Stephen F. Austin, Donnie Darko, and a person calling himself the ‘King of the Wild Frontier’ were among the first people to give money to support Governor Greg Abbott’s border wall effort after he announced that he would seek private donations for help finance it.
But there is no way to verify if Austin, who donated $ 10, has some connection to the man known as the ‘Father of Texas’, or if Darko, who gave $ 25, looks like the main character in the cult movie about a teenager who meets a man in a bunny suit who tells him the world will end in 28 days. The ‘King of the Wild Frontier’ donated $ 50, but public records do not indicate where he lives.
Despite Abbott’s promises that transparency in the crowdfunding process for the border wall would be paramount, donor information released to The Texas Tribune during the first week of fundraising lacked any way to verify the identities of the most donors.
The Abbott office does not release the location of donors or require that they identify themselves by their real names.
“We look forward to full transparency and accountability,” Abbott said in June when announcing the crowdfunding effort. “So that the public knows all the money that comes in and how it is being used.”
Gaps in donation disclosures have raised ethical concerns about the private fundraising effort for the Governor’s main state initiative.
Experts have warned that without clear disclosure and enforcement rules, the public may never really know who is funding the state’s border wall. Worse, they warned, it could invite the perception of a “pay to play” system in which donors, who are anonymous to the public, benefit from their donations to one of Abbott’s priority projects.
“You don’t want to have this big fund of money that goes to this pet project of the State Executive that has no responsibility to anyone, with money that comes from who knows what and God knows who,” said Beth Rotman, national director of money. in politics and ethics from Common Cause, the government watchdog group.
The Texas Tribune reviewed donations to Abbott’s border wall efforts that covered the first eight days of its existence, June 10-17. During that time, the state received more than 3,300 individual donations. The highest was $ 5,000.
As of Thursday, total donations for the wall exceeded more than $ 873,000, but the list of individual donor names beyond the first eight days was not immediately available.
In addition to potentially fake names, the list also includes dozens of incomplete names. Donors are identified as ‘R T’, ‘S P’, ‘Red A’ and ‘A Rim’.
Abbott’s office released city and state information for only 25 donors who had mailed money prior to the establishment of its online fundraising portal on June 16. All but two of those donations came from outside of Texas. A $ 10 donation received in the mail was from “US Citizen / Veteran” and was listed as anonymous.
After the findings of the Texas Tribune investigation were presented to her, Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze reiterated the Governor’s commitment to “ensuring full transparency and accountability to our fellow Texans,” and said Abbott had followed a “ process that has existed for decades to monitor the gifts, grants and donations to establish the financing mechanism of the border wall ”.
Eze added that the donations were subject to the state’s public information laws and that Abbott’s office was releasing the information in accordance with those laws.
“Due to the sensitive nature of personal information for credit card transactions and the very real fear of retaliation for donating to the border security mission, billing information is only kept by the state agency responsible for processing financial transactions from the credit card, “Eze said in a statement. “Until the Biden Administration begins to do its job, Texas is working hard to secure our southern border and protect Texans and Americans alike.”
The Tribune has not requested disclosure of donor credit card numbers, but has requested the names, cities and states of donors to assist in identity verification.
In a similar case, when Arizona tried to collectively fund the legal defense of a controversial immigration law that allowed police to ask citizens about their immigration status, the state released the names of donors and the states where they lived. Not everyone who donated to the Texas Wall hid their identity.
Political consultants like Sherry Sylvester, one of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick’s top aides, donated at least $ 50, and Allen Blakemore, who advises some of the state’s top Republican politicians, including Patrick, donated $ 25.
Experts compared the fundraising effort for the wall to political campaign contributions and said Abbott’s office should implement tools to reassure the public about the project’s transparency.
“You don’t want to remain anonymous because it increases the danger that someone will direct public policy,” said Richard Briffault, a law professor at Columbia University.
Under Texas political information laws, campaigns are required to ask donors for their name, address, and business occupation when soliciting donations to verify their identity. But Abbott’s border wall fundraiser is not governed by those laws and does not have those requirements.
The system has also opened the door for creative donors to send political messages to state officials.
On June 17, a donor gave one dollar, the minimum amount required to donate to the campaign. Below the space for the name, the donor indicated “Stop wasting taxpayer money.”
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