2 Many Secrets
NEW VIDEO! Every commissioner in Harris County has a charity they use to help people, and it helps them politically too! Your tax money is being diverted to their charity piggy bank, and the list of folks who are donating sure looks like another example of pay-to-play politics in Harris County.. One county commissioner has 2 MANY SECRETS…. we’re calling it out.
2 Many Secrets
“When you’re an investigative journalist as long as I have, you kind of suspect you’re over the target of something when people hide records, refuse to answer questions, and hang up on you when you call. And it is even more alarming when you know the charity is set up to help a public official, that your tax money is involved. Hey Adrian Garcia, we’re talking about you,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
“Hey everybody, Adrian Garcia, County Commissioner of Precinct 2.”
Politicians just love to see themselves on video doing nice things for their community.
“I’m on my way to go deliver some much-needed air conditioners to deserving senior citizens.”
Harris County Precinct Two Commissioner Adrian Garcia. Well, he is no different.
“So, we really do want to make sure it’s comfortable for you and your family.”
A lifesaver to seniors. A new playground for the kids.
Garcia’s doing this community service through his non-profit organization called Precinct2gether.
His charity provides services to the community through a number of programs: the Train2Empower, Biz2Empower, Access2Health, Kids2gether day camps.
It’s all 2, 2, 2.
“I got another one for you, Commissioner. How about “Precinct 2 Illegal Secrets,” “Precinct 2 hiding records,” “Pct2 Pay to Play.” Taxpayers deserve to see the records today,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Garcia didn’t start this charity. Precinct 2’s non-profit was started back in 1978, nearly fifty years ago, by longtime commissioner Jim Fonteno.
Now every Harris County commissioner has a corresponding charity to do stuff they sometimes can’t do with tax money.
“And you know who has the biggest charity piggy bank? You might say Rodney Ellis, but no, it’s Adrian Garcia,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Garcia’s charity has ignored our request for financial records required under both state and federal law.
A tax return we obtained from other sources shows Pct 2 raised 1.3 million dollars in 2024.
“You would think Commissioner, you would want to brag about all the great work your charity is doing. But you’re hiding. Why?” Dolcefino told the camera.
So we called this guy, Chris Saddler, Garcia’s deputy chief of staff. He’s also executive director of the commissioner’s charity.
He made 135,000 a year until October, when he got a 32 percent raise to 178,000 because of his new role running Garcia’s charity too.
You won’t believe his reaction when we called.
The guy hung up on me before I could ask a single question. What the hell is he afraid of?
“That’s not nice, hanging up on the famous Wayne Dolcefino, who’s been in the media for how many years? Even longer than I have been selling furniture,” Mattress Mack said.
So I called my friend Mattress Mack for his opinion. Mack has teamed up with Dolcefino Media to expose fraud, waste, and corruption in Harris County.
“Show the light. If you’re not doing anything wrong, show them,” Mattress Mack said.
Mack is right. So I called the listed president of the 14-member board of directors. They have the legal responsibility for doling out the money for Garcia’s charity.
“This is Wayne Dolcefino. How you doing?” Dolcefino said.
“I’m doing well,” Darrell Morrison said.
“The silence was a hoot. I bet Morrison was thinking why the hell did my secretary transferred his call to me?” Dolcefino told the camera.
“You don’t seem very excited to talk to me. Am I a bad guy or something? I’m a good guy,” Dolcefino said.
“No, no,” Darrell Morrison said.
The charity’s address comes back to a P.O. Box in Webster.
“Can you tell me when we can come look at records that show where this money is going and who is funding it?” Dolcefino said.
“You know, I’m just getting back from a meeting. Let me make a few calls and I’ll review. So, thank you for calling and have a good day,” Morrison said.
“There’s that click again. Here’s my opinion about what’s going on. I think folks are skittish in part because of who’s donating to Garcia’s charity. It smells of pay-to-play,” Dolcefino told the camera.
The charity board of directors is a who’s who of county contractors. At least ten of the fourteen board members donated money to Garcia’s political campaign since 2020, a combined 315 thousand dollars.
Eight of the fourteen kicked in 55 grand just last year.
And add to their campaign contributions the tens of thousands these same companies donated to Precinct2gether.
We know that unnamed donors gave the charity another 440 thousand dollars in 2024.
Three fundraisers brought in 126 thousand dollars.
And emails tell us Pct 2 gets a little cranky when companies don’t kick in.
In August, Lyondell wanted to help with Pct 2 senior programs as part of their Day of Global Caring, but said their support in 2025 would be more labor-focused than monetary, in other words volunteers, not cash.
The executive director of Garcia’s charity at the time was Tiko Hausman. This is her email to other Pct 2 staff members last year:
“I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, but if all they offering is labor, then we need make a good ask.”
Another county employee wanted to know if they should continue even talking with the Lyondell representative because they weren’t giving money. Cash.
“Rember Mr. Morrison, he never called me back. Aren’t you shocked?” Dolcefino told the camera.
And we have now filed this formal criminal complaint for violations of state law, a test for District Attorney Sean Teare.
His office has fought our battles for records detailing corruption investigations by his office. Aren’t you shocked again?
“At Ardurra we are committed to making a profound impact on our nation’s infrastructure.”
I’ve done stories on Ardurra before during investigations of former Mayor Sylvester Turner.
Ardurra has made 6.3 million from Harris county in contracts since 2023. No wonder they’re donating.
This lady from the IDCUS engineering firm is secretary of Garcia’s charity.
According to the county’s website, IDCUS has made 4.4 million from the county since 2023.
And then there’s Bobby Singh with Isani Consultants. We weren’t surprised to see him on the board too.
His company has made 3.2 million from the county since 2023.
A company that still somehow qualifies as a historically disadvantaged business even though they make millions of dollars.
“This is simply to move for approval for an allocation of $85,000 from the Precinct 2 budget to Precinct2gether.”
That was when Harris County commissioners voted to spend tax money a couple years ago for a mural honoring Joe Campos Torres.
But that’s just a sample of the money.
Last September, when Harris County doled out Community Block Grant money, Precinct2gether got more than 179 thousand dollars for its transportation voucher program.
Emails we’ve obtained show Garcia’s precinct is seeking millions of dollars in government grants so they can push the money to the Pct2gether charity.
Here’s another problem. This isn’t a charity that survives just on donations.
Whether you live on the east side or west side, you are still helping pay for what they do.
An internal auditor’s report says as much as 38 percent of the charity’s money came from the county’s general fund in just one year, and that doesn’t include the work Pct 2 employees are doing for the charity.
Garcia’s office did tell us Saddler was one of only three county employees who work on the charity. But that’s not true.
The charity’s emails are fielded by this guy, who says he works full time for the charity. Since we can’t get the records, we have no way of checking that. The 2024 tax return said the charity had no employees, at least then.
“My name is Kyan Nandlal and this is the Precinct2gether volunteer orientation.”
Kyan also voiced this 10-minute video about how to become a Precinct2gether volunteer.
There are about a dozen Harris County employee names that show up regularly in county emails about the charity we’ve obtained.
“Is it legal for all this tax money to be spent on a charity, even one set up to promote the public official? Maybe. But it could also be abuse of official capacity. The use of government resources to help the political career of Mr. Garcia,” Dolcefino told the camera.
But that’s not the only problem. Even if it could be argued the charity does work for the public good, taxpayers should get reimbursed for the time county workers are spending on it.
Our review of county records shows Pct2gether has only reimbursed Harris County for employee salaries just once in the past five years.
That was for 141 thousand dollars in 2022. But that was a federal grant. They must ask tougher questions.
But we know there’s a ton of work being done for the charity on the taxpayer’s dime just about every day.
We tried to get answers from another employee, Tiffany Hicks, senior director of grants and nonprofit, and she couldn’t get us off the phone fast enough.
“I have no comment,” Tiffany Hicks said.
“Why can’t you talk to me?” Andre Palacio said.
“Reach out to…” Hicks said.
“Are you hiding something?” Palacio said.
“Have a great day,” Hicks said.
“At least she told us to have a nice day before hanging up. That’s sweet,” Dolcefino told the camera.
The emails we did get gave us a better glimpse of revenues and expenses for Pct2’s three fundraisers last year.
The annual golf tournament TeeUp2gether.
The Biz2Empower program.
And RiseUp2gether, a fancy gala downtown last April that netted 168 thousand dollars.
It could have done a thousand dollars better, but three Harris County employees, including Mr. Rude, Chris Saddler, got hotel rooms at the luxurious Icon Hotel for the night.
“Raising money for charity is hard, I bet it’s real tiring,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Pct2gether says it spent 1.3 million dollars on its programs last year.
But after horrible changes to the state’s charity law, they are not required to show us how they spent the money except for their tax return, even if it is tax money they spent.
“The system is broken and we need state lawmakers to step up,” James Quintero said.
James Quintero is the policy director for the Texas Public Policy Foundation Taxpayer Protection Project. He posted an article after the Chronicle detailed the county’s pay-to-play mindset.
“What that invites is further corruption. Anything involving public money ought to be subject to public disclosure,” Quintero said.
We’ve been raising alarm bells about the changes made to the state charity law.
Tax returns give you categories of spending, maybe the highest payed employees, but you can’t see the rest of the financial records anymore.
Take Pct2gether’s tax return. 50,000 for travel and entertainment for public officials, 125,000 for other expenses.
“Let me get this straight. Some of that is my tax money? That I paid for this building. But I’m not allowed to see what happened to it? How it was spent? That can’t be right,” Dolcefino told the camera.
It’s time to expose this charity pay-to-play scheme and put a stop to it. Has a nice ring, don’t you think Commissioner?
I hope Chris Saddler gave you the message I left him after he hung up on me.
“Hey Chris, Wayne Dolcefino. I know you didn’t hang up on me, because if you hung up on me I’m going to have to come find you and talk to you with a TV camera. So I’d suggest you call me back and tell me it was just a mistake. And tell your boss to stop hiding like a baby from us. We want to talk to him,” Dolcefino said
“Then I hung up, but not for long,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Keep up with us on social media:
