Related story
More than a year's hotel tax, still unspentThe Ellis Network — Follow the Money
Transparency without accessibility is meaningless. Ellis's financial relationships were buried across thousands of scanned pages and a 960MB state database. This tool extracts, connects, and makes them searchable — so citizens can decide what it means.
Read this in the original
This entry provides context and source notes. Its detailed explanation remains in the original build; a separate visual breakdown has not yet been authored here.
- Start with the question and coverage below.
- Open the original to inspect the records, controls and evidence behind the finding.
- Check the source dates and methodology before comparing figures or drawing a conclusion.
What you’re looking at
An interactive investigation mapping 26 years of Commissioner Rodney Ellis's political contributions and campaign fund disbursements — from $100K campaign loans to sitting Commissioners Court members to donations reaching Atlanta, St. Louis, New York City, and beyond.
The question behind it
This investigation combines three data sources — TEC bulk CSV filings (2000-2026), TEC expenditure records, and all 24 Harris County campaign finance reports (4,226 pages OCR-extracted) — to build the most complete public map of Ellis's financial network ever assembled. Every dollar is real, every record is public.
Why it matters
Transparency without accessibility is meaningless. Ellis's financial relationships were buried across thousands of scanned pages and a 960MB state database. This tool extracts, connects, and makes them searchable — so citizens can decide what it means.
Open the full visualizationSources & method
- Texas Ethics Commission — Bulk CSV Database (personal contributions)
- Texas Ethics Commission — Expenditure reports, Filer ID 00019940
- Harris County Clerk — 24 campaign finance reports (2016-2026, 4,226 pages, OCR-extracted)
Method
TEC personal contributions filtered by contributor name. TEC campaign expenditures filtered by Filer ID. Harris County scanned PDFs OCR-extracted via Tesseract, campaign-related expenditures manually verified. Organization names consolidated across 40+ variant mappings. 730 transactions, 339 unique recipients, $1,746,550 total.