Reporting by R.S. Gates
Story by The Legendary Jim Parks
Though McLennan County Commissioners Court acted to pay off a $2,107 deficit in salaries paid off duty police to guard the Courthouse entrance, they deferred paying an additional $16,740 still owed for May's bill.
Story by The Legendary Jim Parks
Though McLennan County Commissioners Court acted to pay off a $2,107 deficit in salaries paid off duty police to guard the Courthouse entrance, they deferred paying an additional $16,740 still owed for May's bill.
Sheriff Larry Lynch proposed to pay the
entire budget for that job - some $111,000 - with funds from assets
seized during criminal investigations, according to documents gleaned
in a public information act request.
When costs overran the budget, he sent
a May 3 letter to County Auditor Stan Chambers received on May 8,
instructing him to apply credit for that amount to the fund.
That leaves the overrun of $16,740 for
May still to be paid.
It's a practice that has drawn some controvery over the last years, one that saw a south Texas District Attorney do hard time and brought on an investigation of the Sheriff of the same jurisdiction by the Attorney General. (click here for an update on the case)
The two were accused of purloining
hundreds of thousands of dollars of unaudited forfeiture funds and using them for
other than crime fighting or administrative purposes approved by the Commissioners Court.
These included pricey cedar paneling, dozens of cars, salary supplements for officials and their secretaries, and tens of thousands of dollars in charges for luxury accommodations and meals.
The provision of the law is very controversial because such funds may be seized in any criminal investigation if the contraband – literally anything used to further the crime such as boats, airplanes, cars, trucks, computers or motorcycles – is proven by a preponderance of the evidence to have been involved in a criminal activity.(click here to read Texas law on the subject)
There need never have been a criminal
conviction, only the fact that an investigation took place, according
to state law, which requires in the Code of Criminal Procedure that
all such budget items so satisfied must be first approved by the
Commissioners Court.
Each department of a county governemnt may tap into the funds in this way, including highly populated areas, which find millions in such such seizures available to satisfy the needs of their operations.(click here for a report on affairs in Harris County)
Click here for a report that likens the situation in Brooks County to that described by the Tales of Robin Hood and His Merry Men in their adversarial relations with the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Click here for a report that likens the situation in Brooks County to that described by the Tales of Robin Hood and His Merry Men in their adversarial relations with the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Wait isn't this the same money that once funded the Drug Task Force? I thought that money was all dried up, or at least that is what we've been told by our crooked Sheriff and his croony Randy Plemons. When is the AG's Office going to get involved in their underhanded dealings? When???
ReplyDeleteOh, just imagine how fat that fund would be & how many "budget oversights" could be covered, if only our current SO cared to do a little crime fighting over desk jockeying behind the bulletproof glass of their offices...
ReplyDeleteNEWSFLASH to Lynch & Co.: Crime doesn't pay...but ACTIVE crime-fighting does!
Too bad you let all the Dept's Narcotics Certs. expire, or you could orchestrate a quick raid on any one of our known crack houses or meth labs to cover your administrative blunders before they even hit daylight & our taxpayers have to pay up for you.
I don't see how anyone can believe a word that comes out of Lynch's or Plemons' mouths anymore. They were caught so many times during the election lying, proven by easily obtained public documentation. They been shown to lie to voters, taxpayers, their own employees, other law enforcement officers, and commissioners all to mismanage a department that is supposed to be protecting us from thieves, murders, and drug crimes.
ReplyDeleteThese administrators in 12 years, have managed to disassemble a once great department. Our once mighty drug task force is no more, an alledged victim of a disappearing budget that has recently reappeared to pay off some of Lynch and Plemons' disasterious overbudgeting. They wasted $1.1 million in making upgrades to the downtown jail under the lie to commissioners that the Jail Commission required these upgrades, which the Jail Commission denies any such requirement and is puzzled why they upgrades were made in the first place. These upgrade continue to blood money from the taxpayers, as the county is fleeced by Lynch and Plemons backed CEC that now holds the county hostage on a $49 million bond in addition to the extra $1.8 million it will cost the county taxpayers to continue giving handouts to CEC for housing our prisoners, in our jail, on our property, built with our money.
My question is how are Lynch and Plemons even free to roam our streets much less still manage a law enforcement organization? I grew up watching the Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrain rob and still from the good people of Hazard County on TV, but whatever scheme Roscoe and Boss Hogg cooked up for TV seems to be a drop in the bucket compared to how badly the taxpayers of McLennan County have been robbed by Lynch and Plemons. Bring in the Rangers!!!