The public right to know
Share this story:
The Caldwell County District Attorney should apologize to taxpayers.
On November 3rd, Dolcefino Consulting filed a request under state law to look at e-mail and phone records of Caldwell County Commissioners. Our mission was simple, examine when Caldwell County officials found out about the proposed Green Group tower of trash.
We substantially narrowed the request after the DA asked, we waived the rules to give them more time to respond, and we offered to pay reasonable costs to produce the records. We told them to withhold confidential information. We even agreed to delay production until after Christmas.
In January, DA Fred Weber notified us they were going to ask the law firm of Allison Bass to respond to our requests. The law firm had been retained in December despite our agreement with the DA.
We have history with Allison Bass.
In Waller County, Allison Bass charged taxpayers close to $90,000 to fight release of public records for months, finally producing documents that helped unravel the secret meetings between Green Group and politicians there.
So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that Allison Bass charged Caldwell County taxpayers $13,853 dollars for less than 8 weeks’ work, $210 dollars an hour to travel and review documents, even though phone records can be reviewed for free by public officials.
The contract with Allison Bass requires them to submit monthly billing, yet the bill for work in January and February wasn’t delivered to Caldwell County until July 6th.
This is a giant waste of money, money that could be used to fight Green Group.
DOCUMENTS
– Allison Bass invoice #1497 received 07062016
– Allison Bass invoice #1675 received 07062016
– Retainer Agreement – Open Records
