Feeling the burn
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The former Caldwell County Judge Tom Bonn made sure no one would ever be able to see his e-mails and computer files, including the taxpayers he worked for. We now know Bonn had his computer records incinerated, ALL of them, regardless of the value of the documents to the citizens of Caldwell County.
That isn’t right! You know what else is strange?
Caldwell County fought for months to keep you from seeing the truth. If that isn’t a waste of taxpayer money, what is?
“All my written financial records have been incinerated with other county communications,” Bonn wrote to lawyers in April. “My electronic records were deleted when I surrendered my county computers.”
You will have to ask District Attorney Fred Weber why he fought to keep you from knowing that.
Interestingly, the lawyers were asking about Bonn’s contacts with Green Group or 130 Environmental Park, even though the request from Dolcefino Consulting 5 months earlier didn’t even mention the landfill.
Bonn may have no written records that weren’t burned, but he claims to have one heck of a memory about his landfill interactions, just two meetings at local attorney Alan Fielder’s office where he suggested possible “perks” for the county if the landfill went though. Bonn even remembers a lunch at the Cat Fish Parlor in Austin with Green Group staff to talk about the TCEQ permitting process. When those meetings happened we don’t know. With no records, we likely won’t. Still as yet unresolved is current location of the county computer Bonn says he turned in.
Bonn claims he has no detailed phone records, even though every other county official was able to retrieve theirs. The DA didn’t press the issue. Bonn doesn’t mention any phone calls from Green Group and friends but he says the folks at Texas Disposal Company of Creedmoor called him to offer free legal counsel for Caldwell County to fight the Green Group landfill. Texas Disposal says that’s false.
No one doubts that Texas Disposal Company doesn’t want another landfill in the area, but the bigger question should be this: If there is already a landfill operating within TCEQ rules, and there’s not a garbage backlog, why does the area need another big tower of trash in a place with known environmental risks? That should matter to the TCEQ.
Caldwell County hasn’t gotten the bill yet for the information they fought to hide. Stay tuned.
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