A warrant has been issued for local school board trustee, Tony Fitzgerald. Sources indicate that the warrant is related to a complaint received on January 20th, 2009 from a local bank concerning attempted forgery and/or counterfeiting.

Tony Fitzgerald

Fortunately, it appears that the charges do not related to the school district – Forney ISD has released a statement indicating that the Forney Police Department had been in contact with the District concerning the situation and that the police confirmed that the District is not part of the investigation.

State law and District policy indicate that, barring a conviction on felony charges or misdemeanor official misconduct, Mr. Fitzgerald will be allowed to continue to serve as a member of the Board of Trustees until the expiration of his term in May 2009.  It is unknown at this time if Mr. Fitzgerald has filed for, or intends to file for, re-election to his position with the District.

It is not clear at this time what the exact charges against Mr. Fitzgerald are – the Texas Penal Code states that forgery is a class A misdemeanor unless it meets certain requirements; one such requirement is that if “the writing is or purports to be a [...] check, authorization to debit an account at a financial institution, or similar sight order for payment of money [...]“, in which case the charge becomes a state jail felony. In many cases, counterfeiting currency is a misdemeanor,  so it is unknown at this time if the charges Mr. Fitzgerald may face could lead to his removal from the school board. However, many members of the community are already calling on Mr. Fitzgerald to resign to preserve the dignity of the Forney ISD School Board.

Frequent readers of the Forney discussion forum here at Twenty Peaceful Minutes may remember Mr. Fitzgerald’s name coming up concerning some questions some area parents had concerning the handling of funds by a local youth sports organization, however, several sources have confirmed that these charges are not in any way related to those complaints.

Welcome to Twenty Peaceful Minutes (20PM) - a community website for Forney, Texas. In addition to this blog, 20PM is home to the Forney discussion forums, which you may reach by clicking the Forney discussion forum link or going to http://20pm.net/forums; also, considering signing up for email or newsreader (RSS feed) notifications of new posts to the 20PM blog!