YCHC, County butt heads over charitable donations

A long-running feud between the Young County Historical Commission and some County Commissioners came to a head on June 26 when the Commissioners refused to accept outside funds designated for the YCHC.

The Commissioners, excepting Precinct 3 Commissioner Stacey Rogers, have been pressing the historical commission to form a 501(c)(3) charitable organization to accept donations and other funding as charitable donations.

Young County Judge Win Graham offered to budget funds for the creation of the tax-exempt entity.

The majority of the Commissioners for the first time withheld their acceptance of the receipts from the YCHC’s sales of maps and scrapbooks at the June 26 meeting.

“Acceptance of the outside donations into the historical commission was voted down today because it died for lack of second,” Mr Rogers said. “I don’t feel it’s up to the Commissioners Court to suggest that it’s tax deductible or not tax deductible.”

Mr. Rogers said the other Commissioners wanted to “neuter” the Historical Commission but cutting off funding so they can tear down the 1921 jail, which recently received an historic designation from the state historical commission.

“They want to tear the building down and occupy the land with something else - some city building,” he said. “The whole deal is, they want to abolish the whole historical commission. They want to neuther their activities for some reason.”

Former Young County Judge John Charles Bullock, who now heads the Historical Commission, called the proposed charitable organization “just an extra layer of work.”

“The historical commission is a discrete agency of the county, just like the county clerk, just like the tax assessor collector welfare board,” he said. “So all the revenue we have belongs to the county - donated or appropriated, either one.”

People who give funds to the YCHC must designate their donations to Young County, which passes it through to the historical commission, Judge Bullock said.

“The county government is a tax-exempt entity which means if I make a donation to them I can deduct that,” he said.

But Precinct 4 Commissioner Jimmy Wiley has long argued that Jim Allison, general counsel of the Texas Judges and Commissioners Association, recommended that the historical commission form a charitable structure to take donations to limit the County’s liability.

Judge Bullock said Mr. Allison never made a formal recommendation to the Commissioner’s Court. “Here’s the intent of the majority of the court - they want that building [the 1921 Jail] gone.”

It is unlikely that the Commissioners can reverse the finding of the Texas Historical Commission, which conferred protected status on the old jail.

The state agency approved a grant that allowed the YCHC to commission an engineering study that would help deermine what to do with the structure, which sits in the Graham courthouse square.

Judge Bullock said the study showed that the building, whose jail cells and gallows are still intact, “is a viable building. It’s a good stout sturdy building in pretty good condition for 100 years old.”