Eric Dick keeps on Eric Dicking

The man is a model of consistency, I’ll give him that much.

Eric Dick

Fresh off running unopposed for re-election to the Harris County Department of Education’s board of trustees, attorney Eric Dick may face disciplinary action after the rest of the board chose to consider censuring the elected official due to $40,000 in unpaid ethics fines.

The board voted 6-0 with Dick absent to draft a resolution of censure before the next board meeting, claiming that he had violated the board’s code of ethics.

The $40,000 in campaign ethics fines were issued by the Texas Ethics Commission after his unsuccessful bids for an at-large seat on Houston’s City Council in 2019 and for Harris County treasurer in 2022. He had served on the HCDE board until December 2022 and then was appointed to the board again in January 2023 after his campaign for treasurer.

Harris County resident and retired NASA software engineer John Cobarruvias initially filed complaints against the official with the ethics commission after the 2019 and 2022 violations, one of more than 60 complaints Cobarruvias said he has filed in the last 15 or so years. He also filed a grievance with the HCDE against Dick in July.

“Trustees are elected officials. Taxpayers should expect them to do some basic things, tell the truth, follow the laws of the state, honor subpoenas issued by judges, pay your fines assessed by the state,” Cobarruvias said at Wednesday’s hearing. “What happens if you and I don’t pay our parking tickets? You know, it’s pretty clear. But the worst part about all this is that he’s thumbing his nose at the law.”

[…]

Dick did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story, but he has previously said he is challenging the fines, which he called “indicative of a systemic issue within the TEC.” More than $1.5 million in fines are due to the TEC and have been sent to the Attorney General for collection, according to state records.

Earlier this year, the attorney was also sanctioned $250,000 for his legal practices, which he said he would fight, and he was under investigation by the Hawaii Office of Disciplinary Counsel after allegedly illegally soliciting Maui wildfire victims. Dick characterized it as a misunderstanding at the time.

When Dick ran for City Council in 2019, the commission found that he paid for mailers from the Harris County Black Democratic News, featuring photos of prominent Black politicians on the front, including former President Barack Obama, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, state Sen. Borris Miles, and Mayor Sylvester Turner. The back of the mailers included endorsements of candidates, including Dick.

Miles and Thomas denounced the mailers at the time, saying they had no affiliation with the group. The mailers also lacked a disclosure saying who paid for them, as required by state law.

Dick was fined $30,000 for his role in the creation of the mailers, and his attorney, Phillip Bryant, was also fined $6,000 for his role in the mailer creation. Bryant was allegedly spending money on behalf of the Harris County Black Democratic News without a campaign treasurer, a violation of Texas Election Code. According to the sworn complaint, Bryant did not appear at the hearing.

[…]

In 2022, during Dick’s run for Harris County treasurer, he failed to report two $25,000 payments to the Conservative Republicans of Texas and the Conservative Republicans of Harris County. There was also a discrepancy of over $100,000 in his pre-election filings, according to the TEC’s signed resolution from Sept. 29.

The TEC found Dick acted “in bad faith” after not responding to its complaint letter for eight months. According to the resolution, the additional $10,000 fine took into account that Dick had not paid his $30,000 fine, so the TEC sought to “deter future violations” with the additional fine.

See here for my most recent entry in the Eric Dick Chronicles, a story that stretches back to his first appearance as a candidate in 2011. To put this as charitably as I can, Eric Dick has been unrestrainedly himself ever since that first campaign, in which he has never let any rule or law or regulation related to campaigns knock him off course. Not just campaign finances, either – that 2011 election was marked by his effort to put a bandit sign on every utility pole in a three-county radius. He’s just being himself and doing what he does, and The Man is always out to get him, for reasons he cannot comprehend. What’s a little censure among friends? He will keep on keeping on, because that’s what Eric Dick does.

(On a completely irrelevant side note, Dick’s current hair/beard/glasses combination makes him bear an extremely disturbing-to-me resemblance to a cousin of mine. That picture in this story, I swear it makes me want to call my cousin and verify that he hasn’t been leading a secret double life here. I can’t unsee it, and it will haunt my dreams.)

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3 Responses to Eric Dick keeps on Eric Dicking

  1. C.L. says:

    I wouldn’t hire that cat to mow my lawn.

  2. And what’s with his use of Rice paraphernalia?

  3. C.L. says:

    “Dick’s attorney, Jared Woodfill, also president of CRT, had not returned a call as of Tuesday.”

    Why does this prior post annotation not surprise me ?

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