MileStone Community Builders donates thousands to commissioner's campaign, local politicians

HAYS COUNTY — As the county grows, Austin-based company MileStone Community Builders has approached multiple government entities with proposals for subdivisions including Hays Commons, located at FM 1626 and Carpenter Lane in Manchaca.

The preliminary plan was presented to Hays County Commissioners Court during its meeting on May 2. The court ultimately denied the plan in a 3-2 vote. Along with Lon Shell, Precinct 4 Commissioner Walt Smith, however, voted against the motion to deny a plan wrought with “big issues” — a characterization by commissioner Debbie Ingalsbe.

The Hays Free Press has since learned that MileStone made two $5,000 donations, totaling $10,000, to Smith’s campaign for reelection on Nov. 4 and Nov. 15 of 2022.

Smith, who said that he handles all of his campaign finances and reports, itemizes each contribution for a standard report and "received approximately 400 donations, with 85-90% being from individual donors," according to the commissioner.

However, MileStone’s $10,000 donation was the single largest contribution, with a total of $13,750 in donations for the Nov. 1-Dec. 31, 2022 reporting period.

Smith’s reasoning behind his vote to deny the motion, he said, was intended to establish a development agreement process for MileStone and essentially protect the eventual property owners in the subdivision from liability and county regulations.

“There would be no availability if we didn’t address [the issues in the preliminary plan]. A couple of developers have taken advantage of state statutes and we have no real recourse against them. That’s the reason I’ve been such a big advocate specifically for development agreements,” the commissioner said. “With a development agreement, it gives us the ability to hold the feet of that individual development agreement holder to the fire and not some new resident or new business that has no idea what the regulations are whenever they purchase a property. We gave absolutely no clear indication to our staff at the end of that. The judge closed it and moved on. And we still have not given our staff any direction whatsoever on a clear process for them to either bring this back, or if they don’t bring it back, we’re going to end up getting a submission. If we don’t reconsider, it’s just going to be what happens with this development or any other developer.”

Smith also downplayed the county’s power in approving or denying new developments.

“Either it meets the requirements or it does not meet the requirements and it can’t be considered. If it meets the requirements, then we don’t have an option but to approve it,” Smith said, adding that the donation had no bearing on his vote or his decision not to recuse himself from voting. “Whether there is a donation from an individual donor, a resident of the county or a company doing business in the county, at the end of the day, statutorily, if it meets our underlying regulations, we’re mandated by the state that we must approve it. Our hands are cuffed.”

The commissioner urged his constituents to come to him with questions should any arise regarding campaign donations.

“The fact is, I can’t control the public perception or the individual perception of anyone, but what I can do is be as ethical as possible and report every penny that I raised and every penny that I spent, and I’ve done that since the day I was elected and will continue to do that,” Smith said. “If any constituent has a question over any individual donation or wants to discuss how that may or may not have impacted a vote, I always have an open door, and I’m always more than happy to speak with anyone.”

He also added that concerned citizens should pay close attention to the contents of the discussion during the May 2 commissioners court meeting, particularly his vote.

“During the discussion with the court, it became very clear that in the consideration of this specific project, there was not a clear direction given to our staff,” Smith said. “Without a clear direction given to our staff, I have a distinct concern that this would have just moved forward without any direction from the county to the developer. Without that, we don’t know what the final product would have looked like. Because of the process that we’re attempting to establish, we’re at least trying to direct what will and will not happen in Hays County in a much better way.”

While MileStone CEO Garrett Martin was unavailable for a follow-up interview with The Hays Free Press, Martin did say that he does not believe such donations would influence Smith’s decisions.

“Frankly, I don’t know how well you know [Smith], but there’s a 0% chance that a campaign donation could impact his vote on anything,” Martin said. “He is super ‘calls it how he sees it’ and we just happen to agree with how he sees it.”

According to campaign finance records daing back to 2020, MileStone also donated $15,000 to Mark Jones’ failed bid for Hays County Judge in 2022 and $1,000 to Travis Mitchell in his successful bid for reelection as Kyle mayor in 2020. Campaign finance records were not available for elected officials in the city of Buda as of this publication.

It’s unclear how much money was donated by MileStone to the campaigns of officials in the preceding elections, as the MileStone CEO stated that the company regularly contributes to the political campaigns of local politicians.

“We donate regularly to political campaigns. I think if you go to the campaign records, you’ll see that. And frankly, we do it really to support people that we think are good in local government and you’ll see pretty universally that we’re not calling it along party lines,” said Martin. “We think that the local government is critically important, not only to our business, but just to our society and because of that belief, we regularly support election campaigns.”