Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

George Scott to speak at the HPRA meeting this Friday

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From the InBox:

Path to Education Reform Starts at Home;

Not in Austin

Our Friday lunch speaker this week is George Scott, a longtime advocate for school reform. Mr. Scott will speak on how school superintendents manage to gain control of district boards, and steps local taxpayers can take to repair broken school district governance. He is a former reporter and publisher, is currently a blogger, and is running for the Katy School District board. His unique campaign videos can be seen here: georgescottreports.com

Houston Property Rights Association

PUBLIC INVITED: $11.49 plus 10{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} gratuity – buffet self-serve – all you can eat.

Coffee and tea are extra.

The Lam Bo Restaurant (Chinese and American food), is at

6159 Westheimer Road, about a mile west of Chimney Rock on the south side.

(look for us in the back room)

Friday, March 11, 2016

Buffet lunch – 12:00 to 2:00 – Program starts at 12:30

RESERVATIONS NOT NEEDED

This should be VERY interesting. I’ve known George for a few years and as I’ve said before, he is a fierce and formidable advocate on education issues. If you can possibly make this meeting, you will walk out more informed than you ever thought you could be! Check out his work at GeorgeScottReports.com.

George Scott Reports back online, mean and nasty as ever

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For a long time, GeorgeScottReports.com was the best place to find in-depth analysis on Texas education and property tax issues. And every once in a while, the proprietor, George Scott, would have a fun rant at the expense of a politician or three. Over the last year, George took a break and didn’t write anything for six or seven months.

Well, he’s baaaackk!

And as mean and nasty as ever. He published three columns today on current issues with “conservative” Republicans. I think you’ll enjoy them.

This abusive system cuts across the ethnic, financial, and political diversity of Harris County. It has degenerated into an abomination for those that live in the affluent suburbs or the inner city of Houston. It is an abomination for the minority owners of mom and pop businesses and homeowners in the wards of Houston stretching all the way to the Mason Roads of affluence in Katy and suburbia.

This is not literature and it certainly is not fiction.  However, let us begin our journey into the abandonment of even a semblance of academic honesty and the crescendo of organizational malfeasance of what has become of a degenerative American public education system in general and the Texas system in particular with a literary framework pulling from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

…The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate…

When the Texas Education Agency (TEA) piloted and then implemented its Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) student testing scheme starting in 1989 as the foundation of its accountability system for public schools, it unleashed a torrent of lies that in the subsequent 26 years have eviscerated both the integrity and potential of the single most important ingredient in public education – the classroom.

Nothing has happened in Texas state government in the public education or property tax systems that conservative Texas conservative Republicans:

  • Did not let pass
  • Could not have vetoed

Texas conservative Republican office holders own the corruption, the dishonesty, the malfeasance, the deference to the most powerful among us lock, stock, and barrel: every sentence, every paragraph, and the entire story.

And what rank and file Texas conservatives own is the full credit for letting it happen taking false, hallucinatory pride in their electoral victories.

George Scott
George Scott

I hope those teasers pique your interest enough to click over and read them. George does not mince words and he provides facts that support his opinions. One thing is for sure – he will not kowtow to anyone and isn’t afraid to point out that Republicans do not always govern with the best interests of the people in mind.

 

Transparency stymied again by Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan

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Harris County Attorney and Democratic Party hack Vince Ryan is at it again. Ryan should have been defeated long ago but several Harris County Commissioners Court members were so scared of having a County Attorney that would investigate him, they helped him defeat the Republican. Yes, that’s true, it’s real, and it happened. And look what the citizens of Harris County got in return.

A County Attorney that is protecting the Harris County Appraisal District from releasing parking lot records. Parking lot records. Records that might, just might give us a hint as to whether or not the county attorney assigned to HCAD actually goes to work.

George Scott over at GeorgeScottReports.com is extremely frustrated about this.

HCAD And Vince Ryan Turn The Search For Truth About Ryan’s Legal Representation Of The Harris County Appraisal Review Board Into A Pathetic, Sad Game That Is Far From Over

In a perverted sort of way that must be totally unintentional, Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan’s and the Harris County Appraisal District’s announced decisions to seek permission from the Attorney General of Texas to keep how many times and for how long Ryan’s attorney Scott Hilsher serving the Appraisal Review Board of Harris County (ARB) showed up at HCAD by parking his car in the district’s garage may represent a metaphorical turning point in the opportunity to finally achieve meaningful reform in the systemic, catastrophic, institutional dishonesty of the ARB process.

This public information saga over the physical presence of Ryan’s attorney’s at HCAD has turned into a humiliating, sad, sad, tale for HCAD and Ryan. They should understand, this is not a game.

(click here to read the entire post at GeorgeScottReports.com)

And that is just his intro. You should click over and read the whole post.

George also has a post up with solid recommendations for cleaning up HCAD.

GSR’s Bottom Line Elements Of Appraisal Review Board Reform

People want solutions. OK, here are some solutions to the catastrophic decline in the integrity of the property tax system and the related institutional dishonesty and fatally-flawed conflicts of interest to which the Appraisal Review Board process has degenerated in major counties of Texas.

The solutions outlined here would be implemented in pilot project format in the major counties of Texas such as Harris County, Fort Bend County, and Montgomery County (there are others) where the institutional flaws of the system have become so overwhelming. As noted later in the column, I am not ‘married’ to my precise solutions because there are highly qualified professionals who can make the concepts sing.

But, I am asserting that the problems cannot be resolved by tinkering. Reforms outlined here may not be the final portrait, but we should be able to recognize the final portrait when others have done what they need to do to restore operational integrity to a system that is now hopelessly and fatally and institutionally corrupt (impure not criminal).

My readers know that George Scott Reports began its property tax mission pointing out severe problems with the valuations of Class A office buildings and industrial properties in Harris County. Make no mistake about it: too many of those properties were undervalued. I think that GSR played a role in advancing that important issue.

However, I have moved way past that initial issue because the bottom line is now that the Appraisal Review Board protest process is institutional dishonest and operationally corrupt FOR ALL MAJOR CATEGORIES OF PROPERTY including those ‘big guys’ I initially targeted.

(click here to read the entire post at GeorgeScottReports.com)

George then goes on to list the problems as he sees them and his suggested reforms. Again, I urge you to click over and read them. Appraisal problems affect you directly in the pocketbook.

One of the problems that independent reporters like George have is that larger media outlets tend to ignore stories like this because they require in-depth reporting and understanding from both the reporter and the customer of the individual media outlet – both are rare and getting rarer in our fast moving society. If you can’t put it in a graphic, you quickly lose the customer. I wish I had an answer to this dilemma, the only thing I know to do is to let you know about it because you have proven time and again to be willing to go in-depth on an issue and be informed. Perhaps then you can inform your neighbor.

Or maybe some one in one of the larger media outlets can figure out how to get this to their customers in a way that is both informative and holds their attention. There is always hope.