The Less Government Foundation - Carole Keeton Strayhorn’s Pay to Play

Carole Keeton Strayhorn’s Pay to Play
Or The 230-1 Tax Abatement to Campaign Contribution Ratio

Last Thursday, the Texas State Auditor released a comprehensive examination of the recent actions and activities of the Office of the Texas Comptroller. Its chief executive agent is an elected official, an occupational aperture currently womanned by our very own Carole Keeton Strayhorn.

The Office of the Comptroller is, as the name of the bureau stipulates, charged with the oversight of all revenue generated by the many and varied manners of excise practiced by this Republic.

The expressed objective of said investigation was to see if contributions made to said administrator’s campaign coffers resulted in substantial reductions in the prospective tax liability of same magnanimous benefactors.

To any reasonable observer of the Lone Star Examiner’s summation, it appears that this is precisely what has transpired lo these last seven years, countlessly in number and egregiously in form.

In other words, it happened. Big time. Both early and often.

A Comptroller only does two things: raise money, and arbitrate contests thereto. If the Comptroller can no longer handle tax disputes, she is no longer the Comptroller, she is the Undersecretary of Sub-Cabinet Departmental Aides to the Ambassador of Outer Mongolia.

According to the State Auditor’s report, there were but a mere 3,656 occasions, for a paltry 755 occurers, where tax abatement or relief therefrom was granted by Madame Comptroller to her various and sundry benefactors within one year of a corresponding campaign muneration between January 1999 and August 2004.

That is an average of 54 ½ toll adjustments a month. The modicum of vigorous consistency she is.

The numbers are staggering; in every direction. In total, the Audit tallied approximately $2 million in corresponding campaign contributions, which netted the benefactors a cool $461 million in unsweetenings of the toll pot. Herein lays the aforementioned 230-1 quotient.

I hope you enjoyed the chicken and the tax abatements

Of these 3,656 acts of Madame Comptroller intervention, 448 were outright management halts and 428 were administrative hearings. So she is certainly hands-on in at least these instances.

Culled from this gross net are 146 amended audit assessments, pertaining to 90 filers, where each of them ended up on the hook for at least $10,000 less in taxes than were they when first they entered with the Comptroller’s bait. No mere three martini lunch, that.

These 90 recipients of relief had their tax liabilities minimized by Strayhorn to the tune of $227 million. That number, too, has a very good beat, and I can most certainly dance to it.

From 1998 to 2004, 19 expressly examined taxpayer representatives made 261 campaign offerings totaling $1.7 million. Those that make up this Blackjack stay figure make a living representing and assisting taxpayers in recovering levy overpayments and resolving tax disputes.

In short, these 19 are, in essence, tax reduction lobbyists.

They are retained by those who are exceedingly levied to render them less exceedingly so. And for but a breeze of campaign cash making its way through the Comptroller’s wide open window, these tax reduction lobbyists can ensure that their clients reap the whirlwind of liberal levy lessenings, time and time again.

Call it Hurricane Carole, blowing down Texas's financial house all in an effort to ensure she is properly funded for her reelective efforts.

Not to worry, though, because Madame Comptroller always keeps copious records of said hearings, reductions, and abatements, correct? Well, actually, no. According to the Audit:

“The Comptroller’s Office does not always sufficiently document why a management halt was placed on a tax account. Management halts are cases in which the Comptroller’s Office temporarily stops (1) tax collection actions, (2) issuance of tax overpayment notices, and (3) automatic transfers of tax credits. As of January 14, 2005, 11,699 management halts that the Comptroller’s Office put into effect between fiscal years 1998 and 2004 had not been concluded. We did not review outstanding management halts put into effect prior to fiscal year 1998.

“For administrative hearings, we were unable to determine disputed tax liability amounts and could not readily determine final tax settlement amounts because of the manner in which the Comptroller’s Office maintains this information.”

Not quite this copious

Not the likes of what you would like to see from your accountant come tax time, eh?

So she is slamming the brakes on investigations into taxes owed by the clients of the tax reduction lobby, thereby zeroing out their fiscal liability to the state, but failing repeatedly to follow up with the necessary paperwork in explanation of why said stoppages were incepted.

Houston (and Dallas, and Lubbock, and … ), we have a problem.

The Audit goes on to recommend that the state Legislature prohibit all elective profferings to an incumbent or prospective Comptroller, and (here is the kicker) REMOVE TAX DISPUTE OVERSIGHT FROM THE COMPTROLLER’S OFFICE.

This is the state tax collector’s equivalent of removing legislative oversight from the House of Representatives.

The Audit sardonically follows all of this with the following:

“While we found no evidence of preferential treatment, this arrangement could present the appearance that hearings are not processed in an objective and impartial manner and that independence could be impaired.”

“The hearings … are not processed in an objective and impartial manner and that independence could be impaired.” No kidding. Really?

“To maintain the technical knowledge and efficiency of current operations, the administrative law judges, their support staff, and their equipment should be transferred to the State Office of Administrative Hearings to continue their duties. The Comptroller’s Office should provide technical tax expertise as appropriate.”

Because the “technical tax expertise” displayed by this Comptroller thus far has been nothing short of exemplary.

This is a HUGE deal, Gentle Readers. The Audit’s last bit of summative assessment to the contrary, there is very little to no way that this is but a meager set of 3,656 coincidences.

The Comptroller will see you now

Madame Comptroller is saved from woefully deserved Media scrutiny (because I am decidedly NOT a member thereof) thanks to her protracted attack against incumbent Governor Rick Perry, whom she is looking to unseat come what March.

If, say, a Republican had done all of this, you would witness the Texas equivalent of a Watergate Press blitz, with Clay Robison (reprising the role of Bob Woodward), Dave McNeely (Carl Bernstein) and the rest of Texas’s Club Media getting to relive that impassioned and inebriated era one last time.

But alas, the Age of Aquarius Revisited is not meant to be. For the Press despises Governor Perry with a passion saved only else for George W. Bush and Brussels sprouts, so Madame Comptroller gets away with getting carte blanche with the state’s wallet.

In actuality, it figures (please pardon the accounting pun at the last).