FORT WORTH, Texas - The man standing in front of the Fort Worth campaign office of Domingo Garcia, a candidate for the 33rd congressional district, snapping cell phone photos was suspicious. Or was he?
It’s hardly an act of subterfuge, although a male campaign aide hurried out the office door to question the man.
“What’s going on?” he asked amiably. Once he discerned no threat, he demurred.
“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t from another campaign,” he said apologetically.
That’s the tenor of a jammed May 29 Democratic primary in North Texas, where 11 candidates are vying for a spot in Washington. With no incumbent, the newly created district has sparked a somewhat furious competition for the right to compete at the next level, the anticipated July 31 runoff between the top two vote getters. In the Democrat-heavy district, the runoff winner is expected to go to Washington.
The pair expected to make the runoff are two state representatives, one former and one sitting. Garcia, a personal injury lawyer, served in the statehouse from 1996 to 2002, while state Rep. Marc Veasey, a real estate agent, has served since 2004.
The two are playing like rivals, accusing and alleging while vowing to be the man of the people.
Marc Veasey
Veasey recently headed over to the gates of a General Motors plant in the district and called out Garcia for claiming that GM was making gas-consuming products that were “not good for America.”
Garcia responded with a letter to supporters in which he called Veasey an “errand boy” for special interests.
GM is among Veasey’s donors. Of course, Garcia’s donor list includes people working for operations that others might consider not so good for America, among them MGM-Mirage and the big-lawyer American Association for Justice. The two have pecked away at each other for months, leaving local Democrats with a disheveled appearance.
“The Democrats haven’t even formed a coalition,” said Chuck Bradley, one of two candidates on the Republican side of the 33rd district primary. “They don’t like each other at all. And they’re beating each other to death and trying to save money at the same time.”
Both candidates pointed in separate interviews to the new seat with no incumbent as the reason for the personal attacks.
The opponent bashing “is one of those things that happens,” said Veasey. “This is a new seat with a lot of people vying, and for some candidates, being able to control their temperament is tough."
Domingo Garcia
Garcia agreed, at least on the first point.
“Whenever you have an open seat with 11 candidates and no incumbent, it’s going to be a free-for-all,” he admitted.
Veasey and Garcia are as seasoned as it gets in the new district, which weaves through Tarrant and Dallas counties like a Democratic voter-seeking missile. Some claim that the race puts Hispanic voters, for Garcia, versus black voters, for Veasey.
To that, both immediately launch into their cross-racial support. Garcia notes he attended the Thurgood Marshall School of Law and is backed by Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins, a black man.
Veasey said, “I don’t see the racial issue at all. I have a lot of Hispanic supporters, and my current [state] district is 35 percent Latino.”
The best candidate will be determined by his campaigning abilities, and so far, no one is winning. In fact it’s painfully obvious neither has D.C. experience, as they bicker over old and petty county rivalries.
And then there’s the paucity of dollars spent.
Veasey reported $104,983 on hand in his most recent filing. Among his contributors: Amber Anderson, wife of super Dem contributor Steve Mostyn; former Fort Worth Mayor Kenneth Barr; Aimee Boone, an exec with Planned Parenthood in Dallas; and Charles Butt, CEO of the H-E-B grocery chain.
And he already has a knack for higher office; in 2007 Veasey spent $4,738 in campaign money to redecorate his office in Austin.
Veasey has been a member of committees on pensions, elections, law enforcement, state affairs and several others in his four sessions at the statehouse.
Among his successful legislation is a measure allowing county commissioners to authorize the destruction of so-called high-emission vehicles rather than selling them and another naming a highway in his district after Martin Luther King Jr.
In the 2009 session, Veasey introduced 53 bills, 28 of them resolutions honoring an individual or group or commemorating an occasion. It was an improvement over 2006, when Veasey authored 47 bills, 46 of them resolutions.
Garcia, a personal injury lawyer, has scored some super PAC dough already, $2,500 from the American Association for Political Justice PAC. He loaned himself $300,000 for the run and reported $241,003 cash on hand in his most recent filing.
He is infamous for his temper, which was ignited recently when the Dallas Morning News announced it was recommending Veasey in the primary.
He fired off an angry email to his supporters accusing Veasey of “promoting Republican priorities.”
In the statehouse, Garcia served on criminal jurisprudence and judicial affairs committees. Among his successful legislation: A bill making it a felony to photograph a non-consenting party for a sexual purpose and a bill increasing the penalty for tampering with standardized tests from a misdemeanor to a felony.
Both candidates concur on a couple of issues that they would deal with in Washington. On earmarks, Veasey said, “It’s every congressman’s responsibility to advocate for local jobs … but there needs to be transparency in earmarks.”
Garcia was equally accepting: “If there are clear guidelines, it’s a good way to get economic development to various parts of America. “
And despite the battle of words, each will vote for the other in November if it comes down to it.
“I have always supported the Democratic nominee,” Garcia said.
"I've always voted straight Democratic ticket, and that’s what I plan to do in the fall,” Veasey said.
The difficulty of running as a conservative outsider in a state with an already conservative congressional delegation is no better explained than in the primary race in District 10.
Eddie Traylor, a retired Air Force and commercial pilot from Cedar Park who has never before run for elected office, was chosen for support from Get Out of Our House to face U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul. McCaul is seeking a fifth two-year term.
This modest non-profit group is working to root incumbents out of the U.S. House of Representatives, a mission not unlike the Houston Super Pac Campaign for Primary Accountability.
The chief difference between the two groups is money. Campaign for Primary Accountability has been credited with spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to help insurgents to primary upsets in Ohio and most recently Pennsylvania.
Get Out of Our House has asked Campaign officials for money on behalf of Traylor. Instead, the group announced it would focus funding to help two Democrats defeat Rep. Silvestre Reyes in West Texas’ District 16 and Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson in District 30 in Dallas County.
McCaul raised $885,000 in the first quarter of this year, according to the latest Federal Election Commission figures. Traylor raised $6,949 during the same period. McCaul had $362,000 on hand for that period, Traylor $1,110.
Should McCaul defeat Traylor in the May 29 primary, he should have little trouble in the general election. In 2010 McCaul won 76.3 percent of the vote to Democrat Ted Ankrum’s 22.3 percent.
Tawana Cadien, running in this year’s Democratic primary raised no money in the first quarter. William Miller Jr., who also raised nothing in the first quarter of the year, remains in the race although he has ceded campaigning to Cadien, according to the left-leaning Burnt Orange Report.
Traylor, 64, says he understands that to mount a challenge to McCaul in a heavily conservative district running from Austin east to the suburbs of Houston voters are going to need to know his few simple positions.
If elected and reelected, Traylor will not accept a third term. He would work to see term limits placed on the House and the Senate. From the moment he took office Traylor says he would trim his congressional staff to 12 from the 18 now allowed House members..
After serving in office, Traylor says he pledges never to return to Washington as a lobbyist.
“I plan to stay two terms. I won’t have the time to be timid or to be bought off,” Traylor says. “I intend to go there to be a leader. I’m absolutely confounded that there are no individuals making a difference in Congress.”
Traylor also takes issue with McCaul’s vote for the National Defense Authorization Act, in that it contains sections 1021 and 1022 giving the president broad powers to detain people in the name of fighting terrorism.
Defenders of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution take issue with with this and a variety of Homeland Security powers ceded to the chief executive following 9/11. McCaul has played key roles on the House Committee on Homeland Security, the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
“Those sections of the National Defense Authorization Act turn the Bill of Rights and the Constitution on their heads,” Traylor says.
Texas Watchdog asked for McCaul’s response to this criticism as part of a request to discuss his positions for this story. Although his spokesman, Mike Rosen received the request, he failed to respond to it, except to say that McCaul was busy.
McCaul’s voting record makes him one of the most conservative members of the House, according to the respected vote-tracking website, govtrack.us
And he was among the first and most staunch House Republicans to renounce and refuse to pursue federally funded projects or earmarks for his district. McCaul and other Republicans took a pledge in 2008, objecting to projects being added to the annual appropriations bill without knowing who sponsored those projects and without being able to vote on them individually.
Last August, Roll Call reported that McCaul was the richest man in Congress, with an estimated net worth of nearly $300 million. McCaul, Roll Call says, has been the beneficiary of family money generated by Clear Channel Communications, whose chairman, Lowry Mays, is the father and whose CEO, Mark Mays, is the brother of McCaul’s wife, Linda.
*** Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.
With claims of a mass land grab by his opponent that would result in a glut of displaced locals, a fair political question could be posed: Is U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes getting desperate?
The Texas Democrat is facing his most formidable challenge since his 1996 election from primary challenger Beto O’Rourke, an upstart politico who married into the family of a prolific and well-heeled developer.
Reyes most recently told a gathering that O’Rourke favors an international bridge from El Paso to Juárez, Mexico, that would take the homes of up to 5,000 families.
O’Rourke countered that he had no such idea but also maintains a bridge is needed to remedy backups and bolster international trade.
The bridge has been discussed over the years although what drives the recent debate is partly politics from Reyes – he is seizing on an opportunity - and a report from the Texas Department of Transportation that supports a new bridge. Wait times to cross the border hit two hours at times, demand is growing and failure to address the need will impact the region’s economy, the June 2011 study points out.
Reyes, seeking his ninth term, sent out a mailer that claimed O’Rourke and supporters including his father-in-law, developer William Sanders, would “bulldoze entire neighborhoods” for a new international bridge.
The election dirt-tossing by Reyes angered Ted Houghton, chair of the Texas Transportation Commission, enough for Houghton to make a public comment, calling the displacing of families notion "ludicrous.”
Houghton, an appointee of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, has not donated to Reyes or O’Rourke.
O’Rourke pointed out that Reyes made his accusations at a community meeting called by the Ysleta school district superintendent. Reyes’ sister-in-law, Martha Reyes, is a trustee in the district. Rep. Reyes contributed $1,000 to Martha Reyes’ 2008 campaign fund, according to a report from Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington. The timing and Yselta-Reyes connection is examined here.
The Reyes campaign did not return calls.
Reyes is among the incumbents targeted by the Houston-based super PAC Campaign for Primary Accountability, which has been turning primaries upside down with generous ad spends either supporting challengers or against entrenched powers like Reyes. CPA has received money from a group connected to William Sanders, O'Rourke's father-in-law.
Last week's historic ouster of veteran U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, by state treasurer Richard Mourdock was done with the support of the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks, two D.C.-based groups that favor smaller government.
Silvestre Reyes
The Reyes-O’Rourke District 16 contest is close; a recent poll published by the El Paso Times has it 39 to 32 percent in favor of Reyes. Early voting begins May 14 and runs through the 25. Election day is May 29.
The bridge issue in El Paso has been in discussion for years, with a separate bridge already under construction.
It bears similarity to an international bridge controversy in Michigan, where Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has been pressing to build a new bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. Snyder first tried a legislative end-around via Democrats in the statehouse, but was thwarted by his own party.
Anti-bridge factions in Detroit targeted property owners in affected sections of towns to gin up opposition by handing out fake eviction notices.
In the El Paso district, the two leading Democrats have been swatting at each other over a number of issues. Reyes at times has sounded like a big-government Republican when attacking O’Rourke in a campaign mailer for refusing to give tax breaks to businesses and suggesting he might be chummy with a Tea Party platform or two.
"Mr. O'Rourke would have sided with Tea Party extremists willing to shut down the government and put everything on the chopping block -- veterans' benefits, Social Security benefits, Medicare, Head Start, financial aid, etc.," the mailer claimed. Reyes’ campaign Web site uses a graphic in an attempt to link O’Rourke to conservative groups.
Beto O'Rourke
O’Rourke said that while he is “certainly not a Republican,” he didn’t put himself in a narrow political category. He noted that he’s challenged the wisdom of the drug war, fought for the rights of lesbians, gays and transgendered people and supported a mass transit plan in El Paso.
“But I’m also someone who considers himself a fiscal conservative,” he said.
O’Rourke continues the primary contender favorite of using the past to project the future for his opponent.
Reyes, in fact, was missing from a Sunday event for various candidates in the region.
"Reyes has not faced a challenger like this in 16 years," said Gregory Rocha, an assistant professor of political science at University of Texas-El Paso. As a former city council member, O'Rourke's grasp of the issues is "tremendous."
Reyes' attempt to paint O'Rourke as a Republican is the biggest political slam one can deliver in the Democratic-heavy district, Rocha said, as the winner of the primary is assured to win the election. O'Rourke's bigger challenge, though, is voter turnout. He's the young candidate who needs strong support at the polls from the youth vote, which doesn't turn out in grew numbers.
"We've seen candidates do it before," Rocha said. "They'll come out."
Whether the numbers will send O'Rourke to Washington is a political guess at this point.
Redistricting in a time of political discontent has made for robust democracy in races for U.S. Congress in Texas.
A dozen Republican candidates rushed into newly created District 36 in East Texas; 12 in a Central Texas District 25 redrawn for Republicans; and nine in the coastal District 14 Rep. Ron Paul is leaving.
Eleven Democrats are clawing their way to the May 29 primary in the new Democratic District 33 in the Dallas area. Eight are running in the new District 34 at Texas’ southern tip.
Challengers are testing 16 of the 22 incumbent Republicans and half of the eight sitting Democrats up for re-election in 2012. Longtime and popular Republican Reps. Joe Barton, Ralph Hall and Lamar Smith and Democratic Reps. Lloyd Doggett, Ruben Hinojosa, Eddie Bernice Johnson and Silvestre Reyes have multiple primary opponents.
Please see a list of all the Democratic candidates running for Congress here. You can find the complete list of Republicans here.
But for all of the acrid political turmoil in the creation of four new congressional districts and a protracted fight over boundaries that made its way to the Supreme Court and back, the makeup of the Texas delegation to Congress is not likely to change dramatically, Steve Bickerstaff says.
Bickerstaff is an election and redistricting expert at the University of Texas School of Law. His 2007 book, Lines in the Sand, is a study of congressional redistricting in Texas in 2003.
The interim congressional map, which has yet to get its federal approval, is a compromise product of overreach by a heavily Republican state Legislature legally entitled to draw boundaries as favorably as possible for Republicans, Bickerstaff says.
“All partisanship aside, the congressional map approved by the Legislature was of questionable legality,” Bickerstaff says. “It isn’t up to courts to decide what is fair. It is up to the courts to correct that questionable legality. Within the bounds of the Voting Rights Act, the Republicans did the best they could.”
Sherri Greenberg
This give and take is most apparent in the drawing of the four new congressional districts. District 36 has 12 Republican candidates and just one Democrat, including State Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, the only candidate from either party with any government experience above the local level.
District 33, on the other hand, was drawn with its Dallas-area African-American and Hispanic voting majority in mind, Sherri Greenberg, director of the Center for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, says.
Little surprise, then, that state Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, an African-American, and Hispanic Dallas attorney Domingo Garcia have emerged as favorites from among the 11 Democrats running. The winner will almost certainly beat one of the three Republicans in that primary.
Hispanic voters in District 34 are likely to be represented by one of the eight Democrats in the primary. One of them, Armando Villalobos, the Cameron County district attorney, has pledged to go on with his bid in spite of having been indicted in connection with a series of briberies involving convicted former District Judge Abel Limas.
Less than two weeks before his arrest, Villalobos told the Brownsville Herald that he had experienced a dramatic drop in his campaign fundraising because of the "wackiness" of the primary.
Brownsville attorney Filemon Vela, whose late father was a U.S. district judge and mother the former mayor of Brownsville, is the favorite to represent a district stretching from the southeastern tip of Texas to the southern half of Gonzales County.
District 35 would also seem to favor a Democrat, Lloyd Doggett, of Austin, who is seeking his 10th two-year term in Congress. Doggett has so far vastly outraised and outspent Sylvia Romo, the Bexar County tax assessor.
But the state agreed to a district drawn to give Hispanic voters a 63 percent majority, giving a boost to Romo and Maria Luisa Alvarado, an overlooked political unknown when she ran for lieutenant governor in 2006.
In addition, the Legislature drew Doggett out of his original and neighboring District 25, which has drawn a very conservative slate of 12 Republicans, including former Railroad Commission chairman Michael Williams and former Secretary of State Roger Williams.
The winner is expected to beat unopposed Democratic primary candidate Elaine Henderson in November.
Robert Bickerstaff
“To the mostly white, liberal voters in Travis County what was done to Lloyd Doggett was totally unfair,” Bickerstaff says. “That wasn’t the issue. The Voting Rights Act and what was legal for a district with a predominantly minority makeup was the issue.”
Legislative mapmakers also stretched the Gulf of Mexico District 27 pulling in voters almost to Travis County. The subtle changes were made to help Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi, in what remains a swing district.
Farenthold scored one of the significant victories in the 2010 election knocking off Solomon Ortiz, a Democrat who had spent 28 years in Congress, but by just 799 votes. He had been outspent by more than two to one.
Farenthold is now the favorite, facing three Republican challengers with no political experience and relatively little money. (Please see the Federal Election Commission chart for all of the candidates for Congress in Texas by searching here.) Should he win he will face a similarly inexperienced and underfunded Democratic challenger chosen from among four in the primary.
On the other side of the state redistricting produced what is likely to be the most interesting congressional race this year in Texas. Political mavens are salivating over the possibility that recently minted Republican U.S. Rep. Francisco “Quico” Canseco will have to defend his seat for the 48,000 square mile District 23 from a challengeby longtime state Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine.
But first Gallego is going to have to shake free of two Democratic primary challengers, one of them Ciro Rodriguez, who was beaten after serving two terms by Canseco. Gallego had raised nearly $600,000 through the first quarter of 2012 and Rodriguez less than $200,000.
Gallego is a clear favorite to face Canseco, who is unopposed in the Republican primary. After that, Bickerstaff says you can expect a close race in a district that gave Canseco a win in 2010 with less than 50 percent of the vote and which favored Barack Obama for president by 51-48 percent in 2008.
Political cartography has failed to quell bipartisan unrest. Months before redistricting went to court, grassroots Tea Party members promised to shake up a rather deeply entrenched Republican congressional delegation, considered by many outside of the state to be one of the most conservative in the country.
In April, the Campaign for Primary Accountability, a Houston political action committee, promised to help fund challengers to four longtime Texas incumbents it says have outworn their welcome. They are Republican Reps. Ralph Hall and Joe Barton and Democrats Eddie Bernice Johnson and Silvestré Reyes.
Of those on the Campaign’s target list, Johnson faces the toughest challenge, maybe the toughest primary challenge in her 10-term career representing the overwhelmingly Democratic 30th District in Dallas County.
Taj Clayton, a Harvard-educated Dallas lawyer who has never run for political office, has raised nearly $400,000, about $60,000 less than Johnson. Johnson’s other Democratic opponent is Barbara Mallory Caraway, who has represented Dallas for three terms in the state House of Representatives.
Reyes, who has served eight terms representing El Paso County’s District 16, is feeling heat from one of those challengers, Beto O’Rourke, a political newcomer who with the Campaign’s help raised nearly $400,000 in the first quarter of the year.
Reyes, having bankrolled more than $900,000, is spending the money on a campaign to warn voters of O’Rourke’s support for another international bridge for the region and the possible displacement of thousands of families if it is built.
O’Rourke has derided Reyes’ ads as uninformed scare tactics.
Rep. Joe Barton, who is seeking his 14th term serving District 6 south of Dallas, has drawn three opponents, and two of them, Joe Chow, the former mayor of Addison, and Itamar Gelbman, a former member of the Israeli Army, have raised more than $150,000 each.
Rep. Lamar Smith joined Barton on both of those lists, but it is unlikely he will be damaged by it. Smith, seeking an eighth term to represent a Central Texas district north of San Antonio, had more than $1.3 million in cash while neither of his two Republican primary challengers had raised more than $25,000.
Democratic Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, on both of those lists as well, is probably as safe as Smith in spite of drawing four challengers in the Democratic primary and four in the Republican primary.
Hinojosa has served seven terms in the largely rural, Democratic 15th District adjacent to District 34 on the state’s southern tip.
And while it isn’t likely to shift the balance of power in the Texas congressional delegation, the addition of Jefferson County to a redrawn District 14 and the withdrawal of Rep. Paul has attracted nine Republicans and two Democrats to the primary.
Randy Weber, of Pearland, completing his second term as one of the most conservative members of the Texas House, is the only one of the nine Republican primary candidates with legislative experience.
But in the first quarter of this year Jay Old, a Beaumont attorney with deep family roots in Jefferson County, raised nearly $200,000 more than Weber and another Beaumont attorney, Michael Truncale, a Tea Party favorite and member of the executive committee of the state Republican Party.
Felicia Harris, a member of the Pearland City Council, has raised more than $200,000.
Each has spent his way to viability.
The wild card in November is Nick Lampson, who is expected to handle political unknown Linda Dailey in the Democratic primary.
Lampson served in the state’s old 9th District for four terms but lost his seat after the Legislature’s 2003 redistricting. He came back to win in a Republican 22nd District, but was beaten in 2008 after a single term.
The question is how much the addition of Democrats from Beaumont might help a Democrat like Lampson in a still heavily Republican district.
Greenberg figures Republicans will probably end up with 26 of the 36 congressional seats in November, with the assumption that three of the four new districts go to Republicans.
Bickerstaff says the keys will be swing Districts 23 and 27. If both of those districts go to Democrats in November, Bickerstaff says that it is possible that after all of the political and legal effort that went into redistricting by the Republicans in the Legislature on the Republicans in Congress Republicans would gain exactly one seat.
Houston ad agency Rehak Creative Services has filed a defamation lawsuit against statehouse candidate Ann Witt, claiming that a Web site where she documents her opponent’s campaign donations amounted to libel of the agency.
A spokeswoman for Witt said that the site, How to Succeed in Government, is fact-based and will not come down. The Witt campaign has not yet filed a response to the claim.
And “there could be more to come,” said Ellen Witt, the daughter of Ann, who is challenging incumbent Jim Murphy in the Republican primary for state representative for the Houston-area District 133. Much of the information on the Web site was also disseminated in a Witt campaign mailer last month.
The portal attacking Murphy chronicles the work of his company, District Management Services, which includes a 2012 contract with Westchase District calling for a monthly fee of $22,491 in addition to other payments for consultancy and an upfront payment of $7,711. His title at the district is general manager, according to the district’s Web site.
The Witt campaign site also outlines the numerous Westchase contracts handed out to Murphy donors, including Rehak Creative Services, whose owner, Robert Rehak, has donated at least $7,000 to Murphy’s campaigns since 2005.
Other contract-holding contributors named on the site include executives with Phonoscope, BMS Management and Brown & Gay Engineers.
“Double Dipping. Skirting the Law. Bilking Taxpayers. Rewarding Cronies,” a banner at the bottom of one page claims in fairly standard attack ad format. The site went live in mid-April.
Rehak claims in its petition filed April 30 in Harris County District Court that the “Succeed” Web site contains a number of “defamatory and illegal statements and references” with regard to Rehak including:
“Material misstatements as to the amount of Rehak’s contributions to Jim Murphy’s campaigns, which were intended to and did create a materially false impression as to timing of such contributions.”
“Materially false allegations of a quid pro quo between Rehak’s contributions and a contract awarded by the Westchase District to RCS."
“Materially false implication that RSC and Rehak were unqualified ‘cronies’ of Representative Murphy, rather than being highly qualified to participate in the competitive bidding process that RCS won” in 2003.
The suit also alleges that the statements were published without an attempt to contact RCS “or attempting to verify the accuracy of the statements.”
“The action is meritless,” Ellen Witt said. “It appears to be an effort by a friend of Jim Murphy trying to discredit the campaign. It’s a flimsy effort to detract from the real issue.”
She added that “most people in this district have not been aware of the enormous salary that he is taking as a government employee and independent contractor. Our government is supposed to be about service, and he’s turned it into a cash cow at the expense of taxpayers.”
She noted that, as the site states, it is illegal for a state legislator to hold a second government job, but the law does not prohibit consultancy work. The site links to a query sent by former state Rep. Joe Nixon to the state Attorney General’s office asking if a legislator may also work as president of a municipal management district. Nixon introduced numerous bills regarding the powers of the Westchase District.
Texas Watchdog reported last month on state Rep. Vicki Truitt's no-bid contracts as a consultant to the public hospital system in Tarrant County.
Patrick Gaas, an attorney representing Rehak, said that the case was not political.
"I don't know Mr. Murphy or Miss Witt, and I personally don't have a dog in that fight," Gaas said. He had sent the defendants a cease and desist letter before filing the petition although the information was already out there via the mailer.
Gaas stressed, as the petition does, that Rehak was contracted before Murphy was elected, therefore the insinuation that Rehak's contributions had anything to do with the contract was false.
A proposal listed on the "Succeed" web site was finalized in May 2007, shortly after Murphy took office. The other documents regarding Rehak are production estimates from 2003.
Murphy did not return calls.
His campaign posted an item on his campaign Web site that claims Witt's attack is "false and easy to disprove" by stating that he was a member of the Westchase district board from 1995 to 1997, "served as the Westchase District President until 2006 and has not been a Westchase District employee since then" and was elected to the statehouse in 2006.
Murphy lost to Democrat Kristi Thibaut in 2008, but bested her 56 to 42 percent in 2010. His victory was due in part, ironically, to a hit job ad by the Republican Party of Texas that linked Thibaut to ACORN, a political third rail at the time.
A civil lawsuit accusing Trustee Larry Marshall of bribery, money laundering, wire fraud and racketeering filed a year-and-a-half ago has cost taxpayers of the Houston Independent School District at least $242,000 in legal fees. HISD officials provided that dollar amount to Texas Watchdog late Friday afternoon. Texas Watchdog had been asking since August for the public records that show how much taxpayer money the district has paid lawyers for Marshall and HISD to fight the allegations. The Gil Ramirez Group LLC, a contractor for Houston’s public schools, sued Marshall and HISD in December 2010 for improper actions they say Marshall took during his 2009 term as school board president. Marshall has repeatedly called the suit baseless.
At nearly a quarter-million dollars, the legal bills so far could pay the salaries of five teachers, then some, at the starting rung of HISD’s pay scale, or about $45,000.
HISD is the nation’s seventh-largest school district, with about a $1.6 billion annual budget and roughly 203,000 students. HISD officials could not provide the law firms’ bills for months because, they said, no records existed that matched the way Texas Watchdog requested the information. Texas Watchdog asked for those bills five different ways from August through March. District officials confirmed in March that Texas Watchdog’s wording in the public records request matched existing documents. They could not explain why HISD did not release the documents to Texas Watchdog until Friday -- nine days after Texas Watchdog filed a complaint with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott arguing that HISD was in violation of the Texas Public Information Act. Texas Watchdog withdrew the complaint after receiving the information.
Marshall's current term on the school board runs through the end of next year. He has not said whether he plans to run for re-election. Marshall is HISD’s longest-serving trustee. He has sat on the board since 1997 and would be 80 on Election Day, 2013. A trial for this suit – which HISD lawyers have requested – could begin by February, Dunn has said. Until November, Thompson & Horton LLC, the firm that has served as the HISD board's legal counsel for two decades, had represented Marshall and HISD. But Marshall then chose to be represented by Jarvis Hollingsworth, a lawyer with the Houston office of the firm Bracewell & Giuliani. Marshall said he made the decision to switch because the two have known each other for decades.
Bracewell & Giuliani have billed HISD at least $139,542.62, according to public records provided by HISD to Texas Watchdog under the Texas Public Information Act. The tab includes a charge of $80.09 for meals on Feb. 22 at the Post Oak Grill, where patrons can enjoy a center cut beef medallion with cognac truffle sauce or seared red spice Asian tuna. District officials supplied the bills from the months of December 2011 through March 2012, inclusive.
Five Bracewell & Giuliani lawyers HISD paid to defend Marshall in the case charged the district a rate of $350 per hour. One lawyer charged $235 an hour. And one paralegal’s time is billed at $260 an hour. Former Houston city attorney Arturo Michel, now of Thompson & Horton, is leading HISD’s defense in the case. Thompson & Horton has billed HISD at least $102,791.45, according to public records. District officials supplied the bills from the months of February 2011 through April 2012, inclusive. Michel charges HISD $175 an hour for his services, according to those bills. Another Thompson & Horton lawyer who has worked on the case, John Hopkins, has charged as high as $225 per hour. U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt is scheduled to rule no later than todaywhether Marshall will have to appear for a deposition on May 29.
Nowhere in Texas has the opportunity presented to Republicans by redistricting been more eagerly embraced than in the newly drawn Congressional District 25.
Twelve candidates running the gamut of political experience and backing will be on the May 29 primary ballot, a division of voters the candidates themselves say is likely to produce a runoff.
Roughly 700,000 people live in District 25. The district is a gentle 200-mile arc of all or parts of 11 Central Texas counties from the western halves of Hays and Travis counties at its southern tip, all of Burnet, Lampasas, Coryell, Hamilton, Bosque and Hill counties, the southern parts of Erath and Somervell counties to Johnson County, just south of Fort Worth.
The Texas Legislature redrew the district as part of a plan that had to make room for four new Congressional districts for Texas. The court-approved map gives considerable advantage to Republicans hoping to pad the current majority of 23 Republicans to 9 Democrats in the Texas Congressional delegation. Democratic candidate Elaine Henderson is unopposed in the primary.
Texas Watchdog contacted all 12 Republican candidates, several times if they did not at first respond. Nine of them answered questions about the issues important to them and what they thought was important to voters in the district.
Here are profiles of all 12 candidates in alphabetical order.
Ernie Beltz Jr., 30, Cedar Park. Beltz, who did not respond to our request for an interview, is a small business owner, Marine Corps veteran and the founder of the Warrior Transition Project, a non-profit to assist military veterans, according to his campaign website.
Like most of the candidates in this field, Beltz wants to put the brakes on out-of control federal spending. If elected he would work to reduce the tax and regulatory burden on small businesses and encourage American manufacturing and consumption. Having joined the Marines after 9/11, Beltz believes in an American military capable of winning the war on terrorism, his website says.
According to the Federal Election Commission, Beltz has raised more than $50,000 for his campaign through March, but has less than $1,500 on hand.
You may see the quarterly totals for all of the candidates in this race here.
Bill Burch, 60, Grand Prairie. Burch says he has acquired valuable political and legislative experience by being active for more than 30 years in the Republican Party in Texas. His founding of the Grass Roots Institute of Texas, he says, demonstrated his leadership in bringing the Tea Party together with the Republican Party to work toward common goals.
If elected, Burch told Watchdog he would try to establish a review committee for federal regulations he says cost Americans $1.75 trillion. He would require that every regulation created through the passage of a law be brought back to the original committee generating the law for final approval.
Burch would ask for an end to all executive orders which inflate the power of the President, circumventing the two other branches of government.
The Burch campaign has raised more than $117,000 through March and has about $34,000 of it on hand.
Dianne Costa, 57, Highland Village. Costa has been the mayor of Highland Village, outside of the district, for the past four years, but her family owns a ranch in Hamilton County.
Although she has raised nearly $250,000 for her campaign, Costa has prided herself on working the big district door-to-door. Costa says she doesn’t think the voters want a candidate who buys a seat on Congress, a reference to three candidates who haveout raised her by at least three times.
“A mayor is the head of the government closest to the people,” Costa says. “That’s exactly the way I plan to be with the people of this district.”
Congress, she says, needs her kind of leadership to stop the federal spending spree, to refrain from back-room deals and fend off lobbyists.
James “Patriot” Dillon, 55, Liberty Hill. A contractor who was rebuilding a stone fence when Watchdog caught up with him, Dillon has delivered the message of Jesus Christ as a write-in candidate for governor in 2006 and the Texas House in 2008. The message crosses party lines, he says. He ran as a Democrat in 2008.
And he will continue to deliver the message, win or lose. “This is the best country in the world, but we have an illness,” Dillon says. “We’ve turned away from God, and the only help we can count on is help from above.”
Dillon’s platform is short on detail. He has no campaign website and is accepting no money. On his application for ballot status, under occupation, Dillon says he wrote, “freedom fighter.”
Dave Garrison, 60, Austin. Like the successful businessman he was with USAA and Halliburton, Garrison drew up a detailed plan, Solutions to Restore American Prosperity, laying out conservative positions on energy policy, health care and entitlements.
To back his ideas, Garrison put more than $800,000 of his own money into the campaign. He had $690,000 of it on hand at the end of the first quarter.
Garrison’s son told him that if he didn’t try to do something about the direction the country was heading it would be like a doctor going to the scene of a car wreck and doing nothing.
To alter that direction, Garrison says, will take people who understand how to and the need to balance a budget, someone who knows the negative effect federal tax policies have on business, the engine of the economy. His energy plan alone has the potential to create 5 million new American jobs, he says.
“I tell people I talk to in the district there is a way out of this,” Garrison says. “It’s not hopeless, but we’re going to have to start soon.”
Justin Hewlett, 52, Cleburne. The mayor of Cleburne, a suburb of Fort Worth since 2010, Hewlett prefers to be thought of as the owner of a computer technology firm and a former bankerrather than a politician.
Although he did not respond to our request for an interview, Hewlett has put together a package of ideas for spurring the American economy - simplifying an unfair tax system and cutting wasteful federal spending - on his website.
Front and center on the home page is his signed pledge to vote for any and all bills that would dismantle ObamaCare. His conservative social values, the website says, are informed by his Christian faith.
Of the $185,000 Hewlett has raised, he still has about $75,000 on hand.
Charles Holcomb, 78, Wimberley. The retired state Court of Criminal Appeals judge is the only candidate in this race to proudly profess to be a moderate or, as he calls it, Eisenhower, Republican.
During a career of 50 years in the state court system, winning district attorney and district court judge races nominally as a Republican, Holcomb says he largely stayed out of party politics.
He believes voters might find that an asset.
Holcomb says he would work to devise campaign finance reform to replace the laws overturned by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case. “Citizens United is ruining our political system,” he says.
Holcomb believes the nine Supreme Court justices should be required to retire after 18 years, staggered every two years. He has no official opinion on abortion, believing it to be a choice left to the privacy of women.
Holcomb, who has no website, is accepting no money, preferring that word of mouth carry his campaign.
Brian Matthews, 59, Austin. Matthews is a Christian family counselor who says he had no political aspirations until he felt summoned to this race. “I’m probably the God candidate,” he says.
He is also what he calls a Constitutional conservative, believing the federal government must be shrunk to a size outlined strictly by the Constitution. He refers to the current state of federal spending “the utter immoral stealing from future generations.” He calls President Obama’s use of executive order “totalitarian.”
This will mean the elimination of entire federal departments and agencies, tossing regulations that prevent jobs from being created and the liberation of the broadest range of the American energy industry.
Matthews, who has raised less than $25,000 and has about $6,300 of it on hand, believes his message delivered directly to the voters is more powerful than the money. Wes Riddle, 50, Belton. The founder and current chairman of the Central Texas Tea Party thinks it is time “to prioritize the value of liberty over security and a guaranteed quality of life in America.”
Riddle has not been afraid to take on the Republican Party for its complicity in failing to secure American borders. He refers to Obama’s term in office as a period of “transformational socialism.”
From taxes to regulatory assault of agencies like the EPA and the size of the federal government, Riddle’s responses are to free the people and “reaffirm our faith in our Founding Fathers’ Constitutional message.”
The retired lieutenant colonel, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Army, Riddle knows he is in a war of another kind: one of big money. He has raised more than $310,000 and still had $116,000 available at the end of March.
“I don’t know if those numbers are in our favor, but one-on-one people are responding to our message,” he says.
Chad Wilbanks, 42, Lake Travis. Although this is his first bid for public office, Wilbanks is the former political and executive director of the state Republican Party. Since 2004 he had been a consultant for conservative candidates and political organizations.
Increasingly concerned with the complaints that the American Dream was being blunted by government overreach, Wilbanks developed a plan to get government out of the way of business and reform Medicare and Social Security without breaking the agreements we are bound to with today’s senior citizens.
The president of the Lake Travis Youth Association, a non-profit youth sports organization, freely mixes in messages of family and faith with his politics. Do right, do your best and show people you care are principles Wilbanks would like to apply to government.
Of the more than $117,000 he has raised through March, Wilbanks had more than $90,000 on hand.
Michael Williams, 58, Austin. In April of 2011, after 10 years and having won three elections Williams resigned from the Railroad Commission, which oversees the state’s oil and gas industries.
Williams is leaning heavily on having gotten as many as 140,000 votes for his commission seat from voters in District 25. He’s traveled the better part of the district for 12 years. During his time on the commission, some of it as chairman, Williams says the number of state employees in the department dropped to 675 in March of 2011 from 853 in 1999.
“Voters will also see somebody who never took a pay raise,” Williams says.
He bills himself as a Constitutional conservative, who would apply the same government spending cutting in Washington as he did on the Railroad Commission.
“I really believe this is going to be an opportunity for voters to make a classic decision about the role of government in their lives,” Williams says.
Williams had raised $765,000, but had a little more than $169,000 on hand, a distant second to the other Williams in the race, Roger. “We’ll have enough money to be competitive,” Williams says. “Being outspent won’t be the issue.”
Roger Williams, 62, Weatherford. No matter the issues or experience, the candidates in this race are talking about Williams’ money. At the end of the first quarter, Williams had raised about $2.3 million and had $1.4 million of it on hand. No one else is remotely close.
But this is the first stab at elected office for Williams, who is best known as Gov. Rick Perry’s appointee to serve as secretary of state from 2005 until 2007 when he resigned, he told the Houston Chronicle, to “pursue other opportunities.” The story took note that the secretary of state’s appointment was usually followed by a run for a higher office.
Williams declined Watchdog’s offer of an interview, but his campaign website stresses his longtime experience as the owner of a successful car dealership in bringing business principles to a runaway federal government.
Among his positions are privatizing parts of Social Security and Medicare, replacing the current tax system with a flat tax or a consumption-based tax, and opposing illegal immigration and abortion.
Null-Lairson, the Houston accounting firm that conducted that audit, counseled HISD officials to develop policies that specified when and how potential vendors contribute to board-member campaigns, and when and how trustees vote on potential contracts with those vendors. As it weighs that guidance, Houston’s school board has an opportunity to become a national model for trustee-vendor behavior. Trustees could plot a course away from the ethics controversies that have beset the district for more than a year: accusations of bribery, contract steering and conflicts of interest. By approving the Null-Lairson proposals, HISD would exceed the standards set by Texas state law – and join the Los Angeles Unified School District as among the country’s few large school districts that identify:
Caps on vendors' campaign donations.
Timeframes for those donations.
When trustees may vote on contracts with vendors who have contributed to their campaigns.
Penalties for trustees and vendors who violate regulations.
The full board would have to approve any new policies, however. And several trustees said they wanted to explore potential paths before taking action.
Mike Lunceford
“I have no problem with Null-Lairson’s recommendations. I support them,” Lunceford said. He said he would ask his fellow trustees on Thursday to approve hiring MGT of America, headquartered in Tallahassee, Fla., to write the new policies, at a cost of $25,000 to $35,000. MGT assisted with the audit.
“I want to see how other public entities deal with these issues, and MGT is supposed to be ‘expert’ in this area,” he said.
But Lunceford emphasized that he is “not determined that we have to have a specific policy.” Trustee Greg Meyers joined Lunceford in that sentiment but said he’d be willing to discuss caps on campaign contributions with his colleagues. “I’d like to find out what best practices are,” Meyers said. “I want to ensure we have policies that are transparent and reasonable.”
Trustee Juliet Stipeche said she respected Los Angeles schools’ ethics policies and added that she and her fellow HISD trustees “need to reform the current campaign contribution system.”
Those reforms should include “blackout periods after elections so that board members no longer receive contributions in perpetuity and limits on individual contributions,” Stipeche said.
Grier has said his staff would implement the auditors’ recommendations. Whatever the board’s ultimate stance, Grier said he is not concerned. “I do not worry or speculate about whether our board will pass a particular policy,” Grier told Texas Watchdog in an e-mail last week. “Policy adoption is a board decision. If the board passes a policy, our administration makes sure it is followed.”
Trustees are already barred from voting on contracts for certain campaign donors doing business with the district through E-Rate, a federal program that offers U.S. schools and libraries telecommunications and Internet access at a discount.
“Board members shall not knowingly accept campaign contributions from E-Rate vendors/service providers, including related officers and/or key employees,” HISD’s E-Rate policy states. Trustees cannot vote on contracts for three years with any E-Rate vendor who has, in a year’s time, given more than $500 to the trustee’s campaign fund or done more than $2,000 in business with the trustee.
Choosing a less stringent path than Los Angeles would put HISD in the same company as Miami-Dade County Public Schools,Clark County (Las Vegas) School District and Dallas Independent School District, America’s fourth-, fifth- and 14th-largest school districts, respectively. That also would align HISD with school districts throughout Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Texas. Public-schools officials in Mesa, Ariz.; Miami; Las Vegas; and Dallas told Texas Watchdog that they do not have district-level guidelines that outline when board trustees may vote on contracts with vendors who have donated to their campaigns. HISD trustees bolstered their financial ethics policies in January. They prohibited campaign donations from any vendor bidding on a contract from 30 days prior to the solicitation for services through the contract’s execution.
The same policy also bans communication between vendors and trustees during that time period.
Trustees must also disclose relationships with potential vendors, and abstain from voting on contracts involving them, when they or immediate family members have a financial interest at stake, a policy that follows state law.
But the overseers of America’s seventh-largest school district – with an annual $1.6 billion budget and 203,000 students – have sometimes been reluctant to impose tougher guidelines on themselves. They chose in December to postpone indefinitely a vote on a more rigid ethics policy, which was aimed at curbing improper trustee influence on contracts but did not directly address the question of trustees voting on contracts with their contributors. Board members in Los Angeles may not receive or solicit campaign contributions of more than $250 from vendors involved in a potential contract with the district from the start of a competitive-bidding process to three months after its conclusion.
The country’s second-largest school district, Los Angeles currently enrolls about 664,000 students and has a roughly $6.5 billion annual budget.
Los Angeles district trustees must recuse themselves from the process and abstain from the vote if they have received donations totaling more than $250 from an interested vendor during the year prior.
Judy Nadler
Those are the kinds of ethical guidelines that please Judy Nadler, senior fellow for government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California. “It is generally problematic for school-board members to be in any kind of relationship with vendors,” said Nadler, who also is a former Santa Clara mayor. “There are inherent conflicts.” Even dollar and time thresholds, such as those set by the Los Angeles school district, don’t matter “because the public perception is that the trustee voted on a contract because he or she knew someone who contributed to his or her campaign or had some other type of relationship (with the vendor).” Like Dallas public schools, HISD adheres to Texas law, which does not place caps on donations and is silent on trustees voting on contracts for vendors who contribute to campaigns.
That troubles but doesn’t surprise Nadler. “My experience, over and over, is that school districts, in particular, are not as well scrutinized as city council members,” she said. “So it’s dangerous territory when trustees engage in these kinds of (vendor) relationships.” Some trustees may not support any new policies regarding HISD contracts, vendors and trustee behavior. Vendors funded nearly half of incumbent trustees’ campaigns over a three-year period, Texas Watchdog found last fall. Larry Marshall, who is the longest-serving board member with 14 years, has stated many times during public meetings since the fall thatexisting policies governing relationships among board members and vendors are strong enough.
He successfully led the charge to put an ethics proposal for trustees on hold in December, with the support of five other board members. The proposal had already been watered down at the urging of Marshall and Trustee Paula Harris.
Marshall did not return two calls requesting comment for this story. Marshall also has pointed out repeatedly during public meetings that HISD trustees shouldn’t have to terminate their friendships with vendors and that ethical problems do not exist for the HISD board – at least during his tenure as a trustee.
Last year Marshall set the stage for a local doctor, Kenneth Wells, to land a no-bid consulting deal with HISD for $640,000. Due in part to questions about the deal raised by Texas Watchdog, HISD officials have put contract negotiations on hold.
The Null-Lairson audit itself came about due, in part, to heavy criticism and media attention from Texas Watchdog and others over how the district has done business in recent years. Often school-board members don’t see their relationships with vendors as wrong, “which is worse,” Nadler said. “If you don’t see losing your independence and perspective as bad, then what do you see as bad?”
Thescathing report detailing the payments of U.S. Congress members to families was a gift to Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, a former El Paso city council member and Democratic challenger to U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes in the far West Texas 16th congressional district.
Theinvestigative study found that Reyes spent campaign funds on his own reimbursement for expenses related to his campaign in 2008, as well as feathering his own family nest with payments to relatives for fundraising, travel expenses and political contributions. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington compiled the report.
"This shows that Reyes is working for himself, his family and those close to him," O'Rourketold the El Paso Times. "It makes it more clear than ever that we need reform in Washington, D.C. He paid his brother, Chuy. He paid himself. He paid his niece. He paid his niece's husband. The whole family was involved."
Reyes defended his expenditures, saying that he was pleased to have family that could help him. Which means apparently that he thinks such a practice is fine.
But while O’Rourke was speaking about reform in Washington, he forgot to mention his own payments to his business and family members of $22,800.
Campaign finance records for his City Council races show that O’Rourke reimbursed his wife Amy $1,358 for expenses at Kinko’s and on election night for the May 2007 election. He also paid his own company, Stanton Street Technology Group, $2,156 in 2005 and $1,147 in 2006 for web services.
Robert 'Beto' O'Rourke
O’Rourke’s federalcampaign financereports show he has paid Stanton Street Technology $17,786 for tech services since September. The campaign also reimbursed his sister-in-law, Marianna Sanders, $410 for utility bill payments and office supplies. Sanders said via email that her contributions of more than $3,700 "far outweigh any reimbursements that I have received."
O’Rourke said that all expenditures, be they to family members or his business, are backed up by receipts that are open to the public for review.
“My wife and I have given well over $5,000 to the campaign,” O’Rourke said. “My company is the largest provider of Web-based services in this community, and I trust them to do right. By federal law, I have to be careful about paying them a prevailing rate and make sure I’m not getting an in-kind deal from a company that I have an ownership in.
“But you have Reyes using his campaign as an ATM for his family.”
The Reyes campaign did not return calls.
CORRECTION (Noon, May 2): This story was updated with a corrected figure for reimbursements to Marianna Sanders. Texas Watchdog regrets the error.
A Houston Airport System official who withheld public records against the advice of city lawyers and then lied to cover up her misdeed was never sanctioned or disciplined, public records show.
Maria Fink, assistant director of human resources at HAS, prevented the release of certain personnel records for an airport employee as required by state law and violated other city policies in her dealings with a subordinate, a 2010 investigation by the city's Office of Inspector General found. According to correspondence from the city on a public information request earlier this year, "there are no records of disciplinary actions" following that investigation.
It's hard to tell if Fink's case is an isolated one. No one at the city contacted by Texas Watchdog was willing to address if there are any penalties for violating those policies.
Annise Parker
Airport Director Mario Diaz and Eric Potts, who was interim director at the time, declined to comment.
Mayor Annise Parker, who once claimed that her administration was “trying to be much more accommodating” to open records requests, also declined to comment.
Fink, a human resources manager at Enron in the late '90s, was paid $111,000 last year, according to records. She, too, declined to comment.
On Oct. 27, 2009, Texas Watchdog reporter Jennifer Peebles submitted an open records request for “any and all personnel records” for two airport system employees, Aleks Mraovic and Kelly Hu.
Beverly Roach, the point person for public records at the airport, emailed Fink as the records requested were in her custody. Fink provided some documents but not all, and on Nov. 5 Roach emailed her supervisor, Nancy Yue.
“This is to bring to your attention a misinterpretation of HAS’ requirement to fulfill an open records request for 'personnel files,'” Roach wrote. “Maria Fink has determined that the personnel file as it exist[s] is not what is being asked for in this request. …This action is not encouraged by our Legal Department.”
Roach included in her email the penalties for refusing access to public records.
“Ms. Peebles is scheduled to come in at 10 a.m. today. I have concerns about our handling of the request. …” Roach added that she had contacted the city attorney's office regarding the issue.
On Nov. 17, Peebles emailed HAS, accusing the airport of withholding documents in violation of the law and threatening action with the state Attorney General’s office. The AG in Texas has strong powers in policing open records violations, and has shown a proclivity to take such matters seriously.
“Several days ago I visited you at your office, and you granted me access to a few sheets of paper – mainly the internal City of Houston forms indicating an employee has been promoted, reassigned or had a change in pay,” Peebles wrote. “While the paperwork you allowed me to view is indeed responsive to my request, I need to make it clear that it does not fulfill my request to HAS for all of Mr. Mraovic’s personnel file.”
Roach forwarded the email to Evelyn Njuguna in the city attorney's office, asking for advice. She copied Fink on the message.
Njuguna was clear: “If the entire file has not been released, it should be released.” She later told investigators that the request was for specific information “and was not vague in what was asked for.”
Three hours later, Fink emailed Roach and advised that "as official custodian of personnel records of HAS, I will handle this request."
Listen here
The OIG report shows that Fink continued to block the release of the records and discouraged her staff, and Roach in particular, from seeking legal advice in complying with public records requests. (Hear an excerpt of an OIG interview with Fink in the player at left.)
“The advice legal gives us is just that – advice," Fink told her staff in a Nov. 30 email. "We, as a division, weigh the risks of that advice and we (HAS management) will make the final decision on the issue. Legal does not make the decision. … We should first utilize our internal resources before we seek external help on HR and open records policies.”
On Dec. 2, over five weeks after the initial request, Peebles sent a last ditch effort email to gain access to the public records. State law requires government agencies to release records promptly and gives them a window of 10 business days to challenge the request to the AG. Peebles again asserted that the matter would be referred to the AG’s office if the records were not released.
The next day, several city officials had a conference call that included Potts, HAS employee Ian Wadsworth, Fink and assistant city attorney Don Cheatham.
In a taped interview with OIG investigator Don Williams, Cheatham said that during the meeting, a woman whom he presumed to be Fink “kind of got in my face, and I got back in hers over the phone. She just didn’t think they ought to do so-and-so and so-and-so, and I told her, ‘That’s fine, but she wasn’t a lawyer for the city, and I wasn’t taking legal advice from her.'
"She wanted to argue about it, and I said, ‘It’s not up for debate.’ You know, she acted like I was offending her.”
The files were eventually released to Texas Watchdog.
Peebles, who is no longer with Texas Watchdog, was part of a team uncovering a number of problems at the Houston Airport System the previous summer, including the creation of a nonprofit offshoot that was entangled in international development of airports using the Houston name without permission, as well as using HAS employees to do its work. At one point, the nonprofit refused to hand its records over to the city, which wanted to review the processes and work of the operation.
The wrangling over the personnel files spurred a lengthy inquiry by the city, one that investigator Williams portrayed during taped interviews as one that “keeps coming back like a bad penny,” and claiming that it was “one of my thicker case files.”
In one interview, Fink told Williams that she had contacted the city attorney’s office on her own regarding the Texas Watchdog request. She said she spoke to Don Fleming, an assistant city attorney.
“We went to another area of the legal department…” Fink said. She said she was told that her “interpretation” was correct.
“…There were now two different interpretations,” Fink said.
Fleming, questioned by the investigator, said that he was never contacted by Fink and that his colleague Cheatham handles open records questions.
Wadsworth, a deputy director at HAS, told Williams that at one point he had a call with Potts and Cheatham, and that there was consensus that Fink’s read on the request was correct, and they would not release the whole file.
But the legal office had told them that the request was for the whole file, which should be released.
Wadsworth then directed Roach to obey Fink and release only the few pages to Texas Watchdog, according to tapes and documents of the investigation.
Listen here
Wadsworth, who was found to have lied to an OIG agent during the inquiry, spoke to the investigator three times in just over five weeks in sometimes combative tones and at several points talked over Williams, interrupting him. (Hear an excerpt of an interview with Wadsworth in the player at right.)
Wadsworth misleadingly told Williams that the Texas Watchdog request “asked for all and any items in the personnel file relating to a number of things.” He initially said the request was read to him by Fink, then said he read the request.
Wadsworth called the request for the personnel records “somebody on the outside doing a fishing expedition presumably for the purpose of discrediting a city employee.”
“We have got to clearly comply with all laws and regulations from a [public records] perspective,” Wadsworth told Williams. “But I believe we also have an obligation to make sure we do what we can to protect our city employees, and therefore if as long as we’re compliant with the [open records] we don’t need to be loose in our interpretation, provide any more than necessary if that’s just going to hurt a city employee.”
Roxanne Butler, communications chief at HAS, told Williams that Fink was to blame for the entire episode. (Hear an excerpt of an OIG interview with Butler in the player below.)
Butler said, in a disjointed use of an old phrase, that having Fink handle a public records request for an HAS employee file ”would be like the fox watching the chicken hen, and when the farmer comes out the fox is now doing damage control. She needed to separate herself. … My feeling is, if one of my staff members is being investigated, I don’t get out front and try to be explaining it and showing it to the person who is looking it over. ... It’s Beverly’s job.”
Butler said she had to answer questions that were coming from Mayor Bill White’s office through spokesman Patrick Trahan after the threat to go to the AG’s office.
“His concern was, ‘Let’s get her the records.’ He wasn’t looking at the back end. He was looking at where we are now, and can we move forward."
Listen here
Butler said at one point she, Trahan and Roach had a conference call.
During the call, “I wanted to make clear that Beverly is not the reason were in this position," she said. "The reason we are here is that someone else involved themselves in the process. [Fink] completely micromanaged the situation and messed it up. Maria caused the situation - I don’t know why. This FOIA stuff you can’t play with. If you hand the reporter five to seven pieces of paper, any reporter is going to look at you and say, ‘You’re full of shit.’ Then I became offended, and I said, ‘What are you hiding?’"
The OIG was clear in its findings: “The investigation revealed that Ms. Fink placed Ms. Roach in an untenable position by failing and/or refusing to comply with the request. The investigation revealed that between November 17, 2009 and December 1, 2009, Ms. Fink failed to comply with the Texas Watchdog Open Records request.”
The inquiry also determined that Fink misled investigators by claiming that Peebles’ Nov. 17 email was a clarification.
“The investigation revealed that the October 27 and November 17 requests both requested any and all personnel files and documentation concerning Mr. Aleks Mraovic," the report states. "Ms Fink was untruthful in her response when she indicated that Ms. Peebles modified her request."
There were other violations of city policy and mayoral directives by Fink, including several infringements of Roach’s rights as an employee. Wadsworth was found to be guilty of one violation, lying to the investigator regarding the city attorney read on the request.
Micah Sifry | 2 min 6 sec
BTW, a "gonk" is a geek who is also a wonk.
Micah Sifry | 2 min 25 sec
If you are a poli-tech gonk, then right now there's only one place to be, banging on Obama Dashboard 4 nuggets like: http://t.co/SIBIKnwG
Nieman Lab | 4 min 21 sec
Why did the CIA, Pentagon and White House grant Hollywood unusual access to those involved in bin Laden raid? http://t.co/cjtmxEZK
keyetv | 5 min 8 sec
Arrest made in rape, stabbing of teenager left for dead in Hays County. http://t.co/JGClMIae
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'Flour power' art project pays tribute to Minneapolis' milling history http://t.co/amiTMnNz by Andy Sturdevant http://t.co/iRCm76dq
Marc Veasey
Domingo Garcia
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