A Texas pastor whose congregation has taken an active role in pushing for more humane policies in Tarrant County has been banned for one year from speaking at Tarrant County Commissioners Court meetings.
Ryon Price, pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, was given the penalty by County Judge Tim O’Hare. In Texas, the top elected official in a county is called a “judge” but actually is not a “judge” in the legal sense. However, the county judge does preside at meetings of the Commissioners Court.
When O’Hare was sworn in as county judge in January 2023, the county leadership took a hard right turn. He is a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump and has a track record that aligns with far-right evangelical priorities.
Tim O’Hare ordering Pastor Ryon Price removed from the Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting. (Screncap)
As a city council member in Farmers Branch, Texas, a Fort Worth suburb, O’Hare wanted to prevent landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants and to make English the city’s official language. He also was a part of the conservative evangelical takeover of Southlake, another affluent Fort Worth suburb that has been called Ground Zero in the effort to take control of public schools. He founded the Southlake Families PAC, which fought implementation of a cultural competence plan in Carroll Independent School District — one of the most notable examples of anti-“woke” maneuvering in school boards nationwide.
Fort Worth Weekly said of O’Hare’s campaign against Critical Race Theory in public schools: “O’Hare successfully gave wealthy white parents in Southlake the means for pushing back on much-needed racial equity programs in the area’s Carroll school district.”
He won the county judge seat in a high-stakes race with Betsy Price, also a Republican and the revered former mayor of Fort Worth.
As county judge, O’Hare has been both volatile and quotable. He has taken particular aim at first-term commissioner Alisa Simmons, one of two Democrats on the five-member commission.
In 2006, as mayor of Farmers Branch, O’Hare said Hispanics are “less desirable people” who don’t value education or take care of their properties.
One of the first county leaders to resign in protest of O’Hare’s election was county elections chief Hector Garcia, who said he could not run elections with “respect and zero politics” while working with O’Hare, who is a 2020 election denier. Garcia was quickly snapped up to serve in the same role in Dallas County, which has a Democratic majority in county government.
O’Hare has called Tarrant County “the last urban Republican county in America.”
O’Hare has called Tarrant County “the last urban Republican county in America.” It is without a doubt the last Republican-led urban county in Texas, a state divided between major urban areas that lean Democratic and rural areas that lean Republican. Republicans control state government because rural voters out vote urban voters.
Broadway Baptist Church, a progressive congregation affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, has become a regular presence at Tarrant County Commissioners Court, advocating especially for better treatment of prisoners in the county jail. In the last seven years, 64 people have died in the Tarrant County Jail with listed causes death including suicides, overdoses and fatal encounters with staff.
Ryon Price
On July 2, Price was present at the county commissioners court meeting and read part of a letter members of Broadway sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland asking for a federal investigation into the county jail.
That 38-page letter said the county jail is “a danger to the Tarrant County community” and injurious practices have continued despite “appeal to the Tarrant County sheriff, Tarrant County Commissioners Court and Tarrant County officials.”
Price told the story of a 38-year-old man who was homeless and living with mental illness who he said was severely mistreated by jail staff. As Price read from the letter describing the alleged abuse of the man by jail staff, O’Hare declared Price’s time was over at exactly the 3-minute mark, which is the allotted time for all speakers. Price continued to complete the sentence he was reading, and O’Hare spoke over him to say his time was up and then to declare the pastor in contempt of the Commissioners Court. O’Hare ordered Price removed from the room.
Someone in the room booed O’Hare’s treatment of Price, and O’Hare then attempted to find out who had booed him.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Price has been banned from the court for one year because he exceeded the 3-minute limit for public comment by 8 seconds.
In a statement to BNG, Price said: “A year-long ban for such a minor infraction is excessive and unfair. Many people exceed their time allotment by a matter of seconds. I’m the first I’m aware of having been banned for so slight an infraction. I hope the court will decide this order is out of proportion. Until then, I intend to comply because I respect the rule of law and because there are too many people in the Tarrant County Jail already.”
Other members of Broadway Baptist Church are expected to speak at this Tuesday night’s meeting of the Commissioners Court.
Price wasn’t the only person barred from future court meetings that night. Former state Rep. Lon Burnam was removed “after he approached O’Hare to express his grievances about his treatment of Commissioner Alisa Simmons, a Democrat who represents Southeast Tarrant County, following a heated exchange between the two,” the Star-Telegram reported.
Burnam told the newspaper he is tired of O’Hare dismissing Simmons’ comments at meetings. “He called the argument at the July 2 meeting the ‘last straw for him,’” the paper said.
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