Spending Campaign Cash. Justice David Medina

The Houston Chronicle out scooped me on this one concerning spending campaign cash. Supreme Court Justice David Medina may have violated Ethics law by paying himself nearly $57,000 on mileage.

AUSTIN — Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina may have violated state
law by paying himself nearly $57,000 from his campaign funds over the past
three years for mileage reimbursement as the judge commuted between Houston
and the capital.

But there is more. Medina spent $468,689 over a 3 year period including $30,000 for accounting services, $2000 for Ethics Commission fines, $11,000 for cell phone service, $4875 for "The Shack" for legal fees, and $5250 for advertising to the Houston Hawks which seems to be a high school football team, or a model airplane soaring club. Go figure.

$57,000 at 40 cents per mile means he traveled 142,500 miles in a three year period, 475 round trips between home and Austin assuming a 150 mile one way trip. That is a round trip to Austin three times a week. Unfortunately, reimbursement for travel is against Ethics rules.

State law prohibits officeholders from converting political contributions to
personal use. The Texas Ethics Commission has interpreted the law to ban an
appellate judge from using campaign donations to pay the costs of commuting
between the judge's home city and the city where the court sits.

But don't hold your breath waiting for te DA's office in Houston to investigate Medina for this. He is too busy filing contempt charges against two grand jurors who came forward to expose Rosenthals' obstruction of justice concerning the indictment against Median and his wife.