Special reports

Highest-paid Texas state employees

Published Dec. 16, 2008
More than 1,700 state employees made more than $100,000 in total pay in calendar year 2007, according to a Texas Watchdog review of state pay records from the state comptroller’s office. Search our database and read our story.

Dead voters may have cast ballots in Dallas County

Published Oct. 30, 2008
More than 6,000 registered voters in Dallas County had personal information — names and dates of birth — that matches that found in federal listings of deceased people. Texas Watchdog identified the records by reviewing the Social Security Administration’s death records alongside the Dallas County voter rolls.

Ballots cast in Houston using dead voters’ names

Published Oct. 9, 2008
Linda Kay Hill of Woodwick Street is among the more than 4,000 people whose names are listed both on Harris County’s voter rolls and also in a federal database of death records, a Texas Watchdog analysis found.

Public can take closer look at legislators’ finances via interactive map

Published Oct. 22, 2008
Texas lawmakers’ personal financial disclosure forms are public record, but they’re not usually available online — the state Ethics Commission collects them and scans them in, but does not post them on its Web site. But Texas Watchdog is making the 2008 forms of all the incumbent state legislators and several other state officials available today on its Web site, www.texaswatchdog.org. The forms cover the 2007 calendar year.

Houston money-man had deep connections to Bush

Published Aug. 24, 2008
For weeks now, the White House has had a consistent message about Texas politico Stephen Payne: We don’t know him that well. He doesn’t really work for us. And we certainly didn’t tell him to do what he did — offer foreign governments access to the White House in return for contributions to President Bush’s presidential library.

But Stephen Payne has a long relationship with George W. Bush, dating back even before Bush’s tenure as Texas governor, going back to when the future president was managing general partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, according to documents obtained by Texas Watchdog.

The bumbling Baron: Lawyer stumbles over role in Edwards’ sex scandal

Dallas trial attorney Fred Baron can’t get his story straight: What role did he play in defusing the simmering drama of presidential candidate John Edwards’ extramarital affair with a new age filmmaker who wound up pregnant?