A Houston Chronicle investigation has revealed that federally approved fiduciaries have stolen from disabled veterans in Texas, in many cases tens of thousands of dollars.

Using information obtained through a public records request, the Chronicle showed that people charged with managing money for former members of America’s armed forces instead paid their own bills and funded their own businesses with vet assets.

Law enforcement authorities say Houston lawyer Joe Phillips and his wife “stole $2 million from two dozen veterans” in “the largest rip-off ever reported in the VA fiduciary program,” reporters Lindsay Wise and Lise Olsen write. Phillips denies the allegations. Their case is pending.

The Veterans Affairs’ Inspector General has repeatedly warned about a plague of fraud and theft in a national program that appoints family members and VA-approved fiduciaries to protect a whopping $3 billion in assets belonging to veterans the government considers too disabled to manage their own money.

Only recently have U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs officials begun requiring background and credit checks for those who want to become fiduciaries.

Wise and Olsen also provide readers with a map that supplies information on 21 Texas cases in which financial managers took money from vets “they’d promised to protect.”

***
Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

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Photo of Purple Heart by flickr user patries71, used via a Creative Commons license.

It takes 37 pages of legal threats to raise the interest of the city of Houston’s fire fighter pension fund. Maybe.

The city of Houston, frustrated over the lack of transparency of the Houston Firefighters' Relief and Retirement Fund, has asked a judge to order the fund to release records needed for an audit.

Good story here on the punches being thrown.

The legal action, called a writ of mandamus, or a request for a judicial order, claims the city has repeatedly asked for records from the fund in order to make budget decisions and an audit required by state law. The city says the fund has refused to provide the needed materials, citing concerns about the confidentiality of member data and the city’s lack of authority to gain access to the records.  

Taxpayers pay $164 million a year for pension funds protecting municipal employees, police officers and firefighters, all separate systems.

There are 6,500 members of the pension plan, including active and retired firefighters and their survivors or beneficiaries.

“Houston has significant concerns about the (firefighter pension) fund’s ability to meet its future retirement benefit obligations," the city’s legal filing says.

The document claims that lobbying by the fund has resulted in special rules and gives the fund “preferential treatment and self-governance.”

“The board exercises control over administration of the fund and establishes firefighter benefit levels with virtually no accountability to Houston taxpayers or their elected officials,” the suit states.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker told Texas Watchdog in January 2011 that the firefighter pensions were the toughest to deal with because of the particular laws in place.

“Fire, there is no mechanism for them to come in and negotiate with me," she said. "Everything takes place at the state level.”

The battle between the city and the fund escalated earlier this year when the fund refused the request for records and implied that the audit was a ruse for a reduction in benefits.

“The Mayor’s task force announced recently they are specifically targeting the retirement funds of city firefighters as a way to generate cash for a city burdened by fiscal mismanagement,” declared a presser sent out by the fund.

Todd Clark, chairman of the pension fund, reiterated that position in this defiant Houston Chronicle op-ed in March.

Two pension fund board members, Craig Mason and Fred Robertson, unsuccessfully moved at a February meeting to provide the information to the city.

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

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Photo of gavel by flickr user s_falkow, used via a Creative Commons license.

Thank you, City of Keller, for restoring our shaken faith in government.

The whole world, practically, went all soft and weepy in March when your city manager, Dan O’Leary, said he was leaving his job and his $176,000 a year salary.

To the amazement of the hard-bitten of us in the press, O’Leary said he thought it was the right thing to do because there wasn’t enough work to go around for him and his assistants. O’Leary didn’t even have another job to go to.

What a relief it is, then, to learn that rather than reduce the budget by $176,000,  you gave $75,000 in raises to four of your highest paid employees, including O’Leary’s successor, Steve Polasek, and hired a new management assistant at $55,000-a-year, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is reporting today.

O’Leary was apparently wrong about that municipal workload. Polasek, one of his two assistants, told the City Council O’Leary’s departure increased the responsibilities for the top department heads.

The council obliged by raising Polasek’s salary by almost $40,000 to $169,000 a year. The council promoted Chris Fuller, the other assistant, to deputy city manager with a $15,000 bump to $145,000.

The council gave Police Chief Mark Hafner a new title, director of public safety, and a $15,000 raise to $145,000 a year. And Tom Elgin, the community development manager got a $5,000 increase to $95,000 a year.

"We didn't hand out raises," Polasek told the Star-Telegram. "We gave them new titles to fit the work that they're doing, and then we provided salaries that are commensurate with what the position calls for."

It seems O’Leary, who has since been hired to be the city manager of Duncanville, didn’t fully realize his value, Polasek says. Not only to Keller, but to those who fervently believe it is government’s sacred duty to spend your tax money.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo 'Broken Piggy Bank' by flickr user 401K, used via a Creative Commons license.

Simply because one is a convicted sex-offender does not bar that person from serving in some Texas elected offices.

And that’s the way it should be, says Mary Sue Molnar, director of Texas Voices for Reason and Justice.

“Anybody who doesn’t have a conviction has a right just like anyone else to run for office,” Molnar told the Amarillo Globe-News in a Thursday story. The San Antonio-based nonprofit organization she works for advocates for reforming sex offender laws to specify violent and nonviolent offenders.

Take the case of former Skellytown Mayor Warren Andrew Mills.

The 73-year-old pleaded guilty in 2007 to two counts of indecency with a child, according to Texas Department of Public Safety records, reports the Globe-News’ Bobby Cervantes. The two girls involved were 8 and 16 years old at the time.

Mills stepped down about a month later.

But last week, Mills returned to public office. He won 51 of 146 votes to become a Skellytown city council member.

“We have people who have been charged with DWIs (and) they’re still running,” Molnar told the Globe-News. “Ultimately, it’s up to the voters.”

But things didn’t turn out so well for another Texas resident in 2008, Cervantes reports.

Registered sex offender James Brian Sliter’s run for mayor of Wilmer, a Dallas suburb, prompted death threats against the accountant and his friends. He pleaded guilty four years earlier to showing up to an Internet chat room sting where he thought he was going to meet a 15-year-old girl, for which he received 10 years’ probation. A week after announcing his mayoral bid, he dropped out of the race, according to reports.

Mills’ offense is not a felony, so he can run for and serve on the city council, according to state law.

***
Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

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Photo of handcuffs by flickr user The.Comedian, used via a Creative Commons license.

The electricity generation industry in Texas some insist on referring to as deregulated is facing a price increase ordered by the regulatory Public Utility Commission.

The three-member commission, meeting today in Austin, thinks it ought to impose an increase on customers to encourage this unfettered business to build more power plants, according to a story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Donna Nelson, chairman of the PUC, has supported raising prices as early as this summer as a hedge on the rolling blackouts that have occurred on peak generation days. Prices going up this summer will not help to meet demand this summer, they will simply deliver huge profits to the free marketeers in electricity, Commissioner Kenneth Anderson, says.

The story goes on to remind Texans that Senate Bill 7 passed in 1999 allowed power companies to set their own prices for electricity and allowed customers to shop for power and the price they wanted.

Unless the Public Utility Commission sees otherwise. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, manager of the power grid in 75 percent of the state, also has the authority to control the wholesale price of electricity to inhibit the spiking of electric rates during times of high power demand.

Like most everything involving the role of government in our lives, some, like the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, contend that deregulation has been good for Texans. Others, like the liberal consumer group Public Citizen Texas, thinks deregulation has been a disaster for those same Texans.

Supporters say deregulated electricity is cheaper than it was before Senate Bill 7 passed. Detractors say it depends on how you’re figuring.

The Energy Information Administration says Texans pay an average of 11.3 cents a kilowatt hour, less than the national average of about 12 cents.Texas ranked 31st among the states in average cost, better than Illinois (11.7) and Florida (11.7) and much better than California (15.2) and New York (18.1).

Should that average go up a little or a lot depends on what the Public Utility Commssion thinks is best. But for heaven’s sake, don’t go calling it regulation.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo 'Power Lines' by flickr user Theodore Scott, used via a Creative Commons license.

Houston schools trustees and administrators discussed next year’s $1.5 billion budget Thursday morning that would determine how many teachers could lose their jobs and how much of a raise teachers who remain employed might receive.

But that public conversation was all but impossible to understand for others present.

That’s because Houston Independent School District officials did not provide copies of the materials – which are public records under the Texas Public Information Act – during the meeting. The practice is legal, an open government attorney said.

But “from a citizen’s point of view that is pretty ridiculous,” said Tom Gregor, a Houston lawyer who answers questions on open government from the public through a hotline provided by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas in Austin.

State law does not obligate HISD, or any government entity, to distribute public records during an open meeting.

“But providing public information so people can follow the meeting would be in the spirit of open government,” Gregor said. “Withholding that information seems to serve no other purpose than preventing the public from understanding the information.”

Texas Watchdog requested, during and after the meeting, copies of the same materials that HISD trustees and staff members possessed and referred to throughout the two-and-a-half hour budget workshop. District officials supplied them more than 90 minutes after the meeting’s close.

Board President Mike Lunceford said in an e-mail that it would “probably make it easier for everyone else to understand” if HISD administrators supplied the public with the same documents the board has during open
meetings.

HISD spokesman Jason Spencer said in an e-mail that he and district Chief Financial Officer Melinda Garrett intended “to make sure (reporters) have what you need to follow the conversation. If it's any consolation, I didn't have the documents either.”

Spencer did not reply to an e-mail asking if members of the public would be able to obtain such materials upon request at open HISD meetings.

Garrett apologized for the unavailability of the budget documents.

“Normally we have them,” Garrett said via email Thursday night. “But I was out of town (Wednesday), and apparently wires got crossed between staff members. I think you know that we always provide copies to the public.”

In an interview with Texas Watchdog following yesterday’s workshop, Garrett said the district’s projected budget deficit is $53.1 million for 2012-13. Garrett said part of the deficit has been offset by $18.4 million in one-time federal stimulus funds approved by the board in August to balance the budget.

The district received a total of $33 million under President Obama’s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Garrett said.

Trustees are considering a range of scenarios, including a 4-cent property-tax increase in 2013-14 that would put HISD in the black by about $160,000. Without that increase, HISD projects it would run a $41 million deficit that year.

“The tax increase is what would happen next budget cycle if the state does not change the funding,” Lunceford said.

HISD officials have discussed a tax hike up to 4 cents since at least last year, when trustees chose not to raise taxes.

A 4-cent tax rate increase would increase the bill for a home valued at $197,408 by about $57 per year.

District residents currently pay the lowest property taxes of all 21 Harris County school districts, HISD officials say. District officials charge residents a tax rate of $1.1567 per $100 of taxable value.

Trustees are weighing whether to give teachers with 10 or fewer years of experience a raise of 2.25 percent and those with more than 10 years a raise of 1.75 percent. HISD officials granted some teachers a raise during the 2010-11 academic year.

Garrett said a final budget proposal from HISD staff would be complete within days.

Board members are scheduled to adopt the 2012-13 budget on June 14 during their regular monthly meeting.

Whatever the board decides, next year’s budget is projected to be tens of millions of dollars lower than this year’s $1.58 billion budget.

***
Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

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Photo 'Budget' by flickr user Tax Credits, used via a Creative Commons license.

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Taxpayers are footing more than $83 million a year in rent for federal agencies in Texas that use less than half of the space they pay for.

This expenditure of many millions of dollars for empty space here and across the country is brought to you by the General Services Administration. You might remember them best as the hosts of the $800,000 mind-reading, Barolo-braised, commemorative medal-awarding conference in Las Vegas that prompted director Martha Johnson to resign.

Washington Examiner data editor Jennifer Peebles, former investigative reporter and editor with Texas Watchdog, today captures in loving detail this latest expression of the GSA’s strategic goal “to use data, evidence, and analysis to support decisions that wring out inefficiencies in operations.”

The GSA’s Public Buildings Service has under management at least 2,000 properties nationwide that are less than 10 percent occupied at a total annual rent of $600 million, 167 of those with a combined rent of $27.7 million in Texas, the Examiner study showed.

Taxpayers are paying $13 million a year for 189 rentals across the country that are less than 1 percent occupied, including an unoccupied 24,000 square-foot space in Fort Lauderdale at $1 million a year. Texas has 11 of these properties toting up more than $430,000 a year in rent.

In all, taxpayers pay $250 million a year in rent for 545 properties in Texas, 292 or almost 54 percent of them less than half occupied at the more than $83 million cost, the Examiner study showed. Sixteen of those half-full properties have rents of $1 million or more a year.

Of that total, 247 properties at a total annual rent of $61.7 million are less than a quarter occupied, 167 of them under 10 percent (viewable in map below) and 103 of them less than 5 percent occupied. (View a list or a searchable database of all properties in Texas.)

Crown jewel among the under-occupied is the swankriffic Fountain Place in Dallas where the Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 staff has its offices. According to the GSA, taxpayers pay $4.8 million a year in rent for the federal government to use 24 percent of the space.

At shimmering 919 Milam St. in Houston the U.S. Attorney’s office reports a 21 percent occupancy at a $3.3 million annual rent. This might be because at least some of the U.S. Attorney’s office staff has already moved to Wells Fargo Plaza.

The Department of Health and Human Services and the Social Security Administration have offices in the prime downtown office building at 1301 Young St. in Dallas. The rent, $2.3 million a year, also covers 81.4 percent of unused office space.

And in the hope of setting an example, the General Services Administration itself has a space less than 1 percent occupied at 333 Clay St. in Houston, a rental steal at $322,100 a year.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo of the sign for building at 333 Clay St. in Houston by Trent Seibert.

Campaign finance reports can be a treasure of information about a candidate at any level of office. Almost across the board, if you run for an elected office, you have to file the form, which details your donors and your expenditures.

The forms are generally kept by the governmental body that holds the election. Most school districts keep their board member filings. The county elections office will have many of the county offices, from commissioner and justices of the peace to the county clerk. In some cases, the clerk may keep the records. State candidates file theirs with the Texas Ethics Commission.

Ask around before you go to make sure. Start at the county elections office.

There can be problems, though, in gaining access to these forms.

We recently went to the offices of the Tarrant Regional Water District and asked to inspect the campaign finance forms for board candidates. The receptionist told us, yes, they had the reports. But the person who was in charge of such things, someone named Rachel, was out of the office. I advised that I did need access to these in accordance with the law.

The burden is on that body to make arrangements to make these available to the public. Rachel was reached on her cell phone and told me I would have to file an open records request. That was incorrect; no open records request is needed.  We told her we were only in town for the week and wanted to see the records now. A request would wind through legal and would give the district an opportunity to stall, perhaps by asking questions for “clarity.” It’s a common practice often designed to force the public to give up.

Rachel said she would mail the records to us, confirming that strategy.

We contacted the district’s custodian of records and its legal counsel to advise of Rachel’s mistake and attempt to thwart the public’s inspection of these records. In the letter, we cited two pieces of law, both from the Texas Election Code.

The first was 1.012:

PUBLIC INSPECTION OF ELECTION RECORDS.  (a) Subject to Subsection (b), an election record that is public information shall be made available to the public during the regular business hours of the record's custodian.

(b)  For the purpose of safeguarding the election records or economizing the custodian's time, the custodian may adopt reasonable rules limiting public access.

We also cited 254.0402, which actually makes it clear that an open records request is not needed to examine the finance reports.

PUBLIC INSPECTION OF REPORTS. (a) Notwithstanding Section 552.222(a), Government Code, the authority with whom a report is filed under this chapter may not require a person examining the report to provide any information or identification.

The office was kindly accommodating after our note, and we got our documents.

That said, no apology was given for the attempt to turn back the public. Ignorance, we’ve heard, is no excuse.

One more thing; Had we actually accommodated Rachel and filed an open records request, access to those forms would have had to be given “promptly,” seeing that the receptionist already confirmed that the records were on premises.

The state Attorney general’s Web site states, “the governmental body must "promptly" produce public information in response to your request. "Promptly" means that a governmental body may take a reasonable amount of time to produce the information, which varies depending on the facts in each case. The amount of information you have requested is highly relevant to what makes for a reasonable response time.”

The district would have drawn a complaint for withholding the records.

These public records and campaign finance reports enable an informed electorate. Don’t let poorly trained bureaucrats deter you from getting the information you need.

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

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Given the track record (pun most certainly intended) of the investors who brought Formula One to Austin, the public is going to have to file an open records request to find out how the first race in November came out.

The Austin American-Statesman this week filed a request with a Travis County district judge to release financial information about the $300 million F1 track included in a lawsuit filed by the former head of the project against several of the investors.

Texas Watchdog has for two years tracked the Statesman’s noble effort to make public the involvement of state and local governments and the use of tax money in the deal.

Two district judges have already decided after hearings to allow certain information to be sealed in the lawsuit filed in March by Tavo Hellmund and Full Throttle Productions against Bobby Epstein, chairman of Circuit of the Americas, and other investors.

Lawyers for Circuit of the Americas asked that the information be sealed because it would expose business practices they believe should remain confidential. Attorneys for Hellmund want the records opened.

The public has a right to know everything in the lawsuit because taxpayers are heavily invested in the project, John Bridges, the newspaper’s managing editor, said in the story.

Travis County taxpayers, whether they liked it or not, signed on to fund two road expansions made necessary by the track. Investors could also be eligible for $250 million in state taxpayer money over 10 years if the track meets certain state sales tax goals.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo 'Formula One World Championship' by flickr user varlen, used via a Creative Commons license.

Issa Dadoush presented a letter to his boss on Monday that excoriated the ways Houston public schools officials conducted their business operations, then resigned. Effective immediately.

“I have addressed my concerns several times with no avail,” wrote Dadoush, who had been head of the Houston Independent School District’s construction and facility services since April 1, 2010.

He wrote his supervisor, HISD Chief Operating Officer Leo Bobadilla, that the district’s “bureaucratic and gatekeeping philosophy” is “not sustainable,” “inefficient” and “exhausting.”

“Our limitations on communicating directly with all stakeholders, including Trustees and other cabinet members, have made it impossible to move this Department to the next level of performance efficiency,” Dadoush wrote. “The ‘muzzle’ that was ordered on me and other department heads has made it impossible to do our jobs effectively.”

Dadoush said this morning that he had no comment. Throughout his tenure, Dadoush had been accessible and responsive in answering questions from Texas Watchdog.

Superintendent Terry Grier said via email that he “enjoyed (his) working relationship with Issa.” Grier declined to respond to Dadoush’s critique of HISD, saying that he does not “comment on personnel issues.”

HISD board President Mike Lunceford said in an e-mail that “Mr. Dadoush was very well qualified for his position and will be missed. I am asking the Superintendent to review Mr. Dadoush’s comments carefully because in all resignation letters there is always some truth to their concerns.”

District parent Mary Hintikka was not happy to hear Dadoush had departed.

“Issa Dadoush has contributed to much needed positive change in HISD,” Hintikka wrote in a Wednesday letter to Trustee Harvin Moore and Lunceford. “I know LEED-certified architects in the community who say Mr. Dadoush was a leader in bringing green sustainable design and best practices to the City of Houston. It's my understanding he has helped to inject this much needed, overdue vision into HISD. … However, the politics, policies and practices of closed-door communication across the district is seriously problematic and impedes that vision greatly.”

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a system for measuring the sustainability of buildings used by engineers, builders and designers.

Dadoush summed up one paragraph in which he identified several structural shortcomings: “The bottom line, ‘we are spinning our wheels.’”

Grier announced Dadoush’s and Bobadilla’s hirings two years ago in the same posting on HISD’s website.

“(Dadoush’s) extensive experience will be valuable to HISD, as he will be leading the district's maintenance and operations, grounds, utility management, custodial services, and property management—all of which are important to creating a high-quality learning environment at every HISD school,” Grier said in the announcement.

Prior to accepting his position at HISD, Dadoush was director of general services for the city of Houston. He oversaw facilities management there as well.

Bobadilla held a position comparable to COO at Guilford County Schools in North Carolina. Bobadilla and Grier worked together in North Carolina.

Dadoush steps down as district leaders consider whether to put a bond referendum to the voters for new school construction and renovations. Grier floated that idea earlier this year.

“HISD is currently gearing up for the bond program work to be done over the summer at schools, and I hope this does not cause any setbacks or major problems,” Lunceford said.

The Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that advocates educating “all urban school students to the highest academic standards,” applauded HISD in May 2010 for hiring Dadoush. Council auditors had conducted a review of the district’s construction and facility services to offer ways HISD officials could make improvements.

***
Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

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