(DRAFT – not published)
Where the numbers come from
We use public records and public reports only. The main ones:
- Audits. Each body’s yearly audited report (ACFR). These are checked by outside auditors. Public copies of the city and county reports are on MSRB EMMA (https://emma.msrb.org); Leander ISD posts its reports at https://www.leanderisd.org/financialtransparency/.
- Budgets. Adopted budgets from the school district, the city and the county.
- Board and council records. Agendas and minutes from the public meeting system.
- Check registers. The school district’s monthly lists of payments.
- State records. The Texas Comptroller, the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, and state law.
- The appraisal district (WCAD). Home values, tax rates and exemptions.
- Bond paperwork. The official statements each body files when it borrows, and the reports of the firms that rate its bonds.
- Census Bureau surveys. Population, income, housing and commute figures. These are survey estimates with a margin of error.
How we check
- Each number on a page has a source note. Most are also tied to a claim in our claims list.
- Each claim points to the exact record and page or line.
- A claim is marked “verified” only when we read it in the record.
- “Our math” means we did the sum ourselves from those records.
- Each page shows the date we last checked it. See all pages.
Labels
- Provisional: from a meeting where the minutes are not out yet.
- Unaudited: from a report that outside auditors have not checked.
- Gap: we looked and could not find it yet.
- The other side: reasons a number can look better or worse than it seems.
What we leave out
- We do not tell you how to vote. We do not cover races on the ballot.
- We do not name private people.
- We do not name individual lobbyists, brokers or firm staff. We name the firm or the client relationship and point to the public registration.
- When we list property owners, we name a business only when it is a well-known company or a public body. Owners that are or could be people, family trusts or small companies tied to a person are described by type instead.
- We do not run ads. See How we work for who pays for this site.
- Some pages wait for legal review before they go up.
Mistakes
See corrections.
Changes to this page
- Nov. 2, 2026: Plainer wording in the list of labels.
- Nov. 2, 2026: We added bond paperwork and Census surveys to our sources, and our rules for naming property owners and for ads.
- Nov. 2, 2026: We added a rule against naming individual lobbyists, brokers or firm staff.