Off the Kuff Rotating Header Image

January 15th, 2022:

Paxton accused of violating open records law

Jan 15th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
16 comments

Put it on his tab.

Best mugshot ever

The Travis County district attorney has determined that Attorney General Ken Paxton violated the state’s open records law by not turning over his communications from last January, when he appeared at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The district attorney gave Paxton four days to remedy the issue or face a lawsuit. The probe was prompted by a complaint filed by top editors at several of the state’s largest newspapers: the Austin American-Statesman, The Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News.

In a letter hand delivered to Paxton on Thursday, the head of the district attorney’s public integrity unit said her investigation showed the attorney general’s office broke state law by withholding or failing to retain his own communications that should be subject to public release.

“After a thorough review of the complaint, the (district attorney’s) office has determined that Paxton and (his office) violated Chapter 552 of the Texas Government Code,” wrote Jackie Wood, director of the district attorney’s public integrity and complex crimes unit, referring to the open records statute.

The district attorney’s office will take Paxton and his agency to court if they do not “cure this violation” within four days, Wood warned. For open-records complaints against state agencies, the law says the Travis County district attorney or the attorney general must handle them. The newspapers filed the complaint with the district attorney.

[…]

Jim Hemphill, the immediate past president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said Paxton may take issue with the DA’s investigations — or he could voluntarily choose to release this and other records to the public.

“It’s a rare occurrence where a requestor actually has tangible evidence,” Hemphill said. “It will be interesting to see how the attorney general responds to this.”

The Texas Public Information Act guarantees the public’s right to government records, even if those records are stored on personal devices or public officials’ online accounts. The attorney general’s office enforces this law, determining which records are public and which are private.

On March 25, six news outlets jointly published a story that raised questions about whether Paxton was breaking open records laws.

On Jan. 4, five newspaper editors filed a complaint asking the district attorney to investigate the alleged violations. Anyone can file a complaint with a local prosecutor if they believe a public agency is withholding information in violation of the Public Information Act.

Wood’s notice to Paxton said the district attorney’s office concurred with the allegations in the editors’ complaint.

First, the editors raised concerns that Paxton’s office was using attorney-client privilege to withhold every single email and text message sent to or received by him around the time of the Jan. 6 rally, which preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Paxton and his wife were in Washington that day and appeared at the rally.

Wood said withholding all of Paxton’s communications during that week violated the law. As evidence, she noted the attorney general’s office released nearly 500 pages of communications sent to or received by First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster — including some emails that included Paxton as a recipient.

The newspaper editors also said the attorney general’s office had no policy for handling work-related records kept on personal devices or accounts.

When a Morning News reporter sent Paxton a work-related text message and another reporter requested all his messages that day, Paxton’s office responded that no responsive messages existed. A spokesman for Paxton later said the attorney general doesn’t have to retain “unsolicited and unwelcome text messages to personal phones.”

Wood noted that the attorney general’s office stated in the past that the communications of government officials were subject to retention policies and the open records law.

Finally, the editors raised concerns that Paxton was turning over other people’s communications in response to requests for his own text messages.

The DA’s investigation agreed that Paxton had not provided his own text messages with officials at the attorney general’s office in Utah — where Paxton and his wife traveled during the February freeze — and instead turned over a copy of another person’s text to Paxton. The attorney general’s office did not explain why Paxton didn’t provide his own version of the text exchange.

See here for some background. The answer to how Paxton will respond is obvious: He’ll denounce the Travis DA’s actions as unfair, biased, and partisan, and he’ll not only not comply he’ll do everything in his power to delay a court decision that might force him to comply. Honestly, even then I doubt he’ll actually comply – I’d bet he destroys records first, and dares everyone to do something about it. I don’t think anything short of handcuffs and a jail cell will move him. What in his past record suggests otherwise? As the Trib notes, the January 6 commission in Congress is also seeking records relating to communications between Paxton and Donald Trump at that time. What do you think are the odds he’ll comply with them?

We know who and what Ken Paxton is. He’s shown us, every day. I commend the newspapers for pursuing this, and the Travis County DA for taking action. It’s just that it will take more than a lawsuit to make him budge. He’s going to require a consequence he fears. We’re nowhere close to that. The DMN and the Statesman have more.

HCC seeks a new Board member

Jan 15th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

There’s a vacancy to fill now.

The Board of Trustees publicly and formally invites qualified members of the public to apply to be considered for appointment to the position of HCC Trustee District II. The Texas Education Code requires that the position for HCC Trustee, District II be up for election at the next regular trustee election in November 2023 for the unexpired term. The current term for HCC Trustee District II will expire on December 31, 2025.

​The proposed process the Board will undertake to fill the vacancy for the position of HCC Trustee District II is as follows:

An announcement regarding the position will be posted on the HCC website from Wednesday, January 12, 2022 through 12:00 p.m. on Tuesday, January 18, 2022. Interested, qualified applicants should apply by submitting a cover letter and resume to [email protected] no later than 12:00 p.m. on January 18, 2022. The Board may interview applicants and make a final selection at a Board meeting on Friday, January 21, 2022. Notice of the meeting to include the date, time, and location will be posted 72 hours prior to the scheduled meeting in accordance to the Open Meetings Act.

To be qualified, the applicant must meet the following criteria:

  1. Must be a U.S. citizen.
  2. Must be 18 years of age or older on the first day of the term to be filled on the date of appointment.
  3. Must not have been adjudged by a final judgment of a court exercising probate jurisdiction to be totally mentally incapacitated or partially mentally incapacitated without the right to vote.
  4. ​Must not have been finally convicted of a felony without a pardon or otherwise released from the resulting disabilities.
  5. Must have resided in HCC District II for at least six months and in the state of Texas for at least 12 months immediately preceding the appointment by the Board.
  6. Must be a registered voter on date the appointment is made and be registered to vote in HCC District II.

See here for the background. I’m told there’s a somewhat obscure provision in state law that would have allowed the Board to not name a replacement within 30 days of the vacancy and thus force a special election on the next uniform election date. That would have meant a May election in Harris County, and would have been the only thing on the ballot in Harris County at that time. (Yes, there will be primary runoffs in May, but those don’t happen on the May uniform election date and aren’t set up to accommodate a concurrent general election. It would have been messy and needlessly confusing.) It also might have meant that Rhonda Skillern-Jones would have continued to be Trustee for at least some period of time longer, even though she had resigned in December. The Board made the right choice here. Get your resume in if you qualify and are interested.

Former Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton sues a blogger

Jan 15th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Obviously, a story like this is going to attract my attention.

Ryan Sitton

A former Texas oil and gas regulator has accused a blogger of helping derail his 2020 reelection campaign by falsely claiming he had an extramarital affair.

In a lawsuit filed last month in Galveston, Ryan Sitton said the blogger, Joshua Matthew Pierce, had claimed in two online posts that Sitton sought to engage in “racial fantasies” with an unnamed Jamaican woman. The piece also included a supposed picture of them together, though the photo was later shown to be a generic, unrelated image used on several websites, according to the suit.

The second post alleged that Sitton had referred to fellow Texas Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick with an ethnic slur. Both were published during early voting in the 2020 primary, which Sitton lost in a huge upset to fellow Republican Jim Wright.

“He published a hit piece, containing salacious lies about an upstanding businessman and public official,” the lawsuit says. “Unfortunately, his silly and false story gained some traction, and influenced an election.”

The complaint also suggests Pierce may have been working for Wright’s campaign at the time, though it does not present any clear evidence.

Pierce responded to the lawsuit over the weekend in a series of tweets, saying, “And to think that little old blogger down here in #CorpusChristi, #Texas could influence an election.”

“Lets get this right out of the way—you can deny, deny but the proof of the “infactual basis” is on plaintiff,” he wrote.

Sitton is seeking $10 million in damages. I went looking on Twitter to see if there was any commentary on this. Didn’t find anything, but I did come across this Yahoo News story that added a couple of details as well as a link to the lawsuit. The main thing I learned there is that Sitton is represented by Tony Buzbee, because of course he is.

My very basic take on all this is as follows: I have no trouble believing that this “blogger” printed false information. I have no idea whether someone who was a public figure has a chance at collecting from a person who while probably not a “journalist” from a legal perspective was nonetheless engaging in political speech, however crappy it was. I also have some real doubts about how much this “blogger” might have affected the election. How big an audience did that guy have? How much were his claims being amplified and repeated, in a way that Texas GOP primary voters might have seen or heard it? I’m not exactly plugged into that world, but if it had gotten real traction there might have been some reporting or even gossip about it in places I could have seen. Maybe it was there for me to see and I just missed it. All I’m saying is, you’re going to need to show me some data to convince me that this effort moved votes, especially enough votes to knock Sitton out. Not saying that can’t be done, just that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If that exists, I can’t wait to see it. I just won’t be expecting to see it.

The cities and the freeze

Jan 15th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Well, at least some government entities are trying to learn from the February disaster, even if they’re having a rough go of it.

Ten months after the freeze, Texas cities have made some headway on storm preparedness, an oft-neglected area of local government. They have bolstered reserves of bottled water for residents in case of water outages, bought tire chains for city emergency vehicles, and implemented measures intended to shorten potential power outages for residents and keep electricity flowing to critical facilities.

But as winter approaches and the electrical grid remains vulnerable to blackouts, cities are still short on two key fronts: making sure their most vulnerable residents have the information they need to survive a similar calamity and that the water stays on. Many preparations cities are undertaking to protect residents against future disasters will take months, if not years, to put in place, city officials have said.

And worries abound that officials didn’t learn the lesson and will neglect to adopt new readiness measures — as they have after past disasters.

Austin officials failed to make emergency preparations before February that may have helped during the winter storm, despite past recommendations to do so, according to a recent report conducted by city auditors. Austin has adopted only a sliver of the recommendations made in the wake of other recent calamities, the report says.

“It’s extremely frustrating, and we need systems in place that don’t let that happen again,” Austin City Council member Alison Alter said during a meeting on the report’s findings last month.

Emergency officials say part of the reason those calls haven’t been entirely heeded is that large-scale disasters are becoming increasingly common as climate change worsens, making it more difficult to learn from the last one before the next one hits. On top of that, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic has stretched emergency responders thin.

“There hasn’t been enough time in between them to look at all those corrective actions,” Juan Ortiz, who heads Austin’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, told a council committee in November. “That really has caused the congestion in work that needed to be done.”

[…]

In San Antonio, city and utility officials are scheduled to deliver a joint emergency communications plan at the end of the month. An important question they are expected to address is how to communicate ahead of and during a storm with residents who don’t have internet access to begin with — like many residents on the city’s South Side.

Those residents can’t be left out in the cold, said council member Adriana Rocha Garcia.

“A preparation checklist should be on a door hanger for every vulnerable community to be able to just literally go out and get it from their doors so that they know exactly what to do, exactly who to call in case of an emergency during a winter storm,” Rocha Garcia said.

Now do the story about what Greg Abbott has learned from the experience and what he’s doing about it. Oh, wait…