"We're With TML, So We're Covered"
Short answer first, because I know how city managers read. TML membership gives you advocacy, training, publications, and a line to attorneys who answer general municipal law questions. The TML Intergovernmental Risk Pool gives you coverage when a claim lands, loss prevention resources, and a genuinely valuable pre-decision phone call before you fire somebody. Neither one diagnoses why your supervisors keep bringing you undocumented terminations, and neither one rebuilds the system that produced them. That is the gap, and it is where an outside consultant lives.
Now the part I actually want you to read.
I have had a version of this conversation in enough city halls that I can predict the sentence. A city manager or mayor says, politely and with total sincerity, "We appreciate the call, but we're with TML and we're in the Pool, so we're pretty well covered on that."
And here is the honest response, which is not the one a consultant is supposed to give: you are more covered than you think, and less covered than you think, and the two are unrelated.
More covered, because most cities I walk into are using maybe a third of what they already pay for. There are free TML attorney consultations nobody calls. There is training in the member portal nobody opens. There is a Risk Pool service specifically designed to stop the exact termination that is about to become a demand letter, and I would estimate a meaningful share of the small cities entitled to it have never used it once. You are leaving real value on the table, and I would rather you go collect it than hire me.
Less covered, because none of those things do the work you actually needed done, which is figuring out why the same problem keeps arriving with a different employee's name on it.
- The Texas Municipal League is a membership association founded in 1913. The TML Intergovernmental Risk Pool is a separate entity created in 1974 under interlocal agreement.
- TML membership answers general questions about what municipal law and good practice require, statewide, for any member city.
- The Risk Pool finances covered losses and, through Call Before You Fire, reviews a specific termination before you make it.
- An outside consultant diagnoses why the same problem keeps returning and rebuilds the system that produces it.
- Most Texas cities are underusing two of these three and expecting the remaining one to cover work it never claimed to do.
Let me put the metaphor down early so it can carry the rest of this. TML is the traffic law and the driver's education. The Risk Pool is the seatbelt and the insurance card, plus a voice on the phone telling you not to take that turn at this speed. A consultant is the mechanic who puts the truck on the lift and finds out why it keeps drifting right.
All three are real. All three matter. And "we have full coverage" has never once been a satisfying answer to "why does this thing keep ending up in the ditch."
I have presented through TML, TMHRA, and Texas PRIMA, and I have written for Texas Town & City. I am not neutral about these organizations in the sense of being indifferent — I think they are good, and I am part of that ecosystem. I am also selling something they do not sell, which is exactly why I want the boundary drawn honestly rather than blurred in my favor. Read the comparison table and decide for yourself. Nobody paid for placement in this article, and I have no affiliate or referral arrangement with any organization named in it.
What Texas Municipal League Membership Actually Includes
TML has been around since 1913. Membership is voluntary and open to any Texas city, and the League reports 1,171 member cities representing more than 16,000 member officials.
Here is the number that matters most for this conversation, and it reframes the whole question: 803 of those member cities — about 69 percent — have populations under 5,000. Another 129 fall between 5,000 and 9,999. Four out of five TML member cities are small enough that "the HR department" is a city secretary who also handles utility billing, court, and elections.
Source reference: Texas Municipal League, Membership
What membership provides, in TML's own framing:
- Legislative advocacy and intelligence. A legislative program members help build, plus the weekly Legislative Update. During session this is worth the dues by itself.
- General legal questions. TML invites members to "contact a TML attorney with your general legal questions about municipal law." Read that adjective. It is doing a great deal of work, and I will come back to it.
- Training and conferences. Annual Conference, workshops, webinars, on-demand training.
- Publications and templates. Sample policies and ordinances, Texas Town & City, a research library.
- Network and career center. Peer connection and a municipal job board.
- Affiliate organizations. Including TMHRA, the Texas Municipal Human Resources Association, which is the closest thing in the ecosystem to a professional home for municipal HR practitioners.
Where TML membership stops
None of this is a criticism. It is a scope statement, and TML is clear about it. But cities hear "we have attorneys you can call" and mentally file that as legal representation, which it is not.
The TML legal line answers questions about what municipal law generally provides. It does not become your city's lawyer, it does not take the file, it does not investigate the facts, and it does not appear for you. Your city attorney is your city's attorney. The distinction is not pedantic; it is the difference between "generally, Chapter 143 requires the following notice" and "here is what you should do about Officer Ramirez given what your captain wrote in the memo on the 14th."
TML also does not draft your handbook, restructure your supervision, sit in your investigation, build your classification and compensation plan, or tell you that the reason your public works department turns over twice a year is a span-of-control problem three levels up.
What the TML Intergovernmental Risk Pool Actually Includes
First, the correction I make most often: the Risk Pool is not the League. They are related and they share a name, but the TML Intergovernmental Risk Pool is a separate entity, created in 1974 under interlocal agreements after the Legislature mandated workers' compensation coverage for city employees and the commercial market declined to write it at a sane price. It has its own board of trustees, composed primarily of city officials, and its own staff.
Today the Pool provides workers' compensation for roughly 200,000 local government employees and liability coverage to more than 2,700 local governments. It is the oldest municipal risk pool in the country and, by most measures, among the largest.
Source reference: TMLIRP, Who We Are and TMLIRP, Coverages
On the employment side specifically, two things matter.
One: Public Officials' Errors and Omissions coverage includes employment-related claims. That is the Pool's own language. If a former employee sues over a termination, that is the coverage line most likely in play. Terms, deductibles, and limits vary by member, so confirm your own with your assigned Risk Management Advisor rather than assuming.
Two: "Call Before You Fire." This is the single most underused resource in Texas municipal government and I will say so to anyone who asks. The Pool makes it available to members carrying E&O Liability Coverage: before you discipline or terminate an employee, you call the Pool's Legal Department and talk it through first.
It is free to eligible members. It is staffed by people who see municipal employment claims all day. It has almost certainly prevented more Texas wrongful termination suits than every consultant in this state combined. If you take nothing else from this article, find out whether your city is eligible and put that number in your personnel policy.
Source reference: TMLIRP, Call Before You Fire
Where the Risk Pool stops
Here is the part that requires care, because I am not criticizing a service I just told you to go use.
Call Before You Fire evaluates a decision you have already reached. By the time you dial, the supervisor has had the problem for months, the documentation either exists or does not, the performance conversation either happened or did not, and the file is what it is. The Pool's attorneys are very good at telling you whether to pull the trigger and how to do it cleanly. They cannot go back and make your supervisor document the first three incidents.
That is not a flaw in the service. That is the service. It is a pre-flight check, not an engine rebuild.
A risk pool's mission is risk financing and loss prevention. That is a genuinely different job from organizational repair. The Pool can tell you this termination is risky. It is not scoped to tell you that your city has no written decision rights for supervisors, that your handbook contradicts your practice in four places, or that the department producing all your claims is the one where a single supervisor oversees nineteen people across two shifts.
And one more thing worth saying plainly. Loss prevention services exist to protect the pooled fund, which is to say they exist to protect every member city including yours. That alignment is real and it is mostly excellent. It is also not identical to your city's separate interest in having a workforce that functions well, retains people, and delivers water service on a Tuesday. A city can have flawless claims experience and a badly broken operation. I have seen it. The claims were clean because the terminations were clean. The turnover was still 60 percent.
Side by Side: What You Get From Each
The table below is the whole article compressed. If you are forwarding this to a council member, forward this part.
| TML Membership | TML Risk Pool (TMLIRP) | Outside HR Consultant | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it fundamentally is | Membership association and advocacy body, est. 1913 | Risk-financing pool under interlocal agreement, est. 1974 | Contracted professional services |
| Core question it answers | What does the law and good practice generally say? | Will the loss be financed, and is this decision defensible? | Why does this keep happening, and what do we rebuild? |
| When it engages | Anytime — general questions, training, session | Before a specific action, and after a claim | Before the problem has a name on it |
| Legal support | TML attorneys answer general municipal law questions | Pool Legal Dept.; Call Before You Fire for E&O members; claims defense | None — not a law firm; works alongside your city attorney |
| Pays a claim | No | Yes — E&O includes employment-related claims | No |
| Diagnoses your systems | No | Loss prevention review, risk-focused | Yes — that is the product |
| Drafts your handbook / policies | Sample templates only | No | Yes, city-specific |
| Conducts your investigation | No | No | Yes, as a neutral third party |
| Rebuilds supervision & accountability | Training available | No | Yes — structure, decision rights, documentation standards |
| Classification & compensation study | Salary survey data | No | Yes, city-specific |
| Cost structure | Annual dues, population-scaled | Contributions by coverage, exposure, and loss history | Fixed project fee or monthly retainer |
| Should you have it? | Yes. Nearly every Texas city. | Yes, if eligible — and use the hotline. | When the same problem returns with a new name. |
Notice how few rows actually conflict. This is not a competitive matrix. It is three columns that mostly do not overlap, which is the entire point.
The Three Layers of Municipal HR Support
Here is the framework I use with city managers who are trying to decide who to call. Match the situation in the left column to the layer that owns it. Most cities call the wrong layer first, then conclude the layer failed them.
The Three Layers of Municipal HR Support. Faulkner HR Solutions. Original framework, 2026. Cite as: Faulkner, T.W. (2026). The Three Layers of Municipal HR Support. Faulkner HR Solutions.
| The situation in front of you | Call this layer first | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "Does state law require us to pay out accrued leave at separation?" | TML legal line | General question of municipal law. Free, fast, correct. |
| "We are terminating a department head on Friday." | Call Before You Fire, then your city attorney | Pre-decision check on a specific action. Free to eligible E&O members. |
| "We were served with a demand letter." | Risk Pool claims, then your city attorney | This is the loss the coverage exists to finance. |
| "Council wants HR training at the next workshop." | TML or TMHRA | Training is a core member benefit you already fund. |
| "That is the third public works supervisor in two years." | Consultant | A pattern is a system problem. No layer above is scoped to diagnose it. |
| "Our handbook says one thing and we do another." | Consultant | Templates do not resolve a contradiction between policy and practice. |
| "We need someone neutral to investigate a complaint against the chief." | Consultant or outside counsel | Internal handling creates a conflict the record will not survive. |
| "Every termination we do is legally clean and we still cannot keep anyone." | Consultant | Clean claims experience and a functioning workforce are different outcomes. |
| "We do not know which of these we are even eligible for." | TML membership services and your Risk Management Advisor | Free call. Do this before you spend a dollar with anyone, including me. |
The Part Where I Argue Against Myself
I said at the top that I would rather you go collect the value you already pay for than hire me, and I want to be specific about that instead of leaving it as a nice-sounding gesture.
If your city is under 5,000 people — and statistically, if you are reading this as a TML member, you probably are — here is my actual recommendation, in order:
- Confirm your Risk Pool eligibility for Call Before You Fire and write the number into your personnel policy next to the discipline section. Cost: one phone call.
- Use the TML legal line the next three times you have a general question instead of guessing or asking a neighboring city. Cost: zero.
- Send whoever handles your personnel matters to TMHRA. The peer network alone will answer questions you did not know to ask. Cost: registration and a hotel night.
- Pull your loss run and read it. If your claims cluster in one department or under one supervisor, you have just done the first half of a diagnostic for free.
Do those four things and a meaningful number of you will not need me at all. That is a fine outcome. It is also, frankly, better business for me long-term than taking money from a city whose actual problem was that nobody told them the hotline existed.
Where I am worth calling is narrower and I would rather name it than blur it. It is when the pattern has repeated. When the third supervisor in that department leaves. When the handbook and the practice have drifted so far apart that following either one creates exposure. When the complaint is against someone senior enough that no internal investigator can credibly handle it. When council keeps reaching past the line into personnel decisions because nobody ever wrote the line down.
Those are structural problems. Coverage does not fix a structural problem. It finances the consequences of one, which is a different service, sold honestly, and worth every dollar for what it is.
"A city with excellent coverage and a broken system has not solved anything. It has pre-paid for its own recurring failures."
— Dr. Thomas W. Faulkner, Faulkner HR Solutions
This is the same argument I make about discipline files in a piece about what leaders pick up instead of the actual problem. A clean file is not proof the problem was solved. A paid claim is not proof the system works. Both are evidence that the machinery for handling failure is functioning, which is a completely different claim from the machinery for producing good outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. TML membership provides legislative advocacy, training and conferences, publications and sample policies, a career center, and access to TML attorneys for general legal questions about municipal law. It does not include a diagnostic review of your HR systems, investigation work, policy drafting for your specific city, or ongoing advisory support on live employee matters.
Related but separate. The Texas Municipal League is a membership association founded in 1913. The TML Intergovernmental Risk Pool is a separate risk-financing entity created in 1974 under interlocal agreement, governed by its own board of trustees, providing workers' compensation, liability, property, and cyber coverage. A city can belong to one without participating in the other.
A service available to TML Risk Pool members carrying Errors and Omissions Liability Coverage. A member considering discipline or termination contacts the Pool's Legal Department before acting. It is a valuable and underused pre-decision check on a specific employment action — but it evaluates the decision you have already reached, not the process that produced it.
TMLIRP states that its Errors and Omissions coverage includes employment-related claims. Coverage terms, deductibles, and limits vary by member, so confirm the specifics with your assigned Risk Management Advisor rather than assuming a given claim is covered.
No. TML describes its legal service as answering general legal questions about municipal law for member officials. Your city attorney is your city's lawyer. The TML legal line is an excellent resource for understanding what the law says generally, not for fact-specific representation on a live personnel matter.
Usually yes, because they answer different questions. TML tells you what the law and best practice say. The Risk Pool finances the loss and checks a specific decision before you make it. A consultant diagnoses and rebuilds the system that keeps producing the decisions. Most cities are underusing two of the three and expecting the remaining one to cover work it never claimed to do.
TML reports 1,171 member cities, of which 803 — about 69 percent — have populations under 5,000. Another 11 percent fall between 5,000 and 9,999. The overwhelming majority of TML member cities are small enough to have no dedicated HR staff at all, which is precisely why the gap between coverage and capability matters so much.
A note on accuracy and independence. Descriptions of TML and TMLIRP services in this article are drawn from those organizations' own published materials as of August 2026 and are summarized in good faith. Programs, eligibility, and coverage terms change — verify your city's specifics with TML membership services and your assigned Risk Management Advisor. I am an HR and organizational consultant, not an attorney, and nothing here is legal advice. No organization named in this article paid for or was offered placement, and Faulkner HR Solutions holds no affiliate or referral arrangement with any of them.