
The board of the Trophy Club Municipal Utility District No. 1 ruled Tuesday that its president, Nick Sanders, must file a conflict of interest statement because of his ownership in a tech firm that maintains the town’s software program.
The decision stemmed from a complaint by a resident, Jim Budarf, who was defeated by Sanders for a spot on the utility board in May.
Sanders’ company, Combined Computer Resources, provides support at $1,200 a year for the software that he donated to the town in 2003.
Sanders, who was mayor of the town from 2005 to 2009, contends that the fee was paid by Trophy Club rather than the MUD, although both entities use the software.
“Basically, they found him guilty of violating the ethics ordinance,” Budarf said of the decision.
“It was anticlimactic,” Sanders contended. “The board decided it did not want to censure me or reprimand me, or think that it had any grounds to remove me.”
He added that he will halt the support fee for the software at this point, further reducing his exposure to any allegations of impropriety.
***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.
Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.
Photo of computer keyboard by flickr user Mike Traboe, used via a Creative Commons license.
Like this story? Then steal it. This report by Texas Watchdog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. That means bloggers, citizen-journalists, and journalists may republish the story on their sites with attribution and a link to Texas Watchdog. If you do re-use the story, e-mail news@texaswatchdog.org.