Dan Patrick resurfaces as Chron "bad guy" (updated 04-19-2005)
Imagine the excitement that must have gone through the offices at 801 Texas Avenue a few days ago after somebody there received a "tip" about KSEV-700 conservative talker Dan Patrick.
Isn't that just potentially great copy? Conservative Chron critic turns out to be hypocritical blowhard on property taxes!
There's just one tiny little problem: the facts didn't bear out that fantastic story.
And now there's potentially a much bigger problem, because the Chronicle's Dan Feldstein pretty much told that story anyway today.
Note how the story is framed:
Sure enough, Patrick's home on Lake Conroe has a full homestead exemption, designed to lessen the tax burden on a primary residence. And his home in Katy also had a homestead break from the Katy Independent School District.
Until we made a couple of calls.
When Patrick transferred his homestead to Lake Conroe a few years ago, Montgomery and Fort Bend counties coordinated the removal of most of his Katy exemptions.
But Katy ISD straddles two counties and its school taxes are collected by Waller County. Montgomery didn't communicate with Waller, and Patrick didn't volunteer that he still had a KISD exemption because, he said, he didn't even notice.
Waller kept the exemption until contacted by the Chronicle. The county has billed him $595.
Patrick tells a very different story on Lone Star Times today. He offers to provide documentation for his assertions, AND he writes that he made all of this very clear to Feldstein, whose story omitted or mischaracterized (in Patrick's view) key facts:
Again, I want to be perfectly clear– I communicated to Dan Feldstein and the Houston Chronicle the substance of all of this information last week.
I haven't seen the documentation to which Patrick refers, but I have no reason to doubt his account. Obviously, I wasn't part of the conversations between Feldstein and Patrick, but I have no reason to disbelieve Patrick if he says he shared the facts he posted today.
That's potentially problematic for the Chronicle. Because if Patrick's account is true -- that he shared all of this information with Dan Feldstein, and the Chronicle chose to smear Patrick anyway by running a selective, misleading account -- the newspaper is treading dangerously into the territory of libel.
Even if the article wasn't libelous, it was certainly of questionable news value.
UPDATE: Dan Feldstein emails the following:
I sent a response to KSEV and the Lone Star Times at about 4:30 this afternoon. It is 7:50 p.m. and they still haven't posted it. They said they were having server problems.
In the response, I asked them to provide me with any error they found in the story. So far, they have only alleged that we took credit for this great caper when in fact Dan Patrick contacted the Waller appraiser in March. As the Waller appraiser would tell you, I brought it to his attention in February (and, actually, forgot about it -- it was so important -- until a week or so ago). I can also show you the printout I made of Patrick's property records, with a Feb. 15 timestamp from the Chronicle printer. I'm still waiting for word of any other alleged error.
I told Lone Star Times that I applied a two-point test in whether to run this small item. If Dan Patrick had discovered that Mayor Bill White or some other Prop 2 opponent had two homestead exemptions, however inadvertent, would he have mentioned it on the air? Yes. Is it mildly ironic, possibly even mildly humorous, that the area's leading low property tax advocate owes back taxes? Yes, I think. The article says very clearly that the situation was not Dan Patrick's fault. But it seems I have given Mr. Patrick great fodder for his show. Fine. I also think he's steamed because I printed his real name. Hey, I use mine and you use yours.
UPDATE 2 (04-19-2005): Lone Star Times has posted the response to which Feldstein refers above.
UPDATE 3 (04-19-2005): David Benzion considers the original article and subsequent posts/comments at Lone Star Times.
(Full disclosure: Roughly one year ago, I helped Patrick start the Chronically Biased weblog. I left that project as it became clear that Patrick wanted to do something like Lone Star Times, and I wanted to do something like what you are reading. While I hold no animosity towards Patrick and appreciated the opportunity to work on that project, neither do I consider myself a devoted follower of Patrick, his causes, or his radio station. All of that is old history for many of our readers, but I wanted to include that context for any reader who thinks it's somehow relevant).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/18/05 06:05 PM | Print | Comments (12)
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