Leiliana Wright, who was beaten to death March 13, had a large bruise around her eye in this photo, taken weeks before child abuse investigators noted the remnants of the bruise, according to a family friend.

By J. DAVID McSWANE and ROBERT T. GARRETT
Austin Bureau

In 2015, at least a dozen Texas Child Protective Services workers were accused of faking portions of their case records, making it look as if they visited endangered children when they actually did not, reviews by state investigators found.

In 10 cases in which children died, workers failed to make timely visits to children and families, according to inquiries conducted by the Health and Human Services Commission’s inspector general.

Child abuse investigators missed deadlines, including a requirement that some endangered children be seen within 72 hours, the reports show.

In two instances, CPS workers were found to have falsely reported making face-to-face contacts with a child who later died from abuse or neglect, inspector general reports indicate.

Promptly seeing children named in abuse tips is crucial to protecting youngsters, experts say.

But the record-keeping flubs and postponed visits cited last year by the inspector general coincided — in North Texas, at least — with more child abuse investigations growing “delinquent.” That refers to cases open at least 60 days, often with minimal to no contact with kids.

The troubling trends went unaddressed by CPS bosses and proved to be crucial factors in the botched case of 4-year-old Leiliana Wright, a Grand Prairie girl beaten to death last month even though relatives had warned CPS she was in danger.

Leiliana’s death underscores the fatal consequences possible when CPS performs poorly. Statewide, reports of child maltreatment continue to increase. The agency struggles to protect children. Overburdened workers complain of lousy supervisors and regional administrators.

Many experienced workers are quitting, especially in Dallas County. This week, Gov. Greg Abbott installed a new team of executives at the overarching state protective services agency. But his choice of a former Texas Ranger as the leader unsettled many longtime CPS employees, who believe a law enforcement approach complicates their attempts to win families’ trust and make good decisions about children.

In Leiliana’s case, agency documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News revealed that her assigned caseworker was supposed to respond to her case within 72 hours, but a child abuse investigator didn’t see the girl for 36 days. In the interim, the caseworker, who had a record of mishaps, mislabeled his cases in such a way that Dallas supervisors had no idea Leiliana wasn’t being seen, his boss later reported in an agency document.

Last month, the worker had 70 cases on his desk — nearly six times as many cases as a leading national child-welfare group recommends for caseworkers. CPS’ parent agency, the Department of Family and Protective Services, agrees with the inspector general that at least some workers are entering incorrect information about face-to-face visits with children into the state’s casework data system.

“Falsification of [data system] documentation by individual caseworkers occurs, and it is extremely concerning, “ said Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for the parent agency. “If children are not seen, how do we know if they are safe in their homes?”

Still, he said, false data entries are “not the most common reason caseworkers are disciplined.” More frequently, workers are reprimanded for doing generally poor work, making decisions that harm children, not making timely visits and falling far behind on deadlines, “despite management support,” Crimmins said.

Experienced child welfare workers and experts agreed that it’s wrong for workers to miss visits and then misstate that in important case records. But they mostly attributed the failings to fast-growing caseloads, especially in North Texas. In Dallas County, child abuse investigators have quit in recent months at a rate of 57 percent a year.

Veteran Dallas CPS employee Jamie Johnson said that with local investigators’ caseloads tripling and even quadrupling in recent years, the entire system for protecting kids has begun to teeter. It’s at risk of collapse, she said.

“There are so many policies and so many things you’re supposed to do on every single investigation,” she said. “If you’re supervising 10 people and everybody’s got 30 cases, you can’t possibly go back to every single worker on every single case and say, ‘What did you find out on case No. 12? How about 13, 14, 15?’ You can’t do that.”

Fatal consequences

State records indicate a clear trend of caseworkers missing deadlines and saying they saw kids when they haven’t.

On December 2014, a child whose family had a history with CPS died, reportedly while sharing a bed with a neglectful parent. The child abuse investigator assigned to the case had failed to see the child within the required 72 hours, the inspector general found. The next month, a 14-year-old who was supposed to have been seen by CPS committed suicide.

The caseworker never saw the child and falsified records, investigators found. “The deceased child’s mother reported she was ‘never contacted, had telephone conversation, or received a business card’ ” from the CPS worker, the report states.

In Leiliana’s case, an investigator mislabeled his reports in the CPS data system to suggest he visited the child, though he did not. Specifically, he did not click an “attempted” box about initial contact in the case.

The investigator, who since has resigned, had been admonished before for not clicking the box, state records show. CPS’ data system alerts investigators’ supervisors when children haven’t been seen in timely fashion, said Johnson, who retired in 2014 but has stayed in close touch with many former colleagues.

“If they forget to click ‘attempted,’ then it’s not going to trigger any alert with the supervisor that, ‘Oh, this case has not had an initial contact yet,’ ” she said. “So you’re not going to know about it.”

Crimmins, the state spokesman, said the department is “continually looking for ways” to train and mentor workers so that they don’t make mistakes or willful omissions, and that they check all required boxes.

But when workers begin to quit in large numbers, as began happening in Dallas County last August, their cases are reassigned to colleagues who remain. They reel under unmanageable demands.

Leiliana’s case landed on just such an investigator — on Jan. 4, just as CPS delinquent investigations in Dallas County reached staggering levels. In January, more than 40 percent of the county’s cases were more than 60 days old and still unworked, data shows.

Peggy Walker, a Dallas program manager who retired from the agency last year, said she’s not surprised that some caseworkers are filing false reports. Tough deadlines and untenable caseloads, she said, “incentivizes lying to some degree.”

“There’s a tremendous amount of pressure, so caseworkers do fudge, and they say, ‘Well, who’s gonna know?’ ” she said.

While Walker said she believes most caseworkers go to great lengths to meet with families and check on kids, there’s no reliable way to be sure all kids are being seen. Sometimes caseworkers will eschew a visit with a kid they think isn’t in serious danger, she said, to make time for another kid they worry might be.

“You get yourself off the hook so you can go and do your job,” she said. “People get in the job, and it’s too much to cope with, and they do things they wouldn’t normally do.”

Agency revamp

The latest crisis gripped the department as CPS was more than one year into a major overhaul of worker training and business practices pushed by an outside consultant and the Sunset Advisory Commission, a group named by the Legislature that advises lawmakers on what improvements are needed in state programs. Last December, a federal judge ruled that Texas subjects many foster children to further mistreatment.

In his first months in office, Abbott last year cracked down on perceived abuse of voluntary placements by parents of their children with relatives. Soon, CPS removals of children soared, exposing a lack of homes and treatment beds in the foster care system.

Lawmakers have promised yet another overhaul of Child Care Licensing, an arm of the department that regulates foster care vendors, and CPS.

Peter Clark, of the advocacy group Texans Care for Children, said the public should not be too quick to condemn CPS workers. The agency “is full of hardworking employees” dedicated to children, but they’re underpaid and overwhelmed, he said.

“When state leaders fail to provide the agency adequate support and the staff is constantly under fire, the job is even harder,” said Clark, whose group advocates for more spending on children and more efficiency in state programs. “Those who make mistakes should be held accountable, but we need to strengthen CPS, not tear it down.”

Many longtime CPS employees say that Monday morning quarterbacking by the Office of Inspector General is destructive, not constructive. The office began looking at child-death cases a few years ago.

“If you put a fine-tooth comb through any 20 of the best worker’s investigations, not every policy will be followed every single time – which means anybody can be fired for violating policy,” said Johnson, a 23-year CPS veteran.

“And with the [inspector general’s] office involved, anybody can be criminally charged, as well — which definitely changes your desire to continue doing this difficult job,” she said.

She referred to 2013 evidence-tampering charges brought against three CPS workers in Greenville after the inspector general looked into CPS’ prior involvement with the family of a murdered teen.

Department spokesman Crimmins, though, said leaders will not tolerate record falsification. Abbott has made it “crystal clear” that “the status quo is unacceptable,” he said.

But there’s a fine line between improvement and inquisition, workers have said.

In the agency’s 19-county North Texas region, at least, investigators and family-based safety services workers recently came under additional scrutiny – from inside CPS.

Region 3 risk manager Val Lucke, a 27-year CPS employee, said she retired in late January because a change in her job duties made her feel she was contributing to an unhealthy “culture of fear” at the agency.

Previously, Lucke said, she mostly coached supervisors as they tutored inexperienced investigators and safety services workers.

But last spring, she was ordered to swoop in after a child died and examine “a significant number” of other cases handled by the dead child’s worker. She also looked for policy infractions in cases handled by other workers in the same unit. Units range in size from six to 10 workers each.

Though her reports focused on weaknesses in training and workers’ poor practices, with an emphasis on how to improve, Lucke said “that information was probably used in personnel actions” to reprimand or fire workers.

“You cannot make decisions out of fear,” she said. “Especially in Dallas here lately, that was going on. There seemed to be a real punitive atmosphere.”

Walker, the caseworker who left the agency in August, said she’s skeptical of Abbott’s promise to overhaul the agency.

“What does it mean that they put in charge a retired Texas Ranger?” she said.

“He’s saying that you’re not doing it right, and if you have a child death, we’re going to prosecute you,” she added. “I mean, what the hell does he know about CPS?”

dmcswane@dallasnews.com,
rtgarrett@dallasnews.com

Twitter: @davidmcswane, @RobertTGarrett

A family photo of Leiliana Rose Wright, 4. (Courtesy of Alisa and Craig Clakley)

People involved in the Leiliana Rose Wright case:

FAMILY
Leiliana Rose Wright: Died in March as a result, police say, of horrific abuse that her mother and a boyfriend inflicted after she drank from her brother’s juice.

Jeri Quezada: Leiliana’s mother, she had a history of drug use and gave birth to Leiliana, her fourth child, in a Texas prison.

Charles Phifer: A boyfriend of Quezada who police say helped beat her to death. He is charged with felony injury to a child.

Eddie Soto: The father of Quezada’s youngest child, he was jailed on an aggravated sexual assault charge when Leiliana was killed.

David Soto: The toddler son of Edwardo Soto and Quezada. He lived with Quezada and Leiliana.

Brian Maker: Leiliana’s birth father. He said he saw signs of abuse but was powerless to help.

Alisa and Craig Clakley: Maker’s mother and stepfather, they raised Leiliana while Quezada finished her prison term and later unsuccessfully fought for custody.

CPS OFFICIALS
Claudell Banks: The caseworker assigned to check on Leiliana, he was juggling 70 cases and failed to follow up an abuse report in a timely manner. He has left CPS.

Amber Davila: Banks’ supervisor, she was fired for failing to take the necessary steps to protect Leilianna. She’s appealed her termination, saying she had asked supervisors for help.

Shane Fortner: A special investigator assigned to the case, he resigned after Leiliana’s death.

Jacqueline Freeman: The top CPS official for the Dallas area, she’s retiring April 30 in the wake of the Leiliana case.

Stacy Reynolds: CPS official who recommended that Davila be fired.

A pink urn containing the remains of 4-year-old Leiliana Rose Wright sits with a photo of her father, Brian Maker of North Richland Hills, surrounded by flowers from her funeral at the home of her grandparents, Alisa and Craig Clakley (Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer)

Leiliana Wright’s grandparents say they sent photos to CPS over a year before her death after they noticed bruising and a cut lip. (Courtesy of Alisa and Craig Clakley)

Social workers had been warned that Leiliana Wright might be in danger two months before a police officer jotted down the harrowing details of how the 4-year-old had been beaten to death: tied up by her wrists, choked, thrown in a closet, force-fed until she vomited, her head slammed into a wall.

A chain of errors, incompetence and systemic problems at Child Protective Services prevented the agency from protecting Leiliana from savage abuse with which her mother and her boyfriend are charged, agency documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News reveal.

The Grand Prairie child’s March 13 death already has prompted firings, resignations and finger-pointing at the agency, which has been plagued by mismanagement and high turnover of experienced caseworkers.

Meanwhile, fewer caseworkers are managing more cases, sometimes dozens more than child-welfare experts recommend, and are failing to promptly check on scores of endangered children.

Leiliana’s case was mismanaged from the start — and every step of the way.

Agency officials have acknowledged the staffing problems and pointed to steps they’ve taken to address the crisis in the Dallas office. A spokeswoman for CPS’ parent agency declined to comment on any of the findings for this report.

On Jan. 4, CPS workers were called to check on Leiliana and her 2-year-old brother because, as the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office had warned child abuse investigators, the children had recently lived with a man suspected of sexually assaulting another child.

The agency’s rules required the assigned caseworker, Claudell Banks of CPS’ Dallas office, to check on the kids within 72 hours.

It took 36 days, according to records.

Agency memos indicate Banks’ bosses suspect he didn’t even try. On Feb. 9, a CPS investigator found the children at the Grand Prairie home of Leiliana’s mother, Jeri Quezada, a convicted felon with a documented history of child abuse and drug use.

Quezada’s previous run-ins with child-protection workers in Texas and Illinois might have been foreboding if caseworkers had actually reviewed her history, which a CPS higher-up wrote that they had not done.

The records show that it was the first in a series of documented failures and missed opportunities that run throughout the handling of Leiliana’s case by the CPS Dallas office, which current and former employees say is so poorly managed and so severely understaffed that a child was bound to die on the watch of a burned-out social worker.

Records indicate that Banks mislabeled reports in such a way that his managers thought he had contacted families, including Leiliana’s, when he allegedly hadn’t. He was managing 70 cases when Leiliana’s was assigned to him; the ideal caseload is a dozen, according to a leading national child welfare group.

CPS supervisor Amber Davila wrote that caseworker Claudell Banks was improperly entering data on whether he attempted to contact Leiliana Wright’s family.

Banks declined to respond to allegations in the records or comment on the case. He recently quit the agency.

Banks’ supervisor, Amber Davila, who was fired after Leiliana’s death made headlines, had asked higher-ups three times to admonish the caseworker for such behavior, yet nothing happened, and he stayed on the job.

CPS caseworker Claudell Banks was reprimanded for failing to meet deadlines.

In the week before Leiliana’s death, Davila asked another CPS worker to track down Quezada. The mother had canceled meetings and stopped returning calls after a doctor determined bruises on Leiliana’s hands and around her eyes were signs of physical abuse.

But the state didn’t get to her in time.

Leiliana was pronounced dead in the early morning of March 13, and Quezada and her boyfriend, Charles Phifer, were arrested on charges of felony injury to a child.

Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, said she couldn’t discuss the case because agency lawyers are still reviewing it.

But a memo outlining the reasons for Davila’s termination, obtained by The News, as well as a rebuttal that Davila wrote in an effort to win back her job, detail at length how systemic problems at CPS — including a massive case backlog and chronic miscommunications between managers and caseworkers — created an environment where Leiliana’s life could slip through their grasp.

Missed opportunities

They were late, but it still wasn’t too late.

After Banks allegedly failed to reach the family in January, Davila asked CPS Special Investigator Shane Fortner to step in, internal investigation documents show.

Fortner visited the family Feb. 9 and saw that Leiliana had an old purple bruise under her left eye and another yellow bruise near her right eye. He took photos. The girl told Fortner that she had fallen and that “there is nothing at home that scares her.”

Fortner, who resigned last month, left the girl with her mom, according to records. According to his written account, though, he called the caseworker immediately. No answer. Then he texted. No response.

“I then sent email to Mr. Banks on same date at 5:38 p.m regarding needing to staff case ASAP, but was unable to make contact,” he wrote in internal investigation documents.

The next day, the two got in touch.

“I advised Mr. Banks of my findings and the need to have [Leiliana] interviewed forensically ASAP,” Fortner wrote to CPS managers after Leiliana’s death.

Davila declined to discuss the case with The News, citing the agency’s investigation into the case and her appeal. But in her written account, she said she didn’t learn of the bruises until two days after Fortner’s visit. That’s when she referred Leiliana to be screened at Children’s Medical Center’s abuse unit, Referral and Evaluation of At Risk Children, or REACH.

That was another chance to rescue Leiliana — and another miss.

Doctors examined Leiliana the next day, Feb. 12, Davila wrote, but she didn’t get the report until March 2, more than two weeks later.

“I was NEVER contacted by REACH,” she wrote. “I had to request the report several times.”

But two weeks earlier, REACH had called Banks during Leiliana’s examination, according to the memo recommending Davila’s firing.

“Leiliana had been seen by REACH clinic staff and concerns were noted regarding the numerous injuries observed and concern for physical abuse of Leiliana,” wrote Stacy Reynolds, a program administrator in the regional office that covers Dallas and outlying counties.

Clinic staffers told Banks what they had found, according to the records. But the visit would be the last time child welfare workers saw Leiliana alive.

CPS official Stacy Reynolds wrote that caseworker Claudell Banks and supervisor Amber Davila should have acted immediately to protect Leiliana Wright.

Davila, in her written rebuttal to her termination, said that phone call was never relayed to her even though she had included Banks on emails to the clinic and had asked him for updates. The doctors’ concerns that the girl was being abused effectively went nowhere.

“I can say with absolute certainty that the case would have moved in a much different direction if the … [special investigator] had contacted me while still at the home, or if REACH had contacted me with concerns, or if the [caseworker] had informed me of REACH contacting him,” she wrote.

“The [caseworker] knew I was requesting the REACH report. … At no time in any of these discussions did he share that he had already spoken with someone at REACH about concerns,” she wrote.

Scott Summerall, a spokesman for the hospital, said he couldn’t discuss which caseworker was contacted and when.

“We work closely with state and law enforcement agencies to protect and safeguard children. We are deeply saddened by every case of child abuse,” Summerall said.

Too late

A month later, Grand Prairie police responded to a call that a 4-year-old was having difficulty breathing. When medics arrived, the girl, still not breathing, had severe bruising on her face.

“Oh my God,” Quezada yelled, according to the police report, while her boyfriend “sat quietly inside.”

Quezada changed her story several times, the report states, but eventually she told police that about 11:30 a.m. March 12, she brought her daughter and son to Phifer’s home. The two left the children in the living room and went to the bathroom to shoot heroin.

When they came out, the report states, the two hit Leiliana with a belt and bamboo stick because she drank some of her 18-month-old brother’s juice.

“She also admitted later that she had left the child with [Phifer], because she knew that she couldn’t take the child out in public due to the bruising on the child’s face,” the report states.

According to Quezada’s statement, when she returned to Phifer’s home about 9:30 p.m., the two shot up heroin while Leiliana was locked in a closet with her wrists tied behind her back, a closet rod attached to the ligature to keep her from being able to sit.

Once out of the closet, Leiliana said she was hungry, but she struggled to swallow her sandwich, so Quezada slapped her on the chest and back of the head, “telling her to swallow her food.”

“She then said that Charles put on black gloves and forced the child’s mouth open while he poured Pedialyte into her mouth,” the report states.

Soon after, Leiliana said she was going to throw up and ran to the bathroom. When she came out, Quezada told police, Phifer “grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off with one hand.”

Quezada said Phifer then shoved Leiliana against a piece of drywall inside the closet, “all the while holding her by the throat with one hand,” and the two left her in there for more than 15 minutes.

When she was let out, Leiliana was allowed to take a shower. Quezada went into another room to fetch pajamas when she said she heard Phifer in the bathroom saying, “Get you some of this.” Quezada said she heard the girl fall in the shower.

The Tarrant County medical examiner ruled Leiliana’s death a homicide as a result of blunt force trauma to the abdomen and head.

A history with CPS

In her memo, Reynolds, the CPS regional director, wrote that “there is no indication that previous Child Protective Services history was reviewed” by caseworkers who had contacted Leiliana’s mother. The files would have been instantly available to any caseworker or investigator looking at the case.

In 2011, a few weeks before she went to prison for a home burglary near Dallas, Quezada became pregnant. She gave birth to Leiliana while serving her sentence, and the girl’s paternal grandparents raised her until she was nearly 2.

After she was released from prison in 2013, Quezada and her daughter moved in with another boyfriend: Eduardo Soto, whose rap sheet includes a child fondling charge that he pleaded down to child injury and two convictions for tattooing children.

Soto is back in jail — accused of molesting a 5-year-old girl at the same Burleson home where he, Quezada, Leiliana and their newborn son were all living in late 2014, when CPS began to investigate again.

Within a single week in November 2014, Quezada was arrested on a drug charge, Soto was arrested for fraud, and Leiliana’s paternal grandmother sued — ultimately without success — to get custody of the girl.

The state separated Quezada from her children after police pulled her over and found meth in her car. But she regained custody in February 2015 after her charge was dropped and she tested clean for drug use, according to her former lawyer. The agency officially closed its investigation in May 2015.

A year later, after Leiliana’s death, the CPS memos obtained by The News referred to “previous investigations where Mr. Soto was alleged to have sexually abused Leiliana.”

Chaos in Dallas office

Problems in the Dallas CPS office are just one piece of the system-wide crisis in how Texas investigates child abuse and cares for children.

There are so few foster homes that kids are sleeping in caseworkers’ offices or being kept in psychiatric facilities longer. A federal judge in Corpus Christi declared the Texas foster care system “broken,” and Gov. Greg Abbott called for changes after high-profile deaths that occurred long before Leiliana’s.

But the Dallas region is the epicenter of the chaos. The county saw a turnover rate of 57 percent a year from September through November, the most recent figures available. That means more cases and more work for less-experienced caseworkers who face an unabating stream of endangered kids.

Peggy Walker, a Dallas-area program director who recently retired from the agency after 44 years, said caseworkers are leaving because they’re not getting support from managers and are burdened with paperwork and arbitrary rules that keep them from spending face time with kids.

“I’m very loyal to agency,” she said. “It makes me very sad what has happened and to hear the chaos that has gone on in Dallas.”

CPS supervisor Amber Davila, in a rebuttal to her firing, complained that she did not receive adequate support from her bosses.

That chaos, and intense workloads, are evident in paperwork that details how Banks and other caseworkers chronically failed to meet their deadlines.

Records show Davila had detailed concerns about Banks and the children he was supposed to see as early as December. In late January, Davila wrote up Banks for numerous missteps, an attitude problem and failures including: “In numerous cases the children were either never seen or had not been seen for over 5 months.”

His supervisor listed 11 cases in which the children hadn’t been seen. Leiliana’s case is No. 6.

CPS supervisor Amber Davila noted that caseworker Claudell Banks had 70 cases, far more than child welfare experts recommend.

Walker, who said she was once Davila’s boss, said, “That’s so sad” that Banks, who had less than three years on the job, was saddled with 70 cases.

But when The News shared each documented mishap in Leiliana’s case, she said: “Yeah, that’s bad.”

“If your supervisor says you need to go out there and you don’t go? That’s a problem,” she said. “On the other hand, where is the [special investigator]? And if he saw the bruises, why didn’t he remove her? That doesn’t make any sense to me.

“I know the supervisor, and she worked for me, and she doesn’t lie,” she added.

Staff writers Avi Selk and Julieta Chiquillo contributed to this report.

Dallas Cowboys stars Ed “Too Tall” Jones (left) and Randy White were featured in a “Don’t Mess With Texas” TV ad in 1986, the inaugural year of the Texas Department of Transportation’s long-running anti-litter campaign. (TxDOT/via YouTube)

AUSTIN — It seems it’s every Texan’s duty to at least once invoke the slogan “Don’t Mess With Texas.”

You’ll see it on bumper stickers, in the movies, on T-shirts and coffee mugs. You’ll hear it hollered from campaign stumps and in songs. It’s about pride. It’s about bravado.

And it’s about trash.

Today, the Texas Department of Transportation celebrates the 30th birthday of its now-ubiquitous trademarked phrase and one of the most effective marketing campaigns in history — a campaign to rid Texas highways of garbage.

“When this program was created, Texas had a really bad problem of picking up highway litter,” said Jeff Austin, a TxDOT commissioner. “As a seventh-generation Texan, it was really embarrassing.”

Its brand endurance aside, Austin says you can measure the success of the campaign in tons.

The last time TxDOT conducted a study of visible trash the state calculated there were about 435 million pieces of litter — or more aptly, mess — on Texas highways.

That mess was about 34 percent less than in 2009, according to the 2013 study by Environmental Resources Planning LLC.

The commissioner attributes the reduction in mess, despite a booming Texas population, to the staying power of the “Don’t Mess With Texas” brand, which was drummed up by Austin-based marketing giant GSD&M in 1986.

It kicked off with a TV advertisement in which Texas guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughan played “The Eyes of Texas.” That spot rolled out during the 1986 Cotton Bowl, and the rest is history.

Over the next three decades, Texas icons such as Willie Nelson, George Strait, Warren Moon, Matthew McConaughey – and the list goes on — would volunteer their time and talents in ads meant to keep Texas neat.

But the phrase took on a life of its own, and though many Texans may feel it’s their God-given right to use the phrase just like they do “Come and Take It,” TxDOT lawyers must occasionally remind folks that right rests with the state.

“We’ve sent a couple cease-and-desist letters to some companies that were using it in a negative way, if you will,” said Brenda Flores-Dollar, the program manager for the Don’t Mess With Texas campaign.

For instance, lawyers stepped in when one entrepreneur wanted to add an expletive to the phrase – “Don’t ****ing Mess With Texas” —  and print it on T-shirts.

By owning the trademark, the state has been able to strategically license its use to make modest revenue – about $143,000 in royalties since 2004 — but also catapult the brand to heights not usually seen in government campaigns.

Last year, TxDOT signed a $25,000 deal with A&E Entertainment for a History Channel miniseries called Texas Rising.

If you purchased a Tervis Tumbler with the Texas emblem on it, about 85 cents came back to the state.

Warner Bros. got to use a “Don’t Mess With Texas” bumper sticker, at no cost, in the film American Sniper, a biopic about U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle, the deadliest marksman in U.S. military history.

The sticker was visible near the beginning of the movie, for about 3 seconds, but Flores-Dollar says those few seconds could go a long way in cutting into the roughly $32 million the state spends each year on litter pickup.

“It was one of those things where we take into consideration that, well, there’s no way we could have paid for that advertising,” she said. “At the same time, we have to also take into consideration that we need for people to recognize the brand for the brand to be on the brain, if you will.

“Each time they hear it or see it, they begin to connect the dots, and from our end, that’s how we start ingraining our message into the public.”

Flores-Dollar says one of the most novel uses rolled out in the last year. If you’re in the market for a “Don’t Mess With Texas” pair of boots, Justin Boots makes and sells two styles that cost about $285 to $565.

House Speaker Joe Straus. (AP Photo/Austin American-Statesman, Jay Janner)

By BRITTNEY MARTIN and J. DAVID MCSWANE

AUSTIN — Conservative organizations that contend they represent a grassroots movement are engaging in an expensive and targeted assault against House Speaker Joe Straus and his allies in Tuesday’s Republican primaries, hoping to move the statehouse further to the right on issues such as immigration and spending.

But many of the tea party aspirants taking on Straus allies are largely funded by Texas power brokers including an influential fundraising group that’s been more than 80 percent funded by one oilman, a Dallas Morning News analysis of thousands of campaign contributions indicates.

Empower Texans has put forward more than $1.4 million in donations and in-kind contributions to anti-Straus candidates. An analysis of more than 17,000 donations reveals that 18 of those anti-Straus candidates each received 20 percent or more of their funding from the group.

The group is primarily funded by Midland oilman Tim Dunn. He’s donated more than 82 percent of what the organization has raised overall — about $7.5 million since July 2007.

The contests show how, while the national Republican Party struggles over a populist challenge to its conservative identity, the battle in Texas is between the right and the hard right.

Empower Texans is led by vocal Straus critic Michael Quinn Sullivan. Neither he nor Dunn responded to requests for comment. In an email to supporters, Sullivan accused the speaker of standing in the way of conservative priorities.

“Despite Texas’ reputation as a red state, Straus fronts a powerful political machine blocking school choice, protecting public employee labor unions, and relegating conservatives to the back-benches,” Sullivan wrote.

A spokesman for Straus, R-San Antonio, said Dunn’s heavy funding shows that Straus’ antagonists are primarily “fringe groups.”

“Tim Dunn wants a House speaker who he can control, and it drives him crazy that he cannot control Joe Straus,” Straus spokesman Jason Embry said.

Straus’ power in the House is extensive — as is the motivation for some to remove him. He assigns bills to committees and appoints lawmakers to head those committees, which can significantly influence which bills die or advance in the chamber.

Money and influence

The Dallas Morning News identified 46 contested House seats that staunch conservatives hope to capture. In six of those, the hard-right candidate faces no Republican opposition.

Empower Texans has been active in many of the races. James Landtroop, a Straus foe and former representative running this time in House District 84 to unseat Rep. John Frullo, R-Lubbock, received nearly half of his total contributions from the group.

The group gave more than 45 percent of all contributions given to Terry Wilson, a former Army colonel challenging Republican Rep. Marsha Farney of House District 20, which includes Marble Falls and Georgetown.

Among the top five far-right fundraisers are challengers to Straus and two of his top lieutenants, Reps. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, and Byron Cook, R-Corsicana. Geren and Cook lead committees that hear legislation on some of the most important topics to conservatives such as immigration and, recently, changes to ethics laws.

They also both sit on the House committee responsible for scheduling. Its members have the powerful task of deciding which bills should be debated by the full House.

In total dollars, Empower Texans packed the most punch in the fight for House District 99, Geren’s seat. His challenger, Richard “Bo” French, raised more than $780,000, the most of any other hard-right challenger, about $161,000 of which came from Empower Texans.

Other groups also have their sights on Straus. Ten organizations contributed more than $2.6 million to hard-right campaigns, about 30 percent of the total donated by individuals and organizations.

Julie McCarty, president of the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party, which gave more than $57,000 to anti-Straus challengers, said the speaker continuously “defeats the conservative agenda.”

“To combat that, we must build our voting bloc — we need greater numbers of conservative representatives,” McCarty said. “We can’t just focus on one race at a time within our own district. We must be ‘movement driven’ and spread out across the state to support as many true conservative challengers as we can.”

Embry said that the lawmakers being targeted “have delivered billions of dollars in tax cuts, defended the Second Amendment and supported the strongest border security package in the country.”

Money to anti-Straus incumbents

In addition to backing newcomers, anti-Straus groups are investing heavily in current House members who have pushed the chamber to the right, either by introducing controversial bills or dismantling bills seen as insufficiently conservative.

Nineteen members voted against Straus’ bid to become speaker in 2015. Of those, 16 are running for re-election.

“Every year we get a few more while hopefully holding onto the ones who stood strong and represented us well in the prior session,” McCarty said. “It’s a long-term strategy covering the whole state.”

Rep. Jonathan Stickland raised nearly $680,000. Nearly $126,000 of that came from Empower Texans and another $33,000 was from other anti-Straus organizations. Stickland, R-Bedford, drew ire in the 2015 session for killing many locally focused bills that usually pass without debate. Both Republicans and Democrats resented his stalling tactics, and many of his own proposals failed to advance.

Major individual donors are also helping him. Dallas businessman Monty Bennett was the second largest individual contributor to Stickland’s campaign, behind Farris Wilks a hydraulic-fracturing services entrepreneur from West Texas.

“He’s not perfect, but no one is. And no one stands up more for liberty and conservative principles than he does,” Bennett said of Stickland. “He’s willing to stick his neck out for those principles. I don’t know of anybody who’s more liberty loving and more conservative than he is.”

Bennett donated to 10 of the 48 campaigns examined by The News – a total of more than $140,000 — but said he had also given to Straus in the past.

“I don’t support these candidates because of their positions on Straus,” Bennett said. “I’m just interested in liberty-loving and conservative legislation, no matter who gets it done.”

Wilks and his wife, Jo Ann Wilks, together gave about $600,000 to anti-Straus challengers, The News’ analysis found. Wilks declined to comment for this report.

Mug shot of Attorney General Ken Paxton from the Collin County Jail on Aug. 3, 2015.

A prominent North Texas real estate developer is fighting to keep prosecutors working the securities fraud case against state Attorney General Ken Paxton from being paid from the public purse, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Jeffory Blackard, who has donated to Paxton’s campaign in the past, claims in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Collin County District Court that special prosecutors are being paid too much and that those payments break local rules.

According to the Chronicle, Blackard’s lawsuit seeks to “halt a threatened expenditure of public funds that would unlawfully serve to enrich private attorneys at the expense of taxpayers in Collin County.”

Three Houston special prosecutors appointed to the case have worked several hundred hours, the Chronicle reports, as Paxton’s attorneys have fought to throw out three felony indictment counts handed up by a Collin County grand jury in July for alleged securities fraud.

Paxton is charged with two first-degree felonies related to accusations that he failed to disclose he was being paid by a McKinney technology firm when he encouraged investors to buy into the company. He is also charged with a third-degree felony for failing to register as a broker when he connected clients to a friend’s investment firm, which he admitted to publicly. 

Blackard’s lawsuit comes after attempts by Paxton and his allies on the Collin County Commissioner’s Court to limit payments to prosecutors to $1,000 each, though those attorneys were promised $300 an hour when they were appointed to the case.

Attorney Todd Graves represents Blackard, who owns property in McKinney but isn’t a resident of Collin County.

Records show Blackard has donated to Paxton’s political campaigns three times between 2007 and 2013 for a total of $1,250.

Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford

Updated 12:54 p.m. with another apparent post by Stickland in which he appears to have condoned rape.

Rep. Jonathan Stickland, the Bedford Republican who is no stranger to strange headlines, is in the news again for old web posts in which he condoned marital rape and sought a marijuana “smoking buddy” with whom to “smoke da green.”

Several weed-related posts made by Stickland were released to the Quorum Report, a political newsletter, by Scott Fisher, the incumbent’s Republican primary opponent.

Stickland also said in a post on a fantasy football forum that it’s OK for a man to rape his wife, according to a post tweeted out by Quorum Report editor Scott Braddock.

“Rape is non existent in marriage, take what you want my friend!” – @RepStickland https://t.co/DaRaMSg92H #TxLege

— Scott Braddock (@scottbraddock) December 29, 2015

Stickland, now 32, told the Texas Observer Wednesday that he “severely regrets” that post. He did not immediately return a phone call from The Dallas Morning News.

Stickland used his email and online handle, RaTmasTeR4LiFe, an apparent homage to his work as a pest control technician, when he wrote on a Marijuana.com forum in 2001:

“Was wondering if anyone lived in the Dallas Fort Worth area and loved to smoke da green. Looking for a smoke buddy…..
If you fit this criteria please contact me.
jstickland@hotmail.com
or IM me through AOL IM@
RaTmasTeR4LiFe
Thanks,
~stick”

Stickland’s campaign told the Quorum Report that he had previously smoked marijuana and had “wasted much of life, said and did things I wish I hadn’t.”

In another post on seedmine.com, Stickland, using the moniker RaTTyTheLegend, inquired about how to grow marijuana in his home:

“actually a little help was a big understatement. I am very seriously wanting to grow some of my own stash but am totally clueless on what to do. I think the best thing I need to do right now is find someone (prefferably local) with experience to help guide me. ANYONE who can help me out I would truly be grateful. I live in the Dallas/FT Worth metroplex if anyone around here could contact me I would appreciate it. **** is my AOL IM handle, you can always reach me there or through email ***Thanks in advance!
-Jonathan
By The Way I have read the entire grow guide but still very unconfident.”

To the Quorum Report, Stickland denied ever growing marijuana at home, but he acknowledged the posts were his.

In another 2001 post, someone using Stickland’s well-known email address called another commenter a “bratwurst-loving homo,” according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

In a prepared statement to the Quorum Report, Stickland said:

“My family, friends, and many supporters, are aware that I smoked marijuana in high school and my early collegiate years. Let me even go a step further and say that during that time I wasted much of life, said and did things I wish I hadn’t. But by the Grace of God my past sins are forgiven.”