Texas Watchdog’s reporting on the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association by Steve Miller was selected as a winner in the 2011 Best in Business journalism contest, sponsored by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

We won for investigative work on a digital platform. Other winners in our category included ProPublica and the Center for Public Integrity.

We have one of the best investigative news desks in the country looking at state and local government. Not only is this another national award for us, but Texas Watchdog’s work got results that helped homeowners and taxpayers.

Miller’s reporting provided information that guided legislators in fixing this flawed quasi-governmental agency, which serves as the home insurer of last resort for Texans. And his work resulted in more transparency in a once hidden place where business people and politicians often cut deals in secret.

Looking back at the body of work, it’s pretty impressive.

Our reporting found:

• Wealthy, prominent plaintiff’s lawyer Steve Mostyn --- whose law firm pounced on the agency following Hurricane Ike for allegedly short-changing clients affected by that 2008 storm --- gave $25,000 to the mediator in a multimillion-dollar settlement days after he was selected. The mediator was Republican state Rep. Todd Hunter, of Corpus Christi, long praised by the tort reform movement; Mostyn, the Democratic lawyer giving him this donation, was the incoming head of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the largest political donor to Texas campaigns.

• That lawmakers charged with overseeing the windstorm agency or looking out for affected homeowners were at the same time pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars from legal action involving the agency. For example, Democratic state Rep. Craig Eiland from Galveston, the hardest hit area in Hurricane Ike, was paid more than $620,000 in legal fees in one settlement alone. Eiland oversees the windstorm agency as vice chairman of the House Committee on Insurance.

• The agency had disregarded sunshine laws. The agency used code language in an open meeting to obscure the substance of the discussion, initially refused to provide a call-in number to an open meeting conducted by teleconference, and slow-walked the release of records showing the agency’s finalists for general manager.

Other winners in Texas were the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for its coverage of the American Airlines bankruptcy and columns by that paper’s Mitchell Schnurman. The SABEW also selected the Houston Chronicle’s TechBlog as a winner.

Awards will be presented March 17 in Indianapolis at the society's annual conference.

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Contact Trent Seibert at 832-316-4994 or trent@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @trentseibert.

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Photo of ribbons by flickr user Susan Ujka Larson Collection, used via a Creative Commons license.