Southlaking Fort Worth

During a recent commissioners court meeting, County Judge Tim O’Hare railed against wasteful spending.

“I’m just reading the information we get in our packet,” said the top elected official in Tarrant County, trying to catch up. The commissioners were discussing inmate calls at the Tarrant County Jail.

Per common practice pretty much everywhere, prisons and jails allow population members to make collect calls. After multiple county officials tried to explain to O’Hare that the county does not cover outgoing inmate communications, the county judge remained befuddled. He might as well have been twisting his index finger up his nose.

“So who ends up paying this?” O’Hare asked the county purchasing director.

The woman paused.

“The person receiving the call,” she replied evenly.

Southlake personal injury lawyer O’Hare may be best known around here for stirring up lies about Critical Race Theory. (Remember that Republican boogeyman? So 2021, right?) Now, he’s seven months into office.

The word “shitshow” comes readily to mind.

Short in stature and big on double-talk, the county head uses the commissioners’ twice-monthly meetings to question every dollar the county spends even as he pushes through military-grade weaponry for fellow right-wing nut Sheriff Bill Waybourn. The same June 20 meeting where O’Hare appears to have discovered how collect calls work (finger, nose) also saw the commissioners court vote to order 50 assault rifles at $1,876 apiece.

The manufacturer says the AR-15-styled long gun is “the perfect duty weapon for those looking for a quality firearm to handle the hard, everyday use that professional-end users put their weapon systems through.”

O’Hare never explained why his Republican compadre Waybourn, who runs the county jail and his mouth, and that’s pretty much it, needs 50 assault rifles, but the county judge sure was ready to pop off about menial purchases like furniture and equipment. And wasteful weapon acquisitions appear to be increasing. In February, O’Hare voted in favor of buying a $345,000 Lenco BearCart G3 armored personnel carrier, clearly so when the drag queens are sashaying and lip-syncing into our homes to groom our children, Tarrant County will be ready to dispatch them with extreme prejudice. The drag queens, that is. The children will be dispatched by incels wielding AR-15s.

For some right-wing voters, O’Hare’s already embarrassing tenure is just dandy. Government dysfunction makes life easy for corporate crooks and Christian Nationalists enacting self-serving plans. One county insider who asked not to be named said the reduction in commissioners meetings from weekly to twice monthly was for O’Hare to be able to spend more time managing his fucking law firm.

Unlike, say, Fort Worth’s mayor, who earns a paltry $29,000 annually, the county judge position pays a cool $212,000 per year, and the people who have held the position of top elected official locally have historically and rightfully viewed the role as a full-time job. Former county judge Glen Whitley co-founded the accounting firm Whitley Penn in 1983 but largely set aside his legal leadership duties in 2007 when he was elected county judge.

For a county of more than 2 million residents, twice-a-month meetings create a backlog that leaves vendors unpaid for weeks at a time, the insider told us. Much of O’Hare’s grandstanding appears to pander solely to his freedumb-loving base.

“I believe we can do a better job purchasing furniture,” O’Hare ranted during another commissioners court meeting. “This is not a Wall Street hedge fund office.” #somuchtough #wow

County officials have had to remind O’Hare publicly on several occasions that purchases made by the previous administration must be honored — by law — by the current court. Rather than keeping up to date on county projects, O’Hare allegedly reads agendas the day of meetings while complaining that it’s the county’s fault he doesn’t know what the hell’s going on.

“I would like to see a briefing on how the county goes about new construction projects,” he recently whined to the court. “My concern is somebody identifies the project. The court doesn’t know it, and then it is so far down the track that by the time it gets to us, there have been studies and plans and all sorts of things that this group up here hasn’t decided we want to move forward with.”

O’Hare in office is like me saying that since I’ve had a root canal before, I’m basically a dentist.

O’Hare’s trainwreck of a tenure so far has led two top county officials to quit. In April, Tarrant County elections director Heider Garcia resigned amid O’Hare’s baseless complaints about the “integrity” of elections. Garcia said he would not compromise his values and that the main reason he was leaving was O’Hare’s fixation on election-integrity bullshit.

Last month, the commissioners court voted to replace Garcia with Clinton Ludwig even though Tarrant County’s chief deputy clerk has zero experience running elections. Based on reporting by The Texas Tribune, the county received 35 applicants, the majority of whom had no election administration experience. Two of the three finalists included a Republican donor (surprise!) and a former CFO for Trinity Metro.

In a public statement, Allison Campolo condemned O’Hare’s bullying tactics.

O’Hare, said the former chairperson of the Tarrant County Democratic Party, has fostered “an environment of misinformation and distrust in our electoral process. Under Garcia’s leadership, our county has demonstrated fairness and accuracy in our voting systems, as verified by numerous audits and citizen recounts. We are concerned that O’Hare will seek to appoint an election denier to replace Garcia who will remove transparency and disenfranchise voters. We ask all Tarrant County voters to remain vigilant on whom Judge O’Hare is interested in for Tarrant County’s next election administrator and to make your voices heard at the commissioners court.”

Election-integrity frenzy remains a potent scare tactic for backward-ass white voters, who see every lost Republican race as somehow stolen through fraud. In February, O’Hare pushed through the creation of an “election integrity” unit even as evidence of local meddling is scarce. Heading this plucky band of crackerjack detectives is assistant district attorney McGinty Glynis, the Black trial lawyer who unsuccessfully ran for county criminal court judge last year. Based on open records, Glynis earns $163,000 per year for the position that has yet to produce a single piece of evidence of local voter fraud. Welcome to the swamp, mfers!

The loss of County Clerk Renee Tidwell adds to the exodus of qualified staffers taking their talents elsewhere. Speaking to the Star-Telegram recently, Tidwell cited the hyper-partisan environment in Tarrant County and Texas as her main reason for leaving. First assistant auditor Kimberly Buchanan will fill the vacant role, a position that Tidwell said now requires “good stress relief.”

And administrator G.K. Maenius publicly announced he will retire in September after 35 years of service as the top county staffer.

Were O’Hare simply an incompetent, willfully misinformed elected official, he’d be in good company in Texas and maybe deserving of only sporadic ink in our magazine, but the county judge is using his public position and resources to further causes that target vulnerable members of our community. In the months before O’Hare was elected, one of our reporters asked him if trans children would enjoy the same protections as cis youths. Timmy replied with a Bible verse, both dodging the question and hiding his bigotry behind organized religion. Indeed, O’Hare enjoys staunch support from Mercy Culture Church, including Pastor Landon Shott, who uses his pulpit to tell his sheep who to vote for while simultaneously coercing them into buying property through the church’s Realtor elders.

Since Republicans have no ideas for improving the economy or stopping gun violence, they fight ridiculous culture wars. The latest group to draw GOP attention are trans youths and drag queens, and you can bet that O’Hare is tilting against that fabulous windmill. In a letter to the head of the Texas comptroller’s office, O’Hare alleged — without evidence — that unnamed drag queens recently exposed themselves to minors. O’Hare requested the comptroller to investigate the matter and consider reclassifying the venue, Tulips FTW on the Near Southside, as a sexually oriented business, one subject to taxes reserved for strip clubs. Drag queens wearing several layers of Spanx and undergarments are generally physically incapable of showing their junk to anyone, and, despite O’Hare’s assertion of “media reports,” no credible witness from that night has come forward backing O’Hare’s allegation. By misusing his office for his own perverted witch hunt, O’Hare has, um, exposed the county to a lawsuit for defamation, either by the performers that night or the popular music venue’s owners.

Blowing taxpayer funds while bringing shame and disgrace to his office is probably O’Hare’s greatest skill. As the self-described founder of Southlake Families, O’Hare forced Carroll ISD to squander hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting a baseless lawsuit bankrolled by O’Hare’s PAC. The DA recently dropped the charges stemming from the civil suit — misdemeanor indictments against two school board members for alleged violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act. In his self-serving push to portray the school board as CRT lovers, O’Hare defrauded Southlake taxpayers just to bolster his political career.

The man’s history of using lies and deception to embolden his white, wealthy base of supporters may not be the biggest threat to his political career, especially given the Republican stranglehold on Tarrant County politics and the way Republican lawmakers keep failing up, but the exodus of top county leaders and O’Hare’s willful failure to keep up with county business are showing his greatest weakness — an inability to lead.

This story is part of City in Crisis, an ongoing series of reports on unethical behavior and worse by local public leaders, featuring original reporting.

This column reflects the opinions of the editorial board and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.