TAFT, Tx. — The Taft Police Chief may have found a major violation in overtime hours, costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.
"City Hall, basically three people, have expended the overtime, budgeted overtime, that is budgeted for the entire city," Taft Police Chief John Landreth said.
But, instead of investigating, city leaders may instead terminate the police chief for blowing the whistle.
6 Investigates began looking into overtime logged by city employees after it received a call from Landreth.
Documents reveal over two months city staff racked up over 571 overtime hours when they were budgeted for zero. And, one name sticks out, City Secretary Andrea Gomez.
KRIS 6 expanded its investigation and reviewed four months of Gomez's timesheets, which revealed she was paid for 522.42 hours of overtime between September 25, 2023, and February 25, 2024.
Logging between 15 and 90 hours of overtime every two weeks.
The problem? She wasn't actually working all of those hours.
For example, on January 30th, 2024, Gomez claimed she worked from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
But a Facebook post shows her in George West at her child's basketball game.
This is just one of many examples where her hours are contradicted by her posts on social media, which were deleted after KRIS 6 began investigating.
ANDREA GOMEZ OVERTIME
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522.42 hours overtime
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$18,274.25 in overtime pay (between 9/25/2023 to 2/25/2024)
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$46,640 annual salary
"These things shouldn't be happening," Landreth said. "We have a lot of families that are struggling and we have no right to take advantage of the situation that we are in and take more than what we are owed."
Months ago, while the city was in transition, Landreth filled in as Taft City Manager for less than a week. That is when he became aware of what seemed to be excessive overtime and began investigating.
He began by looking at timesheets for all city employees over a period of two months. After notifying several department heads about what he had learned, he opened a criminal investigation.
"We took photographs and I sent it out to the city manager, the city mayor, the public works director, and the city secretary. I said that the numbers were just outlandish and I said this is the stuff we promised not to do and we are doing it and it's not acceptable," Landreth said.
The response from city leaders?
"Not good, and now I'm being advised of some complaints that were filed against me by city hall staff," Landreth said.
By law, the chief should be allowed to see these complaints that were filed after he notified staff about overtime concerns. However, his request for these complaints was denied and the city attorney never followed up with him.
"That's how I said it, we are doing this and it's wrong. Then all of a sudden I have these make-believe write-ups and you get this harassment and it's like, look that doesn't fix the problem and it isn't going to make me go away," he said.
No, I don't think it was a big deal to them. Even though they are not budgeted overtime and it was not a small amount of money, it was a large amount of money.
6 Investigates spoke to Taft Mayor Leonard Vasquez.
He said the city council did authorize overtime for employees helping with the move to a new City Hall.
"We knew there was going to be some overtime. We have a bunch of new employees, when they took over those positions, we had no choice but to let them get this overtime. A lot of documents were misplaced, a lot of files were left at the old city hall, which those were brought back. It was a lot of work that they had to catch up on, it was a mess." Vasquez said.
But, he didn't know about allegations of misuse until March.
"When I became aware of it, I did ask the city manager to look into the city overtime issues and stuff like that and she said she would, so it will be up to the city manager to see what she finds," Vasquez said.
This led KRIS 6 to City Manager Kandi Hubert, who claimed she didn't know about it.
"When did you first learn that there might have been some overtime logged that wasn't worked?" 6 Investigates Chief Investigator Bryan Hofmann asked.
"When you came in," Hubert said. "It wasn't reported to me, and still hasn't been had you not been here and started this."
Hofmann pointed out that Hubert received a text message from the police chief months ago, and 6 Investigates gave her that message and other documents.
She says there is now an internal investigation into overtime that started only after KRIS 6 began asking questions.
Hubert, who is the temporary city manager, is in her second stint as Taft City Manager.
In 2014, she was fired for failing to provide financial records to the council and years later was fired as the Aransas Pass City Manager for a similar situation.
City councilor Alonso Molina Jr. told 6 Investigates he has concerns with the overtime paid to employees, and that an investigation needed to and would be conducted.
"I do have issues with how taxpayer money is used," he said. "I'm going to say we look a little deeper into this, you've seen the hours."
The City of Taft policy manual sets policies for timekeeping, including the requirement that accurate records must be kept.
"Time records are official government records that involve the expenditure of public funds. Therefore, they must be maintained accurately and truthfully. Improper or illegal alteration or mutilation of City personnel records can lead to disciplinary action or even criminal liability exposure," the document states.
The policy also requires department heads to approve any overtime hours worked. But, in several cases, Gomez signed her timesheet as both the employee and supervisor or not at all.
Meanwhile, Landreth believes it's a conflict of interest for his department to investigate the city. So he asked both the Texas Rangers and the San Patricio County District Attorney's Office to help in this investigation.
"My thing, it's the criminal thing. They are clearly falsifying their government records with time sheets," Landreth said. "I don't know where it goes from here. My thing is I'm not trying to punish anybody. We need to fix this before we end up in Odem's position where we don't have a police department anymore."
It's the reason they are not getting their streets fixed. It's the reason why we don't have crosswalks painted on our streets, it's the reason we can't get our water bills right.
The Texas Department of Public Safety, under which Texas Rangers operate, told 6 Investigates rangers can only investigate claims such as these at the direction of the district attorney.
6 Investigates has made multiple attempts to reach District Attorney Samuel Smith, but he has not responded.
Landreth now believes he may lose his job for coming forward.
"What I'm doing here today, am I thinking that I have a long history left with the City of Taft? Probably not, but I'm okay with that too," Landreth said.
6 Investigates reached out to Gomez, but she has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
Meanwhile, Landreth's tenure as police chief could be at an end, as the Tuesday City Council Meeting includes an "internal investigation" of both the police chief and mayor.
6 Investigates will be at that meeting to provide updates on what the city plans to do about these questions surrounding overtime and the future of the police chief.
