State House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum says he didn’t list his $600-a-month legislative salary on his 2007 personal financial disclosure form because he doesn’t believe “in the truest sense of the word” that he’s an employee of the state.
But he also said he’d call the state Ethics Commission and ask for clarification on it. [...]
Calling all bloggers in Houston and the surrounding area: Do you ever blog about local politics? How about your kid’s school? Or new roads that you think need to be built to your town? Or a pollution problem in your neighborhood?
Texas Watchdog wants to help you.
We want to put on a meetup — an informal, [...]
Confused by the race for House speaker? Our map lifts the veil on the candidates jostling for the job as well as other key players. We highlight one of those players — Appropriations Chairman Warren Chisum — who failed to disclose salary information, according to the documents we showcase via our map.
You might have seen our story last week on how some 1,700-plus state workers made $100,000 or more in 2007. We paired with it a database of those workers’ names and total pay amounts.
I couldn’t help but notice that the state comptroller’s office’s “Where the Money Goes” Web site — which shows you, for instance, [...]
Several of the largest donors to the efforts to rebuild the burned structure also have business before the state government and its regulatory arms, a Texas Watchdog analysis has found. Others giving big bucks include the CEO of H.E.B., and music stars George Strait and LeAnn Rimes are contributing their star power.
Should public employees’ home addresses be public record?
Texas Watchdog says yes. But a state lawmaker has pre-filed a bill for the upcoming legislative session that looks like it would make state workers’ home addresses, and other information, confidential.
Public employees don’t like us journalists snooping in their businesses, knowing where they live or their phone [...]
Thank goodness for freedom of information laws. Without them, there’s all kinds of stuff we wouldn’t know.
Without them, folks in Detroit wouldn’t know about all the shady deals their (now-former) mayor was doing. Americans wouldn’t know much of what they know about what’s going on at Guantanamo Bay. And here at home, Texans wouldn’t [...]
From the Star-Telegram:
A former Farmers Branch City Council member is suing her city for not complying with the state’s freedom of information law.
Carol Dingman filed suit in a state civil court in Dallas on Wednesday, demanding the city produce legal bills that the state Attorney General ordered must be turned over. Instead of producing the [...]
Texas Watchdog is launching today a searchable database of state employees who made $100,000 or more in 2007.
The analysis includes the employees’ salaries, bonuses, longevity pay, overtime and other payouts. It does not include employees of the state’s higher education systems, whose records are somewhat separate from the rest of the state’s.
Why? It’s important that [...]
More than 1,700 state workers made six figures or more in total pay in 2007, according to a new Texas Watchdog analysis of state records. Search our database of workers making $100,000 or more. We found that nearly 1,000 state workers make more than the governor and we found five state workers who climbed onto the list by raking in tens-of-thousands of dollars in overtime.
When you go to Rep. Kino Flores’ campaign Web site, you hear a sound file of Flores talking, saying “It is better to give than to receive.” Does that explain the fishing cabin on South Padre?
No, I know what you’re thinking now that you’ve read the headline: A bunch of city councilmembers probably wanted to have a meeting at a Whataburger.
No, not quite.
The Whataburger chain’s corporate leaders are considering moving their headquarters from Corpus Christi to San Antonio. Some Corpus councilmen wanted to discuss that at a meeting, but it’s [...]
People across Houston have been speculating about Democratic Mayor Bill White’s political future — and now they know. He’s eyeing the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, if she steps down to challenge current governor Rick Perry.
From the Houston Chronicle:
In considering his future in recent weeks, White said a number of Texans [...]
Written on December 13, 2008 | Posted in
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Public records show that the head of a troubled Fort Worth public hospital earned nearly $800,000 in salary and benefits in the last fiscal year, the Star-Telegram reported today.
It’s hard to forget the Star-Telegram’s excellent investigative series from earlier this year about JPS hospital, with its descriptions of poor patient care that get in your [...]
State Comptroller Susan Combs‘ Open Book Texas and Texas Transparency Check-Up sites are getting pats on the back from no less an authority than the Sunlight Foundation, a DC-based nonprofit committed to government transparency:
Everything about this project is fantastic. Of course, the next step is to make these sites more interactive and more supportive [...]
It sure piqued my curiosity a few weeks ago when I read that someone wanted a whole bunch of information about Texas A&M-Corpus Christi’s athletic programs, and the state attorney general’s office had to weigh in on whether those records were public. (You might remember that we included this request on our recent interactive map [...]
The Dallas Morning News used records gleaned via the state’s Public Information Act to show the cost of verifying signatures on a petition to stop the hotel.
The Texas Faculty Association has sued the University of Texas’ regents, alleging that the board broke the state open meetings law when it voted to layoff scads of people at the university’s Medical Branch in Galveston, The Chronicle is reporting.
From the story by Harvey Rice:
“Important public decisions are being made in secret for reasons nobody [...]
We’re awfully grateful for the shout out from the editorial board at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram — and they’re right: lawmakers’ personal financial disclosure forms should be available in a searchable database.
Bexar County will begin posting campaign finance reports online, the San Antonio Express-News reports.
Open government is big part of our mission here at Texas Watchdog, and our story (and map) today are just our latest project. We’ve posted online the financial disclosure forms for state lawmakers and Houston city council members, and we’ve got more to come.
Here at Thanksgiving, we’re certainly thankful for Texas’ open records law. But many of the exemptions to the law are real turkeys, including one that allows records to be held if they’re deemed “intimate or embarrassing” to the people involved. Texas Watchdog takes a look at some of the public records people have asked to see in Texas lately and what the state attorney general’s office has said about whether they can see them — and we’ve plotted them on a map.
