There are three C’s in Chandler Crouch’s life these days: corruption, cronyism, and Christ.
The first two he believes he is fighting, and the third he feels has called him into what was once the service of others but is now a battle against Tarrant County’s tax assessor-collector.
Chandler, the owner of Chandler Crouch Realtors, a boutique real estate brokerage firm employing 25 realtors and staff, took an unlikely path to the place of prominence he occupies now.
In the early 2000s, Chandler was a UNT student without direction. Drinking too much and studying too little, it was not immediately clear what — if anything — he would make of himself.
Chandler was seeing a girl who also attended UNT, but they had gone on only one date. It did not appear likely the relationship would go anywhere. Eventually, he dropped out of UNT and bounced back and forth between Denton and Waco, trying to figure his life out. But by 2002, two books came into his life.
“I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” Chandler said. “It taught me about minimizing my liabilities. So I sold my big GMC pickup, bought a Geo Metro, and moved into a $365, all-utilities-included apartment in Denton.”
There were no frills in his accommodations. “My neighbor was a crackhead,” Chandler said, “They called it ‘Cement City.’”
Raised a Methodist, he leaned toward agnosticism in his early adulthood when he felt “no one could answer questions” about the faith.
Chandler’s reintroduction to the Bible happened in Cement City when he “spent two years reading a ‘Read The Bible In One Year’ devotional.”
His faith, which “started with a mustard seed,” would be watered when he discovered Bent Tree Church in North Dallas. He found a preacher who “really broke down the gospel” for him. This convinced Chandler to leave his old life behind.
“It was a lot of fun, but it doesn’t compare to the quality of life you get in the faith,” he said.
Chandler does not characterize his conversion in all rosy terms, however. While a life of Maccabees and minimal liabilities added meaning to his life, it was unclear where this new direction would take him.
“It is beautiful. It is a hard life, but Jesus is the answer,” he said.
One day, when Chandler went to pay his rent, the apartment complex’s owner happened to be in the lobby. They struck up a conversation, and the owner asked him to go into the real estate business with him.
Chandler had no idea why the man made the offer, but he gladly accepted it. At first, Chandler just helped here and there with leasing a few apartments. Then he helped with a few side businesses.
In a month, Chandler had gotten his real estate license, and though his relationship with the apartment owner would last only a few short years, he had been set off on a path that would lead him to sell over 1,000 properties across a 22-year career. He also went on to marry the girl from UNT.
“She was the one good thing I took away from my time at UNT,” Chandler told DX. He and his wife have three children.
His life would take a new course in 2017.
“[God had put] giving back to the community in my heart,” Chandler said. He was looking for a way to help others when someone approached him with a problem they were having: the tax assessment for their property was outrageously high and riddled with errors.
There is a highly profitable cottage industry that helps homeowners dispute their property tax assessments, but as a realtor, Chandler knew a little about it, so he decided to help pro bono.
The favor quickly turned into a major operation. In 2017 and 2018, Chandler helped 1,500 homeowners dispute their property tax assessments.
“We were getting no sleep. My team was run ragged,” Chandler said of his team’s ever-increasing workload. He ended up bringing on more people to shoulder the project.
The problem was so broad that Chandler realized something had to change to curb the situation. Eventually, Chandler contacted then-Rep. Matt Krause. Together, they rewrote some of the tax laws that were causing trouble in Tarrant County.
However, the problem persisted. More and more people were contacting him for help protesting their tax assessments. Soon, Chandler was helping 37,000 property owners. This put Chandler in constant contact with a battery of executives at the Tarrant Appraisal District (TAD).
One may suspect that the enormity of the problem would provoke a crisis response from TAD staff and that they would be grateful to Chandler for helping the taxpayers they serve to correct a pervasive issue. Just the opposite occurred.
Executives at TAD went on the offensive. They filed a volley of complaints against Chandler with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulations (TDLR). The accusations in these complaints ranged from Chandler allegedly representing too many clients to unethical conduct and fraud.
Chandler did not shy away from these accusations. He challenged every one of them and reposted them on his website with rebuttals and annotations citing inaccuracies.
He decided to approach then-Tarrant County Chief Appraiser Jeff Law for help with his staff. Chandler claims he hit a stonewall in Law and felt the chief appraiser was doing nothing but covering for rogue employees.
Sensing he was getting nowhere, Chandler went to the TAD board, which oversees the chief appraiser, but “the board is not accountable to the people,” Chandler said, noting that the voting members of the board are appointed.
Except for Rich DeOtte, Chandler felt the board members were indifferent to helping the citizens they were supposed to be serving. He noted how every motion that concerned holding someone accountable resulted in a “4-1 vote [against] with Rich as the minority.”
This led him to confront Tax Assessor-Collector Wendy Burgess, the only official with sway on the board directly elected by all Tarrant County residents, and the entire TAD board in the summer of 2022.
In a widely shared video, Crouch pokes holes in the complaints and starts to raise questions about the actions of TAD employees, but the board would not hear it.
“The complaint doesn’t have anything to do with the board,” TAD’s attorney declared. Meanwhile, TAD’s chairwoman, Kathryn Wilemon, refused to answer questions from Chandler.
Burgess and Wilemon signaled their interest in moving the issue to a non-public “executive session” that was months away, while DeOtte raised numerous objections. Executive sessions are closed-door meetings where Chandler, his attorney, and the public would not be allowed in without the board’s approval.
In one peculiar exchange captured in the video, TAD’s counsel claimed he knew nothing of the complaint and that no one had any discussion about it, then seconds later, he made a series of factual statements assuring that neither Jeff Law nor anyone on the board was involved, nor was anyone authorized to file the complaints against Chandler.
Chandler quickly pointed out the incompatibility of these statements in a commentary he posted online, “You are telling me you know a bunch of stuff, but then you don’t know.”
His case was bolstered by the fact that the complainant, Randall Armstrong, a director at TAD, had signed the complaint using his own name, his official TAD email, and — rather than his home address — the address of TAD’s office.
According to Chandler, Burgess was just as interested in covering for wrongdoers as Law and much of the board.
“[She] defended these governmental cronies and crooks,” Chandler said, “She didn’t stand up for any of us. She kept turning a blind eye when confronted with what was going on.”
Time has slowly recomposed the TAD board. With the exception of DeOtte, whom Chandler calls a “hero,” and Burgess, Wilemon, Law, Armstrong, and others who were on the board when Chandler’s battle started have left — many in clouds of scandal.
“Every executive has been fired, early retirement, resigned, recalled, etc. At least 13 people have been cleared out one way or the other,” Chandler said, “The last one is Wendy.”
Chandler said he sees Burgess as the last holdout of a self-serving regime, and he made his views clear in a recent Facebook post that made a splash around Tarrant County.
“She was the ONLY person on the TAD board elected to represent the citizens and at every single turn she defended the bad guys. She failed,” Chandler wrote. “When the government attacks its citizens and the person elected to defend us turns her back, why should we vote her back in office?”
After two years, the state investigator at the TDLR found no evidence of wrongdoing on behalf of Chandler. Meanwhile, Law and Armstrong were suspended from TAD for their involvement in the filing of the bogus complaints. Both Law and Armstrong eventually left the organization.
For her part, Burgess is bogged down by questions about her relationships with donors and her slurred and incoherent speech during official proceedings, as previously reported by DX.
Burgess is being challenged in the Republican primary by former Tarrant County Republican Party chair Rick Barnes. This is a rematch for the duo who first faced off in 2018.
Early voting began on February 20 and ended on March 1, with the Texas Republican primary set for March 5.
Note: This article was updated on March 6, 2024, at 10:12 a.m. to remove a social media post by Burgess.