Montgomery County Adopts AI Ethics Rules Amid Texas Mandate Uncertainty

Montgomery County commissioners voted unanimously last week to adopt minimum ethics standards for artificial intelligence use, but the state mandate comes with a price tag nobody can quite pin down.

The resolution, approved during the April 23 court meeting, implements the Texas Department of Information Resources Artificial Intelligence System Code of Ethics. This framework, required by Senate Bill 1964, applies to both state agencies and local governments across the state. The Houston Chronicle first reported the decision and the financial concerns it raised.

County IT Director Bobby Powell made one thing clear during the meeting: there is nobody in his department except himself who can handle the AI risk management job. "This is going to end up being a full-time job," Powell told the commissioners. The mandate requires appointing a dedicated AI risk management official, creating an unfunded position that will need to be filled.

The exact cost remains unknown as the industry continues to evolve. Powell noted that hardware costs have already surged dramatically because of AI integration. Increases range from 40% to 60%, and in some cases exceed 1000% above last year's market level for specific items. (Nobody asked for the servers to cost more, but here we are.)

Almost all software now has an AI element, Powell said. The county must prove that any AI it uses doesn't harm anyone. "That is kinda hard to prove when we don't even know what the software is doing all the time," Powell admitted. "It's going to be a pain."

The framework focuses on "high scrutiny data"—records containing sensitive information, personal data, or information at high risk of errors or potential fraud. If the county district attorney's office gathers data from the county jail and AI is used in that process, that qualifies as high scrutiny data. The physical reality of this means more clicks, more documentation, more meetings where someone has to explain why a particular algorithm might be problematic.

Commissioner Charlie Riley of Precinct 2 expressed frustration with the growing AI industry and potential costs to the county. "The answer to AI ought to be 'ain't interested,'" Riley said. Commissioner Matt Gray of Precinct 4 was equally blunt: "(AI) is a problem and it's going to continue to be a problem."

First Assistant County Attorney Amy Davidson noted the scope of the challenge. "It's widespread. We have an employee issue, we have a training issue, we have a software issue, we have an IT issue, ... at the same time on [top of] that, ... we do have requirements with the state that we have to comply with."

According to Community Impact, Powell confirmed that anyone doing AI business with the county must enact the same provisions within their companies and comply with state guidelines and standards. This extends the compliance burden beyond county employees to vendors and contractors.

The approved resolution enacts the minimum standards required by the Texas Department of Information Resources. Powell said there will be living documents tied to the back end of this that the department will bring back to the court in a few weeks. These documents will have specifics about what the county is doing, instead of just the DIR framework that they're requiring the county to enact.

Powell and his department will work to only allow AI to occur when it's safe. His department, along with the county attorney's office, is working on additional AI-related policy that will be brought back to the court at a later date. The AI policy produced by the county attorneys will enact all the changes and restrictions that the county has to follow through.

The AI industry is expected to grow by over 25% annually worldwide through 2032, according to Statista. Whether Montgomery County can afford to keep up with that growth while maintaining ethical standards remains the real question. The commissioners approved the rules, but nobody handed them a budget to match.

Artūras Malašauskas is an AI Systems Integrator with 20+ years of production-grade web engineering experience. He has designed, shipped, and scaled enterprise Python/PHP systems for logistics, SaaS, and public-sector clients. For the past year, he has focused exclusively on AI integrations: deploying open-source LLMs, building generative media pipelines (image, audio, video), and engineering multi-agent workflows for real production environments. His standard: reproducibility, security, cost-efficient inference—no vaporware. He documents and evaluates emerging AI tooling, separating verified capabilities from marketing noise. Technical editor at: muza-ai.eu, ai-verslas.lt, ai-naujinos.lt Connect on LinkedIn