Texas Attorney General Opinion: GA-0650 Page: 2 of 5
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Ms. Kathleen T. Jackson - Page 2
You ask whether members of the board of directors are entitled to participate in the LNVA's
health care plan established under section 49.069 of the Water Code. Request Letter, supra note 1,
at 1. Section 49.069 authorizes a district operating under chapter 49 of the Water Code to offer a
health care plan to its employees:
The board may include hospitalization and medical benefits
to its employees as part of the compensation paid to the officers and
employees and may adopt any plan, rule, or regulation in connection
with it and amend or change the plan, rule, or regulation as it may
determine.
TEX. WATER CODE ANN. 49.069(c) (Vernon 2008). We presume for purposes of this opinion that
members of the board of directors of the LNVA are "officers" within the meaning of section
49.069(c). The only express authorization to the board is to include hospitalization and medical
benefits only in the compensation paid "to its employees." Id. Thus, under the plain terms of section
49.069(c), only employees may receive hospitalization and medical benefits as part of their
compensation.
It has been suggested, however, that the directors of the LNVA might themselves qualify as
"employees" for purposes of section 49.069(c). Request Letter, supra note 1, at 2. In a prior
opinion, this office considered whether directors of a chapter 49 water district might be classified
as "employees" for purposes of participation in a deferred compensation plan. See Tex. Att'y Gen.
Op. No. JC-0197 (2000). The opinion relied on a decision of the United States Supreme Court
declaring that when the term "employee" is used in the law without an accompanying definition, "the
term presumably describes 'the conventional master-servant relationship as understood by the
common-law agency doctrine."' Id. at 3 (quoting Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Darden, 503 U.S. 318,
322-23 (1992)). The opinion concluded that a director of a chapter 49 district "is not an employee
of the district under the common law." Id. Based on this same reasoning and authority, we conclude
that LNVA directors are not "employees" for purposes of section 49.069(c).
Moreover, the term "employees" in section 49.069(c) is clearly limited in its scope when
contrasted with the language of section 60.014 of the Water Code. In a prior opinion, we said that
members of the board of directors of a navigation district, another type of conservation and
reclamation district, were authorized to provide medical benefits to themselves. See Tex. Att'y Gen.
Op. No. GA-0284 (2004) at 4. The relevant statute provided, however, that "[t]he [navigation]
commission may include hospitalization and medical benefits for officers and employees as part
of the compensation paid to the officers and employees." TEX. WATER CODE ANN. 60.014(a)
(Vernon 2004) (emphasis added). This provision, by specifically permitting a navigation district to
offer hospitalization and medical benefits to its officers, demonstrates that the Legislature was aware
of the kind of language required to permit the offering of such benefits to an officer. In section
49.069(c), it elected not to do so, but rather to limit hospitalization and medical benefits to
employees of the district.(GA-0650)
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Texas. Attorney-General's Office. Texas Attorney General Opinion: GA-0650, text, July 29, 2008; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth275546/m1/2/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.