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.
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.