Mount Pleasant City Manager Ed Thatcher is shown during a special Mount Pleasant City Council meeting in May 2024. (Jordan Green/Longview News-Journal File Photo)

A former Mount Pleasant city manager has been indicted in connection with controversial mileage reimbursements received by a former City Council member.

Ed Thatcher was indicted Wednesday by a Titus County grand jury and is accused of knowingly making a false entry in a government record on March 7, 2022. The indictment reads that Thatcher reported on a city mileage reimbursement travel request form that Tim Dale, Mount Pleasant’s former mayor pro tem, had driven 870 miles for council-related business and sought reimbursement for that amount. The Tri-County Press first reported the news.

Records obtained by the News-Journal show that Dale received a reimbursement payment of $509 in March 2022 but paid the money back.

Thatcher’s indictment comes roughly 10 months after the news broke that the Texas Rangers were investigating roughly $40,000 in mileage and travel reimbursements Mount Pleasant City Council members received during Thatcher’s tenure as city manager. He took the job in 2019 and resigned in May 2024.

Thatcher and Dale did not return calls immediately Thursday, and the city of Mount Pleasant did not immediately provide a statement to the News-Journal.

In a statement to the Tri-County Press, city officials said they were made aware of Thatcher’s indictment. The statement recounted some details of the investigation and said city officials could provide no further comment.

Dale was one of five council members who submitted travel reimbursement forms that were called into question. Council members became the subject of scrutiny after Debbie Corbell, a former city employee, raised concerns about the reimbursements the four members received beginning in 2021.

Chief among the complaints against the council members were that the required forms they submitted for mileage reimbursement were vague. Council members sometimes reported driving hundreds of miles per month for city business but often didn’t list specific places to which they had driven or why.

In December, a Titus County grand jury declined to bring charges against former councilmen Galen Adams and Henry Chappell or incumbent Mayor Tracy Craig and incumbent Councilwoman Sherri Spruill.

In a news release, former Titus County District Attorney David Colley said the investigation began in July 2023 and that Craig, Spruill, Adams and Chappell had been accused of “theft in their official capacity based on mileage reimbursement they received from the city,” the Tri-County Press reported.

The Texas Rangers determined, however, that the mileage reimbursements they received were legal and allowed by city policy. The officials “committed no offense and did not abuse their capacity as public officials,” the news release stated.

Craig and Spruill still serve on the council, while Adams chose not to run for re-election this spring. Chappell was defeated in May in his reelection bid by Carl Hinton.

Corbell became a council member in November. Titus County’s new district attorney, Chuck Bailey, took office this month.

Bailey told the News-Journal on Thursday afternoon that the district clerk’s office issued a capias warrant for Thatcher’s arrest.