Chaos erupts in court over Burnet County Sheriff’s Office report
Burnet County Judge James Oakley listens to audience protests during a highly charged meeting of the Commissioners Court on Sept. 24. The issue concerned alleged overtime abuse by the Sheriff’s Office. Staff photo by Dakota Morrissiey
The Burnet County Commissioners Court’s meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 24, erupted into chaos when County Judge James Oakley attempted to stop District Attorney Wiley “Sonny” McAfee from giving a presentation on his office’s investigation into alleged overtime abuse by the Burnet County Sheriff’s Office. The DA from the 33rd/424th judicial districts was ultimately able to present his report, which found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Before that happened, however, a baliff was ordered by Oakley to remove a loud protestor from the courtroom while other audience members demanded McAfee be allowed to speak. Oakley called a recess and left the room until the turmoil calmed down.
An anonymous complaint was made in 2023 to the Burnet County auditor and human resources department, then passed on to the DA, county attorney, and Sheriff’s Office. The complaint claimed officers and dispatchers were being paid overtime hours for time they did not work through field training officer or communications officer programs.
The Commissioners Court ordered a $20,000 third-party forensic audit of the Sheriff’s Office in September 2023 for a deeper look into the matter.
The results of that audit by international accounting firm Baker Tilly were presented during the court’s Aug. 13 meeting, nearly a year after it was ordered. The 15-page report showed 957 instances when the labels “FTO” (for field training officer) and “CTO” (for communications training officer) were used on timesheets. However, no conclusive evidence of overtime abuse was shown.
District Attorney McAfee and his office conducted their own investigation, spanning August 2023 to June 2024.
“During this investigation, the DA investigators did not discover any factual evidence which demonstrated that any member of the Burnet County Sheriff’s Office Command Staff, including managers or supervisors, had ordered, directed or suggested to any deputy or communications officer working as a field training officer to submit for one-hour of overtime pay if the FTO had not indeed worked that extra hour due to FTO duties,” reads the conclusive summary of the report.
The specific allegation against the Sheriff’s Office was that leadership was giving one extra hour of overtime to FTOs and CTOs as an incentive for the work. The DA’s investigation claims supervisors were manually entering FTO-specific overtime hours and keeping track of them separately, which made it look as though they were being added on to hours worked.
The DA’s report was completed and sent to Burnet County Attorney Eddie Arredondo on June 10 but never given to the Commissioners Court. Sheriff Calvin Boyd referred to it during the court’s Aug. 13 meeting, but Judge Oakley claimed he was unaware of it.
“I saw (the DA’s report) for the first time today,” Oakley told DailyTrib.com following Tuesday’s meeting.
Arredondo told DailyTrib.com he did not feel it was his place to share the report with the court because it contained sensitive personal information he did not want to redact on his own.
“(McAfee) sent it to me, I had it, it had all sorts of sensitive information in it,” Arredondo said. “I certainly didn’t believe it was my place to be redacting information from somebody else’s report.”
Oakley said the matter would be investigated again by an unnamed agency that could not be shared publicly.
“I think, at the end of the day, in the name of government transparency, we want everything to be out in the open. And whenever the whistleblowers came forward with the information (alleging Sheriff’s Office overtime abuse), it is just something I have a duty to act on, and I still feel like there are some unanswered questions,” he said.
Chaos in the court
Before DA McAfee began his report, Oakley informed the court that County Judges and Commissioners Association of Texas attorney Jim Allison advised him not to allow discussion of the matter.
The judge then moved to table the agenda item. The motion was seconded by Precinct 4 Commissioner Joe Don Dockery. Precinct 3 Commissioner Billy Wall voted to table the item, along with Oakley and Dockery. Precinct 2 Commissioner Damon Beierle voted no. Precinct 1 Commissioner Jim Luther was absent.
Members of the audience erupted in protest as Oakley made the motion. Several people got to their feet and shouted objections.
McAfee was then given three minutes to speak during the public comment agenda item. When the timer went off, Oakley stopped the presentation.
“You’re going to stop the explanation of this because you don’t want to hear it?” McAfee asked the judge. “Has anybody got three minutes I can borrow?”
Under the court’s rules of decorum, members of the public are allowed three minutes to discuss whatever they want, as long as it is not threatening or violent or harmful to the meeting. Audience member Patricia Cope attempted to give her three minutes to McAfee, but Oakley denied the request.
“This is incredible, and for you (other commissioners) to go along with it,” McAfee said to the members of the court.
While many in the audience began to loudly protest tabling the agenda item, one member was louder than the others.
Burnet County resident Charlie Parker was escorted from the court by the bailiff at the request of Oakley following repeated outbursts.
“You’re a tyrant!” he shouted at Oakley. “This is against the people of this county. You are standing against the people of this county.”
After Parker was escorted from the courtroom, protests continued until Oakley called for a recess and also left the room.
Upon returning to the courtroom, Oakley called the meeting back to order and allowed McAfee to make his presentation as a long public comment.
“We’ve got a right (in the Texas Constitution) to address the things that the court has raised, and I’ve never had somebody deny me that right,” McAfee told DailyTrib.com.
This was the first Burnet County Commissioners Court meeting to be livestreamed since the 2020 pandemic. A recording is available at YouTube.com.
6 thoughts on “Chaos erupts in court over Burnet County Sheriff’s Office report”
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How many investigations are we going to have ? Three so far and no evidence of wrongdoing. Maybe we should investigate the “Judge”
Oh wait…
Talk about an oxymoron – Oakley talks about transparency then says in this article the matter would be investigated again by an unnamed agency that could not be shared publicly. What a joke!
Oakley likes to refer to government transparency a lot but he is far from it. Government transparency would be letting the DAs office do their job, trust the job they’re doing and letting Mcafee speak yesterday to update the county citizens on a report that’s been going on almost a year now and was finished back in June. He’s the only one so far who has spoke professionally and given clarity to this matter. Squashing it to the public by the judge only raises eyebrows. He speaks of another case review in the article? Why? I smell stink and it’s not coming from the BCSO.
The DA’s investigation found nothing and people are still up in arms? Sorry folks, if there’s no evidence, then your opinions are irrelevant. It sounds like the DA did his job, and it also seems, according to Oakley, that an “unnamed agency” is conducting another investigation, so let’s wait for that and see where we need to go from there. Unlike all the social media protests we actually need to let the process play out and find facts, not feelings.
The article omits the history of the original complaint and who brought it up….resulting in this outcome & avoids noting why the dust up occurred in the first place.
$20,000 of our money was spent to audit the allegations and no evidence of wrong doing came out of it. Now I see that people are still trying to continue to see what sticks. Regardless of the outcome, somebody wasn’t going to be happy. What more do you want after spending that kind of money. Stop wasting time and get with other business that needs attention.