Paxton aide gets paid past quit date
Assistant began work at super PAC while still on state payroll
AUSTIN — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton allowed a top aide to remain on the payroll for more than a month after he resigned to work for a Ted Cruz super PAC, with an option to keep getting paid into June so he could keep his state health insurance while he battled cancer, officials confirmed Friday.
Amid growing questions over whether the deal was legal, officials on Friday said Charles “Chip” Roy, Paxton’s former first assistant attorney general, officially will be removed from the state payroll effective April 7 — just over a week ago — when all but an hour and a half of his accrued vacation and leave time ran out.
Texas laws prohibit state agencies from using taxpayer funds to pay employees who are not working or to “finance or otherwise support the candidacy of a person” for a state or federal office.
Roy resigned March 9 and signed on the next day as executive director of Trusted Leadership PAC, a super PAC supporting Cruz’s GOP presidential campaign.
Paxton aides at first said Roy still was on the payroll more than a month after resigning because he was on “emergency leave” through June 10, an arrangement that could have earned him as much as $48,680 in salary.
Paxton spokeswoman Cynthia Meyer said Roy’s case was allowed under another section of state law allowing emergency leave to be approved by an agency head if the worker “has shown good cause for taking emergency leave” for a reason other than family death.
On Friday, Roy in a statement said that he had an arrangement with the agency to stay on the payroll to use his remaining vacation and leave time, with an option to stay on leave into June, so he could continue his state health coverage:
“The terms of my resignation included from the (Office of Attorney General) an option for
leave beyond my earned vacation and holiday time. The primary benefit to me would have been health care coverage in light of being in the five-year window after Stage 3 Hodgkins Lymphoma. My plan has been to go off payroll at OAG using only my earned vacation and holiday time unless it were absolutely necessary to stay on pending the uncertainty of medical tests and subsequent employment. Yesterday I was blessed to receive an all-clear from my oncologist and my complete departure from the OAG is effective at the time of the expiration of only earned vacation and holiday time.”
Agency officials said Paxton would have had to have approved the deal, which first was reported by the Dallas Morning News.
Meyer said Roy’s termination date was changed Friday to be effective April 7. State records show he was paid a full month’s salary of $16,220 on April 1.
Officials offered few details on continued payments to Allison Castle, Paxton’s former communications director who left the agency March 10. Like Roy, she remains on the state payroll and was paid a full month’s salary of $12,825 on April 1, according to state records.
Meyer said Castle was “on leave” but did not elaborate. Castle, a former press secretary to former Gov. Rick Perry, could not be reached for comment.
Friday’s move did little to silence critics of the embattled Paxton, who already is facing state criminal charges and a fraud lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over his involvement in investment sales while he was a member of the Texas House.
“This latest situation is clearly illegal or insensitive or ignorant, and the question is, why did Ken Paxton let it happen?” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, Texas director of Public Citizen, a government and ethics watchdog group. “He’s supposed to be enforcing the law, but he’s clearly bending every rule to benefit him and his friends. Paxton needs to quit.”
Other good-government advocacy groups were similarly adamant, questioning whether leaving Roy on the payroll constituted a de facto campaign contribution to Cruz’s campaign by Paxton.
“This is beyond cronyism. It’s criminalism,” said Craig McDonald, executive director of Texans for Public Justice, a nonprofit that has filed ethics complaints against elected officials, including Perry.
Roy worked as Cruz’s chief of staff and as a senior adviser before joining the attorney general’s office in early 2015 as Paxton’s top aide. Roy also was the ghost writer behind Perry’s book,”Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington.”
McDonald, Smith and Buck Wood, a longtime Austin ethics lawyer, said paying former employees for accrued leave time is allowed, but paying them beyond that is not allowed. And because Roy went to work for a campaign immediately after leaving Paxton’s office, he never should have been kept on the payroll or put on “emergency leave” since there clearly was no emergency, they said.
“If they wanted to keep him available for a transition, they should have put him on an independent contract,” Wood said. “If they wanted to pay him for his leave, they should have done that, especially since he was going to work for a campaign. If they wanted to let him keep his state health insurance, he needed to be working, which he clearly wasn’t.
“He was left on the payroll and that should never have happened,” Wood continued. “You can’t leave someone on the payroll who’s not working. That’s fraud.”