Appraisal District Board of Directors

Looking for citizens who can do more than just rant on Facebook. Now is your chance to actually make a difference. The groundwork has been done and there is some evidence we are making progress.

The Board of Directors of the McLennan County Appraisal District (MCAD) is composed of 5 members. All five are elected every two years. They are elected by the taxing entities. (County, City, School Districts, Community College)

Taxpayers need a change on the Board. Here are some reasons:

1. During the current term, MCAD had lost three significant lawsuits. The estimated cost to taxpayers is $1,000,000.00. All three should have been resolved out of court but the District drug them out as long as possible. That led Chief Appraiser Andrew J. Hahn to report "extraordinary" legal expenses of $225,000.00 for the current year.

2. At a recent meeting, held 11/12/13, the board voted to extend the contract of the Chief Appraiser for three years. A provision in the contract provides that he can not be paid any less than his current compensation. There is a good possibility some of the current board members will be replaced in January and they voted to extend the contract not only beyond their term of office but also beyond the term of office of the people taking office in January.
3. The ballot for this election was sent via e-mail to more than 30 people. The e-mail was requested under the Texas Public Information Act. MCAD refused to release the e-mail. MCAD hired an attorney to ask the Attorney General if they could withhold the e-mail. A request was filed with the recipients of the e-mail and they furnished the requested e-mail while MCAD spends taxpayer money on an attorney to block access.

4. There is a statement on the sign-up sheet for the Board Meeting of MCAD. It reads "The McLennan County Appraisal District highly values the input of citizens in making important decisions that affect the District." On the agenda, public comments is item 15, AFTER they have taken care of all the business. Having attended several board meetings, I can assure you "citizen input" is not appreciated and dang sure not solicited.

What can you do?

Attend one of the meetings where they are going to vote. Tell them three strikes on the lawsuits is unacceptable. Tell them you think extending the contract for the Chief Appraiser beyond their own term is unacceptable and voting to extend it beyond the term of office of those to be elected is even worse. Tell them you think transparency is important and committing resources to block transparency is unacceptable. Remind them unchecked power is the path to corruption and they are the check and balance.

November 18th 2013

Robinson School Board Meeting 6:00

Hewitt City Council Meeting 7:00

China Spring School Board Meeting 6:00 Voted 11/28/2013
Connally School Board Meeting 6:30

Lorena City Council Meeting 6:30

November 19th

LaVega School Board Meeting 7:00

Midway School Board Meeting 7:00

How can it be?

How can it be that I have friends who have such diametrically opposed views of a situation that has received more attention than the school massacre.

I ran across a few items I had not seen before and wanted to share.
The first is purported to be the convenience store surveillance video of Trayvon Martin the night he died.

That is a far cry from the picture provided by the main stream media.

Here is another one.

In the same story, in the comments, I ran across this one.

The main thing most people point to when saying Trayvon was murdered is that Zimmerman “followed” Martin. More extreme cases say Zimmerman “stalked” Martin. Check out this:

I ran across the photos in an article here.

There is a lot of information in this video I did not know.

Another brick in the wall

A month after I filed a request for information related to the arrest of CJ Grisham, I received a response from the County Attorney.

I never claimed any disability. This is a special sort of spin inferring the information was available all along and the only reason I did not have the information was because I did not stop by to pick it up. The reality is, the Temple Police Chief, City of Temple and the City Attorney violated the Texas Public Information Act. I personally find it very troubling when the people with the authority to enforce the law ignore the law.

Here is my response:

Here is the before and after photo:

After studying the matter for a while, here is the response from the City Attorney:

If you pursue it long enough, eventually they show their cards. This is a very disturbing e-mail. They begin the communication by hiding behind a misinterpretation the the AG letter. They then reveal that they were in fact in possession of the affidavit. I filed a request with the AG for clarification.

The second part is a denial information released existed. This is a very simple matter. The information was supplied via e-mail to Mr. Watson. This leaves one to wonder if a government document, the e-mail. was destroyed by the department. Doesn’t seem like something like that would be very hard to locate yet according to the County Attorney, it does not exist.

Lastly there is the matter of the public information act signs.

Sec. 552.205.  INFORMING PUBLIC OF BASIC RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES UNDER THIS CHAPTER. (a) An officer for public information shall prominently display a sign in the form prescribed by the attorney general that contains basic information about the rights of a requestor, the responsibilities of a governmental body, and the procedures for inspecting or obtaining a copy of public information under this chapter.  The officer shall display the sign at one or more places in the administrative offices of the governmental body where it is plainly visible to:

(1)  members of the public who request public information in person under this chapter; and

(2)  employees of the governmental body whose duties include receiving or responding to requests under this chapter.

The language is pretty clear. You can check the photos and decide for yourself. It’s kind of like saying you can not file a DWI charge because the next morning the person was no longer drunk.

I saw some correspondence from the Mayor and he was no different from the police or city attorney. The evidence has been submitted for your review. Make your own conclusion.

Chronicle of public information act request to Temple P.D.

Original Request

Reply

So I went to the Department to pick up the information and this is what I was furnished.
TempleResponse.pdf
While I was there, I noticed there was no sign posted. The Texas Public Information Act requires a government agency to display a sign that displays the rights of the requestor.

Nope, no sign. Here is a close up of the sign visible on the right of the photo:

The above was representative of the interaction I had with the department. The records guy was not very helpful but there is no sense in raising a fuss there, I followed up with another e-mail.

A few days later, I received this response from the "Office Assistant":

Here is the request - OPEN RECORDS REQUEST_041113SCAN.pdf
Here is the interesting thing about an AG request. Since the requester does not get a copy of the information, all an agency has to do is "forget" to send information in their possession and the AG rules only on information sent. If they only send information they know is exempt, the response is always in their favor or as they desire it to be.
The catch is, since it is not permissible to see what they sent, it is almost impossible to prove the information sought was not submitted for the AG to rule on.
The other problem is 99.9% of people who take the time to make a request give up after the initial rejection. It's not like the government would lie or do something unethical.
Sure enough this is the response from the AG:

The AG open records people crack me up sometimes. They are not stupid. You have to check the line that goes: However, you must release the basic information, including a detailed description of the offense, pursuant to section 552.108(c) of the Government Code.
Ms. Rodriguez is standing behind the police department and has not made "a detailed description of the offense" available. The response narrative said "See offense report" and the offense report narrative was determined to be excepted information.

On 4-26-13, I called to follow-up on the e-mail above and was told Ms. Rodriguez was in a meeting and unavailable. I left a message but she did not return my call by close of business. I was not particularly shocked about that.
I also filed a complaint with the County Attorney.

They did not have a clue what to do with this. After jacking me around for 45 minutes, a guy names Guess came out to talk to me. He acted like I was the stupidest person on the face of the planet. Then I received this response:

It must be great to be so important you have assistants to send e-mail on your behalf. Minor thing? Probably but here is the response I provided to the County Attorney.

As  of close of business on 4-26-2013, I have received no response to the above. Have no fear, I was not holding my breath on this one either.
Perhaps next week, almost a month after the initial request, someone with integrity will stand up and make the public information available.

Go-along Get-along and an IPad

For your consideration.
Waco Trib Opinion - The weeks long feud between fiscal-minded McLennan County commissioners and Precinct 7 Justice of the Peace Jean Laster Boone over her quest for a county-paid iPad had to end eventually.

The Trib overlooked a couple of things I think are important from the 3-19-2013 Meeting of the Court.

Judge Boone mentioned in her comments one Judge was using an IPad to do “Magistrations”.  This is the process of arraignment and setting bond for someone  arrested and charged with a crime. Taxpayers pay for a Jail Magistrate but on the weekends, the duty falls to a rotating list of Justices' of the Peace. Commissioner Jones in an attempt to make the problem go away, negotiated the purchase price down to less than $700.00.

This is important because later in the meeting. Commissioners approved $4,800.00 budget amendment from the Justice Technology fund for Justice of the Peace Precinct 5.

Here is where it gets interesting. Judge Boon had originally requested to use funds from the Technology fund and was denied. The Court has some interesting discussion between the two items.
1. Some evidence was offered that a $700.00 IPad might be able to do the same thing as the system which cost almost $5,000.00. Commissioners discussed this but offered that might not be the case.
2. It was pointed out the video system is dated as soon as it is installed and has been problematic since inception. Problematic to the point court testimony indicated one Judge refused to use the system.
3. Pct. 5 JP might not be assigned jail duties for a while making the approval less than immediately necessary. It was suggested, since there was time, to research if the equipment was really necessary. The County Judge intervened and saved the day causing Commissioners to approve the budget amendment and spend a bunch of money because that, rather than finding solutions to problems, is what they do best.

You are welcome to your opinion about whether an IPad is necessary but don’t think for a minute this had anything to do with fiscal responsibility on the part of the Court.