By Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson
Can you imagine driving your family to the beach for summer vacation only to find a high fence covered with no trespassing" signs?
For Texans the ability to go to any beach they choose seems natural. But that isnt the case elsewhere.
Florida California and nearly every other coastal state in the Union allow owners of beachfront property to exclude the public and permit public beach access only in a limited number of locations.
Our freedom to walk on any beach we choose is unique and under constant threat. Developers overpaid lawyers and even the legislature fail to appreciate this freedom.
Thats why I urge you to vote YES on Proposition 9 November 3 and enshrine our right to our beaches in the Texas Constitution. With your help we can forever recognize and protect Texans right to access their beach and add it to our Texas Bill of Rights so that it cannot be taken away.
This prescriptive right to access the beach is as old as Texas. Before statehood when Texas was a Republic travelers regularly used the beach as a highway. In the days before roads Texas long beaches served as an expressway for horses stagecoaches and even the mail.
This tradition of public use constitutes a common law right. Like so many common law rights this right faced legal challenges. It was eroded over the years as development boomed along the Texas coast. By the 1950s some beachfront property owners were building fences all the way to the water to make their own private beaches.
In 1959 the Texas Legislature passed the Texas Open Beaches Act to put this common law into statute. Despite natural disasters and no small amount of controversy the Texas Open Beaches Act has withstood the test of time and continues to affirm the publics free and unrestricted access to public beaches.
It has served Texas well for 50 years. Its now time to enshrine this right in our Texas Constitution.
Proposition 9 would elevate the freedom to access the beach to a lot of other freedoms we depend on like freedom of speech freedom of worship and the right to carry a firearm.
Just like those rights Texans right to access public beaches should be protected in perpetuity. The Legislature will still have a say on how that right is managed but the right itself will be preserved.
If you want to keep your summer vacations at the Texas beach vote YES on Proposition 9 and lets send a signal that Texas beaches belong to all Texans.
Jerry Patterson is Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office and a Republican. A former state senator Marine Lt. Colonel and Vietnam veteran Patterson lives in Austin.
