Open Letters to Maverick County Commissioners Court

Judge Saucedo and Commissioner’s Court,

Maverick County is in violation of Chapter 255 of the Election Code.  It is a Class A Misdemeanor to use public resources to advocate FOR or AGAINST a ballot measure. Your use of the Official Maverick County Facebook page to advocate in favor of the Certificates of Obligation election is prohibited.  In addition, you are prohibited from using employees, supplies, equipment or any resource for any election.  A complaint has been filed with the Texas Ethics Commission.  I would suggest you review the attached information from the Texas Ethics Commission.

Also, you will see attached photos of how the county is also using the county vans to transport voters with a sample ballot already in hand to the voting place. This is clearly a violation.

Commissioners Court,

There was an $800,000 County bond issue in September 2015 to repay the Road & Bridge account after its funds were raided so the County could make payroll and cover regular bills at the end of the year. The next year at the same time there was another $1,300,000 County bond issue in August 2016 to help the County to make payroll and cover bills again. During these two fiscal years, the County General Fund lost about $4 million from the Tom Bowles Jail undercollecting budgeted prisoner care revenue while not reducing its expenses to match. The Auditor’s February 2017 Monthly Report said that the Tom Bowles Jail appeared to be on track again to undercollect about $800,000 in revenue but did not mention that the County also budgeted $800,000 more in expenses than even the overestimated revenue amount, which could directly hurt other operations by requiring as much as $1.6 million in cuts to other General Fund services if the Court refuses to cut Tom Bowles Jail expenses like the previous two fiscal years.

If Tom Bowles expenses are not reduced again this current year then Commissioners Court will have watched it drag down the County’s General Fund by almost $5.6  million where the Court’s only actions over this time were to help conceal the losses with $2,100,000 in bond issues, reduce other General Fund services so the Tom Bowles Jail could operate outside a regular budget and to basically launder over $330,000 from old County bond issues through the General Fund in late 2016 to claim more revenue was collected. With a lawyer who will tell you anything you want to hear, taxpayers should believe the Court will not use money from another bond issue to continue helping cover up the same financial mismanagement and waste of taxpayer funds on projects that benefit Commissioners Court’s most loyal supporters first?

Should citizens deprived of General Fund services in spite of regular tax revenue increases also believe there will be money left over from the new bond issue to finally spend where it should have been spent all these years because the Court will suddenly exercise self-control? When Commissioners Court learned on September 29, 2016 that it had incorrectly budgeted to spend $1.9 million more in General Fund expenses than the maximum 8% increase allowed by law, instead of cutting $1.9 million in expenses like any other regular person with a budget the Court decided to meet for six hours behind closed doors with its lawyer, the Tax Assessor and County Auditor to figure out how to issue the tax bills at higher rates. The County’s decision to knowingly commit 30,000-40,000 acts of fraud mailing out inflated tax bills instead of cutting expenses gives taxpayers a good idea of the self-control and professionalism we can expect.

Roxana Maldonado-Guerra
Maverick County Taxpayer