The Texas Observer

Imagine you need a lawyer, but can’t afford the high fees. You crack the phone book and find a group calling itself “National Legal Aid Services.” offering low-cost representation. Sounds good, right? Maybe not.

National Legal Aid Services is apparently a group out of Colorado that’s posing as a nonprofit, but allegedly scams poor folks out of their money.

This according to a recent lawsuit filed by Rio Grande Legal Aid (the real legal aid folks in Texas) in state court against several allegedly fake “legal aid” outfits. Thirteen plaintiffs allege they were scammed out of their money by 12 defendants, including an entity called National Legal Aid Services. The group deceptively incorporated the “legal aid” into its name and marketed itself as such, according to the complaint.

One of the plaintiffs is Juanita Sarabia. According to the filings, in June 2007, the San Antonio woman wanted to gain legal access to her grandchildren. Her daughter was missing, and Sarabia wanted to visit her grandchildren, who lived with their father. Unable to afford an attorney, Sarabia tried to contact legal aid, which provides legal representation to the poor. She called directory assistance and was given a phone number for “legal aid.” She called, and asked if she had reached legal aid in San Antonio and was told she had.

The person on the other end of the line told Sarabia they could help get her a lawyer for the fee of $450. (Legitimate legal aid agencies don’t charge for their services.) Sarabia said she didn’t have the money, but the person on the phone insisted and warned her that other lawyers cost thousands of dollars. Sarabia agreed. It took her two months to scrounge up the money. She wired them the money in late September. In return she received a set of documents that, she was told, needed to be notarized and taken to the courthouse. Sarabia asked for an attorney’s help, but was told “we only do paperwork.”

She took the documents to a notary, who told Sarabia she had been scammed. The documents were slapped-together boiler plate that was of little use in Texas. She hasn’t been able to contact the so-called Legal Aid group since and never got her money back.

Sarabia’s experience isn’t contained to Texas. Similar scams have popped up recently in Ohio, California and Maine. But Rio Grand Legal Aid also has joined with Colorado Legal Services to file a federal lawsuit in Colorado federal court against a similar set of defendants, alleging false advertising, trademark infringement, and racketeering. National Legal Aid Services’ Web site has been taken down.

Brian Flood, the top watchdog at the scandal-plagued Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) announced his resignation late this afternoon. As HHSC inspector general — a post created in 2003 — Flood oversaw investigations of fraud and abuse across Texas’ multi-billion dollar health care safety net.

Earlier this year, Flood feuded rather openly with Gov. Rick Perry and HHSC chief Albert Hawkins after Flood released a highly critical report on HHSC’s two major privatization efforts. Those disastrous contracts , including the Accenture mess, cost the state hundreds of millions and deprived many families of benefits. Investigations by Flood’s office made Hawkins’ leadership of the agency look rather clumsy.

The reason for Flood’s departure late today is unclear. There was speculation at the Capitol during the legislative session that Flood was getting forced out because, according to some sources, he had embarrassed Hawkins, the governor’s ally. It’s worth noting that Perry doesn’t praise Flood personally in the HHSC announcement. The governor has appointed an interim IG.

Texas Watch has been doing all the heavy lifting on this, but director Alex Winslow has dug up yet another interesting document on the fundraising efforts of the state’s senior Supreme Court Justice, Nathan Hecht. Last week Travis County D.A. Ronnie Earle announced his office was looking into one of three complaints filed by Judicial Watch against Justice Hecht for possible omissions on his campaign finance reports.

All of the trouble stems from Hecht’s efforts to get reimbursed for legal expenses he incurred while employing “Oprah’s lawyer” to appeal a reprimand from the state’s judicial ethics commission. The admonition was overturned on appeal, and Hecht eventually paid the bills by hitting up “attorneys, lobbyists, and litigants with business before the Court soliciting funds to cover his personal legal expenses.” Now Texas Watch has obtained a copy of the letter Hecht sent out, reproduced below. It’s a tiny bit of insight into how state officials conduct business:

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More importantly, as Texas Watch notes, the letter’s significance is that Justice Hecht says that “The firm [Jackson Walker] has also agreed to designate a large part of the fees as an in-kind contribution to my campaign.” Hecht’s campaign finance reports show no in-kind contributions from Jackson Walker, which could be a violation of the Election Code.

It’s worth noting Hecht’s explanation in the letter, as well. His letter makes it clear that he thinks he never should have been reprimanded in the first place and that he saw his case as a larger stand: “So I appealed — to clear my record, to ensure that other Texas judges would not be subjected to such abusive treatment by the Commission, and to uphold the rule of law. … Because of the public importance of my case, it could not be lost to misstep. Trial costs were high.”

For what it’s worth, Law.com has a good rundown of both sides from when Hecht was first admonished. For our views on Hecht’s conduct read the Observer editorial “Hecht of a Job.”

Several months ago Justice Nathan Hecht, the longest-serving member of the Texas Supreme Court, racked up some $450,000 in legal bills fighting a ruling by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, which he paid through the kindness of campaign donors. Details are of that tawdry tale are here.

Now, as Texas Watch documented in a complaint filed today in Travis County, the problem is that Hecht didn’t actually pay that entire legal bill. Turns out he received a discount from his lawyers at the firm Jackson Walker worth about $100,000. While judges are allowed to collect contributions for legal defense funds, they are limited to $5,000 for individuals and $30,000 for PACs, including law firms. If considered the same as a campaign contribution, Hecht’s big discount could constitute one of several violations. Texas watch explains where the complaints were filed and why:

• Public Integrity Unit: The Texas Penal Code prohibits judges from accepting a gift from a party who the judge knows is likely to appear before him. As Jackson Walker is a prominent law firm with numerous clients with interests that are likely to come before the Texas Supreme Court, the discount the firm gave Justice Hecht was possibly an illegal gift. A violation of this statute is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine of $4,000.

• State Commission on Judicial Conduct: The discount on his legal expenses is a gift that reflects adversely on his impartiality and is a possible exploitation of his position in apparent violation of the Canons of Judicial Ethics.

• Texas Ethics Commission: The $100,000 discount that Hecht received on his legal bills is an in-kind contribution in excess of the statutory $30,000 contribution limit that law firms are permitted to donate to judges and judicial candidates. A violation of this statute is punishable by a fine of three times the amount of the illegal contribution.

Alex Winslow, the watchdog’s executive director, is asking for a full investigation into the discount.

Hecht, for his part, has denied that any of the contributions to his defense fund would influence proceedings before his court.

Hecht’s lawyer, Chip Babcock, a high-profile First Amendment lawyer in Dallas, told Fort Worth Star-Telegram in April that any rules violations were unintentional. “I’ve said all along that I want to do the right thing, and if the right thing is that I’ve got to be paid more money, then so be it,” he told the paper. “I wouldn’t have done it that way if I thought it was going to cause a problem, especially not to Justice Hecht.”

It’s safe to say current Rep. Garnet Coleman and former Rep. Ron Wilson, who now serves as Tom Craddick’s second-in-command-right-hand-man on the dais, don’t like each other. While both are/were listed as Democrats from Houston, it would be hard to imagine them more at odds.

As background, consider this Observer article detailing Wilson’s helping hand in the 2003 redistricting fiasco, along with his subsequent primary defeat. Or this incendiary Houston Press piece, in which Wilson, testifying about his role in the redistricting plan, berates just about every one of his Democratic and African-American colleagues at the time. Wilson is quoted saying, “I don’t consider [Coleman] an African American.” He also accuses Sen. Rodney Ellis of having “his head up his ass half the time.” Unrepentant in a follow-up interview, he calls one-time U.S. Rep. and former Dem candidate for governor Chris Bell a “racist bastard.”

Given all that, it’s not hard to imagine how Coleman, among others, felt when they saw Wilson take such a prominent place with Team Craddick last night.

Today Coleman struck back. He issued press releases saying he filed two ethics complaint against the new assistant parliamentarian, and he plans to file 15 more. “Those ethics complaints are based on incidents, going back to as far as 1993, where Mr. Wilson consistently failed to file his campaign finance reports on time,” the release said.

The Craddick camp quickly issued a response to the one complaint, which alleged Wilson never paid an Ethics Commission fine levied against him for failing to report campaign contributions from voucher-fanatic James Leininger. Said Craddick spokeswoman Alexis DeLee in a release, “As to Rep. Coleman’s allegations that Ron Wilson owes an $8,300 fine to the State of, that claim is false. Mr. Wilson does not recall the second allegation of a failure to disclose a $10,000 contribution from the ‘All Children Matter’ PAC. However, he will check with the Texas Ethics Commission when it reopens on Tuesday.” Hmm… seems that Wilson has crossed party lines and caught a nasty case of Republican Memory Loss Syndrome. But in response to another ethical imbroglio Reps brought up last night, DeLee says Wilson filed a letter with the House chief clerk “indicating that he would not be representing clients in his law practice while he is acting as Deputy Parliamentarian.”

Coleman himself has never brought up the past animosity in his complaints, instead making a case for why these alleged violations matter now:

Mr. Wilson has shown blatant disregard for ethics in the past. I believe our House Parliamentarians resigned late last night because they could no longer stand by Speaker Craddick’s disdain for the rules. So what happened? Speaker Craddick went out and found Parliamentarians that have shown they have no problem showing disdain for the rules.

You know, maybe we overestimated Tom DeLay. The blunted Hammer was on Meet the Press this morning. He is trying to make a comeback these days with a new book called “No Retreat and No Surrender.” DeLay participated in a roundtable on Iraq. His fellow panelists included retired admiral now-congressman Joe Sestak and former Defense Policy Analyst and prince of darkness Richard Perle. In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, what was clear about the former majority leader is “what a maroon, what an ignoranimous” he is.

Maybe it was all but inevitable that he was destined for such a spectacular fall. He was in over his head from the very beginning. Oddly enough, the one personal shortcoming DeLay admitted to in the New York Times today is largely the reason that a man with such limited computing power went as far as he did. “… my flaw is that I can sometimes be aggressive, even mean,” he said.

About all Tommy could muster on Tim Russert’s show were platitudes and talking points. “We are at war and when you are at war you have to fight that war to win,” sounds fairly lame against folks who have actual military experience and the capability to reason.

“I think if we keep our eye on the ball and if we put terrorists in a cell or a cemetery no matter where we find then, we are winning.”

The only problem Tom is that we are making ‘em faster than we can kill ‘em. So much for the “war on terra” as DeLay likes to say.

DeLay also criticized recent protests against the war. “It is my opinion that when you go to war we ought to all come together…. Those are not patriots that call for the impeachment of the commander and chief… [You are] aiding and abetting the enemy by calling for withdrawal.”

This is DeLay in his new-found role: Lemming tour guide. “Just stay in line. Keep on walking. Pay no attention to that cliff.”

In keeping with his book’s “message” DeLay kept repeating that anyone who advocates a timeline for withdrawal is a quitter. “Surrender does not bring security. This is hard so I want to surrender.”

This from a man who tried to sneak away from his congressional race because he wasn’t guaranteed a win. Almost a year ago, DeLay told Time Magazine that, after realizing he could lose, he decided to quit the race because he “didn’t want to risk the seat.”

We raised the question on Monday of what, exactly, the people of Texas received for the roughly $1 million in public funds paid to lobbyists (and Tom DeLay-Jack Abramoff cronies) Drew Maloney and Todd Boulanger? Gov. Perry announced last week that he had canceled the controversial lobby contracts. For the past two days, we’ve endeavored to find out for you, dear reader, if Texas benefited from these lobbyists or if the governor was funneling taxpayer money to DeLay’s associates.

We finally reached Tom Alexander, spokesman for Cassidy & Associates, Boulanger’s firm. Alexander happily provided a written statement (”We are confident we provided an unmatched level of service that delivered positive results for the people of Texas”). If that comment looks familiar, it should. Alexander fed it to every reporter in town. When we asked what “positive results” Alexander had in mind — contracts won, bills passed, federal money snared — we got shut down. Alexander refused further comment out of “fairness.” We tried asking the question several different ways. “I’m not taking any follow-ups,” he finally said and hung up. Bang-up job, Tom.

Maloney hasn’t returned calls for comment. Neither has the governor’s office. So we dove into Maloney and Boulanger’s lobby contracts with the state, which gives new meaning to the word vague. For instance, on February 9, 2004, the state paid Maloney’s firm, the Federalist Group, $75,000 for “consultant services app. by gov.” to work on a budget item titled “regular reports,” according to the records. Maloney and Co. received another $60,000 on April 22, 2004, for yet more work on those “regular reports.” They do seem awfully regular: in fact, the state paid the Federalist Group on five separate occasions for “regular reports,” totaling $315,000. That was when Maloney and friends weren’t working on those always-tedious “ad-hoc reports/briefings,” the “action plans,” or the “indirect administration,” which, to us, sounds vaguely sexual. No doubt, since reviewing this egregious waste of taxpayer money, it’s clear someone was getting f#%*ed.