County shuts down eight bail bondsmen
February 13,2007
James Osborne
Monitor Staff Writer
EDINBURG — The first day in the effectual shutdown of a third of Hidalgo County’s bail bonding companies quietly passed Monday, after months of debate among county officials.
Computer technicians at the sheriff’s department replaced the bondsmen’s erroneous and inflated bond limits with corrected figures shortly after 11 a.m., fixing a years-old error that allowed the companies to write unlimited bonds and run up millions of dollars in debt.
As a result, eight companies were prevented from writing bonds and another had so little credit the owner was forced to stop operating for the meantime.
"I’ll be back in business tomorrow once I increase my collateral," said Rene Anzaldua, the owner of Anzaldua Bail Bonds, on Monday.
County officials have been quick to praise last week’s decision to institute the correct limits as a much-needed solution to a long-time problem.
While the details on how the error occurred remain muddy, officials have said a programmer accidentally entered the false limits during former sheriff Enrique "Henry" Escalon’s administration, and they were never fixed.
The bondsmen’s representative on the Hidalgo County Bail Bonds Board, Tillmin Welch, is opposing the shutdown and said the accuracy of the county’s records system remained questionable.
"As the vote was taken last week, at least in my case, there was a 20 percent inaccuracy in the report," Welch said.
"If it’s a computer error creating this problem and it’s not corrected, two months or two years down the road you’re going to be right back at this same point again."
Welch’s wife, Carrie, is the owner of A-1 Bail Bonds, one of the companies shut down Monday. In November, records showed that Welch’s company and that owned by Hidalgo County Democratic Party Chairman Juan Maldonado were the two biggest offenders in exceeding their bond limits and that they owed the county a combined $6.3 million.
Both companies’ debts have since significantly reduced, though both were still shut down Monday.
Ever since the debate on the bondsmen’s debt began last fall, officials have grappled with the question of whether their record of outstanding bonds is in fact correct. That list, thousands of pages long, determines a bondsman’s available credit, and there have been numerous reports of criminal cases closing out in the courts, but the bond on the prisoner remaining active.
The bail bonds board acknowledged the problem and held off on imposing the correct limits for months, to allow board president Judge Rudy Gonzalez to individually meet with bondsmen and address any errors.
While Welch remains unconvinced, the board has now given the bond list its seal of approval.
"The figures are as accurate as they possibly can be," Gonzalez said. "Even if we contend they’re off a little bit, it’s incumbent upon the bail bond company to come in and point it out to us."
As recently as last week, Mike Robledo, head of the criminal justice division of the county’s computer department, reported sporadic instances in which the system did not allow a bond to be removed from a company’s account. He theorized the error was because the sheriff’s department’s computer system was not properly maintained.
Last Tuesday, the board ordered the work immediately performed, but as of Monday afternoon it still wasn’t.
"It’s something the sheriff’s office will have to do," Robledo said.
The bail bonds board is scheduled to meet this afternoon to discuss the shutdown, and the issue concerning Welch is whether the computer system is in fact fixed.
While she would not say it categorically was, Hidalgo County Treasurer Norma Garcia, who sits on the bail bonds board, said vast progress had been made over the last year.
"Sometimes, it’s a case where something becomes so chaotic you almost get used to it," she said of the situation a year ago.
"What’s that saying? When chaos becomes order or something like that."
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James Osborne covers PSJA and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4428.
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I hope that the findings are that it has been simple computer errors, that would be the best thing that could happen here - it is time for all to play by the rules not just the few