The latest investigative stories in Texas that uncovered hidden facts and held officials accountable:

Apple served with search warrant in Sutherland Springs shooting | The San Antonio Express-News

Texas Rangers investigating the mass shooting in Sutherland Springs have served a search warrant on Silicon Valley giant Apple Inc. and are seeking digital photos, messages, documents and other types of data that might have been stored by gunman Devin Patrick Kelley, who was found with an iPhone after he killed himself. Story by John Tedesco and Kelsey Bradshaw

At the Texas Capitol, victims of sexual harassment must fend for themselves | The Texas Tribune

“Interviews with more than two dozen current and former lawmakers and legislative aides indicate sexual harassment regularly goes unchecked at the Texas Capitol. And sexual harassment policies rely on officials with little incentive or authority to enforce them, particularly in cases of harassment by lawmakers.” Story by Alexa Ura, Morgan Smith, Jolie McCullough and Edgar Walters

Reversing course, Austin council to reveal city manager finalists | The Austin American-Statesman

“Austin City Council members will reverse course on their secret search for a city manager and release up to five finalists’ names in the next few days, a week after the American-Statesman staked out candidate interviews and sued the city over refusing to release records on the search.” Story by Elizabeth Findell

Arkema documents: Planning, mechanical failures led to Harvey chemical fires | The Houston Chronicle

Poor planning and a series of cascading equipment failures led to dangerous chemicals erupting into flames in late August during the height of Hurricane Harvey at Arkema’s Crosby plant. “The miscalculations indicate the company’s lack of preparation for more than 3 feet of flooding, reflected by an emergency management plan that barely addressed how to handle such a storm.” Story by Matt Dempsey and Jacob Carpenter

Investigation finds corruption, intimidation at Temple VA campus | The Austin American-Statesman

Struggling veterans who work at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Temple campus have lodged nearly 50 grievances in the past decade, claiming they’ve endured verbal tirades, witnessed thefts and were forced to perform personal work at the homes of high-ranking VA officials. An internal VA inquiry has finally corroborated their complaints. Story by Jeremy Schwartz

Did I miss a good story? Contact me or leave a comment below. Don’t forget to sign up for blog updates and check out more watchdog journalism from the great state of Texas.

The post Must reads: Texas watchdog journalism roundup for Nov. 19, 2017 appeared first on John Tedesco.

I found the answers in the IRS Form 990 — the publicly available tax filing that must be filled out by a variety of nonprofit organizations in the United States.

It turned out the museum was overseen by a tax-exempt charity, which meant its tax records were open to the public, which meant anyone curious about the museum, like me, could learn all kinds of things about its finances.

The tax records helped me write a series of news stories about how the museum was actually a telemarketing operation that raised $12 million from 2004 to 2009 in the name of helping the families of state troopers who died in the line of duty. For every dollar raised, this “charity” had actually spent less than one penny on that worthy goal.

The museum’s activities had already caught the attention of the Texas Attorney General’s office and it went to court to shut down the telemarketing operation, claiming it was duping donors.

Today, the museum is history. The story I stumbled across offers a lesson for any journalist who writes about a nonprofit organization at some point in their career (and we all do). It pays to take the time to look up the 990 — even for seemingly innocuous stories.

The 990 filing, while not perfect by any means, is a road map that can guide you to a better understanding of how a charity works. How much money does it make? How much does it pay its executives? Has it ever been the victim of embezzlement?

The 990 isn’t just a tool for journalists, either. It’s for anyone who wants to know more about a charity. These organizations are often holding out their hats for donations. In return, you’re allowed to look at how they handle the money they raise. And it’s easier than ever to get your hands on these tax records online, often for free.

Here’s how to find 990s and analyze them. Sometimes, the things you discover will raise questions that need to be answered by the charity. But you’ll never know to ask those questions unless you read the 990.

Obtaining tax records of charities

Different types of nonprofits fall under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Many follow 501(c)(3) of the code, which covers charities that raise funds from a variety of donors. There are also charitable foundations that rely on fewer benefactors. Churches don’t have to file a 990. But religious schools and private universities do.

The IRS says you can visit the office of any group that falls under 501(c)(3) and request copies of their tax filings for the past three most recent years. If they made more than $25,000, they’re supposed to file a 990-EZ or the full 990 form, depending on their revenue. But if you’re in a hurry or don’t want to raise alarm bells at the nonprofit, there are also free online tools to obtain the records.

The pioneer in making 990s widely available is Guidestar.org. Sign up for a free account, and Guidestar lets you search by keyword and location to find the charity of your choice. Click on a profile, and you can download recent 990 tax forms.

OK, so you found the 990 you’re looking for. Now what?

Analyzing the 990

Here are a few things I usually look at. The front page of the 990 gives you an overview of the organization:

You can find basic information, such as the main office address and phone number, the year the charity was founded and how many employees it has:

You’ll also find the overall revenue, expenses, fundraising numbers and whether the group made or lost money. Remember, nonprofit doesn’t mean no profit:

In the case of the obscure museum I was curious about, we can see that its telemarketers raised $2.2 million in 2009. Is that a lot or a little? Whenever you look at a financial document, it’s helpful to compare it to past reports to put those numbers into context. My suggestion is to look at several years of 990 filings. Plug the numbers you’re interested in into a spreadsheet, and you can now spot trends.

In my case, I was interested in how much money the museum raised, and how much money its related nonprofit entity was donating to the families of fallen state troopers. The San Antonio Express-News has a paid account with Guidestar, which let us download 990 tax filings for the previous five years. I typed the revenue totals and payments into a spreadsheet.

Across a broad time frame, it was clear that little money was trickling down to the families who needed it.

Digging deeper

The second page of the 990 has the mission statement of the organization and what it claims it accomplished — useful if you want to compare the rhetoric to reality.

Page 3 is the beginning of a lengthy questionnaire. Interesting nuggets might be buried there.

Part VI of the questionnaire asks about the management of the organization and whether it had a “significant diversion” of assets that year. If an organization checks “yes,” that usually means it was the victim of theft.

You don’t see this checked “yes” very often, but the Washington Post published an excellent series in 2013 about more than 1,000 organizations that lost millions of dollars.

Answering “yes” to questions in the questionnaire can trigger a requirement to fill out supplemental information further down in the 990. There you can find, for example, “Schedule O,” which is where the charity explains how the “significant diversion of assets” happened.

The salaries of the nonprofit’s top employees and the identities of board members often makes for interesting reading, which you’ll find in Part VII of the 990:

Some organizations fill this out in an attachment because it’s so long.

Again, be on the lookout for supplemental information toward the back of the 990 for more information about how employees and board directors are compensated.

You might find a “Schedule J” that fleshes out compensation packages for the group’s leadership. You might also find a “Schedule L,” which details “transactions with interested persons.” That probably sounds better than what it is, the “Potential Conflict of Interest” section. This is where a charity might report “excess benefit transactions” to the IRS, which means it overpaid in a transaction with someone who had ties to the organization, such as a charity executive.

Part IV of Schedule L lists business transactions with “interested persons,” such as board members. Last year, this section caught my eye when I was covering a rare, public clash between Louis Agnese Jr., the longtime president of the University of the Incarnate Word, and UIW’s board. In Schedule L, Incarnate Word reported several transactions with businesses tied to the school’s board members, including Charles Amato, the past chairman of the board:

Such transactions aren’t illegal. But Agnese’s critics said the board at UIW had always strongly supported Agnese. It was surprising when the new chairman, Charles Lutz, announced he couldn’t condone Agnese’s conduct.

You also might find “Schedule R,” which details related organizations and partnerships, and any transactions with them. This is where I learned the Texas Highway Patrol Museum was tied to other organizations, which led me to yet more 990 tax filings.

Tying it together

Remember the cover page of the 990 and its overview of revenue and expenses? Be sure to review three sections that offer greater detail on those subjects.

Part VIII is the “Statement of Revenue,” which breaks down revenue streams for an organization. You’ll find how much money comes from membership dues, fundraising events, government grants and other categories.

Part IX is the “Statement of Functional Expenses,” where you can find how much an organization spends on advertising, legal fees, travel and other expenses.

Part X is the balance sheet, where you can see the breakdown of assets and liabilities. You can check for things like how much cash the group had on hand at the beginning of the year compared to the end of the year.

This numbers might not seem very sexy. But the simple act of reading them, plugging them into a spreadsheet and comparing them over time can lead to good questions and beef up a mundane news story.

What’s in a name?

Keep in mind that some organizations call themselves “foundations,” but they might not be. A foundation usually relies on one or several wealthy benefactors, and by law, it must spend at least five percent of its investments on charitable purposes.

Foundations file a slightly different tax form called a 990-PF. One difference is that the foundation lists its grants and recipients. You can see where the money’s going and where the foundation’s priorities lie.

This came in handy when I profiled San Antonio billionaire B.J. “Red” McCombs, who has made headlines for big-ticket multi-million dollar donations that gets his names on buildings. But the 990-PF for his foundation listed a variety of gifts totaling $4.7 million, most of which were smaller donations that never made the news.

“Those gifts you never hear about,” McCombs told me. But he’s convinced the smaller donations make a difference. “If it’s to the food bank, for example, we fully believe that they can take $100 and do five times as much with it as as we could possibly do.”

Other helpful websites

The 990 is a starting point. Even Guidestar, which revolutionized public access to 990s, cautions that these tax records aren’t the best barometer of whether a charity is fulfilling its stated mission.

But the 990 can still be useful. Time after time, I’ve found gems in these seemingly dry tax filings that made me a little more informed about a charity and gave me good questions to ask.

Here are some other resources for finding 990s and checking out nonprofits any time you drive by, say, an empty museum and wonder what their deal is:

• The IRS’ exempt organizations search tool: Allows you to verify an organization’s tax exempt status, and download the agency’s entire database of nonprofit entities.
• The Foundation Center’s 990 finder: Another free online source to track down 990s. The group offers an online guide to demystifying the 990 for foundations.
• Citizen Audit: An awesome, fee-based tool that lets you conduct keyword searches across millions of nonprofit tax documents.
• Federal Audit Clearinghouse: Searchable database of nonprofit organizations that receive federal dollars and must undergo audits.
• Charity Navigator: Offers 990s for nonprofits and rates thousands of organizations.

The post How to find and analyze tax records of charities: The IRS 990 form explained appeared first on John Tedesco.

But what stood out for me was a talk by investigative reporter Jason Leopold of Vice News about using the Freedom of Information Act to get your hands on that data in the first place.

“The Freedom of Information Act has become a very important tool for me,” said Leopold, who writes about the secretive world of national security where few people are willing to speak on the record.

To bypass those road blocks, Leopold began relying on FOIA to dig up public records and unearth good stories. Over the years he’s learned about the intricacies and pitfalls of FOIA. He’s been so prolific, a federal bureaucrat referred to him in an email as a FOIA terrorist. Leopold liked it and the nickname stuck.

“I file FOIA requests probably several times a week,” Leopold told several hundred journalists who packed a conference room at the Denver Marriott City Center on March 10.

Here’s what Leopold learned about FOIA, a law written nearly a half century ago that has its flaws — but can still be a powerful tool:

Speed up the FOIA process

One downside of FOIA is the backlog of open records requests at many federal agencies. It can take months, even years, to get anything.

To speed up the process, Leopold said it’s important to explicitly explain in your FOIA request not only what you’re looking for, but where it’s located at the agency.

“It’s crucial for reporters to build a template — a template that describes exactly where you want these agencies to search,” Leopold said.

Every federal agency has “systems of records” that are usually public and list where they are keeping certain databases and documents in their vast bureaucracy.

Let’s say you’re looking for emails about the German auto manufacturer Volkswagen and how it rigged emissions tests. You send a FOIA request. “The EPA is a large organization, obviously,” Leopold said. “So just sending it to the EPA would not necessarily get you the info you’re seeking in a timely manner.” Leopold said you could speed up the process, potentially trimming off months of delays, if you tell the EPA where to search.

This tip is also a bit empowering. Once the agency notices you know what you’re doing, it’s harder for it to blow you off.

For the FOIA analysts handling your requests, “if you’re not telling them what to do, they have to figure it out,” Leopold said.

Leopold also singled out the FBI.

“The FBI is the worst agency in the government when it comes to responding to FOIA,” Leopold said. The FBI has a 100 million records, and how it searches those records matters.

“Whenever you file a request with the FBI, you should always ask them to conduct a cross-reference search,” Leopold said. “That’s a separate filing system. And an ELSUR search — electronic surveillance database search. And oftentimes, the FBI will have documents in cross-reference files.”

For example, after Maya Angelou died, Leopold filed a FOIA request to see what files the FBI had about her. “They responded by saying, ‘We didn’t find any records.'” Leopold said. “So I appealed and said, ‘You guys did not conduct a cross-reference search.’

“And they went back, the did a cross-reference search, and the gave me these cross-reference files, which were actually really fascinating because these cross-reference files had to do with an investigation into communist activities in the ’60s. And there was Maya Angelou in this file.

“So it really sort of helps to get those documents and get that type of material,” Leopold said. “It will really also help, if you’re reporting on a story, to gain a wider knowledge of how the FBI conducts its activities.”

Appeal everything

FOIA has an appeals process, and Leopold uses it all the time.

“I cannot stress enough how important it is to appeal every response that you get,” Leopold said. “Even if the agency turns over everything you want. There may actually be more. I appeal everything.”

An example: For a story about the Obama administration scuttling FOIA, Leopold heard rumors about the Federal Trade Commission being involved. He filed a FOIA request and they sent about 30 pages.

“I appealed it. They said, ‘Oh, we found 900 more pages.'”

When you appeal, you don’t need to make a compelling legal argument. Simply write, “I appeal the integrity of the search.” It’s also very important to appeal any and all redactions. “You will really be surprised by some of these responses,” Leopold said.

The meta FOIA

File a FOIA request for the processing notes to see how the government agency is handling your initial FOIA request. It’s a way to gain a great understanding about how the FOIA process works.

Leopold said there’s a paper trail from the moment your request lands on an analyst’s desk that shows how your request is being handled. Processing notes sometimes have names of databases that are undisclosed, which could be valuable to your reporting.

“You get a good understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes,” Leopold said.

Leopold advised to wait about three or four weeks after receiving your FOIA case number to file this “meta” FOIA request. “I think those processing notes are hugely valuable,” said Leopold, especially for reporters who cover national security where it’s so difficult to obtain information.

A great resource

One thing that frustrates Leopold is that many reporters don’t know about a great resource: OGIS, the Office of Government Information Services.

This office is the “federal FOIA ombudsman” that provides mediation services for citizens dealing with federal bureaucracies. They can help you if an agency is stonewalling.

“They’re waiting for that phone call,” Leopold said of OGIS. But all too often, journalists aren’t picking up the phone.

“It’s not used as often as it should be,” Leopold said. “It does not cost anything. I’ve used their services before suing. They’ve actually been able to get documents for me.”

Expedited processing

Under FOIA, the burden is on the requester to prove there is a need for the information to be released immediately.

“Each agency is different with regard to expedited processing,” Leopold said. “The easiest office to be granted expedited processing is the Justice Department, even though they suck at FOIA,” Leopold said.

It doesn’t always work out the way you want. For one request, Leopold was granted expedited processing but still had to wait two years to receive what he asked for.

“So much for expedited processing,” Leopold joked. But he said it’s always a good idea to ask for expedited processing and figure out how to make that case. What is that pressing need? How would the public be harmed if that information was not out immediately?

Do your homework

FOIA logs: Read them regularly. Most agencies post their FOIA logs of past requests and responses on their website. You can actually see what other people are asking for, get ideas, and save yourself some time.

You can also check a website called FOIA online, which allows you to conduct keyword searches of multiple agencies and read any documents that were released.

It’s OK to sue

Leopold said there’s a myth that it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to sue the government to resolve a FOIA dispute.

“If you are looking for a highly classified document, yes, be prepared for a fight that’s going to take many years,” he said. But otherwise, it’s not so bad. You or your news organization file a suit, and then life gets better. The litigation helps speed up the FOIA process if the agency is dragging its feet.

“Basically what happens after filing a lawsuit, you kind of go to the top of the pile,” Leopold said. “You end up working with a government attorney, and you come up with a production schedule.”

Leopold said FOIA litigation doesn’t cost as much as some people might think.

“The costs are really minimal,” he said. “I mean, four digits. It’s a sad reality about FOIA. It remains broken. We’re left having to litigate for documents that belong to the public.”

Fee waivers

To save money in open records costs, you need to ask for a fee waiver and make an argument as to why you’re entitled to it. You can write: “I’m a reporter. I publish regularly. I am going to use these documents to write a news story about this issue. I should be entitled to a fee waiver because it is in the public interest.”

When writing your request, be sure to use the phrase “any and all records relating or referring to …” That’s very important language, Leopold said. Don’t say you want documents “about” something. Agencies can deny your request, claiming they don’t know what you mean.

Related: How to contact an investigative reporter

By law, every agency also has to provide you with an estimated date of completion. You can request that, and if they fail to provide it, that can help your cause if you need to later appeal or file a lawsuit.

Keeping track of it all

“I have more than a thousand outstanding (FOIA) requests,” Leopold said. He makes sense of the chaos by using a “very simple” spreadsheet that includes the date of the request and when responses are due.

What’s Leopold’s success rate?

“You know, I’m not patting myself on the back here,” Leopold said. “I’m really successful. I turn all of this into news.”

What’s amazing about getting records through FOIA, Leopold said, is that sources are suddenly willing to talk once documents are unclassified and released publicly. It’s tedious work — but it pays off.

“It has become a very important tool for me,” Leopold said. “But yeah, I have a very good success rate.”

The post Insightful FOIA tips from ‘FOIA terrorist’ Jason Leopold at NICAR 2016 appeared first on John Tedesco.

Here are five shining examples of why this pesky-open government thing matters.

Last week, the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas held its annual conference in Austin and announced the winners of the Gavel Awards, which go to journalists who produced stories that shed light on the legal system. A common thread runs through all these stories: They relied extensively on public documents, and uncovered important, previously unknown problems and issues in the community.

Related: Top five books every student journalist should own right now

So if you think public information isn’t really that big a deal, check out the winning stories:

Somebody explain to me again why public information doesn’t matter.

The post Five news stories that show why open government is such a big deal appeared first on John Tedesco.

Adkisson doesn’t want to release private e-mails in which he discussed public business. The attorney general’s office told him he has to release the e-mails. However, there’s an important caveat: Adkisson is the one who’s responsible for identifying the e-mails that pertain to the public’s business.

Adkisson. The guy who doesn’t want to give up any e-mails. He’s the one who’s supposed to go through his Hotmail account or whatever and turn over copies of e-mails that can be deleted with a mouse click.

In related news, a public interest group, the Corrupt Regime of Associated Politicians (C.R.A.P.) announced today that they’ll be conducting all business on Yahoo! e-mail accounts.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

The post How to keep a secret if you’re a crooked politician in Texas appeared first on John Tedesco.

Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson refuses to comply with a Texas attorney general’s ruling that ordered him to release e-mails in his private accounts that contain public information. This week he instructed the Bexar County district attorney’s office to sue the AG.

The San Antonio Express-News submitted an open-records request under the Texas Public Information Act on Feb. 17, seeking all e-mails between Adkisson and grass-roots toll opponent Terri Hall regarding business of Bexar County and the Metropolitan Planning Organization, of which Adkisson is chairman.

The request sought e-mail correspondence from Adkisson’s county-provided e-mail address as well as from two private accounts he maintains. The newspaper is seeking the e-mails because they would offer insight into Adkisson’s management style at the MPO.

The story raises two issues that ought to trouble open-records advocates:

One is that public officials are keenly aware that their government e-mails are public documents, and they are turning to private e-mail accounts to conduct government business.

Related: How to find and analyze tax records of charities: The IRS 990 form explained

The other is Adkisson’s explanation for seeking to withhold his e-mails from the newspaper: He believes the Express-News is biased and has a pro-toll road agenda.

Even if Adkisson’s claim were true, the point is irrelevant when it comes to public information. In Texas, a government record is either public, or it isn’t. In order for an agency to withhold a record, it must cite a legal exemption. For example, a section of the Texas Public Information Act says investigative files of law enforcement agencies don’t have to be made public.

The motives of the person requesting the information has no bearing on whether a document is public. In fact, under the law, officials aren’t even supposed to ask why someone wants the information. Otherwise, government officials could withhold everything from the public simply by saying they don’t trust the people asking for the information. Or they could play favorites and give information to preferred journalists and bloggers.

So now the county is going to spend taxpayer money on a legal effort to withhold information from taxpayers. Maybe Josh can find out how much money the county will spend on the case — assuming no one questions his motives for asking.

The post Open records quiz: Can officials question your motives and withhold documents from you? appeared first on John Tedesco.

Karisa King and I were cleaning our corner of the newsroom last week, and I rediscovered this gem of an e-mail written by an official for the Texas Department of Insurance.

The state agency oversees the amusement-ride industry. When a patron is seriously injured, the ride owner is supposed to report the injury to the department of insurance, and the information is typed into a database.

For a story I wrote about the safety of amusement rides, we obtained a copy of the injury database, and the Express-News posted the data online.

That disturbed at least one state official.

“Tedeso has put together a searchable database of injuries from our data,” department spokesman Jerry Hagins informed his colleagues in the July 2009 e-mail.

“Can he do this?????????” replied Richard Baker, a manager at the agency.

A question with nine question marks deserves an answer: Yes, we can do this. In fact, news organizations and blogs ought to do this.

Related: Telling stories with data: Police chases and drug smugglers on the Texas-Mexico border

Government agencies collect reams of data about important issues. When journalists find that data, analyze it, and share it with the public, we help readers make sense of a complicated world. That’s our mission. And that’s why news sites are publishing “data centers” with unique and useful information.

Want to learn the salary of the city manager of San Antonio? Check a public-salary database.

Curious what litterbugs have been dumping on roadways? Check the state’s “Dont Mess with Texas” database.

Wondering where it’s safe to drive in San Antonio during a downpour? Check a map of low-water crossings, which was created from a city database.

Can we post this data?

Yep.

Should we?

Absolutely.

The post Government official shocked — shocked! — when public data is posted online appeared first on John Tedesco.

On March 26, City Hall reporter Josh Baugh got an adrenaline-pumping tip: FBI agents had seized files at the office of Fernando De León, a city official who reviewed permits for real estate development in San Antonio.

The tip sparked a frantic series of phone calls that afternoon as Josh and I tried to figure out what was going on. Authorities said they couldn’t discuss many details — there was still an active investigation, and De León hadn’t been charged with a crime. It was an understandable response, but we had to tell readers what was happening at a city department funded by their tax dollars and permit fees.

Trying to find answers in a story like this is like working on a jigsaw puzzle, only you have to go out and interview people and dig up records to find the missing pieces. And even then, you’re only going to see part of the picture. But after a lot of work, here’s the gist of what we know today:

There’s certainly far more to this story, but it’s a start. If you’re digging into a murky topic like this for a blog or news organization, here are a few tips that can help you find the missing pieces of the puzzle:

(Photo credit: liza31337)

The post Reporter’s notebook: Tips for putting together the pieces of a puzzling, complex story appeared first on John Tedesco.

When I worked on this short article about CPS Energy and its incorrect claim that no one had ever been killed in an accident at a nuclear plant in the United States, I came across this YouTube video about a fatal accident at the SL-1 military facility in Idaho.

That video was obtained by Public.Resource.Org as part of FedFlix, a clever term to describe a vast collection of videos created by federal agencies that Public.Resource.Org is obtaining and posting online, through partnerships with federal agencies and open-government advocates. Copyright claims don’t apply to material produced by the U.S. government, so Public.Resource.Org, led by Carl Malamud, can use the videos however it wants. And it wants to share the treasure trove of material with the public:

Related: A review of the Sigma 17-70mm lens for videographers

FedFlix is a joint venture with the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) in cooperation with other government agencies including the National Archives. They send us government videotapes, we upload them to the Internet Archive, YouTube, and our own public domain stock footage video library— then we send the government back their videotapes and a disk drive with their digitized video.

Here are a few examples of the cool educational and documentary videos available:

True Glory (1945)

An award-winning documentary about World War II, “told by the guys who won it.”

Top 10 Coast Guard rescues

Laser Safety

This psychedelic video by NASA should have won an award for its groovy soundtrack.

The post The free version of Netflix: FedFlix appeared first on John Tedesco.

In the process of blogging about WOAI’s open-records battle with the Texas Department of Transportation, I had a chance to revisit the Web site set up by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. The foundation has completely revamped its old, sleepy site — check out how it looked as recently as 2008 in the Internet Archive.

The foundation erased that static page and replaced it with social media offerings. The home page is a WordPress blog, and the foundation now has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.

The new site makes it easier for people to see the foundation’s good work, and it offers tips for people interested in open government. For example, Executive Director Keith Elkins gives advice on YouTube about how to effectively use the Texas Public Information Act to obtain government records.

Related: How to research a property’s history using Bexar County’s free records search

Social media still gets a bad rap in some circles, especially in the media. But look at the before and after shots of the foundation’s Web site. It’s not hard to tell which one is more engaging, and which one does a better job explaining to people why open government matters.

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