Bay Area Houston

I’ve seen a lot of ethics violations over the last 20 years. This one ranks right up there with the best…worst. If you want to read another one of the worst, read about Secretary of State Jane Nelson.

Republicans have lost their “law and order” card. This is just plain sick. Taylor Goldenstein of the Houston Chronicle wrote a couple of articles about former Representative Chris Paddie. He was fined $105,000 by the Texas Ethics Commission for violating the State’s revolving door law. He also created a charity the day he announced his intent not to seek reelection and transferred $450,000 of his donors money to his own charity. He is the Chair of the charity and his son is the Vice Chair.

Lucky for Paddie the Texas Attorney General will not enforce the $105,000 fine and the Ethics Commission has no authority to do so. Like other republicans who have violated the ethics laws in Texas he is just going to ignore the fine. There is no record of the fine or the investigation of Paddie on the Ethics website. There was a formal complaint filed against him but if you have money you can have this complaint and resolution hidden from the public.

After leaving office an elected official can transfer their campaign cash to other candidates, the State, or charities but to create a charity under his own name is an incredible loophole that Texas Republicans will never close. His family can now benefit from the donations his supporters gave him.

According to the article he refunded about $30,000 to donors. I think I’ll look at this at a later time.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2025 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.