Unethical Behavior from the Texas Attorney General's Office

I have previously mentioned that the Attorneys from the Texas Attorney General's Office are clueless as to the rules and regulations that govern Childcare Centers. Unfortunately, so are the Administrative judges that preside over Administrative Hearings! I have been asked if I believed that the Attorneys from the Attorney General's Office are truly ignorant of the State of Texas Minimum Standards that govern Childcare Centers or if they are deliberately misrepresenting the rules and regulations when they are trying to incriminate someone for wrong doing. The truth is that it doesn't matter. You just have to be prepared to attack them and call them out when they misrepresent the rules and regulations which they will do. They will repeatedly make false statements of material facts to the presiding judge. They are not the most ethical of individuals and should be disbarred for using these tactics.

What we have witnessed from the Texas Attorney General's Office, as it is the Texas Attorney General's Office that represents the Department of Family and Protective Services in all legal matters, is a blatant misrepresentation of the rules and regulations when targeting daycare operators. Their attorneys will go as far as to fault daycare operators even when those daycare operators are operating within the State guidelines.

In our hearing before the State Office of Administrative Hearings, the Attorney General's Office faulted Marla for not being at the daycare at the time that a child allegedly stepped out of the building. While the rules and regulations clearly state that the daycare operator does not have to be at the daycare for all hours of operation it didn't stop them from using that against her. Adrienne Driggers, who was very much aware that this was not a violation, used the fact that Marla was not at the daycare during the time of the incident to place Marla on the Texas DFPS Central Registry!

The Texas Attorney General's Office also attacked Marla for having young caregivers working at her daycare. The State of Texas Minimum Standards state that age 18 is the minimal age a caregiver can be expected to make independent decisions and respond appropriately to the needs of children. In addition to this, the Minimum Standards indicate that a high school diploma or its equivalency is a recognized indicator of basic literacy in our society. Every one of Marla's employees was over age 18 and had High School Diplomas. The Attorney General's Office attempted to fault Marla for having some young employees on her staff even though it was not a violation!

As you may remember, the Texas Attorney General's Office tried desperately to avoid the disclosure of information that they planned to introduce before the State Office of Administrative Hearings. You now know that they will misrepresent and flat out lie about violations of the State of Texas Minimum Standards that govern Childcare Centers when there are no violations. Be prepared for them to also cite violations that do not exist. In our hearing Patricia Fernandez, the lead attorney for the State, argued that it was Marla's responsibility to train her staff one-on-one. Ms. Fernandez was blatantly creating her own rules and regulations as this rule does not exist in the guidelines that govern how daycare centers operate!  You must be prepared to object and call them out for their misrepresentations whether they are intentional or not.

But it doesn't end there. For those of you who have experienced the corruption of childcare licensing representatives you very well may have been cited for what are typical occurrences in daily operations. For example, we were written up for there being food on the floor by childcare licensing representative Christina Cantu. What was left out of her report was that she came to the daycare when the children were eating. The toddlers, being toddlers, dropped food on the floor. While we cleaned this up immediately as we always would it didn't stop her from writing us up! The Attorney General's Office in failing to understand typical daily operations argued that Marla's daycare was not safe for children because toddlers were dropping food on the floor when they were having their meal!

Another example are School age children arriving at the daycare after school. It would be common sense for those of you who have either worked with children or have children of your own to know that these children are excited to be out of school and would enjoy playing with the many toys and games that we offered. It is normal for children to put toys/games out of order. It won't look nice when they do it but we would always rearrange the items into their proper place. Christina Cantu presented this in her report as if the rearranging of the toys and games were a danger to the children. But she admitted in the SOAH hearing that the children were not in any immediate danger. The Attorney General's Office, despite hearing Ms. Cantu's testimony that the children were not in any danger would still argue that this was reason enough for Adrienne Driggers to close the daycare! I can't blame them for trying as I had so completely destroyed their case that they really had nothing to fall back on. It was pretty pathetic.

I have been told by other daycare operators that the Attorney General's Office, in smearing the daycare operator, will introduce writeups given to daycare operators since their daycares inception even if it goes back 10 years! The problem with this is that they do not provide comparative numbers for all daycares within that same period. In the DFPS website, the number of writeups only go back 2 years. We proved in court that our daycare had significantly fewer writeups than the average number of daycares for the Southwest District and in doing so proved that we ran an exceptional daycare. Monica Martinez, the childcare licensing representative that investigated the incident of the child walking out of the building, acknowledged in the hearing that this was exceptional. Because I was aware of the Attorney General's Office unethical tactics I was able to either dismember their arguments before they had the opportunity to present them or I was prepared to counter them. I knew what they were going to do before they did them. That would explain Patricia Fernandez meltdown at the end of the hearing!

I have also been told that the Attorney General's Office will also present writeups that daycares receive for failing to complete FBI fingerprinting on some of their staff. While we didn't have this problem, I can tell you that what often happens is that childcare licensing representatives will disregard the rule that states that a caregiver can work with the children without having completed an an FBI fingerprinting if that caregiver has has completed a criminal background check and you need that caregiver to satisfy State mandated ratios. The daycare operator must ensure that the caregiver completes an FBI fingerprinting within 30 days of having completed their criminal background check. In addition to this I can provide you with a list of daycares that have been given writeups for not having completed FBI fingerprinting and Criminal Background Checks that total as many as 17 in one visit alone without Childcare Licensing giving these daycares as much as a slap on the wrist. Here is an interesting thing about this. When we were operating in San Antonio, childcare licensing representatives would be apt to separate each of those deficiencies to pad the number of our deficiencies as we ran such a great operation that Adrienne Driggers Childcare Licensing Department had to be creative on how to create deficiencies against us. It is easy for us to prove that this exact same Childcare Licensing office would group those exact same kind of deficiencies to represent only one deficiency for those daycare operators that they were not targeting! Be prepared for the Attorney General's Office to try and prevent you from presenting this information as it would prove that you are being subjected to a different set of standards from the norm.

Another thing that Patricia Fernandez and the Attorney General's Office did in our hearing was to present a "witness" from the Corpus Christi Childcare Licensing Office to state that this office felt that our daycare should have been closed as a result of the child walking out of the building. Her name escapes me at this time as she was so insignificant. I'll do an update on this post at a later date when I remember her name. It was difficult for me to contain myself from laughing when she was being questioned by the Attorney General's Office as she appeared to be no more than a puppet to them with her answers! In cross-examining this poor girl it was obvious that she was unaware of simple rules and regulations that childrens daycares and childcare licensing operate under. One funny thing about her and the Attorney General's Office is that they were completely unaware that I would present documentation that would prove that the Corpus Christi Childcare Licensing Office ruled that the daycare did not pose a danger to the safety and well-being of the children. The Attorney General's Office presented this "witness" to lie to the court. Please read the Closing Statement that I presented to Melissa Ricard, the presiding judge for our hearing in the following link.

SOAH CLOSING STATEMENT

So I say to you that your best approach to a hearing against these people is to challenge the Texas Attorney General's Office on everything and you will find that they will fold like a cheap suit. After the beat down that I gave them they will fight tooth and nail to prevent someone like myself to represent someone again as the rule in representation in SOAH hearings is that a person can represent themselves or be represented by an attorney (who is not likely to be familiar with the rules and regulations that govern childcare centers). This sets daycare operators up to lose as the judge that is presiding over the hearing is also a State employee and as a result is already going to be leaning their way. They are comrades. The Attorney General's Office begged and pleaded to try and prevent me from representing my wife. They will make sure that nobody else is able to do so again. I say to them what the childcare licensing representatives would tell us when they were harassing our daycare: "If you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to fear!" They and the presiding judge underestimated me.