I had mentioned before that it was hard to find campaign finance reports for HISD and HCC Trustees. I now have some updated information about this, so I wanted to share it with you. First, HISD Trustee Anna Eastman (who represents my HISD district) emailed me on Tuesday to let me know that their finance reports are now posted online. If you go to the HISD Board of Trustees page and click on an individual Trustee, you will see a link to his or her finance reports, dating back as far as 2008. I have now updated the 2011 Election page to reflect this. My thanks to Anna Eastman for passing this on. Note that unlike the City of Houston reports, these are document scans that have been saved as PDFs, and not native PDFs. That means you can’t easily copy and paste from them, and it means they can be filled out by hand, as a couple of them were. But at least they’re online.
Which is more than I can say for HCC Trustee finance reports. I received an email from Trustee Richard Schechter last week informing me that I can get them by requesting copies from their general counsel, Renee Byas. I have sent a request for this information to Ms. Byas, who is out of the office this week but is expected back on Monday, and will update the 2011 Election page accordingly when I receive them. At least then they’ll exist somewhere on the Internets. My thanks to Richard Schechter as well for the information.
I am still unaware of any candidates for these offices other than the incumbents and Carroll Robinson for the HCC open seat. It remains possible that none of these seven elections will be contested, which as a matter of general principle is just wrong. But it’s the situation we appear to be facing.