A roundup of webpages we highlighted during Tuesday’s TrentTV on quasi-governmental agencies, and please join Texas Watchdog in May to chat about municipal bonds

Using Texas Watchdog’s 2009 investigation of the Houston Airport System Development Corp. as an example, we talked about how this quasi-governmental agency successfully kept secret details of its finances and loans. But we were able to pry open salary records, as well as public officials’ calendars, travel records and correspondence, which revealed a publicly-funded trip to Libya that cost $13,000.

This helped build the all-important timeline, which as we discussed during TrentTV is critical for forming the framework of an investigation into a public agency.

We also spotlighted the Guidestar web site, which warehouses nonprofit’s tax returns, called a Form 990, and we took a peek at the development corporation’s 990, which offers details of revenue, expenses and salaries for highly paid employees.

Then we shifted the discussion to another quasi-governmental agency, the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, whose problems with transparency and general state of crisis have been recounted here.

We looked at the severance agreements with two top claims employees Texas Watchdog received, and talked about how they formed the basis for a story with the zinger that one former employee received a 2010 pickup truck.

We also talked about how correspondence records helped us build a timeline for the circumstances around the firings of the two employees. And we looked at salary and bonus records at the agency, which yielded more fodder for stories.

We looked at vendor payments and invoices, which showed a PR firm getting more than $250,000 over the course of a year-and-a-half.

Payment records also came into play when we looked into the earnings of a state representative from the agency. We pieced those together with campaign finance records to show that the state representative, paid to mediate a case involving the windstorm association, had also received a campaign donation from a law firm involved in the case. The donation was recorded within days of the lawmaker’s being chosen to mediate the case.

We hope you’ll join us next month for TrentTV when Jennifer Peebles will be talking about municipal bonds. For some flavor of that discussion, check out her Texas Watchdog investigation into a state senator’s profits from bonds off public agencies he represents in Austin. Tune in to TrentTV at 11:30 a.m. CST Tuesday, May 24 at www.texaswatchdog.org.

TrentTV: Tips on obtaining records from quasi-governmental agencies from Texas Watchdog on Vimeo.

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Contact Lee Ann O’Neal at 713-980-9777 or leeann@texaswatchdog.org.

Photo of ‘On Air’ sign by flickr user adambowie, used via a Creative Commons license.