AUSTIN — The sizzle of meat. Smoke wafting away from a heavy smoker. The sight of a beef rib nearly the size of your arm.

Texas’ barbecue culture is sacred. But some pitmasters are catching heat from a former rodeo cowboy overseeing the state Department of Agriculture.

Commissioner Sid Miller is slapping fines on their small businesses despite a warning from the attorney general that his reasoning may be illegal. The department issued at least 13 citations to barbecue joints for failing to register their meat scales since September, despite a 2017 state law requiring the commissioner to leave such establishments alone. In a case of unlikely bedfellows, Miller’s commission issued nine scale-related fines to yogurt shops, too.

The department has no plans to stop.

The citations are part of a running feud between restaurant owners and Miller, a white-cowboy-hat-wearing commissioner who made it his mission to ensure the state register all scales that weigh food for customers. But the state’s restaurant association is warning the food fight could land the commissioner in court.

The Texas Department of Agriculture regulates scales for some 17,700 retailers, like grocery stores, coffee shops, jewelers, nut sellers and candy shops. About 2,200 barbecue joints use similar scales. Regulators also inspect meters used at airports to fuel planes, pumps at gas stations, even liquefied petroleum gas meters used for filling small tanks for backyard gas grills to storage tanks at businesses.

More Information By the numbers: Sept. 1, 2017, when the law went into effect April 23, 2018 when the attorney general opined the department’s use of the law is illegal 11 barbecue restaurants issued 13 citations $1,500 in scale-related fines to barbecue restaurants 8 yogurt shops issued 9 citations $2,100 in scale-related fines to yogurt shops Other fines: Other restaurants: 31 citations, $3,100 in fines Coffee shops: 6 citations, $1,850 in fines Jewelry stores: 19 citations, $1,700 in fines Meat market or producer: 47 citations, $8,900 in fines

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For years, though, Texas agriculture commissioners have ignored a decades-old law requiring restaurants to get their scales certified and inspected to ensure customers can see the weight of the food they are buying. Miller thought differently. Elected in 2014, Miller quietly began enforcing the law in the name of protecting consumers, dubbing the effort “Operation Maverick.”

When you order a quarter-pound of brisket, Miller insists the meat-slinger should set it on a state-registered scale where you can read the weight. Restaurants must also pay a yearly $35 fee for each of their scales. But strictly enforcing the law could force some of Texas’ most storied smokehouses to completely change the layout of their kitchens, incurring huge remodeling costs.

It’s “patently absurd,” said Kenneth Besserman, general counsel for the Texas Restaurant Association. Some pitmasters scrambled to rewrite their menus to serve less specific amounts of meat but found that created confusion for customers, he said.

Besserman and the restaurant lobby quickly convinced the Legislature to rewrite the law, nicknaming their effort the “Barbecue Bill.” Lawmakers in 2017 almost unanimously agreed to exempt scales “exclusively used to weigh food sold for immediate consumption,” largely pertaining to barbecue restaurants, yogurt shops and certain salad bars. The governor was sold.

Nevertheless, Miller persisted. Once the bill became law, Miller used his authority to add three additional words: “on the premises.” That meant any establishment selling food to-go — as the vast majority of barbecue restaurants do — had to follow the scale laws and regulations, essentially undoing the new law.

Since the “Barbecue Bill” took effect in September, 11 barbecue restaurants have faced scale-related fines, as have eight yogurt shops that sell by the ounce.

In more than 20 years in the barbecue business, Russell Roegels was never asked to register a scale until last year, when an inspector paid Roegels Barbecue Co. a visit. Roegels said he paid $35 to register his scale, but two months later, he received a $100 fine for lack of registration, he said. It was cheaper to pay it than fight it, he said, so he sent the department a check.

“It’s government for you,” said Roegels before a recent afternoon lunch rush. “I just figured that was my donation to the Department of Agriculture.”

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At least one other barbecue restaurant was fined $500 for failing to post a certificate proving the scale was registered. Others were fined between $50 and $200 for using an unregistered scale or one with an expired registration. In total, barbecue restaurants were fined at least $1,500 between Sept. 1, 2017 and April 23, 2018, the latest data the Department of Agriculture made available.

Yogurt shops faced $2,100 in fines, largely for failing to prominently post signage that the scale was certified.

Attorney General Ken Paxton weighed in on Miller’s expansive interpretation of the Barbecue Bill in April. A fellow Republican who shares Miller’s Tea Party roots, Paxton opined that a court would likely find Miller’s rule reaches beyond the Legislature’s intent.

While the law exempts restaurants selling food ready for immediate consumption, the law doesn’t mandate where or when the customer will eat that food, nor does it require restaurants to have space for people to chow down, he wrote in his legal opinion.

“A court would therefore likely conclude that the Department’s rules … are invalid to the extent the rules impose the additional burden, beyond what the statue requires, of a purchaser consuming food on the premises,” Paxton concluded.

While the opinion sliced through Miller’s interpretation of the law, the department has no plans to stop enforcing it because the attorney general’s opinion is non-binding, said Mark Loeffler, a department spokesman.

“Nothing has changed. Our inspectors will continue to do the work they do every day to protect consumers as outlined in our rules,” he said.

Miller’s representatives declined to make him available for comment.

The plot’s about to thicken: the Texas Restaurant Association plans to take the commissioner to court if he refuses to chop his rule from the books. But restaurants would rather Miller throw in the napkin.

The restaurant industry is not alone in pushing back against Miller. The commissioner, who owns a garden nursery business, saw the nursery association and other groups flock to his Republican opponent in the primary election. Although chemical and agriculture lobbyist Trey Blocker tried to make beef out of Miller’s war on barbecue, Miller easily won the party’s nomination in March.

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He’s now running against retired Air Force Col. Kim Olson, a farmer who has helped energize Democrats ahead of the November election. She said the state has received only four complaints against barbecue restaurants from 2015 to 2017.

“We’ve got better things to focus on at TDA besides four barbecue joints,” said Olson. “We have a drought. We have hail. We’ve had Harvey. We had a hundred other things going on, and this is what you used your power to do?”

Restaurant owners think Miller should let customers use other means to adjudicate whether they get their money’s worth.

“If somebody’s got a problem that they’re not getting enough barbecue on their plate, they’re not going to call the Department of Agriculture,” Besserman, the restaurant lobbyist, said. “What they’re going to do is get on Yelp.”

Andrea Zelinski is a staff writer who reports about politics. Read her latest stories here. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook. Send her tips at andrea.zelinski@chron.com.