Editorial: Reporting the long game

Rarely do things conclude in just one moment. The same goes for the events that make up the fabric of our lives and of our community – and the stories that can be told of their happenings.

We brought in 2021 still reporting on matters that started long before, and that’s how we enter 2022, as well.

The year 2021 was rife with continuous local reporting surrounding a global pandemic now entering its third year – from infection rates and hospitalization data, to public service announcements on treatment and reducing transmission, to surveying the ERs and COVID wards to properly report the effects of COVID-19 and the people and resources available to combat it. And, as we ring in 2022, COVID again dominates the headlines with a daily average of over 200 cases a day in Jefferson County alone. There is some good news as of this publication, though, that the record-breaking number of new cases is not as severe as Alpha and Delta variants.

In January 2021, Southeast Texas readied for mass vaccination to try to stem the tide. And in January 2022 the percentage of Jefferson County residents fully vaccinated still only scales at just 50%.

At the same time we were desperately seeking the lifesaving COVID vaccine, the pages of this newsprint revealed in an exclusive Examiner investigation that inmates were collecting pandemic unemployment checks while sitting behind bars in local jails and state prisons. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were claimed nationally in scams to pilfer payroll protection funds, and, as reported by this paper, several local scammers were ultimately indicted and convicted of the scheme, too.

Vaccines didn’t really begin to roll in until February, a month that also brought with it the roughest winter storm seen in these parts since the 1990s. Homes were flooded with water from burst pipes, and drinking water was in short supply as municipal water lines, already sub par due to age and wear, likewise buckled under the pressure of a cold front that dawdled for days. While not as severe as other parts of Texas, the effects of the wintry blast were widespread and costly. The freezing temperatures lingered beyond our structural breaking point and the effects can still be felt in homes of residents unable to recover from the blow.

Throughout the year, we continued to follow up on investigations of yesteryear that still have yet to be resolved. A common crusade is to ensure public access to public information – a Constitutional right frequently challenged and impeded by those in positions of power. Open records and open meetings of governmental business are essential to the community’s understanding of how our tax dollars are spent and how those we place in power wield that trust. Still, with the exceptions granted by executive sessions and deals that are never reduced to paper, there are still a lot of official happenings that are hidden from the light of the Sunshine Act and the eyes of the public.

The ongoing investigation by this newspaper of the Ford Park Entertainment Complex sale still has yet to uncover many of the deal’s details, which have remained as elusive as the actual payment taxpayers have been waiting for since the deal was inked in 2020.

Not nearly as elusive as the anticipated check for the bill he’s run up is self-proclaimed owner of the $78 million taxpayer investment known as Ford Park, Kevin Johnson of Renaissance Development Group. Johnson (no relation) could be seen strutting around November 2021’s Cody Johnson concert playing the big-shot owner of Ford Park when all the county has seen regarding the Ford Park purchase is letters of pipe dreams and delays. Our investigation will continue until all is in the light of day.

Many Southeast Texans being scammed by crooked contractors never get justice when they have been taken in by the likes of people such as Mike Mincey of Brothers in Christ Construction, or Jason McKnight of Amazing Roofing and Siding. And, while victims almost never see any of their money back, the revelations of their experience investigated and exposed in this newspaper will save countless others.

Another multi-year investigation that seems to have no end in sight, Southeast Texas game room purveyors continue to thrive in spite of their known proclivities to facilitate illegal gambling, serve as hot spots for violent crimes and drug deals, and diminish the value of the area in which they operate. In 2021, we revealed in these pages how many of these illicit gaming facilities donated thousands of dollars to Beaumont Mayor Robin Mouton; with a lion’s share of the dozens of game rooms stinking up the city being in Mouton’s ward.

And then there’s the Beaumont Independent School District, where voters selected ousted former BISD Board of Trustees President Woodrow Reece to again serve on the dais. It didn’t matter to his constituents that Reece was previously kicked off of the school board by the Texas Education Agency following multiple findings of mismanagement, embezzlement, administrator-sanctioned and administrator-administered cheating on standardized tests and more financial misdealings than you could shake a tree full of sticks at.

Some may say it’s distant history. Still, the history of BISD has a way of positioning itself like a bad case of heartburn. Reported in these very pages, the BISD board just last month voted to give even more money to former auditor Gayle Botley, who was either so incompetent he didn’t notice MILLIONS of dollars being stolen from the kids of BISD, or was a complicit co-conspirator who was paid off handsomely to produce clean financial audits for a system being pilfered from every which way.

The ongoing nature of many Examiner investigations and news stories can be infuriating and exhausting – to read and to report. But, we’ll continue to do it. Uncovering and highlighting the dirty deeds done in the dark is, at times, a thankless task. Certainly, it isn’t pretty. However, without a spotlight on the ugly, there can be no recovery. You can’t fix it if we don’t know it’s there.

And, for all the bad, there is much good – which we take great joy in bringing to our readers. We have community members who have overcome such atrocities as world wars, cancers, broken homes, costly scams and natural disasters – and we have community members who work tirelessly to help these survivors thrive. We dedicate ink and paper to tell the tales of the men and women who rise before dawn to make Christmas a joyous occasion for children they’ve never met; to document the decades of families united on Adoption Day; to celebrate holidays with homebound senior citizens; to memorialize outstanding scholastic achievement in our youth; to give hope and help to our readers, our neighbors, our friends and family.

The accolades and awards lauded on this publication and its writers, both locally and nationally by our peers, is great. Make no mistake, however, the real reward is being there for the countless would-be victims saved from scams now uncovered in the pages of this print, the justice granted once investigations are exposed, the emails from victims thanking us for being their last hope for someone to listen to their troubles and attempt to get to the bottom of their issues.

True enough, some stories span years. Good thing for our community, The Examiner is in it for the long game.