The sun-baked sign marking Von Ormy’s city limits—population 1,300—doesn’t just announce a place. It advertises a philosophy. Here, on the scrubby outskirts of San Antonio, a mayor with a law degree and a historian’s pedigree has spent two decades trying to prove that government works best when it barely works at all. Art Martinez de Vara’s experiment in “liberty cities” has now metastasized into something far more ambitious: a campaign to rewrite the rules for every municipality in Texas, starting with the state’s largest.
Last February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Dallas for failing to hire 900 new police officers, a mandate voters approved in 2024. The lawsuit wasn’t just about public safety. It was a test case for Martinez de Vara’s latest playbook—a strategy that turns local charters into legal tripwires, strips cities of their immunity, and forces elected officials to answer to outside groups with deep pockets and zero accountability. The man behind the blueprint? A small-town mayor who lists “state historian” before “attorney” on his business card.
The Libertarian’s Long Game
Martinez de Vara’s crusade didn’t begin in Dallas. It started in Von Ormy, where he helped incorporate the town in 2008 with a promise of zero property taxes and “the freest little city in Texas.” The pitch was simple: escape San Antonio’s annexation threats, keep more of your money, and govern yourselves. What unfolded was less a utopia than a cautionary tale. Von Ormy still lacks a sewer system 18 years later, relying on septic tanks that deter businesses and frustrate residents. Two truck stops generate most of the town’s revenue, leaving little for roads, trash pickup, or even a full-time city employee.
“We were sold self-determination,” said Alex Quintanilla, a former Von Ormy city commissioner. “What we got was a maze of potholes and no way to pay for them.”
The liberty city model—low taxes, minimal regulation, volunteer governance—has been tried in at least five other Texas towns Martinez de Vara helped incorporate. None have thrived. Kingsbury, 60 miles northeast of Von Ormy, has one paid employee and no water or sewer service. Its mayor, Shirley Nolen, admits the low-tax ethos is a “double-edged sword.” “We don’t want property taxes,” she said, “but we also don’t want a landfill next door with no zoning to stop it.”
Yet Martinez de Vara’s ambitions have only grown. After his early experiments faltered, he pivoted to a new strategy: instead of building liberty cities from scratch, he’d force existing ones to adopt his rules. In 2024, he joined Dallas HERO, a nonprofit funded by Republican megadonor Monty Bennett, to push ballot measures that reshaped Dallas’s charter. The changes required the city to dedicate a fixed share of its budget to police hiring, hiked officer pay, and—most critically—removed the city’s immunity from lawsuits. The result? Dallas is now cutting services to fund police, even as crime rates drop, and facing litigation from residents and the state.
How a Tiny Town’s Mayor Became a Big-City Puppeteer
Martinez de Vara’s influence extends far beyond Von Ormy. Through the Texas Government Accountability Association (TGAA), a nonprofit he helped launch in 2025, he’s pressured cities to sign contracts that bind them to external audits, limit their spending discretion, and waive their legal immunity. The pitch? “Transparency and accountability.” The reality? A Trojan horse for outside control.
TGAA’s ties to Bennett are no secret. The group shares a mailing address with Dallas HERO and Bennett’s conservative media outlet, the Dallas Express. Its financial officer works for Bennett’s hotel empire. When Odessa, a city of 124,000, signed a TGAA contract, it discovered the deal had no expiration date, no cap on fees, and could only be terminated by a citywide vote. After new council members were elected in 2024, Odessa sued to escape the agreement. A judge voided the contract in December, calling it “unenforceable.” TGAA withdrew its appeal in February, leaving its future—and Martinez de Vara’s role—uncertain.
“This isn’t about accountability,” said Bill Helfand, a Houston municipal law expert. “It’s about outsourcing local governance to unelected groups with their own agendas. No responsible official should sign away their city’s autonomy.”
Yet Martinez de Vara’s legal fingerprints are all over the Dallas lawsuit. He represents two plaintiffs in Paxton’s case and confirmed to the Dallas Morning News that he coordinated with the attorney general’s office. “I was a logical person to reach out to,” he said. Logical, perhaps, but also convenient. Martinez de Vara’s dual roles—as mayor of Von Ormy and attorney for groups suing Dallas—blur the line between local leader and political operative.
The Ripple Effect: Who Wins, Who Loses
Martinez de Vara’s strategy exploits a fundamental tension in Texas politics: the clash between urban and rural values. Dallas, Houston, and Austin are Democratic strongholds with diverse economies and complex challenges. Rural Texas, where Martinez de Vara’s ideas resonate, often views big cities as bloated and unaccountable. By weaponizing ballot measures and lawsuits, he’s found a way to impose rural priorities on urban centers—without ever winning an election there.
The consequences are already visible. Dallas has slashed funding for libraries, parks, and public health to meet its police hiring mandate. In Von Ormy, residents still flush their toilets into septic tanks, and businesses avoid the town for lack of infrastructure. Kingsbury’s mayor now admits that “self-reliance” has limits. “We can’t even regulate a landfill,” Nolen said. “That’s not freedom. That’s just chaos.”
Political scientists see Martinez de Vara’s tactics as part of a broader conservative effort to rein in blue cities. “Texas Republicans have long sought leverage over urban Democrats,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. “What’s new is the legal creativity. They’re not just passing laws—they’re rewriting city charters to make governance impossible.”
“This is the endgame of the liberty city movement: not to create functional governments, but to make government so weak that it can’t function at all. Martinez de Vara isn’t building a model. He’s building a wrecking ball.”
—Dr. Heather K. Gerken, Dean of Yale Law School and expert on local governance
The Future of Local Control
Martinez de Vara’s vision faces its next test in Von Ormy, where he was reelected mayor in 2025. The town’s struggles—no sewer system, no property tax, no full-time staff—are a microcosm of the liberty city experiment’s flaws. Yet his influence continues to grow. The TGAA may be on life support, but its tactics live on in the Dallas lawsuit and other pending litigation.
For cities like Dallas, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The charter amendments Martinez de Vara helped draft don’t just mandate police funding—they create a legal minefield. Every budget decision, every policy debate, now risks a lawsuit. “We’re spending more on lawyers than on streetlights,” said one Dallas council member, who requested anonymity to avoid litigation. “That’s not governance. That’s extortion.”
The broader question is whether Martinez de Vara’s approach will spread. Other states, including Florida and Tennessee, have passed laws limiting local control, but none have gone as far as Texas in using ballot measures and lawsuits to micromanage cities. If Paxton’s lawsuit succeeds, it could embolden similar efforts nationwide.
For now, Von Ormy remains a symbol of both the promise and peril of limited government. Its streets are quiet, its taxes are low, and its residents are free to set off fireworks wherever they please. But when the septic tanks fail or the potholes swallow a car, there’s no one to call—and no money to fix it. That’s the paradox of Martinez de Vara’s experiment: in his quest to liberate cities from government, he’s left them with no government at all.
As Texas grapples with this new reality, one thing is clear: the mayor of a town you’ve never heard of has already redrawn the rules for millions. The only question left is how far his wrecking ball will swing.
What do you think—should cities have the right to govern themselves, even if it means higher taxes and more regulation? Or is Martinez de Vara’s vision the future of local control? Sound off in the comments.
