Texas Scorecard By Don Huffines June 5, 2020
Commentary: New Guilty Plea in Dallas County Schools Scandal Calls for Citizen Reflection
Taxpayers must always be prepared to be their own fiercest advocates.
Texas Scorecard recently penned an
article on the plea deal signed by Richard Reynolds, a Louisiana attorney who used his law firm to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to corrupt Dallas County Schools officials. After years of hard work by taxpayers, elected officials, and investigative journalists around the state, justice is slowly being served in the largest political corruption scandal that Texas has ever seen.
This story started after I received my tax bill in the mail on a November morning in 2014. I was perusing the long list of entities that were charging property owners in Dallas County when the last entry labeled “SCH EQUAL†caught my eye. As a newly elected state senator and concerned taxpayer, I began researching this entity.
The “Dallas School Equalization Fund,†also known as Dallas County Schools (DCS), had 3,000 employees but no teachers, students, or schools. Its main purpose was student transportation. And while every property owner in the county paid taxes for it, only students from a handful of districts received its services. We found that DCS was involved in many deceptive practices, including the infamously corrupt “flash-to-cash†bus camera scheme. It was a financial time bomb, riddled with thieves. Eventually, I had to call on the Texas Rangers, the Dallas County DA’s office, and the FBI to formally investigate.
In the 85th session of the Texas Legislature, I authored legislation to abolish DCS. The governor, lieutenant governor, and speaker of the House were, and remain, strangely silent on this massive scandal. In May of 2017, with DCS just two weeks away from finalizing the sale of over $50 million in new taxpayer-funded bonds, we coordinated with the Texas attorney general’s office and stopped the sale, starting the financial undoing of their elaborate scheme. Of course, the crooks took a final parting shot at our wallets, having wasted over $1.3 million fighting us with a fleet of Austin lobbyists. Per my legislation on November 7, 2017, the taxpayers voted to abolish DCS.
More:
https://texasscorecard.com/commentary/commentary-new-guilty-plea-in-dallas-county-schools-scandal-calls-for-citizen-reflection/
