On Wednesday, the Commissioners’ Court, led by retiring County Judge Mike Bradford, agreed to extend a contract to Dooley Management to manage the Horseshoe facility for another five years. The contract they were working under still had one year and three months left on it. The assumption can be made that Dooley Management now has a guaranteed tenure of six years and three months to continue business as usual. This binds the new court that will be seated on Jan. 1 until the end of September 2024.
Whoever is selected as the next county judge will have finished his first four-year term at the expiration of this extension. This is bad politics by all involved in this by binding a new administration to this long-term agreement.
According to Mike Dooley of Dooley Management, the necessity of the early five-year extension was asked to allow his current management company time to get a liquor license transferred. It would be transferred into one of his employee’s name so that Dooley could sell “his” business to that employee. The retiring county judge went on to explain that it is accepted practice in the industry to run background checks on an employee and that takes time. What employee or what industry needs five or six years to run a background check?
At the time Dooley sells “his” business, I believe that any new operator needs to be vetted along with all investors involved. This would be…
