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Botley
Although the state of Texas intervened and halted the rampant embezzlement and mismanagement documented at the Beaumont Independent School District in 2014 with a Texas Education Agency takeover, actors accused of pilfering the taxpayer coffers – or facilitating its occurrence – are still in court even seven-plus years later.
As 2021 ended, the new leadership of BISD (along with a reinstated relic of the takeover) agreed to pay former auditor Gayle Botley on a lawsuit the CPA filed even after he was found to have botched his job so severely that the school district lost more than $4 million dollars and was on the verge of bankruptcy.
When the previous administration was grasping at straws – and spending taxpayer dollars – in an attempt to hold on to the checkbook of the school district, Botley was penned into contracts that the incoming clean-up crew didn’t want or need from the person who was watching the money while it was being stolen.
Still, at the end of December 2021, BISD Board President Robert Dunn and Trustee Stacey Lewis Jr. signed an agreement to settle with Botley for $75,000 and up to $1,300 in court costs. The district in return received sworn agreement from Botley to end the madness and the lawsuits – past, current and future.
According to the signed agreement between the district and Botley, the ousted auditor was to be paid by the end of the year and both parties go their separate ways. But there’s still at least one more alleged bad actor from the old BISD still making trips to the courthouse.
Former contract electrician Calvin Walker was sentenced criminally for his theft from the school district during the years he was paid millions to perform work under the previous administration. Walker was also sentenced to pay $1 million back to the school district and stakeholders he illegitimately took money from. However, to date, the victims of Walker’s crimes have not received justice – or any of the money he was ordered to return. Pursuant to a trial and sentencing in Judge John Stevens’ Criminal District Court in October 2019, Walker was ordered to serve 10 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison, exchanged for 10 years probation; pay a $10,000 fine; and return $1,172,656.92 in restitution; as well as serve 180 days in county jail on the weekends.
Mounds of legalese pad the time Walker has walked free despite a guilty verdict for his crimes against the community. Most recently, Walker’s appeal of the verdict was submitted without oral argument on June 4, 2021, to a panel consisting of 9th Court of Appeals Chief Justice W. Scott Golemon, Justice Hollis Horton and Justice Leanne Johnson. The appeal was instigated in January 2020 – two years ago.