The three-member board that lends Texas veterans money to buy homes and land meets Oct. 27 to decide whether its staff director can raise the ceiling on those home loans by himself, without coming back to the board for a vote. Anyone who wants to address the board has to say so at the start of the meeting.
The Texas Veterans Land Board is chaired by the elected land commissioner and run day to day by an executive secretary, Anthony W. Dale. The item would let him lift the maximum home loan to match the federal ceilings, which the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Federal Housing Finance Agency reset most years. The board already ties one piece of its lending to the federal number: a loan to a veteran and a spouse together cannot exceed the VA maximum. The average home loan the program wrote going into this fiscal year was $386,857, well under any of those ceilings, so the change would matter at the top of the market rather than the middle.
The rest of the agenda is land. The board votes on accepting high bids from an online sale of forfeited tracts that ran Sept. 1 to Oct. 15, on setting aside bids where the former owner is appealing, on ordering more tracts into a sale running Dec. 1 to Jan. 14, and on forfeiting delinquent accounts. It will also weigh cutting the minimum bid on tracts that already failed to sell once — the same step it took in April. The previous sale, which closed in July, drew 37 bids on eight tracts and produced seven winning bids worth $742,003.
Also listed: amendments to the rules for the home improvement loan program, a credit reporting contract, the fiscal 2027 internal audit plan, and five resolutions — among them one marking the board’s 80th year. The Legislature created it in 1946 under the Veterans Land Act, with $25 million in bonds to buy land and resell it to veterans coming home from the Second World War.
The loan ceiling is the only item that would change how the board works after Oct. 27. Everything else disposes of a tract, a contract or a quarter’s business.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 8:30 AM, Tuesday, October 27, 2026. TRD 2026006188 was filed October 16 at 4:43 p.m.
- Where
- Stephen F. Austin Building, 1700 N. Congress Ave., Room 170, Austin. In person only; the notice gives no advance stream address.
- Governing body & chair
- Texas Veterans Land Board — three members, chaired by the elected land commissioner. Chairwoman Dawn Buckingham, M.D. Anthony W. Dale is executive secretary.
- Format
- A special called meeting, not a quarterly one. Seventeen numbered items in three parts: ceremonial business and public comment, a two-item consent agenda, and a regular agenda of lending, land and audit votes.
- Live video
- The notice says a video link will be posted on the General Land Office website the morning of the meeting. Nothing is published in advance.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · Veterans Land Board page
Board members
- Dawn Buckingham, M.D. — chairwoman; land commissioner; serving since January 2023.
- Judson “Jud” Scott — retired admiral; term through December 2026.
- James Rothfelder — term through December 2028.
Names and terms are from the Land Office’s Veterans Land Board page, checked October 19, which shows no vacancy. The page gives no cities and no background for Rothfelder, so neither is printed here. The land commissioner chairs the board by virtue of the office. Anthony W. Dale’s title comes from the meeting notice itself, which he signed as executive secretary; the board’s July 2026 packet gives his name as Anthony W. “Tony” Dale.