Texas Military Commission Rewrites Its Grant Rules After Lawmakers Took Scoring from Staff

The Texas Military Preparedness Commission meets Sept. 15 to rebuild how it hands out a grant program that has sent more than $172 million to towns near military bases — the first cycle since the Legislature took the scoring away from Governor’s office staff and gave it to the commissioners themselves.

The money goes to defense communities: cities, counties, regional planning commissions, junior colleges and base development authorities can apply for $50,000 to $5 million to build infrastructure tied to a Pentagon decision, whether a base is growing, shrinking or at risk. The round announced in March spread more than $26 million across seven projects — $5 million to Val Verde County for airfield lighting at Laughlin Air Force Base, $4.5 million to Bell County for an aquifer storage system serving Fort Hood, $4 million to El Paso to expand desalination capacity for Fort Bliss, and smaller awards in Texarkana, San Antonio and Corpus Christi.

Until last year a panel of three to five Governor’s office employees scored the applications. A 2025 law deleted the panel and put the scoring on the commission’s 13 members instead; the Senate analysis said the staff reviewers “may not have any expertise or background in military culture.” Commissioners will now vote on temporary workgroups to review the applications before individual scoring is finished, along with limits on what members in those groups may say to one another. The commission is subject to the state’s open meetings law.

Two rule items follow. Commissioners will vote to publish amendments to the grant rules — which still describe the staff panel the Legislature abolished — and to start the review every Texas agency must run at least once every four years, deciding whether each of its rules is still needed. The most recent such notice the Dispatch could locate ran in November 2019; the Texas Register archive pages would not open to confirm whether a later one exists.

The stakes are large and slightly smaller than they were. A comptroller’s study the commission commissioned put the economic output of Texas military installations at $148.8 billion and about 629,000 direct and indirect jobs this July, down from $151.2 billion and 677,000 in the 2024 edition. Applications for the next round close Nov. 6, though the program’s own web page still describes last year’s cycle.

Meeting at a glance

Commission members

• Michael Boyd — chairman; San Angelo; retired broadcaster and Texas Army National Guard veteran.
• Garry Bradford — Corpus Christi; staffing company owner; retired Army Reserve colonel.
• Darrell Coleman — retired newspaper publisher.
• Tom Duncavage — Houston.
• Todd Fox — Killeen; bank president; former III Corps chief of staff.
• Dennis Lewis — Texarkana.
• J. Mark McLean — Fort Worth.
• Benjamin Miranda — El Paso.
• Paul Norwood — Georgetown.
• Annette Sobel — Lubbock.
• Michael Bob Starr — Abilene.
• Timothy Strawther — San Antonio.
• Shannalea Taylor — Del Rio.

Roster from the governor’s commissioners page, read September 8. One caveat: the Texas State Directory lists a different thirteenth member, Kirk Peterson of Wichita Falls, in place of Darrell Coleman, whose last announced term expired February 1, 2025. The Dispatch could not resolve the conflict and did not reach the governor’s office. Three ex officio seats — the adjutant general and the two legislative committee chairs — could not be confirmed as currently filled. Switchboard: (512) 475-1475.