State Rep. Cecil Bell is a member of a committee that oversees utility districts in Texas. Many of those districts give his construction companies big contracts, while some of their lawyers contribute to his campaign.
Neil Thomas
Neil Thomas was an investigative reporting fellow at The Texas Tribune in 2017. He received a master's degree in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a writer and an editor for the Kennedy School Review. He previously worked at the Australian National University, the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center, and Danwei Media.
Posted in
State Government
Are lawmakers’ business ties with public entities a conflict of interest?
Since 2016, public entities have had to reveal the businesses they have large contracts with. These “1295 disclosures” reveal numerous legislators among the contractors — and some of those lawmakers have sponsored or voted on bills that help those same public entities.
Posted in
Politics
After dissident’s death, Ted Cruz hopeful about changing Chinese Embassy address
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is pushing legislation to rename the street outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., after pro-democracy dissident Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who died in Chinese custody on Thursday.
