Tuesday, September 24, 2024 Joe Clifton
On Monday, attorney Fred Lewis filed a complaint alleging that Steve Herbst, the lead consultant on Forvis Mathers’ contract to review the performance of Travis County’s Central Health, practiced law without a license. The complaint is based on the fact that Herbst told the Travis County Board of Commissioners that he was “pleased to report that there were no reportable conditions or violations of law that were discovered in the performance review of Central Health.”
Lewis has waged a years-long campaign to show that Central Health’s $35 million annual payments to the University of Texas Dell Medical School are illegal because they are not being used to support the hospital district’s mission of providing care to the poor. He expressed frustration that Herbst’s claims that no law was broken have been widely quoted and reported. Herbst is not an attorney and does not have the authority or background to make any declarations about legal violations, Lewis said.
The Austin Monitor reached out to Herbst for comment but did not receive a response.
In the complaint, filed with the Texas Supreme Court’s Commission on Unlicensed Attorney Activities, Lewis said that neither Herbst nor any of his team members are lawyers, “and therefore they lack the authority or expertise to determine whether any violations of law have occurred.”
Lewis added, “The Mazars report noted only that the medical school’s spending appeared to comply with the affiliation agreement. No one questioned that. The medical school has the freedom, under the terms of the contract, to spend our property tax money however it likes. But as any competent Texas lawyer knows, the Texas Constitution and statutes take precedence over any contractual provisions that conflict with state law.”
After hearing the Mathers report last week, Travis County commissioners voted to postpone adoption of Central Health’s fiscal year 2025 budget, which includes a 6.5% tax increase.
Lewis added that “it is time for the commissioners to hire independent outside counsel with expertise in special purpose district law to advise them whether the gift of taxpayer funds is illegal under Texas law.”
Photo: Fred Lewis 2017.
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