Texas Cities Are Tearing Out AI License-Plate Readers. The Governor Just Cut State Funds Too.

Texas cities are pulling Flock Safety's AI-powered license-plate readers off their streets, and on Friday Governor Greg Abbott told state agencies to stop paying for new ones.

Pflugerville's city council voted unanimously this week to pull 28 of the cameras the Atlanta-based company had installed across the city. The vote followed weeks of constituent pressure over how long the readers' plate data was retained and whether it was being shared with federal agencies. Hood County commissioners followed suit and disconnected three of their readers. The local pullouts cleared the way for Abbott's order, confirmed by spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris, to pause state agency money for the network.

Abbott's directive targets only state-agency dollars. Mahaleris said "most" Flock funding in Texas flows from cities, counties, and federal grants, so the practical reach of the order is narrower than the political signal. The cameras themselves photograph every passing vehicle and run the plate through databases of wanted cars, stolen vehicles, and missing-person alerts. Flock pitches the product to police as a force multiplier for short-staffed investigative units. Civil-liberties groups counter that the readers build a permanent log of every driver's movements, often with few local rules about who can query the data or how long it is kept.

The network Pflugerville and Hood County are walking away from was built without a public vote on surveillance. The 2023 Texas legislature added a $1 fee to every auto-insurance policy and routed the proceeds through the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority (MVCPA), a small grants body sold to lawmakers as a tool against catalytic-converter theft. The Texas Tribune's investigation found no committee or floor discussion of routing the money to license-plate readers. The bill's public justification was converter theft alone.

By the end of the fee's first three years, MVCPA had raised roughly $81 million. Of that, at least $30 million flowed to Flock cameras, funding at least 3,200 readers statewide. Another $50.8 million went to 234 grants covering officers, analysts, attorneys, drones, and other surveillance work. The Department of Public Safety alone holds a $15.9 million, three-year MVCPA contract to install about 1,200 of the readers. In early August, MVCPA approved another $3 million to place 583 more along Texas tollways. MVCPA's chair, Laredo Police Chief Miguel Rodriguez, said in an August 2023 meeting that he hoped fee proceeds would "cover the entire state" with cameras. Abbott's order tells state agencies they cannot do that anymore.

Flock said it supports "thoughtful legislation" with privacy guardrails and described the readers as a tool for solving crimes, finding missing people, and recovering stolen vehicles. Law-enforcement groups have made the same case in council hearings where the Pflugerville and Hood County votes landed.

The next test sits in the cities Abbott's order does not reach. Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio all run Flock networks paid out of city budgets, and several of those contracts include data-sharing language with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that local critics have flagged in council hearings. Abbott's order sends a signal from the statehouse. The next Pflugerville-style vote, and the next round of MVCPA grant decisions, will determine whether the 3,200-camera network actually shrinks or just changes which agency pays for it.