By Tommy Witherspoon

Tribune-Herald staff writer

A spokesman for the state’s largest law enforcement association is calling for state and federal investigations into dealings between McLennan County officials and a private detention corporation as the county continues to negotiate jail contracts.

“First of all, we don’t believe anything that officials in McLennan County say anymore,” said Charley Wilkison, political and legislative director for the 16,500-member Combined Law Enforcement Agencies of Texas. “The credibility gap in this county is incredible.”

McLennan County Judge Jim Lewis, county commissioners and Sheriff Larry Lynch have been wrestling for years with the county’s jail overcrowding problem. County officials say they sought proposals from 14 companies nationwide on a variety of options, including privatizing the entire county jail system and building a new, 1,000-bed jail.

The county received proposals from just one company, CEC, which has had a contract to operate the downtown county jail since 1999. CEC contracts with several agencies, primarily federal, to keep prisoners at the downtown jail.

The company’s McLennan County contract, which pays Lynch $12,000 above his county salary of $88,000 to oversee the downtown jail, expires Oct. 1.

Commissioners voted last week for the sheriff to maintain control and operation of the county jail on State Highway 6, on a recommendation from Lynch and after weekly protests from about 50 jailers.

Precinct 3 Commissioner Joe Mashek has called for the county to take back operation of the downtown jail to help alleviate overcrowding and give the county more time to study the situation.

Wilkison said he will ask Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to investigate whether Lynch violated the Texas Public Information Act by failing to respond to CLEAT’s open-records requests for all correspondence between Lynch and CEC officials.

He said he also is seeking state and federal investigations about whether Lynch lawfully and ethically can accept money from the private vendor or whether it is a conflict of interest when he helps decide the fate of the jail system.

“The sheriff has taken $91,000 of personal money that goes into his bank account, and then he says: ‘I am still able to decide. I am still OK deciding whether it is in our best interest to privatize.’ That old dog won’t hunt. Nobody here believes that.”

The contract between the county and CEC, then called CiviGenics, originated when the late Jack Harwell was sheriff. The part of the contract that calls for payments to the sheriff, Lewis says, has not changed, although it has been renewed since Lynch took office.

Lynch did not return phone calls to his office or cell phone Monday.

Wilkison also charges that county officials should come up with more efficient ways to clear out the jail, especially of nonviolent first offenders. He claims the CEC contract pays Lynch more for more prisoners.

‘Artificial crisis’

“We think inmates are being kept in jail to create an artificial public safety crisis so the hue and cry for a new jail can come and the new jail can be privatized and built by CEC,” Wilkison said.

Lewis scoffed at that notion and said Wilkison’s claims are off-target. He said Lynch is paid the same in the contract with CEC whether there are 300 prisoners or none.

“It is still his responsibility to oversee that jail,” Lewis said. “By statute, it is the sheriff’s responsibility, whether it was Jack or Larry. That contract has not changed, and up until 20 months ago, we didn’t have a prisoner in that jail. So does that logic make any sense?”

Wilkison also charged that Lewis’ office is using “stalling tactics” by asking for an attorney general’s opinion about whether his office has to release 170 pages from CLEAT’s open-records request that Lewis claims are attorney-client privilege. Wilkison said Lewis’s office has released 1,300 pages to CLEAT pursuant to the request.

“We believe somewhere in that 170 pages will be some of the information that will tell the tale about how you get only one bid on a private prison,” Wilkison said. “If they have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to worry about. If they have done nothing wrong, then they should release it anyway.”

Lewis said attorney-client communication is privileged and exempt from open-records requests.

“That is just as standard as everything,” Lewis said.

Commissioners will continue to discuss jail proposals at their weekly meeting this morning.

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

757-5737