Odd State Comptroller rules

[treadlightly]

The thread on youtube censorship got me to thinking about a recent tax protest beating I took.

I recently appealed my property taxes. Don't worry, I still would have paid a whole bunch if they had shown any mercy. The total is just shy of $19 grand from rental property that doesn't show much profit and non-productive property we can't find buyers for.

After being treated like an unidicted perjurer I declined to take a survey on an Appraisal District computer. The URL was a long, parameterized surveymonkey.com address, so I told the clerk I would email the Appraisal District for the survey address and take it on my own computer.

I emailed. A couple of days later I got a letter in US Mail:

This office is in receipt of your email.

Regarding the survey, per the Texas State Comptroller's instructions:

"Persons interested in providing input through the Comptroller's ARB (Appraisal Review Board) Survey are required to do so at the appraisal district office. They must be directed to computer terminals at the appraisal district office to complete the survey electronically. If a person wishes to answer the survey in writing, however, he or she may do so, but only at the appraisal district office. Surveys must be completed on the same day as the ARB hearing and before the respondent leaves the appraisal district office."

That's a lot of limitations on what should First Amendment dialog with a government agency. (My emphasis added.)

I found the full survey rules at http://comptroller.texas.gov/taxinfo/ta ... 50-824.pdf.

It also includes the statement, "Surveys not completed at the appraisal district office shall not be accepted by the taxpayer liaison officer, appraisal district staff, or the Comptroller’s office."

'Scuse me? I know my right to free speech does not include a right to be heard, but a government agency has the right to close the door to inbound communication?

Even my lawyer thought that was harsh.

[parabelum]

What's the big deal about completing the survey at home?

You have to take on their terminal? Why, so they can be sure to juice up the data?

That's weird.

[treadlightly]

This thing I've got going with my new friends at the Appraisal District is starting to sound like one of those stories Mr. Twain wrote about the McWilliamses. It's offbeat comedy.

I lost the appeal, but that's just a sidelight. There's so much strangeness. LIke the way I think I really lost. The appraiser asked me to send my bank records to skwxxxxxx@aol.com (the xxxxxx is there to mask trailing digits in his email address). I wouldn't do it. I think I took an attitude hit for not using the AOL address, and that helped me lose.

Then comes this bizarre survey with all its anti free speech riders and a prohibition against trusting citizens with unsupervised access to the purity of the data the survey represents.

I jest, of course. There’s nothing pure about it. I trust the State Comptroller’s Appraisal Review Board survey about as far as James Comey could throw Hillary Clinton’s email server. I don’t yet have the proof, but the survey is cooked.

For instance, 63% of the State’s responses came from a single county, Harris, which turned in 3,541 surveys.

Dallas County, just 13.

The results, incidentally, are favorable by margins that would make Fidel Castro's campaign manager blush. Ninety, ninety-five percent favorable in some categories.

Little Limestone County, population 23,000, outgunned Travis County with its measly 10 surveys. Limestone County rang in with nearly three times the impact Bexar County had in the Survey.

In fact Limestone County had the impact of Tarrant, Travis, McLennan, Comal, Rockwall, Hunt, Armstrong, Bandera, Bastrop, Bell, and Freestone counties - combined.

And you caught me. I’m exaggerating. Most of those counties didn’t have any responses at all. In fact, barely more than a third of the counties in Texas appear in the survey.

Despite all that, the purity of the data is such no citizen may have the right to contribute without a proctor. Top secret stuff, that survey.

I think somebody in Harris County (or in Austin) stuffed the Harris County results. Forty five minutes writing a little Python code and I'm pretty sure I could pitch a few thousand results in myself, but I don't understand why anyone would want to. It's just a dumb survey nobody cares about - but it's jealously guarded.

The State Comptroller’s counsel wrote to me, “We are declining to provide the URL to the Appraisal Review Board (ARB) survey… The methodology employed in the survey is designed to protect the validity of the survey results. Because the survey is anonymous, a public URL would allow persons to take the survey multiple times, allow persons who did not attend an ARB hearing to complete the ARB evaluation portion of the survey, and permit persons with malicious intent to compromise the integrity of the survey and its results.”

Horrors. And Harris County racked up 3,541 surveys, Tarrant County, zero. How bad it could have been without those protections!

And then I found something really amazing. Google indexes Survey Monkey surveys. That’s where the State Comptroller parks its top secret surveys.

My first "google" discovered the top secret Survey Monkey address for ARB feedback. There’s no login required. I got to fill out my survey on my own equipment. Let ‘em have it, too.

I was so happy, I had to celebrate so I wrote to the Comptroller’s attorney who had declined to share the URL:

Thanks again for your time, and although I do not understand why https://www.surveymonkey.com/not-gonna-post-it-here is considered top secret, I guess I have to live with it.

Got a leak somewhere?

His one-word reply about ten minutes later, “Apparently.”

So why am I pursuing it? I don't really know, except that the worst way for a bureaucracy to get rid of me is to fib.

And, by the way, I wrote back to the attorney and came clean about finding his survey with a quick Google search. I didn't want him to think I'd trespassed State computer systems.

Raw data in the latest survey can be found here - http://www.comptroller.texas.gov/taxinf ... 6_2015.pdf

[Skiprr]

Post of the day!

Even a 9th grader knows not to put datasets in the public HTML area on a webserver because--ta dah!--without other encryption measures Google and every other index spider will find them. And that Google found them says that they didn't even have a robots.txt configured; we all know that illegitimate 'bots ignore that, but Google, Bing, and reputable spiders respect it. At least publicly...

Thank you for deciding not to breach them.

But how laughable is it that the data is in the clear, yet they have a stringent physical proximity protocol? You must be present to win? (Thank you; instead I'll go place 5,000 entries for Jim Wells County and let you figure out what happened.)

I can't speak to the discrepancy of survey numbers--particularly any favorable surveys--in Harris County unless it has to do with the honkin' property tax increases we've seen the past two years. It may be the same over the state; don't know.

Using actual numbers (though not displayed) of the appraised, taxable value of my homestead in northwest Harris County, here's a chart of the amount of property taxes, in dollars, over the last six years:



You bet I protested.

Denied.

At this rate, HCAD will appraise my modest two-story as a vacation home for Hillary and Bill Clinton come 2017.