LION Local Integrity Oversight Network

A Texas public-records analytics firm · based in North Texas

You paid for these records. With your taxes.

We’re not the government, and we’re not a newsroom — we’re your agent. With the community’s help, LION drafts public-records requests and aggregates thousands of them across Texas to force local government into the open. Every record is verified against its source and published — open and free to the public. It starts with one request: yours →

Free · anyone can

Adopt the truth.

You already paid for these records — with your taxes. Put your name on a public-records request and we file it for your town. It costs nothing but your voice.

Our method, in the open: we file · we verify against source · we publish, dated and cited.

Browse the Open Records board →

What we are · how we operate

A novel model, in plain terms.

Public records don’t request themselves. LION turns scattered, one-off requests into one coordinated machine — run for the public, funded by the public.

  1. 1
    You lend your name. Records must be requested by a person. You adopt a request; LION drafts and files it as your agent.
  2. 2
    We aggregate at scale. Thousands of requests across 1,219 Texas districts — one system, not scattered asks.
  3. 3
    We verify against source. Every record checked against its original — no spin, no summary passed off as fact.
  4. 4
    We publish, open & free. Dated, cited, searchable. You decide what it means.

What we cover

Tap a domain to see what it means. Library records are live today — the rest are being built.

Fund the operation

One person built this. Funding keeps it full-time.

One person runs LION — no staff, no bureaucracy — using enterprise-grade infrastructure and custom-built software to do what used to take a whole firm. Funding is what keeps it full-time.

Founder’s investment

$13,700

put in by Jesse, LION’s founder — unpaid, since April 18, 2026

This month

$264of $1,500

what it currently costs to run LION in August

The first 90 days — April 18 to July 17, 2026 — was the quiet build: the founder’s own time and money, no ask. Now LION is going public. It currently costs about $1,500 a month to keep running; monthly or one-time support is what covers it.

Help cover it — monthly or one-time.

Monthly keeps LION steady; a one-time gift helps whatever month it lands in. Cancel anytime, and recognition is never required.

Monthly$10/mo Monthly$25/mo Monthly$50/mo Monthly$100/mo

Or give once — any amount →.

The library, today

Every book in Texas school libraries — documented, sourced.

What these books contain, drawn from cited sources and shown most-interesting first. LION documents content; it does not rate or grade a book. You decide.

Open the full library database in its own tab ↗

Community-driven

See something worth pulling? Point us at it.

LION is built for the public and runs on what the public flags. If your school, city, or county is doing something that deserves a public-records request — or you want us watching a government we haven’t reached yet — tell us. We review every recommendation the community sends.

Recommend an investigation → Contact LION

The first 90 days — April 18 to July 17, 2026

Built by one person — full-time, self-funded, answerable to no government or corporation. Roughly in the order it happened:

  1. Set up the whole operation on enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure — the public sites, the databases, and automated watchers that run on their own.
  2. Built custom research tools to read and cross-check public records at a scale one person couldn’t by hand.
  3. Launched the library catalog live — search 300,000+ books across 27 school districts by what’s inside them: content topics, cross-checked against recommended reading lists (including the ALA’s) and the TDCJ list of books banned in Texas prisons, every note cited.
  4. Mapped the records officers for 820 Texas government bodies — so requests reach the right desk.
  5. Launched the open-records board live — any Texan puts their name on a public-records request, LION files it for them, and the response gets published.
  6. Built an SB 13 watchdog that watches school-district agendas for the book-acquisition lists the new law now requires.

LION is built and run by Jesse. If you want to talk about the work — or about funding it — email jesse@lionwatchtx.org and we’ll set up a call.

Every figure on this page is computed live from published records. A tag reflects what the cited source states — not LION's claim about any book, author, school, or district. See something wrong? Let us know. Support is goodwill — not tax-deductible, not advertising.