From Deseret News archives:
Costs top $12.4 million for raid on FLDS
Figure doesn't include court fees for massive case
A spreadsheet outlining some of the costs for the sheltering of FLDS women and children in the aftermath of the April raid was provided by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services on Wednesday after a request for an accounting. The figures for the "San Angelo Mass Care Event" do not include ongoing costs since the 439 children were returned to their families in June, including the salaries of caseworkers and attorneys still involved in the case, agency spokesman Patrick Crimmins said.
"We think this is the final cost of the operation," he said Wednesday.
More than $4 million was spent on goods and services at Fort Concho and the San Angelo Coliseum, where FLDS children and some of their mothers were housed immediately following the raid. The "unified command center" set up there cost nearly $1 million. Another $1 million was spent on buses to take the children to foster-care facilities scattered around the Lone Star State.
Foster-care placement, security and Medicaid cost Texas more than $3.3 million, the figures show.
The numbers do not include court costs in the nation's largest child-custody case. A judge in San Angelo recently signed an order approving payment to hundreds of lawyers appointed by the courts to represent the children from the Utah-based polygamous sect.
"All attorney ad litems were advised prior to accepting appointments that their service would be voluntary and possibly without compensation, and that if compensation became possible, actual expenses and attorney's fees would be paid by the court at a reduced rate," 51st District Judge Barbara Walther wrote in the order signed last week.
The judge's order sets a cap of $4,000 for hourly billing and $750 for travel and other expenses. Walther left open the door to approve higher fees if attorneys make their case to her for more money.
"There were some tenacious ones among us who spent a lot of time trying to force CPS to give us the information they should have voluntarily given us in April," said Susan Hays, a Dallas attorney who represented a 2-year-old girl in the custody case.
Hays calculates she drove more than 7,200 miles between Dallas and San Angelo, where the court hearings were held, the places where her child client was taken and the mother lived, and the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado. She also logged more than 264 hours on the case.
"In child welfare cases, the ad litems and the state are on the same sides, which is the best interests of the child," Hays said. "They shouldn't make it hard to represent the child and, unfortunately, they did here."
