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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Fee Simple
Attorney General John Cornyn took time out from his busy U.S. Senate campaign to tell the Tarrant County Bail Bond Board to start obeying the law. Cornyn has ruled that a practice that some local bondsmen — including board member L.G. Cornish — admit they use is, in fact, illegal.
State law prohibits bondsmen from collecting lawyer’s fees from their bond clients to pass on to attorneys. Cornish said in a recent public meeting that it’s OK to do that if the bondsman passes on 100 percent of the legal fees, without taking a cut. That “is what I do,” he said.
That’s wrong, said the attorney general, who’d been asked by the Tarrant County district attorney’s office for a ruling on the subject. The D.A.’s office had argued that in some cases the practice serves “legitimate public policies.” On July 9, Cornyn ruled that the “plain language” of the law says the practice of collecting and passing on the full fee can’t be separated from fee-splitting, which is a Class A misdemeanor. Plain language may be a new concept for the D.A. and this board.
Water World
A July 23 story by the Star-Telegram’s excellent Neil Strassman regarding opposition from East Texas folks to a plan for a huge reservoir to serve the Metroplex was déjà vu all over again. Shockingly, people are upset at a plan to flood 62,000 acres of their farms, forests, and wild lands so us city dwellers can water our St. Augustine in August. Back in the early Pleistocene, when Static was a cub reporter in East Texas, it was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers planning to dam up some creek to build a lake — mostly for recreational purposes. At a public hearing, a raft of locals spoke out against the plan to trade farm and forest land for bass boats. Static naïvely queried the Corps spokesman; surely the plan would have to be altered in the face of all this citizen opposition? The Corps-man smiled pityingly. “There’s always opposition,” he said — and gnats, both of which can be swatted away. Dam and lake, of course, were built. This new lake probably is also inevitable, because cities believe growth is the only way to survive. Static foresees the day when all of Texas will consist of city, highway, landfills, industrial parks, hazardous waste sites, and artificial lakes. If you don’t believe it’s possible, visit New Jersey.
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