Like TURF
Follow TURFRoad lobby arrogance: Chide NTTA for wanting to save money with in-house contractors
If this doesn't demonstrate the grip the highway lobby has on toll roads and road policy, I don't know what does. The North Texas Tollway Authority knows its under a microscope as complaints about the lack of financial transparency have poured in. A bill by Rep. Rafael Anchia would subject the NTTA to Sunset Review and another bill by Rep. Ken Paxton would subject it to placing its checkbook register online and require an annual financial audit (which the NTTA testified against). So as it makes efforts to rein in the super-expensive outsourced contracting to help lower costs to taxpayers, the road lobby has the audacity to chide the NTTA for doing so.
As NTTA eyes bringing some work in-house, two former leaders urge caution, tout contractors
By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER -- 07 April 2011
The North Texas Tollway Authority should not abandon its long history of relying on talented but costly specialty firms to do its most complex engineering, financial and other work, two former top leaders of the agency told its board of directors Thursday.
Former board chairmen Jere Thompson and David Blair each argued that NTTA’s long history of hiring the very best lawyers, engineers and other professionals available — in some cases, regardless of cost — has been critical to its success.
“Organizations are collections of people. And over the past 50 years this agency has assembled a remarkable collection of loyal people, firms and advisers,” said Thompson, who led NTTA’s board during its creation in 1997 to replace the Texas Turnpike Authority. “Discarding that wealth of institutional knowledge is about the same as undergoing an unnecessary lobotomy.”
The comments came as NTTA executive director Allen Clemson presented for the first time publicly his proposal for how the authority will in the future evaluate whether to hire temporary, and expensive, contractors to do NTTA’s work or to employ staff to do it.
Clemson’s proposal was only the beginning of a conversation that could last months as NTTA’s board grapples with the hypersensitive issue of whether its most valued contractors — some of which have worked for NTTA and its predecessor since the 1950s — could be replaced in part by cheaper permanent staff.
Still ahead are budgeting decisions that could cut into the tens of millions of dollars in fees those firms have earned and will otherwise expect to earn in the future. NTTA chairman Victor Vandergriff also has vowed to have the board reconsider a vote last year that essentially keeps those legacy firms in place at the authority without competition until 2013.
Instead, what Clemson told the nine-member board Thursday was simply that his staff will be asked to examine each decision to augment its temporary workforce with new contractors and to weigh each time whether it would be wiser to bring that work in-house.
“I think our business model is sound,” Clemson said, attempting to reassure the board and the audience that he plans no wholesale jettisoning of existing contractors. “This is about making better business decisions.”
NTTA director Bob Day, a former Garland mayor, said Clemson’s proposed approach to future staffing decisions makes sense. “I must have missed something,” Day said. “I don’t see what the controversy has been over.”
But that’s probably because most of the controversial elements of any effort to reduce the role of the legacy contractors had been scrubbed out of Clemson’s initial proposal. Clemson said he met repeatedly with HNTB Corp. and other major contractors in recent weeks to resolve some of their concerns about the proposal.
Vandergriff said he and several other board members were aware of those discussions, too, and said they were appropriate given the firms’ long involvement with NTTA.
“HNTB has been with us since our inception, since the inception of toll roads in this area,” Vandergriff said. “They have been seen as a partner.”
Clemson said, simply, “we are walking through a mine field.”
He said the sharp criticism by some contractors — what he called the “knives and daggers” — had been hurtful.
“It’s been difficult to do this,” he said. “And some of what has been said has slowed this process down.”
Vandergriff said Thursday’s debate was only the beginning, and he vowed that all sides will be heard as the process unwinds.
The knives aren’t likely to be put away, he suggested.
“NTTA is big business now,” he said. “Aside from all the other issues, the most important issue here is money. That’s why there is such interest in what we are doing.”