The Sheriff's Office has no such reports.

It is interesting that McLennan County Commissioners’ Court, this year, approved a $12,000.00 a year increase for the Sheriff.  There is a contract requiring the Sheriff to make twice monthly inspections of the Jack Harwell facility. The curious thing is there is no record of any inspections. If the Court required the Sheriff to file reports, this would not have been a surprise.

Immigration agency pulls inmates from Jack Harwell jail www.wacotrib.com

The federal immigration agency has stopped sending inmates to the Jack Harwell Detention Center and moved all existing detainees out of the facility, citing concerns about housing conditions and inmate medical care.

From the above article:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Nina Pruneda:

“We’re no longer using it, and from what I understand we have no intentions of using it in the future,”

In addition, some county officials said they were not informed there were complaints about care at the jail.

County Judge Jim Lewis said he talked with officials from CEC about ICE’s decision and said he has a meeting scheduled with CEC in the coming weeks to discuss the matter further.
Lewis said he had “only heard rumors” that ICE raised complaints about inmates’ medical treatment.

Commissioner Lester Gibson, the court’s liaison for jails, said while he noticed the ICE population slowly dropped to zero at the Harwell facility, he was not given a reason for the change.

Commissioner Kelly Snell learned about the lack of ICE inmates at Harwell from Gibson. He too said he would have wanted CEC to inform the entire court about the issue, but said in general he finds it difficult to get information directly from CEC officials.

Commissioner Ben Perry said he asked the sheriff’s office about the decline in ICE inmates, and officials there speculated that ICE simply was moving the detainees to a cheaper facility.

Commissioner Ben Perry said he asked the sheriff’s office about the decline in ICE inmates, and officials there speculated that ICE simply was moving the detainees to a cheaper facility.

Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 11:47 PM
To: 'Lynne Lockwood'
Cc: randy.plemons@co.mclennan.tx.us
Subject: Request

I am requesting access to and making application for the following information:

This is a public information act request for any reports filed by the Sheriff in relation to this clause of the agreement.

Randy,

Please consider this a request of the Sheriff for documents not in the possession of the County Judge but maintained which are responsive to this request. This request is intended to include requests for additional information which resulted from the on-site inspections, and requested remediation or related correspondence. Please consider this as redundant for reports filed with the Commissioners’ Court.

Thank you,
R.S. Gates

_________________

From: Lynne Lockwood
Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2011 11:34 AM
To: R.S. Gates
Subject: RE: Request

Scott – Your below open records request has been received and reviewed.  Based on our best attempt to interpret your request with relation to a clause of an agreement relating to monitoring of the detention facility by the Sheriff, the County Judge’s Office has no responsive information. No such reports were identified.  L2

___________________
From: Randy Plemons
Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2011 3:56 PM
To: R.S. Gates
Cc: 'Lynne Lockwood'
Subject: RE: Request

The Sheriff's Office has no such reports.

The director of maintenance of building recently told the court a local vendor refused to work for CEC because they could not get paid. Dr. Wells, the jail Dr., told the court he was unable to resolve an expensive medication issue for taxpayers because the new warden had problems to deal with.
More coverage from The Legendary: http://downdirtyword.blogspot.com/2011/11/mclennan-court-continues-housekeeping.html

But this is supposed to be a surprise to the court…..

Magistrate makes application for golden parachute

It’s a good job if you can get it.

Britton was hired sometime in 2007. The compensation sought appears to date back some 4 years. That is quite a nest egg.

We ran across this document as a result of a public information act request. Commissioners will vote today on whether or not to grant the golden parachute to the magistrate.

It is interesting that no documentation was included to indicate how much tax dollars are involved. The item is buried in the consent agenda which is normally approved with one vote approving several items. 

The departure of the magistrate is another issue. There was documentation from the District Attorney’s office indicating the employment of said magistrate was in violation of the Texas Constitution.

Will the Commissioner’s approve yet another sweet deal? Court begins at 9:00 a.m.

An example the double standard in local political reporting of elections?

On December 2nd 2011 the Waco Tribune-Herald published an article titled Tax Assessor candidate pulls endorsement from website. In the article by political writer Michael Shapiro, the paper pulled out the stops and blasted the former city manager of the city of Lacy-Lakeview. Shapiro points out the candidate was not aware of the allegations against the manager until the Trib pointed it out.

Here is the part I think most people missed. The city manager was never charged with a crime. In the article, like the original coverage of the purchasing irregularities, there was innuendo tying the questionable purchases to the city manager. The city council voted by majority vote not to pursue a criminal investigation related to the purchases. They kind of acted in the capacity of a grand jury.

Now contrast that with the recent endorsement announcement by the local Sheriff’s Officers Association. The association endorsed Randy Plemons. Mr. Shapiro's article pointed out that Sheriff Larry Lynch endorsed Plemons.

The Texas Ethics Commission fined Sheriff Lynch a few years ago. So the Trib will crucify someone who was not only never convicted of a crime but, like the former city manager, was not even charged with a crime, and at the same time promote an endorsement by someone who was found to have violated the law.

Remember that the Trib did not cover the news of Lynch’s violation of the law. Only KWTX-TV covered it. The common story was that the only way laws were broken was by committing clerical errors. If you review the document linked from KWTX you will see the violations took place in three different years and happened after Lynch had been in office for 6 years. It was neither a one time omission or a rookie mistake.

Haven’t got a clue where the money went.

In response to a public information act request, Budget Director Adam Harry furnished what County Judge Jim Lewis called the “Cheat Notes” for the county budget. One interesting item was buried in a line item called 001-2850 Solid Waste Management.

The interesting part is the note which says “Uncertain status of organization”

So the question is, if you do not know the status of the organization, why in the hell is it in the budget? Wait, lets check the budget and make sure it is in the proposed budget.

  Yep, there it is big as life. The budget director decided tax payers could do without a measly $35,000 and stick the money in an account he can’t even account for. Gives me all kind of warm fuzzy feelings.

Next lets check the web.  Name change found. Wonder when that happened? Guess they forgot to let the source of funds know.

Keep McLennan County Beautiful, KMCB (formerly Clean McLennan County, Inc.)

What is interesting is the minutes have not been updated on the website since 2009. Looks like the County was still sending them checks as recently as this year. The budget indicates funds were spent from the line item. Since the budget Director does not know where the money went, perhaps you should ask your Commissioner.

To bid or not to bid…

So in a developing story by The Legendary we now have a three part series. The first - Baubles and bangles bought without purchase order, details how Commissioner Joe Mashek questioned the County Judge about a purchase with no purchase order. Commissioner Mashek wanted to know if the Judges’ office went out for bids. The Judge said he was 99% sure bids were sought.

In the second in the series - Purchase of baubles, bangles contrary to policy, further information is revealed when we are told the Commissioners had approved revision or the County Purchasing Policy about a month before and the purchase did not appear to be handled within those guidelines. In fact the very same matter, going around the purchasing agent, had been the subject of inquiry the previous year and Commissioner Gibson read from the opinion of then District Attorney John Segrest.

In the third article – Service pins purchase could have been $5K less, we find out back in May, Commissioners were presented with an option that would have saved taxpayers $5,000. Commissioner's rejected the savings for doing it like we always have. Even more shocking was the revelation an employee of the Judges office worked with the purchasing agent who was ultimately left out for the record to do an end-around on the purchasing policy.

Excerpts from  the public information response:

 

and this one

   No record of a response from the Purchasing Director.

This caused me to remember one time when the Sheriff’s Office had a Golf Cart loaned to them. It broke and they decided the right thing to do was fix it. Not a big problem but a little checking was enlightening. You see Paul Wash is a licensed CPA. He formerly worked for the McLennan County auditor. The use of forfeiture funds is highly restricted but he managed to hammer this one to fit within the confines.

Then I ran across this little snippet.

The Auditor did not agree and this little matter was discovered when it went to court for ratification.

I’m sure Capt. Wash just didn’t want to impose on the Commissioners valuable time.

Here you have two examples. Make your own decision.

Excerpts from the original request:

Scott, in response to the below revised / clarified open records request seeking  …..”information related to the purchase from a vendor,  documentation to support the statement by the Judge that someone checked prices from other vendors / fax or an e-mail; documentation related to the choice of vendors including any direction that person received / vendor list….” I have attached the documentation which seems to be responsive to your request.

Also, Scott, just for clarification, I would like to point out that, in relation to your statement about the  Waco Tribune-Herald on 7/24/2011 quoting Judge Lewis…“There’s no way I would do that in my office, because it does not pass the smell test,” Lewis said”….that statement was not made regarding the county service pin issue or regarding the subject of ratification of purchase orders by the CC.  It was made on an entirely different and unrelated matter (I believe it was re:  nepotism issues).   Take care.   L2

The administrative assistant to the Judge is worth her weight in gold. Hope the Judge realizes that.

Duty of every citizen

What a week. On Tuesday, Commissioners’ Court voted to buy the County Judge a new desk and chair for the tidy sum of $3,900.00. It was rushed through in summary motion with little comment. When you are talking about a $116M budget, $3900 might not seem like much. Consider, however, this is tax payer money. The court represented this money was needed to pay for court appointed attorneys to represent those who could not defend themselves.  Consider further, the same court raided the County rainy day fund (contingency fund) to put money in another account for what..? Court appointed attorneys. So while voting to allocate funds for a REALLY nice desk and chair, well, you get the picture.

This took place in a public meeting. How was it handled? Was there a gasp in the gallery when it was announced the Judge needed a new desk and chair he neglected to include in his budget request? Nope! because the only reference in court was..well listen to the judges own words.

 

By voting in support of this, Commissioners’ determined this was in the best interest of the County.  I would have liked to see my Commissioner stand up and tell the Judge the appropriate place for this request was in the budget not shuffling funds from another line item.

Government incompetence

I sure would like to know how they found out about this: Texas comptroller mistakenly posts public records. The argument will no doubt come up that our government is to incompetent to provide any public access to data.

One citizen watchdog found a local government was listing the names of sexual assault victims in their check run. The citizen did not run to the press or make a big deal of it, the government entity was notified and now the payments only reference a case number. One vocal watchdog group believes as long as the government entity says the Pledge of Allegiance, everything is good and no further scrutiny is required. The same group organized an attack on the citizen watchdog in an effort to undermine the credibility of the citizen watchdog.

Screw the poor and sickly.

Two weeks ago there were two things on the agenda for McLennan County Commissioners’ Court that concerned me. There is a trend in McLennan County of reducing services to the public.

The first item concerned an amendment to existing policy governing pauper burial. Seems more than a few grieving families had placed headstones for their deceased loved ones on pauper graves. The solution is to remove the headstones because they impede maintenance of the gravesites. I thought surely there would be some discussion by members of the court of other solutions. Say offering to leave the stone if the family paid for the maintenance. The item was on the consent agenda and did not warrant any discussion.

The second item was modification of the indigent health care services agreement. It seems some patrons of the system have become belligerent and abusive of staff members responsible for processing the applications for service.  I expected to hear about how extensive this abuse was and how unreasonable the demands were. Like before, no discussion. The court just rubber stamped the proposal provided by the director Eva Cruz.

Ms. Cruz proposed a process where the person denied services could appeal to the County Judge or his designee. At least that is better than the grieving people get.  Last year the company that takes care of elderly shut-ins proposed to the court to take a lump sum in exchange for taking care of all of their charges. Judge Jim Lewis recommended no change. The result was a 100% increase in the budget for last budget year and the current budget year. Cost to taxpayers was about $50,000.00 annually.

Inspires all kinds of confident doesn’t it?

Jail Debt

The contractor was paid ~$37M to build the new Jack Harwell detention center. The estimated debt service, read interest, is $58M.

In the end the $37M jail will cost $107M.

Original Debt $49,015,000.00		Interest $58,190,687.50		Total $107,205,687.50

Good job County Judge Jim Lewis. NOT

Remember that visitation center they got in such a hurry to build because it got overlooked? The property next to the land purchased for the visitation center is valued at less than $6,000 and acre. The commercial property on the other side of that is valued at $3,000 an acre. What did McLennan County pay for slightly less than 10 acres to build the visitation center on? $140,000.00 or more than $14,000 an acre. Curious ain’t it?