Where has Harris County’s Tax Assessor-Collector been?
A recent Houston Chronicle investigation found that the top tax official in Texas’ most populous county has not shown up to her office in four years. Documents show Ann Harris Bennett, an elected official, last swiped into the county building where she works back in late 2020.
This in the midst of the state Legislature targeting Harris County over its election procedures – procedures that the tax assessor-collector’s office is now at least partially responsible for.
Houston Chronicle city hall reporter Yilun Cheng spoke with the Standard about the details. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity.
Texas Standard: Before we get into what a tax assessor collector does, I just want to ask a question for clarification: Is Ann Harris Bennett safe? Are her whereabouts known? Is she disappeared or is it just that she hasn’t swiped into work?
Yilun Cheng: So people really haven’t seen her in a real long time. I’ve spoken with people who work at the county and people who deal with her office and no one has really seen her around the office or at any public appearances, even those that actually center her office and her work.
So it’s not just the badge swipe. That’s only a piece of the information that helps paint a picture of someone who just really isn’t engaged anymore.
Well, but is she safe? I mean, do they know where she is? Have people talked with her and that sort of thing?
Well, I did speak with her staff. And, you know, they are saying that they are still in regular contact with Ms. Bennett. So hopefully she’s safe.
Let’s talk about this office of tax assessor collector. I think most people are familiar with the office’s duties assessing property taxes, but the scope of that position in Harris County goes beyond just that. What else are they responsible for?
So the tax assessor-collector’s office actually handles many things – from collecting and dispersing property taxes, like you said, to processing vehicle registrations and title transfers. And they are also in charge of voter registrations and managing the voter rolls for the over 2.5 million registered voters in Harris County.
So if you live in Harris County, you probably interacted with the office and utilized their services in one way or another.
Well, how did it come to your attention that Bennet hadn’t been in the office in the first place? And what else did you discover in the course of your investigation?
You know, in local government, people talk. And when someone consistently doesn’t show up, people will notice and word gets around.
We also have a Harris County reporter and my colleague Jen Rice, who helped me with this story. She goes to commissioners court meetings every two weeks. So over time, we get a pretty good sense of who’s there and who’s not.
And Ms. Bennett, her absence really stood out during some key moments over the past year or so. And one big one was when the state Legislature got rid of Harris County’s independent elections office last year and gave election duties back to her and a county clerk. You know, it was a pretty contentious moment. And Ms. Bennett, whose office was at the center of this, was simply not around. You know, she missed some important public appearances related to the transition.
And then we dug deeper and started looking for more concrete information about how she’s been spending her time. We requested her I.D. badge swipe records and found that, like you mentioned, she hadn’t swiped into her office since late 2020. And there was actually a noticeable change in her attendance. She swiped her badge 92 times in 2019, but only seven times in 2020 and then not once after that.
And lastly, we also requested her email records and file. She sent very few emails this year, only 18, aside from approving employee time off requests. And some of those 18 emails were also forwarded emails. So that’s an incredibly low number for any government official, but especially for someone running such a huge operation.
You know, the Tax Office has three divisions, around 500 employees, and they need to communicate regularly with other county departments and also taxing jurisdictions. So all this information just really painted a picture of someone who just wasn’t really engaged with the office she’s elected to lead.
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So who has been managing her duties if she’s not present?
You know, from what I’ve heard, their staff really stepped up to keep things going. And there are a lot of longtime employees with deep institutional knowledge and people who access their services and people who deal with the tax office have been able to rely on them, thankfully.
Did you try to reach out to Bennett? Were you able to reach her? What does she have to say about this?
Of course. So Ms. Bennett and her office didn’t respond to our interview requests or our requests for comment. I wasn’t too surprising because she’s also declined other inquiries we’ve sent her in the past and hasn’t really been speaking to the media much.
There was one instance in September last year when she made the press conference about taking over election duties, and her spokesperson told reporters then that Ms. Bennett had a family member in critical care. But that doesn’t really fully explain why she’s been largely absent for years.
It’s possible she’s dealing with other personal issues, but without her coming forward to explain her options, we just can’t speculate.
Okay, well let me just throw this out there. You know, of course, we all know what happened in 2020 with COVID, and a lot of people didn’t go into the office. And even after the worst of COVID had subsided, many continued to do their work from home.
Is it possible that this is just a case similar to that? I mean, there are a lot of workers who found that they could manage what they needed to do from their home or home office.
Well, it’s possible that played a part at the beginning, but in Harris County, folks have returned to the office long since then. And the changes in her behavior that we noticed really happened after her reelection in 2020 – that’s after COVID broke out and after folks actually returned to the office in Harris County. She didn’t.
I mentioned that she’s an elected official. When is she up for reelection?
So she’s actually going to retire after this term is completed. So she’s not running anymore.
But there’s still a question of where has she been during her last term, during the last four years. So no one really saw her around after she was reelected in 2020.