Who's been paying for the State of Texas, as represented by Andy Lucas, lawsuit bills against Paul Harper? Andy chose an attorney, C Alfred MacKenzie to represent the State of Texas on his behalf. Somervell County, specifically the Somervell County Commissioners, have voted to pay for his bills. Let me put a fine point on this. Did somebody at the Comptroller's office in Austin pay for Andy's bills? Nope. You did because you pay taxes to Somervell County and the commissioners voted to pay them as items on the Somervell County Commissioner's court agendas.. 

I did an open records request recently to get all the invoices and amounts of Lucas spending since the last time I posted about it. My last post previous to this was dated 6 May 2019 and included all bills since November of 2017. On that particular post, Somervell County voted to spend about $9000. That wasn't the only ones they paid for. There is also a post for 19 July 2017 that includes all the bills since August 2016  and July 2016. 

As a side note, before I go further, the case State of Texas ex rel Darrell Best v Paul Harper is now over, it has been through final judgment and the judgment went against The State of Texas (Andy Lucas).  However, this last set of invoices/bills includes all bills since May 2019, which pays for Alfred MacKenzie, who represented the State of Texas for Lucas,  to show up in the final judgment hearing. 

Of interest are the amounts that Lucas asked Somervell County to pay for C Alfred MacKenzie,his attorney. You can click the pictures to see the details closer up. The total for this set of records is $6,342.64.

Here is video of Andy Lucas discussing that Somervell County paid for MacKenzie's bills.

Barkley: One of the other documents requested was Mr. MacKenzie's engagement letter in this lawsuit and you and the State replied that there are no items responsive to that request. Is that correct?

Lucas: That's correct  We don't have an engagement letter or engagement agreement with Mr MacKenzie

Barkley: How is Mr Mackenzie charging the State for his services?

Lucas: He submits invoices that are approved by the commissioners court. 

Barkley: And that was my next question, how is Mr Mackenzie being compensated by the (quote) State in this lawsuit? 

Lucas: Mr Mackenzie is acting as a representative of the State but it is Somervell County who is paying his invoices. 

One more thing is that Lucas has continued to rack up bills for Mr MacKenzie , which shold be available in the future under yet another open records request.

The running total so far by the reckoning above is that the State of Texas, as represented by Andy Lucas,  has had $24,437.28 worth of outside attorney bills paid for it by Somervell County.