Business owners and candidates who paid for ads in a Fort Bend County Republican Party newsletter, which was printed but never mailed, began receiving reimbursement checks in the mail Wednesday from Gary Gillen - who resigned last week as party chairman.

Several would-be advertisers said Thursday that they got reimbursement checks written on the county GOP checking account, and dated Nov. 7 - the day before Gillen announced his resignation.

Accompanying the checks was a letter, dated Nov. 8, signed by Gillen. Several people who received them said the envelope containing the letter and check was postmarked Nov. 13.

“We refunded the money before we left office,” Gillen said Thursday. “Since the newsletter didn’t go out, I did reimburse those advertisers. I think when you take money from someone…and you don’t send the newsletter out, integrity dictates that you refund them the money.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t his decision to make,” said county GOP Communications Committee Chairman Andre McDonald. He added that a check Gillen wrote to the newsletter printer was for $7,500, and that checks above $5,000 are, according to the party’s bylaws, supposed to be authorized by the executive committee. McDonald also said that reimbursements for the newsletter ads would total more than $8,000 - thus also requiring executive committee approval.

McDonald said last month that Gillen withheld payment for mailing some 20,000 copies of the October newsletter over issues related to ad placement, and the fact the newsletter was printed without his column.

In announcing his resignation last week, Gillen told a crowd of elected Republican officials and party activists that he had put the newsletters in his warehouse and “they will not be mailed under my watch.”

Fort Bend County Precinct 3 Commissioner Andy Meyers, who received a reimbursement check for the ad he paid for in the newsletter, said the Nov. 13 postmark on the envelope he got in the mail caused him at first to question whether the check had been written after Gillen left office.

“But even if not, it probably was not authorized by the party,” Meyers said. “He just made some unauthorized reimbursements.”

Meyers said that left him with a problem as far as how to properly report the check in candidate financial statements filed with the Texas Ethics Commission.

“I’ve got knowledge of the fact the guy resigned,” Meyers said of Gillen. “I was there at the meeting he resigned at. And, I’ve got knowledge he wasn’t authorized to make the (reimbursement) payment. The other guys” who advertised in the newsletter “can kind of plead ignorance; I’m not one of those.”

After making several calls to state officials, Meyers said the advice he received led him to believe the proper course of action as a candidate was to accept to reimbursement check and report it.

And, “it’s going to have to be Gary’s explanation as to whether he was authorized to make the reimbursements,” Meyers said.

Gillen said he believes he would have been criticized if he did not make reimbursements for the ads, and now is being criticized because he did so, adding, “this group of folks are not going to be pleased about anything I do.”

Gillen also said he has asked Texas Republican Party Chairman Tina Benkiser “who to turn this newsletter over to,” adding that “the advice so far was to hold on until there’s a new” party chairman named. That likely will happen at a special meeting called for Nov. 27.

Gillen said he has several items that he’s holding on behalf of the county GOP.

The party’s checkbook is not one of them. Gillen said resigned party treasurer Richard McCarter “had that, and I don’t know what he’s done with that. I am no longer signing checks for the party.”

“Rick McCarter and I are honorable people, in spite of the ridiculous and vindictive statements” Gillen said others in the local party have made. “And you’re going to find we’re going to do the honorable thing.”