She pleaded guilty to corruption in government job, then worked for Harris County for 2 more months

For seven weeks, Rhonda Skillern-Jones was just like any other Harris County Precinct 1 employee, with one dubious distinction: she was the only to have pleaded guilty in a federal public corruption case. Skillern-Jones took a plea deal on Oct. 28, admitting to a single count of conspiracy to defraud the government. Prosecutors said she admitted to accepting payments as a Houston Independent School District trustee from a vendor and then putting a contract for the vendor on the school board’s agenda and voting in favor of it. Skillern-Jones kept working for Precinct 1 as a community aid, however, until Dec. 16, when the Department of Justice announced the guilty pleas of her and four HISD employees involved in the scheme after it unsealed indictments against the district’s Chief Operating Officer Brian Busby and contract vendor Anthony Hutchison.

Democratic Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis said he had no knowledge of Skillern-Jones’s involvement until that day. He said he immediately fired her. “The news today came as a shock to us, and we never had any indication of such inexcusable wrongdoing during her time at Precinct 1,” Ellis said in a statement Dec. 16. Skillern-Jones also remained in her seat on the Houston Community College board of trustees until her plea agreement was revealed. She resigned the seat, which she had held for two years, the day after the U.S. Attorney’s office announced her plea agreement. Why Skillern-Jones kept her job working for one local government for nearly two months after admitting to defrauding another remains unclear. Based on her annual salary of $71,837, Skillern-Jones would have earned $9,670 as a member of Ellis’ staff during that period, excluding benefits. Skillern-Jones did not respond to requests for comment.