block a zoning change, even if the remaining 80% supported it. A property owner could appeal the petition to their city council, which then needed a 75% supermajority to override it. In practice, that meant one homeowner could override years of planning and the will of the majority.

Austin, for instance, now has a pro-housing supermajority of 9 out of 11 members on Council, but for years it did not—and during that time, a small minority of neighbors used this “tyrant’s veto” to stop housing projects with broad public support. Even where it didn’t kill projects outright, the valid petition chilled rezonings across the city, fueling Austin’s housing crisis.

No more. HB 24 raises the threshold for the valid petition to 60% and reduces the votes needed to overturn it to a simple majority (6 out of 11 in Austin and San Antonio). The law also prevents a minority of property owners from blocking citywide zoning changes that allow more housing, as they have succeeded in doing in Austin in recent years.

HB 24 marks a tectonic shift: it reclaims zoning authority from entrenched opposition groups and returns it to elected leaders and property owners.

Opponents of HB 24 said it “preempts” local control, arguing that land use decisions should stay in the hands of communities. But the phrase “local control” has long been a misnomer: it doesn’t mean the right of local governments to govern, but rather the ability of small groups of neighbors to override democratic processes and individual property rights. Indeed, as Vista Park shows, “the community” often means only the people who already own property there—not existing renters, or would-be renters who would like to live close to their jobs. During San Antonio’s public hearings about the project, one of the neighbors protesting the project begged the City Council to “keep San Antonio residential and feeling like home.”

“Residential and feeling like home”—for whom? Only those lucky enough to already live there.

Those who might have lived at Vista Park didn’t get to vote. The builder who already owned the land had a vote—but it didn’t count. Neither did those of the nine planning commissioners and seven city council members who supported it. Their decisions were overruled by a few neighbors and an outdated rule. Thanks to the valid petition, the debate over “local control” versus preemption in Texas was largely a farce.

“Local control,” at least as exemplified by the valid petition process, is itself a preemption—of individual property rights and local democracy.

In a free society, this doesn’t make any sense.

Properly understood, preemption is when the state overrides or compels local action. That typically applies to areas where authority has traditionally resided with cities. Texas, for example, has preempted cities from enacting rent control or raising property taxes above a certain threshold. Zoning, however, is not a right that cities inherently possess. It's an explicit extension of the state’s police powers—a delegated authority, not sovereign control. So, the state can take it back, or place limits on its exercise.

And in cases like the valid petition, it should.

In Texas, we’ve created a system where those uncomfortable with change—or with the people they think change represents—can prevent others from living nearby. This is what local control is in practice. A process that empowers opponents of change while disempowering pro-change majorities makes it impossible for communities to evolve in response to real housing needs, local demand, and changing demographics. When the state withdraws that power, it doesn’t impose a top-down vision—it removes a barrier to bottom-up development. It reorients municipalities away from suppression and toward organic growth.

HB 24 strengthens local democracy by requiring majority support for neighbor petitions, restoring simple-majority power to elected officials, and preventing small groups from derailing citywide reforms. The reform doesn’t take power away from cities, it gives it back, empowering cities—and their elected leaders—to make decisions unshackled by rules that favor housing opponents.

HB 24 deweaponizes the zoning process in Texas.

By limiting the power of minoritarian vetoes over more comprehensive land use changes, HB 24 opens a deeper question: why do we rely on zoning at all?

Zoning may have started as a way to prevent nuisances—but it quickly became a tool of exclusion. Today, it restricts land use not to prevent real harm, but to enforce conformity and protect incumbents. It empowers a select few to decide who gets to live nearby, based on income, housing type, or family structure. Under the pretense of order, it suppresses growth and denies opportunity.

We need a different framework—not one based on exclusionary zoning, but one that starts with a presumption in favor of the property owner, bounded by clear, objective rules. Planning doesn’t have to disappear—in fact, it’s necessary for maintaining public rights-of-way, creating public and civic spaces, and managing the interface of city streets and private spaces. Cities can still have design standards, environmental review, and infrastructure requirements. But zoning isn’t planning; it’s the micromanagement of land use. Getting rid of zoning as we know it doesn’t mean we lose order—it just means we lose the power to exclude.

While zoning is no longer subject to a neighborhood vetocracy, its fundamental exclusionary nature remains. Nevertheless, HB 24 is a major step in the right direction.

HB 24 helps cities act like cities again—places shaped by democratic majorities, not paralyzed by neighborhood vetoes. As more people continue to move to the Sunbelt, straining housing markets in cities, Texas lawmakers recognized that land use authority couldn’t remain hostage to the most change-averse. This wasn’t about shifting power from one government to another. It was about shifting the power from those who always say no to those ready to say yes—to more neighbors, more housing options, and more opportunity in the places people already call home.

The passage of HB 24 is a victory for liberty, democratic governance, and the simple idea that cities should be allowed to grow. This isn’t preemption. It’s restoration—and redemption.