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Follow TURFPerry's council wants TxDOT exec paid 'millions'
January 6th, 2011 2:56 pm CT
By Terri Hall, San Antonio Transportation Policy Examiner
A Restructuring Council hired to dig into the troubled Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and make recommendations on how to reform the broken agency suffering from an "acute erosion of public confidence in TxDOT," gave its report to the Transportation Commission yesterday. It's two top recommendations are a far cry from taxpayer-friendly reforms: lift the salary cap for the Executive Director from $192,500/yr to "millions" (said one councilmember) and adding yet two more executive pay positions. Are they nuts?
During an economic recession with public sector jobs salaries rising far faster than private sector jobs, with Texans struggling to make ends meet and hang onto their homes, these cronies of Rick Perry and David Dewhurst, one an ex-Transportation Commissioner himself, have the unmitigated gall to suggest lifting the pay cap for a government bureaucrat in charge of building our state highways? These people have lost their grip on reality. Wake-up and smell the grassroots! This is what reform is supposed to look like?
The public has bombarded lawmakers on the Sunset Advisory Commission tasked with reviewing state agencies for waste and inefficiencies, with calls for ELECTED leadership at TxDOT for the past four years.
The Sunset Advisory Commission has recommended the current Transportation Commission, comprised of 5 appointees by the Governor, be abolished and replaced with a single appointed commissioner. At a public hearing December 15, 2010, Rep. Dennis Bonnen failed to see how a single appointee of the Governor would fundamentally change the problems at TxDOT, especially its unresponsiveness to the public and even lawmakers. He's exactly right. It won't fix the leadership problems at TxDOT, neither will throwing more money at government bureaucrats.
TxDOT's leadership does not "recognize the need for self-correction," the 69-page report said, which is all the more reason to scrap the current Transportation Commission and replace it with ELECTED commissioners who answer to the taxpayers.
It's OUTRAGEOUS to think taxpayers need to pay a private sector CEO wage to the TxDOT Director so they can bring a "business" sense and finance background to the agency. That's code for "innovative financing," experts who have gotten an earful from Goldman Sachs (the same jokers who advised the government of Greece that went bankrupt and tanked the Euro with its multi-leveraging schemes with public debt) and those who want to sell-off our highways to foreign corporations who are granted 50 yr monopolies and then charge Texans 75 cents a MILE to use our PUBLIC roads. TxDOT's primary role is to build and maintain our Texas state highways, not tinker around in high finance and complicated public private partnership (PPP) contracts that en debt generations.
This isn't the kind of change we can believe in. The Commission itself needs scrutiny and this report and the timing of the release of it is to provide smoke and mirrors to try and get the Sunset Commission to vote to leave the leadership at TxDOT as appointees and hired guns (controlled by the Governor), not elected commissioners accountable to the PEOPLE of Texas ahead of its Jan. 12 vote on the sunset bill.
How much are Railroad Commissioners, the Ag Commissioner, Land Commissioner paid? That's what a TxDOT Commissioner ought to be paid. The 2010 Grant Thornton Audit had a chart showing TxDOT executives pulled down anywhere from 30-50% more than their counterparts in other states, yet all the focus by the Governor's cronies is on comparing TxDOT salaries to the private sector instead of public sector salaries. The taxpayers aren't obligated to pay them private sector CEO salaries to build Texas highways!
An ELECTED Transportation Commission the fastest, surest way to bring fundamental change, restore the public trust, and get us moving again. Anything less is taxation without representation and an affront to the overwhelming public feedback insisting on elected leadership to transform this agency.