(October 30, 2006)—Falls County Commissioners named Georgie Patterson of Cedar Springs Monday to succeed former Tax Assessor-Collector Kate Vande Veegaete, who resigned Friday after she was named in a three-count indictment earlier this month charging misapplication of fiduciary property and tampering with a government record.

Both offenses are state jail felonies.

Vande Veegaete submitted a letter of resignation just after 3 p.m. Friday to Falls County Judge Tom Sehon.

Patterson worked in the Falls County Tax Office from May 1996 until 2000 and ran an unsuccessful campaign against Vande Veegaete in the Democratic primary in 2004.

She is now employed at a local title company.

She’ll take over the job on Nov. 1 and will fill out the remainder of Vande Veegate’s four-year term.

If she wants to keep the job longer, she will have to stand for re-election in 2008.

The indictments against Vande Veegaete were handed up after investigators from the Texas Attorney General’s Office called witnesses before a grand jury on Oct. 11 in Marlin as part of an ongoing investigation of alleged irregularities in the Falls County Tax Appraisal District.”

Click Here For Full Press Release From Texas Attorney General’s Office

The indictment alleges Vande Veegate “defrauded Falls County, the city of Marlin, and the Marlin Independent School District by altering government documents and failing to collect nearly $10,000 in delinquent property taxes,” according to a release from the Attorney General’s Office.

Specifically, the indictment claims that Vande Veegaete changed appraisal values of property owned by Eva Joyce Burks, the mother of the county’s former deputy chief appraiser, Candace Grams, “In an attempt to quash a tax judgment placed against Burks' property due to unpaid taxes from 1993 through 2001,” the Attorney General’s Office said.

The indictment also alleges she failed to cash a $9,538.52 check issued by the lien holder on Burk’s property in payment for back taxes, penalties, interest and other costs and “created a fraudulent installment agreement and sent the false document to the lien holder to make it appear that Burks had entered into a payment plan with the Falls County Tax Office,” the Attorney General’s Office said.

The grand jury session came less than two weeks after a team of investigators searched through records in the Falls County Tax Assessor-Collector’s Office.

The investigators filled about a half-dozen boxes with records from the office after the search on Sept. 29.

The search came one month to the day after the former Falls County Appraisal District employee Candace Grams, 30, of Marlin was arrested on new charges stemming from the alleged irregularities in the office.

She was named in indictments handed up on Aug. 25 charging 19 counts of tampering with government records and two counts of fabricating physical evidence.

She was freed on bonds totaling $31,500.

At the time of her arrest, Grams was free on $50,000 bond, which was set after she was indicted in July for theft by a public servant.

The indictment stemmed from an investigation that determined signatures had been forged on appraisal district checks.

The latest indictments stem from allegations that appraisal values were changed on several properties and that false documents were filed.

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