Chronicle Tracks County Political Donations of Floodplain Developers

10/28/25 – Yilun Cheng and Matt Zdun, reporters for the Houston Chronicle, published an article this morning about the political donations of floodplain developers. It represents a new high-water mark in investigative journalism concerning Houston’s flooding problems.

Cheng and Zdun found $10.8 million in contributions from development interests to county judges and commissioners in Harris and Montgomery counties for the decade between January 1, 2015, through December 31, 2024. That works out to roughly a million dollars per year contributed to 10 people.

The article’s headline: “How officials approved tens of thousands of homes in Houston floodplains: ‘1,000 ways to rig the model.'” Their story’s preview link gives us a hint: “In Houston-area floodplain development, political donations beat science.”

The thrust of the article is how development interests have:

• Influenced the very regulations that govern the industry
• Tweaked model inputs to make developments look more desirable and their impacts less severe
• Made huge political contributions to those who influence approval of their plans.

65,000 Homes built in Houston Floodplains since Harvey

Cheng previously published a blockbuster story about 65,000 homes built in Houston floodplains since Hurricane Harvey. Today, she delved into how that happened. She and her colleagues tracked the political donations of developers, homebuilders, engineers and their respective Political Action Committees (PACs) and trade associations.

For today’s article Cheng and Zdun focused mainly on Harris and Montgomery Counties, though Cheng interviewed people from the other surrounding counties and cities as well.

Research Challenges and Ensuring Data Quality

Such research is more difficult than it appears at first glance. Contributions often don’t appear under the name of a corporation on a government contract.

Rather, contributions often appear under the names of the corporation’s leaders, employees, and their family members. That adds extra layers of research and verification.

And multiple donations from the same individuals may appear in different forms. For instance, an individual might use his full name for one donation and a first initial for the next. That discourages automatic sorting.

So, Cheng and Zdun had to review contributions one by one. “Campaign finance filings vary greatly in quality,” they noted at the end of the article. “The same donor could be represented several different ways in filings, with different spellings, suffixes, titles and punctuation. Additionally, some county officials submitted handwritten filings, which complicated the data parsing.” Accidental? I think not.

The Chronicle standardized names across filings, removing extraneous suffixes, titles and punctuation through a process that involved substantial hand checking.

Then the reporters cross-checked all name matches with occupation and address data to verify that they were the same individual. They also sorted entries by date because during the sampling period, some politicians also ran for offices other than county judge or commissioner.

From my own experience with such research, I suspect the totals they reported may be understated. The rule of thumb? When it doubt, leave it out.

Contributions Don’t Automatically Guarantee Plan Approval

Cheng and Zdun are careful to point out that political contributions don’t automatically guarantee approval of developers plans. But they also point out situations in which contributions to a county commissioner mysteriously made it difficult for county employees to reject a developer’s plans/studies.

For instance, they explored a floodplain development by Ryko in Montgomery County and found that a county employee’s rejection of the developer’s plans was later escalated to a former commissioner. The employee was formally reprimanded. Coincidentally, the developer’s consultant (and former employee) currently chairs the Houston Planning Commission.

“Experts, residents and advocates warned that they’ve seen case after case of politics, not math, shaping floodplain development decisions,” said Cheng.

Cheng interviewed Dr. Sam Brody of Texas A&M. He said, “All the models done are based on assumptions, and the assumptions are based on what they think,” Brody said. “There are 1,000 ways to rig the model to come up with an answer that you want to see.”

Cheng also interviewed Chad Berginnis, director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. Berginnis said he has experienced firsthand how politics can complicate efforts to enforce floodplain rules. “I tried to faithfully administer the regulations,” he said, recalling his time as a local floodplain manager. “And I can tell you on more than one occasion I suffered the county commissioners’ anger.”

I personally know a floodplain manager in Montgomery County who labored under similar pressure and eventually left the county.

Part of a Larger Series

Cheng is a talented writer/reporter with a penchant for meticulous documentation. Today’s article is part of a larger series exploring flooding in the Houston region and Texas in general. I will say this. When the next big flood destroys thousands of homes, people need look no further than Cheng’s articles for answers.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 10/28/2025

2982 Days since Hurricane Harvey

The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.