Collin County must pay Paxton prosecutors
A judge has ordered Collin County to pay the special prosecutors in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s criminal securities fraud case after years of back-and-forth over their rate in the long-delayed proceedings.
Collin County, where Paxton owns a home and has deep political support, is on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees, but officials there say they’ve already paid enough. The special prosecutors now are asking the state’s top criminal appeals court to force the county to comply with the new order.
The pay dispute has been one of the main obstacles in the 8year-old case that on Monday was finally scheduled for trial.
Paxton, a third-term Republican who just survived an impeachment trial, is accused of encouraging investors in 2011 to invest in a technology startup without disclosing that he was being paid by the firm for those referrals. He also is accused of soliciting clients for a friend’s investment company without registering as an adviser with the state. He has pleaded not guilty.
In a ruling Tuesday, Harris County Judge Andrea Beall decided that the Collin County fee schedule that officials there want to use is “not fair or reasonable” and violates criminal procedure rules. The county caps pretrial work payment at $2,000, meaning prosecutor Brian Wice would earn about $6 per hour and cocounsel Kent Schaffer would earn about $9 per hour. Minimum wage in Texas is $7.25.
Those rates are “wholly unreasonable for … a case of this complexity,” Beall wrote.
The case was so complicated that three prosecutors were originally appointed, she added, an amount typically reserved for death penalty cases. (The third prosecutor has since dropped out of the case.)
Neither Collin County’s attorneys nor Paxton’s immediately responded to a request for comment, though Collin County Judge Chris Hill hinted on social media that the county was likely to fight the order.
“Nevermind that both the 5th COA and the Texas CCA ruled in our favor against these fees,” Hill posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Good luck with that.”
Earlier this week, Paxton attorney Phil Hilder said prosecutors may not like the fee schedule, “but they have to follow the law.”
Beall agreed that Wice and Schaffer ought to be paid the $300 hourly rate that was set by the judge who appointed them. If the appellate court disagrees, she offered $225 an hour as an alternative, according to the ruling.
The prosecutors were last paid $242,025 by Collin County in January 2016, following a court order. Paxton challenged the $300 rate in court, and the county refused to make any subsequent payments until it was resolved.
According to court filings, Wice has billed for 323 hours and Schaffer has billed for 221.5 hours for pretrial work, which at the $300-an-hour rate would amount to about $97,000 and $66,000 due respectively. Wice also has submitted an invoice for about $600 in travel expenses, while Schaffer has billed over $3,700 for travel and printing costs.
“We’re confident that the Court of Criminal Appeals will enforce her lawful order with all deliberate speed and finally put an end to Collin County’s incessant, transparent, and purely political ploy to derail Ken Paxton’s prosecution by defunding it,” Wice and Schaffer said in a statement.
The trial is set to begin April 15. Separately, Paxton was acquitted after an impeachment trial by the Texas Senate in September over allegations that he took bribes from and abused the power of his office for friend and campaign donor Nate Paul.
Paxton reportedly is still under investigation by the FBI, though no charges have been filed.