(November 20, 2006)—The Falls County Tax Assessor-Collector’s Office closed its doors temporarily Monday while officials resolve a bonding issue.

The office will be closed at least until Wednesday and could remain closed until sometime next week while officials arrange for a bonding agent, without which the office cannot operate.

The office has been in flux since former Tax Assessor-Collector Kate Vande Veegaete resigned last month after she was named in a three-count indictment charging misapplication of fiduciary property and tampering with a government record. Both are state jail felonies.

On Oct. 30, County commissioners named Georgie Patterson of Cedar Springs to replace Vande Veegate, but she submitted a letter of resignation last Tuesday 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 was employed at a local title company when she accepted the appointment and she took over the job on Nov. 1, intending to fill out the remainder of Vande Veegate’s four-year term.

Vande Veegaete submitted her letter of resignation on Oct. 27.

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.

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