Tit for tat for the twit.

Waco Tribune Herald 2/9/10

Meadows says contributions not a conflict of interest

McLennan County Commissioner Ray Meadows received nearly $3,000 from executives of the company building the new Jack Harwell Detention Center on State Highway 6 for his re-election campaign.

“I believe in becoming friends with anybody that does business with (the county) because we can get more out of a friend than we can from an enemy,” Ray Meadows 2010

Back in July, the Bureau of prisons owed the county ~$130,000.00 for housing federal prisoners. There was some mixup and Medicare seized the money to offset a payment made on behalf of a county employees spouse. It's pretty complicated how the county "lost" $130K.

The contract the county has with CEC is interesting in two parts.

1st the contract stipulates payment to CEC is only due if the money is actually received. Way I read it, if the money is not received, it is CEC's problem.

2nd The contract prohibits use of taxpayer money to pay for the prisoners. This fact has repeatedly been touted by the county judge who lauds the clause as a protection for taxpayers.

Seems pretty simple. It is not a county problem. Remember these are not county prisoners.

Now politicians really try to keep campaign contributors happy. Ray Meadows did exactly that by making a motion for an exception to the contract and allow using taxpayer money to cover the loss experienced by his "Friends". If that is not interesting enough, besides the $102, 435.15 bill taxpayers got, did taxpayers also pay to cover the Sheriff's $1,000.00 a month kickback?

Sheriff's kickback and money laundering

I looked on the County website and found the fiscal year 2009 allowance and salary schedule for elected officials. From that document:

(3) The Sheriff’s salary may be supplemented from non-tax revenues up to $12,000 for detention monitoring compensation subject to, and contingent upon actual receipt of monitoring reimbursement funds under the Facility Lease, Operation and Management Agreement regarding the housing of Federal Prisoners at the Downtown Jail.

Why is the same not available for FY 2010? I don't know. Call your commissioner. 254-757-5000.

Key words here are non-tax revenues and monitoring reimbursement funds.

A private company can not contract with the federal government for the housing of federal prisoners. Only another government entity. McLennan County has such an agreement. Jim Lewis implies the county keeps a portion of the money paid by the feds for housing prisoners and passes the money on to the private company sans the "fee". Lewis tries to imply the Sheriff's kickback is paid from a portion of the "fee" and as such the kickback does not come from CEC.
The Feds do not pay a monitoring reimbursement fee. Note the wording above indicating the Sheriff receives his kickback contingent on the County receiving "monitoring reimbursement funds". If the feds only pay a per prisoner fee, where does the monitoring reimbursement funds come from? Can't be the feds.

I told you so.

Don't you just hate it when someone says that? In this case, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot issued opinion GA-0760. This opinion should create two problems for McLennan County Sheriff Larry Lynch and County Judge Jim Lewis. For Larry, it makes clear that the Sheriff can not receive money from a private company that does business with the county. For Jim Lewis, it makes clear the existing contracts with the private company paying off the Sheriff are void.

Here are the links for more info. I will be following up on this soon.
http://thepatriotwriter.com/

News 25 Coverage

PDF version of the Opinion Request

Texas Prision Bidness story.

Waco Tribune Herald coverage