State Rep.:
TxDOT faces rocky road in legislature

May 12, 2008

BY LESLIE WIMMER, Fort Worth Business Press

State Rep. Linda Harper-Brown took the Texas Department of Transportation to task for its financial troubles, performance on projects and communication problems with the state legislature.

Harper-Brown, R-Irving, was the featured speaker at the May 7 Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition meeting. Harper-Brown’s presentation focused on the state’s Sunset Advisory Commission and its plan to review the department of transportation through 2008 and 2009.

“TxDOT has done more to harm transportation in the last five years than they have in the history of the state of Texas,” Harper-Brown said. “Everyone will agree TxDOT needs more money. But how do you convince the public they need more money when they behave the way they have for the past few years?”

Harper-Brown cited the department of transportation’s recent financial troubles as a main issue of concern when state lawmakers are asked to give the agency more money.

“How do you convince legislators that it’s OK to give them more money? Especially since we gave them $7.5 billion more than they had last year, and yet they’re standing up and saying they’re broke,” Harper-Brown said.

The agency’s budget for 2008 is $3.1 billion.

“We look forward to working with Rep. Harper-Brown and her colleagues in the Legislature to meet our state’s transportation needs,” said Chris Lippincott, TxDOT spokesman.

A solution, Harper-Brown said, could be to follow a procedure the state of Florida uses with its transportation agency. Florida gives the agency a certain amount of money and a set of strict guidelines, as well as a timetable, for how the funds will be used. When the agency doesn’t meet the timelines, it has to explain why to state lawmakers, she said.

“Then we would know, when we hand them all those billions of dollars, what they’re going to spend it on,” Harper-Brown said.

Florida’s transportation agency is solely a management agency and does not build or maintain roads like TxDOT, she said, and moving TxDOT to a management-only agency that would contract out its maintenance and construction is something she is interested in doing in one to two years.

Harper-Brown hopes to have a set of solutions for TxDOT ready by January 2009, before the next legislative session starts, she said.

Maribel Chavez, TxDOT’s district engineer for Fort Worth, attended the meeting and gave an agency report for the department of transportation and mentioned the status of various projects, but did not respond to Harper-Brown’s comments.

Some projects will have to wait until TxDOT finds out how funding will be allocated from Austin through the North Central Texas Council of Governments and various North Texas transportation organizations, she said.

Harper-Brown also commented on Gov. Rick Perry’s appointments on April 30 to the Texas Transportation Commission. Perry appointed his former Chief of Staff Deirdre Delisi and former Fort Worth City Councilmember William Meadows to the commission.

“Bill Meadows is a very fine man and I think he’ll do a wonderful job, but when the governor put a staff member in as chairman again I think that is going to cause questions,” Harper-Brown said.

Delisi’s appointment will cause distrust among Texas residents, she said, and Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief agreed.

“I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said this morning, especially your observations about the governor’s recent appointment of a staffer to chair this important commission,” Moncrief said. “It speaks volumes, I think it’s very disconcerting, to all elected officials and those who are counting on this agency to help us avoid complete gridlock in this region.”

Factors Perry takes into account when considering appointments are an ability to lead and make decisions, as well as how aligned the person’s philosophies are to the governor’s, said Robert Black, a spokesman in the governor’s office.

“You know, the biggest criticism that we have heard from elected officials both here in Austin and outside of Austin for the last few years has been that TxDOT isn’t communicating very well,” Black said. “When you are a governor’s chief of staff, one of your main responsibilities is to communicate and work with lawmakers, local elected officials, to move the state forward. So the governor’s essentially put someone forward who has been his chief, first communicator, in charge of an agency that has been criticized for lack of communication.”

Harper-Brown is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, House Administration Committee, Sunset Advisory Commission and is chairman of budget and oversight of the Transportation Committee.