Posted on 06/09/2010 11:17:33 AM PDT by a fool in paradise
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White released his income tax returns Tuesday for the entire time he served as Houston mayor, disclosing $11.8 million in adjusted gross income over six years, largely related to his energy career, including investments, fees and sales of stock in companies on whose boards he served.
...White previously had released his 2009 return and said he released the 2004 to 2008 returns to “call his (Perry's) bluff.”
...“This partial release of some tax returns creates further questions about how Bill White profited while serving Houston as a part-time mayor,” Miner said, citing work by BTEC Turbines, which provided mobile power generators under contract to the Coastal Water Authority to help preserve the water supply after Hurricane Rita.
Miner said that White “must explain the details of BTEC's involvement with efforts concerning Hurricane Rita, considering he was a board member of the company before being elected mayor and that he personally made more than $500,000 from the company just over one year after it participated in Hurricane Rita efforts.”
...White, a lawyer who forged a career in the energy business, initially had refused to release all his tax returns from his time as mayor, dating back to 2004, when asked to do so by the Houston Chronicle....
“It was long overdue,” said Andrew Wheat, research director for Texans for Public Justice, an Austin-based organization that monitors government ethics....
Perry has not released his 2009 return — Miner said the governor had asked for a filing extension — but has released other returns going back to 1987. White's camp noted that Perry keeps most of his assets in a blind trust, so the details on his returns are limited. Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said the value of Perry's blind trust as of August 2009 was about $896,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Tax Break for the Rich; Roger Clemens at the Capitol; Green Sex(Mayor White gets help from the appraisal district By Richard Connelly - Houston Press Thursday, Feb 21 2008)
http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-21/news/tax-break-for-the-rich-roger-clemens-at-the-capitol-green-sex/
Houston accountant Tim Hebert is p!ssed about his property taxes. So he decided to do a little research at the Harris County Appraisal District Web site.
And there he learned that in 2007, while his taxes were going up, Mayor Bill White’s Memorial-area home had gotten a huge tax break, with the assessment falling from about $2.8 million to about $1.8 million.
White’s neighbors hadn’t gotten the same break, just the mayor.
HCAD told Hebert the change came because new maps placed White’s home in a floodplain, but that didn’t make much sense — only his house was in the new floodplain? Hebert showed that other houses should have been affected by the new map as well.
“I don’t have any personal beef with the Mayor,” Hebert says, “but I hate the fact that the rest of us are getting slammed with ever-higher property taxes while His Honor gets a reduction of damn near $1,000,000.”
Jason Cunningham, HCAD’s residential property director, says, essentially, mistakes were made. Both in telling Hebert the reduction was because of a floodplain map, and in assessing White’s house so high in the first place.
White, he says, has simply been the victim of “extreme overvaluing for years.”
...Even Hebert’s figures show that none of the other homes on White’s street were valued at more than $2 million.
Cunningham says White had nothing to do with the change. Mayoral spokesman Frank Michel says the same.
“It’s not like he requested it,” Michel says. “He didn’t know it happened until someone asked us about it.”
“White’s neighbors hadn’t gotten the same break, just the mayor”.
Ruh Roe!
I smell a RAT.
Something smells.
Typical democrat: “Give us the breaks but the serfs need to pay their fair share.” And he didn’t know about it. Just like Dodd didn’t know he was getting a special deal on his mortgage.
I’m sure the new mayor and her “partner” will get the same special treatment.
Ask me if I would not love to be able to ask a question in that debate...
I don’t understand how such a mediocre politician like Bill white has SOOOO many people covering for his arse...
I guess he must have banked sooo many of them when he headed the dem party back in the day before he ran for mayor of Houston...
I still believe he and Beverly Kaufmann (outgoing County Clerk) are trying to rig the next election with this Elections Administrator in Harris County...He needs Harris County in his pocket very soon if he stands a chance to beat the Texas Teflon Governor “Good Hair”...
But that is just my opinion...;-)
Well, it maybe because the process to question the appraisals goes through Paul Bettencourts office (Tax collector/assessor’s office) and he was a Republican in charge of that operation in Harris County, till they ran him off after the last election...This reduction came right around the time that occured, if I got the timeline correct...
A dem (liberal) mayor going to a republican (conservative) office holder to get a break on taxes and home and property assessment values might have been a little awkward...
That seems to be the kind of guy Bill White is...Awkward...
But what do I know...hehehe
The timeline is somewhat correct, but I think there was a bogus “ethics” charge the Democrats were hinting at going after Bettencourt over. He didn’t get voted out of office, he went into private practice advising Houstonians on how to challenge their tax appraisals.
Bettencourt may have an answer on Bill White’s reappraisal (or be able to point to someone who can shed some light on it).
Paul is a sometimes afternoon talk host on KSEV 700AM as well (Fridays with the Three Amigos like 4-6pm I think and sometimes on other days).
Sounds kind of snakey to me. The mayor being the only one getting a break.
And one of those companies was hired by the city in the Hurricane Ike recovery effort. It’s a conflict of interest.
Then again, all major cities including Houston are corrupt and run by the national Rat machine. There is a multistate scam with the same players names coming up again and again. One of those was Lee P. Brown’s personal aide.
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