John Tedesco

Express-News Reporter Guillermo Contreras has been covering an unusual scandal at the Bexar County courthouse: Thousands of stolen airline tickets were sold at a discount to county employees — including judges and other public officials:

What happens in Las Vegas may stay in Vegas, but how you got there apparently doesn’t — at least not at the Bexar County Courthouse.

Between 2002 and 2005, courthouse regulars took trips to Sin City and to several other cities that Southwest Airlines flies.

As people around the courthouse heard how little was paid for airfare — $120 per roundtrip ticket — demand spread like wildfire, according to testimony in the federal trial dealing with 5,600 tickets stolen from Southwest by one of its former employees, Althea Jackson.

Soon, more people were going to a pair of courthouse sources for tickets: then-sheriff’s Deputy Mark Kedrowski, who ran a travel agency on the side, and the main ticket provider, Jackson’s husband, ex-Bailiff James Jackson.

One cool thing about Guillermo’s coverage is a database he obtained of the ticket sales, which the Express-News posted online. It gives you an idea of the sheer scale of this ticket-selling operation. You can also look up the public officials who bought tickets. For example, you can see that District Attorney Susan Reed went on three trips with a market value of about $570 apiece. The database shows the exact date of the trips and the destinations.

This is definitely one of the more unique databases I’ve ever seen.

Texas relies heavily on property taxes to raise revenue, and homeowners have a right to protest the appraised value of their land set by county officials. The lower the appraisal, the lower the tax bill.

Express-News Reporter Karisa King has been examining a county database that tracks protests filed by homeowners. She obtained the data through a request under the Texas Public Information Act.

Her first story showed how wealthy homeowners were more likely to protest their property appraisals. In today’s front-page story, she focused on how some homeowners take advantage of agricultural exemptions to drastically lower the value of their land. Karisa found an unusual example of such a case:

About 20 minutes north of downtown, a tall stone wall obscures the view of a 23,000-square-foot mansion that sits on about 30 acres of prime land.

Like many other owners of upscale homes in Bexar County, Robert and Sandora Kolitz, who built a multimillion-dollar luxury compound on Bitters Road, have fought to lower their property taxes. But they’ve had unusual success. This year, they slashed roughly $50,000 from their $236,000 tax bill. It’s a benefit they’re now entitled to receive every year.

The key to their savings: miniature donkeys.

The small herd of about 18 donkeys allows the Kolitzes to claim an agricultural valuation on most of their land, which drops the taxable value of the parcel from about $2.2 million to $2,350.

In other words, the agricultural designation means the home and land, which are listed as having a total market value of $10.6 million, are assessed at $8.4 million.

The property is one of the most costly and contentious homes in Bexar County.

The Express-News posted the Bexar County database of appraisal protests on its Web site. You can search the data yourself, and look up who exactly has protested their property appraisal, the value of their property, and how much their appraisal was lowered.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmarkham)

Using the Texas Public Information Act, reporter Karisa King obtained a huge database that tracks property tax protests in Bexar County and San Antonio. She analyzed the data and here’s what she found:

Everybody wants lower property taxes. But those with the least ability to pay rarely protest their appraised values, while owners of upscale homes are far more inclined to fight their bills.

The more costly your home, the more likely you are to protest, according to a San Antonio Express-News analysis of data from Bexar Appraisal District. …

The story examines specific examples, and you can also search the data yourself.

For the last few months, we’ve written about an obscure public agency that spied on its employees, spent millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers, and awarded multi-million dollar contracts to insiders.

San Antonio Express-News Reporter Jerry Needham has a new story about the troubled Bexar Metropoiltan Water District. Two officials resigned in protest from an oversight committee investigating BexarMet, which has struggled to provide clean, affordable water to a quarter of a million customers. Here are pdfs of the resignation letters from Bexar County Commissioner Sergio “Chico” Rodriguez and Joe Aceves.