Throwing Money Away
NEW VIDEO! Folks in Kemah are getting ready to go to the polls, but it looks like they will be stuck with council members, and a mayor that are part of the KEMAH CLOWN SHOW. Their incompetent and potentially corrupt decisions have already cost the folks living there a ton of money, and we had to fight to find out just how badly they are THROWING MONEY AWAY.
Throwing Money Away
“I’ve had lots of confrontations along the way, but I must admit my recent with Kyle Dickson, a lawyer for a lot of Galveston County towns, well it became an instant classic. And rightfully so,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
“Why’re you running, what are you running from.”
Kyle Dickson is just one of the reasons local government are screwed up in towns all across Galveston County. He can run, but he can’t hide.
Dickson is a partner in the Murray Lobb law firm, and he has illegally withheld public records, or watched as other public servants do it.
“Where’s our Kemah records? We’ve asked for all the law records. Why are you hiding them?” Dolcefino said.
“Dickson didn’t care when Texas City illegally withheld records from us, like the audits of the police department,” Dolcefino told the camera.
And don’t forget the cost of that absurd security detail Dedrick Johnson carts around. They won’t tell us how much it costs.
In Hitchcock, the mayor has been busted for organized crime under Dickson’s legal watch.
But he is also the city attorney in Kemah.
The political clown show we’ve been highlighting for years.
And there Dickson illegally hid public records we’ve been asking to see for months.
“You want to be jerks, be jerks. I don’t know who got you under their thumb, but I don’t play that,” Dolcefino said.
While I was arguing with Texas City cops a few weeks ago, we saw Mr. Dickson heading for the exits. He came right past me, and my questions were about his violations of state open records laws.
“I love when they come right to me,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“Why are you hiding them? Mr. Dickson, you’re ignoring our calls. Why are you hiding our records? Really? You’re going to throw a door in my face? What is wrong with you?” Dolcefino said.
“We fight with government lawyers all the time about getting public records, because taxpayers get screwed twice. Your records are withheld, and then you get a bill from lawyers who didn’t need to be involved in the first place,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“You know who you work for? Do you know who pays your salary? The taxpayers. Why are you withholding these records from us?” Dolcefino said.
“You talked a lot in there, why don’t you talk to me? Why are you running? What are you running from? Why are you running?” Dolcefino told the camera.
Wonder if Kyle Dickson watched that scene in Forrest Gump, because he sure takes retreat to heart.
“I really came to see Mr. Dickson to find out why he always runs away from me and slams the door in my face, but he’s not there,” Dolcefino said.
We know members of the Kemah City Council have seen the embarrassing video, but they have done nothing, at least publicly, to punish Dickson. His law firm, Murray and Lobb, has been paid more than 400,000 dollars since January 2023.
And that’s what Dickson was hiding from us, the staggering cost of legal bills for a city of 3,400.
Never heard the mayor talk about that in her Kemah Mayor Minute videos.
But I wanted all Kemah taxpayers to know the number, because it’s a big one.
So I made a speech.
“Since 2020 City of Kemah has spent 1.4 million on lawyers,” Dolcefino said.
1.4 million.
Plus payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Texas Municipal League that provides insurance coverage for some of the fights.
“Look I get it, cities need lawyers to defend themselves and to go after contractors who rip off taxpayers. I get it. But so much money is being spent on lawyers to fight your request for documents about the way your money was spent. That’s screwed up,” Dolcefino told the camera.
But I say the numbers expose a deeper problem, the mounting financial cost of small-town political retaliation, incompetence, and corruption, and false allegations that wasted tens of thousands of dollars to investigate.
“Now is because we can’t find money. We are missing money. We had to hire an attorney,” Teresa Vasquez Evans said.
That’s longtime city councilwoman Teresa Vasquez Evans accusing now former mayor Carl Joiner of corruption in the Kemah City Hall remodeling project.
“We are still trying to track money down that we can’t explain where it went,” Teresa Vasquez Evans said.
Kemah taxpayers can blame her, and Councilman Doug Meisinger and Isaac Saldana, for the wild goose chase that ensued, the 70,000-plus investigation that found no missing money. The mayor was cleared.
“The investigation was never released publicly to the people who paid for the damn thing,” Dolcefino told the camera.
It was part of a nonstop campaign by council to oppose almost anything Joiner tried to do.
At the time, we identified who was clearly the puppeteer behind the obstruction.
Matt Wiggins, the developer, had close ties to all three council members, and he hated Joiner.
Wiggins is especially tight with this guy, Doug Meisinger.
We loved this Wiggins text to Meisinger we found along the way.
“What else can I do for you?”
“Wanna keep the sex doctor happy?”
Meisinger’s response
“You’re too good to me,” with a heart-eyes emoji.
How sweet.
Their financial real estate entanglements have never been disclosed as they should have been.
Kyle Dickson knew about the texts, the conflicts, potential violations of disclosure law, but said nothing publicly, as Meisinger clearly carried Wiggins’ water.
Meisinger has given us some memorable moments in Kemah.
Famously throwing a gavel in his fights with the mayor at the dais.
Complaining how much he didn’t like being on city council.
Luckily Meisinger is term-limited this time.
Last December, Dickson apparently didn’t show up at the federal courthouse in Galveston, where owners of Palapa’s Tiki Bar are suing the city.
“So Judge Edison was like, wait, hold on, let me make sure we sent notice. And all of a sudden he’s like, yeah, we sent a notice.”
The case dates back to July 2021, when Kemah officials ordered the closure of Palapa’s four-story building over alleged “life-safety issues.”
“It’s clear that there’s some other ulterior motive. In my opinion, they’re not just trying to enforce code or anything like that. They are enacting new ordinances that are designed to shut down these businesses.”
The Kemah official who issued the order later admitted in his deposition he never personally inspected the building.
“I mean, this is very calculated, and there’s a bigger plan they have in mind. Kyle Dickson admitted that, you know, while the building has been shut down this whole time. So that the damage have been occurring that whole time.”
The owner filed a federal lawsuit in January 2022. It continues today.
The financial damage, if the city loses, could be in the millions.
“Local businesses say the closure is affecting their bottom line.”
The city has just won the latest legal chapter over the closing of Sixth Street to cars.
But it was done without real input from the bars and restaurants, which would have been affected. A political arrogance that likely led to all these legal bills.
One of my favorite Kemah restaurants, Bakkhus, has already closed down because of the lack of foot traffic.
And don’t forget about the other ongoing lawsuit against the City of Kemah.
“My name is Veronica Crow. I’m the owner of 1306 Fay in Kemah,” Veronica Crow said.
The story of Veronica Crow, who got help from City Councilman Meisinger in her fight to build a barn dominium and short-term rentals in a neighborhood that said she couldn’t.
“And this is again more of the just BS that goes on in this town. It’s insane. It’s insane the way this town works,” Doug Meisinger said.
Meisinger’s rant may end up costing taxpayers a lot more in legal bills.
“These are the kinds of things that we have to stop, targeting people. This town is terrible. Some people get to do this, some people don’t get to do this,” Meisinger said.
The city argued it was immune from the lawsuit.
“What we thought would be a great community has turned into a nightmare. And I’ll tell you why. Members of the City of Kemah’s staff have lied to us on multiple occasions,” Veronica Crow said.
“I get it. The city has lied to us. A lot too,” Dolcefino said.
The city fought our investigation into the death of Manny Skaris, who got stabbed in the entertainment district. That was an insult to his family. And Kemah has withheld tons of public records taxpayers deserved to see.
Like the investigation they paid for into former Police Chief Holland Jones. Arrogance again.
“We’re supposedly one of the number one attractions in Houston, Texas. That’s a pretty big deal. We’re more of a bloody dot on the map than a shining star,” Joiner said.
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