City Comes Clean on Republic Services Payments, Somewhat.

SAN ANGELO, TX — Almost two months after our request, the City of San Angelo has come clean on its accounting for refunds to itself from Republic Services for overcharges.

The City cannot produce copies of all checks it received from Republic for all refunds to itself, but today, in response to our request, the City did provide a printout of the journal entries from its accounting system on the specific accounts where refunds from Republic were deposited (view all here, in *pdf).

The City also furnished copies of two deposit tickets to its bank suggesting the deposits were made for the amounts the City stated Republic owed it.

The total amount of the Republic Services refunds that the City accounting documents recorded was $102,534.38 made on Jan. 23, 2015. This equals the amount it said was owed. Previously, the City only provided copies of checks totaling $17,751.14 for the refunds.

The records the City provided today answer the question, did the City actually receive refunds from Republic Services for the overcharges to the City itself? These are payments for overcharges for Republic Services dumpsters the City paid for at the police department, City parks, and facilities like the convention center.

As for copies of the rest of the actual checks proving the refunds? The City said it cannot produce all of them. The City did say all of the refunds from Republic were in checks, not wire transfers.

The records released today do not address the fact that the City has no proof it completed its audit of alleged overcharges of San Angelo businesses for dumpsters prior to the signing of the new with Republic contract in July 2014.

Nor can the City produce details of the Republic Services claim it refunded $6.5 million to San Angelo commercial businesses. We asked if there were any records of to whom and for what amounts Republic refunded San Angelo businesses. Not having those records, the City asked Republic for those records, and Republic refused to provide them claiming pending litigation.

TDS-affiliated Acme Iron and Metal and Mayfield Paper sued Republic over the overcharges in 2014. The case is pending in the 119^th District Court in San Angelo.

Because of our reporting and use of the services of a Houston-based private investigation firm, Dolcefino Consulting, who initiated the open records request, the City is providing records of accountability to its citizens.