SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
MISSION, TX — Promising the most transparent era in municipal history, the Mission City Council advanced a landmark drug-testing ordinance Tuesday that imposes mandatory, random testing on every city employee who did not ask for it, while the elected officials who did ask for it will each receive a commemorative sample cup they are legally permitted to regift.
“If a parks employee refuses a random test, that’s a career event,” explained City Attorney Ricky Barragán, one of exactly two humans in the building the ordinance can actually bind. “If a council member refuses, we make a frowning motion, someone seconds it, and we adjourn. The cup exists. The consequence does not. That’s what makes it symbolic.”
Ordinance Mandatory for Everyone Who Can’t Vote on It
Under the draft, testing covers officers, staff, the city manager and the city attorney — a list Barragán noted had been “suspiciously co-edited by the people it leaves out.” Council members may voluntarily participate, with results read aloud only if they pass, and only after the Citrus Fiesta grapefruit has been blessed.
“I brought this item forward in the name of transparency,” said Mayor Chacho Villarreal, clarifying that transparency means the staff will be visible through it. “We’re holding ourselves to the same standard — voluntarily, from a distance, in spirit, mostly on weekends.”
Randomizer Carefully Calibrated to Never Land on the Dais
Officials also unveiled the selection software, which ran 11,000 practice draws Tuesday and, in what engineers called “a statistical miracle,” never once landed on an elected official. The algorithm has been certified random by the same logic that certifies a quinceañera court as democracy.
Mayor Pro-Tem Wally Peña, a mayoral candidate, stepped away before the discussion began and was praised by colleagues for the consistency of his stepping. His empty chair has since been tested for everything, sources confirmed, and passed. The final vote is set for next meeting — the second-to-last before Election Day — so the symbolism can peak during early voting and evaporate by noon on Election Day.
Barragán, who unlike the dais can actually be fired over a cup, shrugged: “I’ve been enforceable my whole career. Honestly, at this point I’d settle for decorative.”
