Jan Klinck; Dedicated or Exploitive Politician

State law and the city charter seem like trivialities to city’s longest-standing elected official, enjoying big tax exemptions on his million-dollar Austin lake house while telling voters he lives in a small McAllen home

Jan Klinck, a 63 year-old developer and the longest-standing politician at McAllen City Hall, apparently hasn’t lived in the city that he supposedly serves for the last 20 years. According to records from the Travis County Appraisal District, Klinck has alleged since 1986 that his primary residence is a $1.4 million home on the shores of Lake Austin.
   And according to the McAllen city charter, commissioners must live in the city they serve, or vacate their posts.
   With the city locked in a bitter and expensive legal fight against its former Fire Department chief Anthony Rogers, who was fired after trying to fine Klinck for a handful of fire code violations at several of his McAllen properties and businesses, Klinck remains at his commissioner’s post, enjoying a homestead exemption for his trendy Central Texas lake house.
   Texas law allows homeowners to deduct 10 percent of a family’s primary residence from the total value, to lessen property tax payments.
   Though state law is clear that a homestead exemption can be applied only to a person’s principal and primary residence, and though the city’s own charter is clear that commissioners must live in the city that they serve, Klinck has managed to wiggle past apparent laws and restrictions with the help of city hall itself — after the city paid a law firm $4,000 to draft an opinion about Klinck’s ability to serve as commissioner, rather than requesting a free opinion from the Texas Attorney General’s office.
   There was another kink to Klinck’s homestead exemption problem — he had been receiving two homestead exemptions on two properties for several years: the Austin lake house and a McAllen home. State law, however, allows only one exemption per family.
   Though Klinck publicly promised to “fix” his homestead exemption problem a year ago when the issue was brought to light by a McAllen watchdog group, Klinck continues to enjoy his Austin exemption — telling the Travis County tax appraiser that his Austin home is in fact his primary residence, while telling McAllen voters that he lives in good ol’ McAllen.
   But the apparent willingness of city hall to burn public money in defense of Klinck gets worse. Last week, the city released a $100,000, year-long investigation report prepared by a private attorney that blames former chief Rogers for six year of problems within the fire department, even though Rogers was able to take the fire department’s reins for only about a year — taking focus off of the fact that the bureaucratic head-butting between Klinck and Rogers was at the center of Rogers’ heated dismissal in the first place.

PESKY LITTLE FIRE CODES
In 2001, the City of McAllen hired Anthony Rogers for the fire chief post — a clean-cut, soft-spoken Ph.D. who had previously served as an engine captain for the San Antonio Fire Department. In an interview with The Paper of South Texas, Rogers said that his first order of business as fire chief was to initiate a massive inspection of buildings.
   But those inspections caused waves. The McAllen ISD is one political entity, for example, that fell under Rogers’ scrutiny. MISD administrators weren’t happy about the  citations issued on district grounds, but the district complied, effectively ending the matter, Rogers said. But when scrutiny fell on buildings and businesses owned by Klinck, the commissioner seemed simply unwilling to comply.
   “They tried to paint this as political retaliation, but the remedy was so simple it makes such an argument ridiculous. All Klinck had to do was bring his buildings up to code, and the matter would have been solved,” Rogers said. “The real problem is that I was treating Klinck like anyone else with a fire code violation.”
   Rogers was then dismissed from his post in 2002, sending the city into a legal battle as the ex fire chief sued to get his job back. Earlier this year, state District Judge Mario Ramirez verbally indicated that he would be ruling on behalf of the city, but Ramirez has failed to sign the appropriate order, preventing Rogers from filing an appeal on the case. Though the city possess a report that paints Rogers in an extremely negative light, Rogers said that the city got exactly what it paid for: a contrived document to justify the commission’s decision to fire him, when the real issue all along was that Klinck refused to accept citations for fire code violations.

HOME IS WHERE THE TAX BREAK IS
The battle between Rogers and Klinck, however, is a controversial side note to what The Paper considers the real lingering question in the matter: how can Klinck remain a commissioner for the City of McAllen when he claims on legal documents that his primary residence is in Austin?
   After the question of Klinck’s residency came to light in 2005, Mayor Richard Cortez requested a legal opinion from the Weslaco law firm Jones, Galligan, Key & Lozano.
   The opinion, which according to city records cost  $4,000 for 27 hours of work, stated that Klinck did in fact have the right to keep his seat as commissioner, basing the conclusion on a 1960 Texas Attorney General’s opinion that found a city commissioner of Rosharon, Texas — who had a home in another city — could keep his post because he spent the majority of time in his Rosharon home.
   But a one-hour search by The Paper found a much more recent Texas AG opinion as well as a state law that would seem to support a different conclusion.
   A 1992 Attorney General’s decision ruled that a Carizzo Springs school board member vacated her post when she moved out of the school district she represented. The opinion cites state law that requires officers to live within their districts, a law echoed by the city’s own charter which requires commissioners to live in McAllen. The AG’s office, however, says that basing a private legal opinion on any existing AG opinion is shaky, since AG rulings do not set precedent.
   “Each opinion requested from our office receives an independent ruling,” said AG spokesperson Tom Kelley.
   To know for sure, a city wanting an answer to such a residency question as Klinck’s would simply have to request an opinion from the AG, Kelley said.
   Since state law also only allows homestead exemptions to apply to a person’s “primary” residence, and since Klinck willingly and knowingly claims that his primary residence is in Austin, we think the conclusion about Klinck’s residence is more than clear.
   Mayor Richard Cortez, however, thinks differently. We asked him why the city didn’t opt to seek a free Attorney General’s opinion on Klinck’s residence, rather than shell out $4,000 in taxpayer funds to a private attorney. He told us that time was the factor in the decision,
   “We thought an Attorney General’s opinion would have taken too long, so we decided to seek a qualified legal opinion to settle the matter,” Cortez said.
   But the matter isn’t settled. On a tip that Klinck has been receiving his official city-business mail at his Austin lake house, potentially costing the city thousands in delivery charges, we requested receipts for all mail and delivery packages sent to Klinck’s address. But the city stalled the request, claiming that it was unclear.
   If Klinck has been receiving city mail for years at his Austin home, and he continues to seek the homestead exemption at the same address, The Paper wonders how there could possibly be a question about the commissioner’s residency. We tried reaching Klinck for comment at his McAllen and Austin homes, but he didn’t answer our calls or return messages that we left with his house staff.
   In a previous interview, however, Klinck said that he merely spends weekends in his Austin home, but that he lives in McAllen during the week. If that is the case, then Klinck shouldn’t be claiming his Austin abode as a homestead, according to staff at the Travis County Tax Appraisal office.
   And if that isn’t the case, city commissioners and the mayor have a lot of explaining to do for McAllen residents, who’ve been footing the bill for years as the city zealously guards the seat of McAllen’s longest-standing elected official — a commissioner who might not even have lived in the city he’s served for upwards of twenty years. •