Monday, June 02, 2008

Harris County Grand Juries - Too White, Too Right, Too Old


Interesting article by a conservative recently asked to serve on the Harris County Grand Jury system. Even he was disturbed about how non-representative it was. There are no attempts at randomness or representation of the county population, as is done for federal grand juries. Instead it is usually friends of the Republican judges.

If they think that is a biased system the Houston Chronicle should check into the Harris County Appraisal District Juries Review Boards. They are almost entirely old Republican builders, businessmen and developers. They have a vested interest in making sure that average property owners continue to pay the highest share of local property taxes. And they get paid $75 a day to do it. There are some local anti-tax groups protesting this.

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