More than $25,000 for Christmas cards. Valet parking to the tune of more than $3,100. And $931 for flashing blinky lights?

These are just some of the creative ways our Texas delegation to Congress spends its campaign funds, according to the Houston Chronicle's Texas on the Potomac blog. The blog cherry-picked what it considered interesting ways campaign money was spent and reported as required by law through the June 30 election cycle.

It is Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, who apparently goes all out at Yuletide, spending $25,329 on Christmas cards and more than $4,000 on ornaments. The Christmas cards expense, according to writer Emily Cahn, was his largest in the last cycle.

A congressman rarely does his big fundraising at a rural VFW club where parking is ample. No surprise, then, that Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, rolls up big valet bills in swankriffic Big D.

From now on when you see someone wearing the state of Texas or cowboy boots that light up on his lapel, you can thank Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis for identifying them for you as flashing blinky lights on his campaign spending report. The Texas-themed blinkers were the swag at Barton's Happy Birthday Texas fundraiser.

By comparison, the expenses of the two Houston members scrutinized were more prosaic. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, spent most of her money on the usual, $8,800 for campaign flyers, door hangers and those little handout campaign cards. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, apparently doesn't get out as much as Jackson Lee. Culberson spent almost $6,000 on books for research.

Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org.

Photo of the Capitol by flickr user scottlenger, used via a Creative Commons license.

Houston Independent School District board president Greg Meyers amended his July campaign finance report today, adding more than $1,400 in reimbursements to himself for phone bills, a day after a Texas Watchdog story that noted the omission.

“I inadvertently omitted some expenditures on schedule F to myself as reimbursement for the properly reported schedule G expenditures. I am filing this corrected report within 14 days of learning of the error; which was yesterday, August 5. I believe my report as originally filed substantially complied with the law.”

Three checks of $250, a $200 check and a $100 deposit were posted to the “Greg Meyers Campaign” account between January and April. In addition to those transactions, in the correction to the campaign finance report Meyers lists a fifth check for $393.16 made out to Meyers from his campaign account on June 23.

MEYERS

When alerted to the discrepancies Thursday by a reporter, Meyers said the mistake was in not properly listing the checks as a reimbursement for more than $1,500 in AT&T campaign phone bills, which were listed in the initial report

Meyers said that he had never submitted campaign finance reports with reimbursements before and that it was just a filing mistake. He later acknowledged that on his Jan. 15 campaign finance report he had correctly filled out the paperwork to show reimbursements to himself.

Candidates in Texas are required to disclose campaign expenses without exception, though small expenditures do not require the same level of detail as larger ones.

Meyers was elected to the HISD board of education in 2004 and re-elected in 2009. He represents District VI, which includes Sharpstown and Westside high schools and encompasses an area north of Westheimer Road south to Bellfort Street.

Contact Lynn Walsh at 713-228-2850 or lynn@texaswatchdog.org. Follow news about the Houston Independent School District on Twitter. Follow @TexasWatchdog or search #HISD.

You're invited to our blogger meetup Saturday afternoon at the Stag's Head pub. Come talk politics, government transparency, and meet other area bloggers, activists, journalists.

What: Texas Watchdog blogger meet-up

Why: Talk shop with Texas Watchdog staff and local bloggers/journalists/activists

When: 3-5 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 7

Where: Stag's Head, 2128 Portsmouth St., Houston, TX 77098-4057

All are welcome! Come alone or bring friends -- the more the merrier.

We’ll also celebrate Texas Watchdog's second birthday.

Questions? Contact Lynn Walsh, lynn@texaswatchdog.org, 713-228-2850, Twitter: @lwalsh.

Hope to see you there!

Photo of word cloud by flickr user Kristina B, used via a Creative Commons license.

Thanks to the morning crew at NewsRadio 740 AM for having us on to talk about our story looking at the overblown employmemt numbers in a stimulus project here in Texas.

We discussed one of our latest stories, in which we looked at an audit that found severe problems with how a Travis County program that recieved millions in stimulus cash was counting the jobs the claimed the stimulus created.

From the Texas Watchdog story:

The directors of a $2.3 million stimulus-funded summer youth program reported the program created or retained 556 more jobs than the 124 found in a review by the State Auditor's Office, a difference of more than 440 percent.

In a report released today, the state auditor said the Capital Area Workforce Development Board reported the summer employment jobs for low-income people aged 14 to 24 as full-time positions, although the program was designed to run eight to 10 weeks and be discontinued.

Read the whole story on the overblown employment numbers here.

Also read the other work we've done covering the stimulus:

San Antonio stimulus program investigated; one of 5 in TX fraught with problems

$5.6 million federal stimulus contract halted in Abilene, subpar work found statewide in Texas' weatherization program.

Sheltering Arms director out; shoddy work found in $22.3 million federal stimulus contract to fix up low-income homes

Job creation 'has not materialized' from Weatherization Assistance Program: Federal inspector general

Shoddy workmanship found in $22 million federal stimulus contract to improve the homes of the poor

Federal stimulus plan for solar power will take decades to return investment, if ever

47 homes retrofitted, $3.7M spent in Texas through Dec. under program to improve low-income homes

Trent Seibert can be reached at 832-316-4994 or at trent@texaswatchdog.org.

More than $1,000 was disbursed from Houston Independent School District board president’s Greg Meyers’ campaign account -- to Meyers himself, bank records show -- but not a dime of it is listed on his campaign finance report that was filed in July and covers the time period of the checks.

Meyers signed for the cash withdrawal and cut the checks that were dated and cleared the campaign account in January, February, March and April, bank documents obtained by Texas Watchdog show. The failure to report the payments and their purpose is a violation of Texas election law that can carry fines.

“I appreciate you bringing this to my attention, and I am going to be amending this first thing in the morning,” Meyers told Texas Watchdog Thursday afternoon.

MEYERS

Meyers said the payments actually totaled around $1,200 and were reimbursement for $1,514 in AT&T campaign phone bills he had paid. Those phone bills are listed beginning on page 5 of the report.

“I thought that if I put the expenses in both (schedules) F and G, then I would need to put that in the total,” Meyers said. “That would have doubled the amount that was due back to me. That is not my intent.”

The payments included: A cash withdrawal of $100 was posted to the “Greg Meyers Campaign” account by Meyers on Jan. 20. Meyers wrote himself a $250 check dated Feb. 19 that cleared the campaign account three days later. A month later he signed two more checks for $250 each. The checks were written on March 6 and March 31, clearing the account within days. He wrote a subsequent $200 check on April 17.

State campaign finance law permits candidates to reimburse themselves for campaign-related expenses as long as the expenses are itemized and reported --- Meyers did so in his January report, which noted the campaign reimbursed him for $550 in meals.

Meyers, who fills out his own campaign finance reports, first said he had never had to fill out the section of the reporting form that tracks personal expenses prior to the July report.

“I looked at the instructions and what it said to do. It was a live-and-learn moment. I have never done any reimbursements like this before.”

But the process for disclosing the payments to himself for phone expenses would have been identical to the one Meyers undertook in January for campaign-related meals.

“I don’t know. I don’t have it in front of me,” Meyers said in a second interview. “But I believe what you are saying and have no reason to doubt you. Obviously, I made a mistake, and I can amend it, and it is a miss on my part.”

Dr. Charles Mullins, the treasurer listed on Meyers’ campaign finance reports since at least 2008, said he has not had contact with Meyers in two or three months. Mullins is the father of Sandie Mullins, Meyers’ ex-wife.

“It was sort of just a title,” Mullins said. “I have never had any working with it.”

Candidates in Texas are required to disclose campaign expenses without exception, though small expenditures do not require the same level of detail as larger ones.

“Some payee would have to be tied to it,” Tim Sorrells, a lawyer at the Texas Ethics Commission, said of a scenario like Meyers’. “It is correct that if someone makes a political expenditure from campaign funds, it needs to be disclosed.”

Meyers was elected to the HISD board of education in 2004 and re-elected in 2009. He represents District VI, which includes Sharpstown and Westside high schools and encompasses an area north of Westheimer Road south to Bellfort Street.

Meyers said he expects his amended report to be available to be viewed Friday at the HISD Hattie Mae White building at 4400 West 18th St.

Contact Lynn Walsh at 713-228-2850 or lynn@texaswatchdog.org. Follow @texaswatchdog on Twitter, or search #HISD, for news about the school district.

Houston Independent School District trustees are conflict of interest-free, according to the most recent conflict disclosure forms filed last month.

When a governmental entity ponies up our money for some food for the elderly, we aren’t expecting Golden Corral prices. We’d hope some quantity buying could be leveraged.

But the East Texas Council of Governments contracted with a private meal provider on a pilot program for its senior nutrition program, according to a recent state audit, and prices per meal for the pilot hit $10.88 between March 2009 and September 2009, compared to $5.52 at group dining places operated by other meal providers.

The audit by the State Auditor’s Office also found that after the council had ranked the bids for service to the program, one bidding provider griped – and “[the council] awarded a contract to a provider that had not submitted a proposal,” according to the report.

This must have had some heads shaking. It made us dizzy just reading the narrative. It appears that after the appeal from an initial bidder, the council sent all bids to a committee. Then the committee changed the criteria for the bids. And more complaints ensued.

“Following a second appeal by the same provider, the council contacted a separate provider that had not submitted a proposal and asked this new provider to provide services for a county that had complained about the quality of past meal services. The [committee] then reviewed the proposals for a third time and issued a third set of recommendations, which included awarding a contract to provide services in the county mentioned above to the new provider."

The context of the problem is simply an agency in trouble.

"The program was on the ropes, and it was broken," council Executive Director David Cleveland said.

 Eating sites had been shuttered due to poor performance on the part of some contractors. So a pilot program was hatched that might provide better service, Cleveland said in an interview with Texas Watchdog.

The meal cost was so high on the pilot, Cleveland said, because there were fewer people to feed.

Today? "I'd have to crack that down, but it's not $10.88," he said. "The scale has gone up, and the prices have gone down."

And as for the handing over of a contract to someone who hadn't even bid? That came about because of complaints about the provider who was appealing. "We had to get someone in there who could do a good job," Cleveland said. 

And that someone, apparently, hadn't even been interested in managing the meal program.

We're still dizzy.

Anyway, we see the council has again issued a request for proposals to manage its senior nutrition program. We like the green beans and mashed potatoes, if anyone is wondering.

Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

Photo of a meat loaf dinner by flickr user The Marmot, used via a Creative Commons license.

Answering an investigation by the FBI into the allegedly unethical handling of clients by attorneys for Baron & Budd, once the biggest asbestos litigator in the country, U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins dashed off a one-sentence letter that said, essentially, case closed.

The 2000 letter is part of a 90-page FBI file reviewed by Texas Watchdog on Fred Baron, the flamboyant founder of the Dallas-based Baron & Budd, whose millions in asbestos wealth he distributed to Democratic political candidates, most notoriously former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. Baron died at 61 of blood cancer on Oct. 30, 2008, five years after giving up law to devote his time to politics.

There is nothing in the file referring to his role as Edwards' lead fundraiser or that he had raised his own personal funds to pay the moving expenses for Edwards' mistress, Rielle Hunter, to flee tabloid reporters.

The file is one of several FBI files on prominent Texas political figures Texas Watchdog has requested under the federal Freedom of Information Act, which generally allows public access to the FBI's files on people once they die. Texas Watchdog recently posted the file of another prominent Democratic fundraiser and trial lawyer, Houston's John O'Quinn, and has requested to see files on several other prominent figures, both Republican and Democratic.  

The FBI opened the file monitoring an investigation that began when an opposing lawyer in a Baron & Budd asbestos case said he had come into possession of an internal memo he said confirmed that Baron & Budd had established a format for clients to give false testimony. For all intents and purposes, the file ends with Coggins' July 22, 2000, letter that read, "Because of the administrative nightmare created by the McDade legislation we have closed our investigation into the above captioned matter."

The legislation to which Coggins, who has since retired as head of the U.S. Attorney's Northern Texas District and is in private practice in Dallas, was referring was the McDade Amendment, much reviled at the time by federal prosecutors. The amendment made far-reaching federal investigations cumbersome because it required prosecutors to follow ethics guidelines in each of the states where the subject of an investigation was operating. Baron & Budd were said to have handled 20,000 asbestos lawsuits from people all over the world.

The abrupt end to a long-running investigation left unanswered questions raised originally by an investigative report in 1998 and an aggressive follow-up in 2001 by the Dallas Observer.

When Baron, the so-called King of Torts, died, the Dallas Morning News ran a lengthy obituary. The investigation was not mentioned.

Do you have an idea of a prominent political or government figure in Texas who might have an interesting FBI file? Drop us a line at news@texaswatchdog.org. 

Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org.

The replacement for Houston Independent School District trustee Diana Dávila is unknown, but the board of education should be closer to figuring out how that person will be chosen after a workshop Thursday morning.

The long-awaited Texas Watchdog blogger meet-up is right around the corner -- and you're invited.