Dick’s Lawyers
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The mayor of Dickinson has been mad at us since we first asked for public records. Now THE DICK OF DICKINSON is using a second law firm to help him keep secrets, and the cost for a city already in financial trouble could be enormous.
Dickinson taxpayers are going to be paying mounting legal bills for the conduct of these two guys. Mayor Sean Skipworth and city manager Theo Melancon.
City council voted to hire attorney Rusty Hardin to defend a lawsuit that hasn’t even been filed yet. The one over the apparent targeting of the Creekside apartment complex.
That’s a low-income housing project now shuttered just off I-45 and 517.
The owners hired Tony Buzbee to help them.
But now we know Hardin is also being paid $500 an hour to fight us too, over the release of clearly public records.
We filed suit in March after the city of Dickinson illegally withheld public records from us.
And the law firm of Olson and Olson apparently can’t handle that legal fight by themselves.
That firm has been paid more than $600,000 in legal fees in the last couple of years. Some of it to defend our request for public information.
When the city finally released some of the records, we found evidence Dickinson planned to shut down Creekside even before inspections took place last year.
It appears to be part of a plan to get rid of the apartments to redevelop the area into a special tax zone.
The Dick of Dickinson has been complaining about people being mean to him for months.
He got the Galveston Daily News to help him complain too. Now Skipworth thinks he’s being threatened with murder.
“Making casual conversations about political murder purging people from the earth about how long it takes to dispose of a course. You’re out of order. No,” claimed Skipworth.
“The vitriol and gas lighting that has gone on and has escalated over the last two years is just incredible and I think Creekside has encapsulates what has happened,” continued Skipworth.
The city manager has been caught routinely drinking late at night, sometimes on the taxpayers’ dime and the mayor says video of that on social media is a smear job.
The mounting legal bills come as the Dickinson Chamber of Commerce president says the duo is ruining the city.
New emails reveal even the city’s own auditors have complained about a lack of transparency while Dickinson’s revenue plummets.
The notion that the city of Dickinson had to hire high priced lawyers to help them fight a simple request for public records, it’s a horrendous waste of money and an affront to the taxpayers of this beleaguered city.
If mayor Skipworth had been transparent from the beginning and not trying to keep secrets, then no one would have to spend a penny. Think about it.
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