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Texas Department of Transportation: Salary situation doesn't sit well
Editorial Board
Austin American Statesman
Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011
The Texas Transportation Commission got one right, and they got one very wrong.
Last week, the commission decided not to seek permission to increase the $292,500 annual salary of Phil Wilson, the new executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, until he's had a chance to prove himself as leader of the state agency.
But then the commission gave Wilson the authority to hire five new managers and pay them at least $250,000 a year.
The commissioners' vote allows Wilson to pay up to $272,000 a year for a deputy executive director and up to $250,000 each for a chief financial officer, a chief planning and project officer, an "innovative financing/debt management" officer, and an unspecified fifth executive officer.
Once everyone is hired and in place, Wilson and his TxDOT executive team will cost state taxpayers more than $1.5 million a year if each new hire is paid the maximum salary allowed.
The executive director Wilson replaced, Amadeo Saenz, was a 33-year TxDOT veteran who was making $192,000 a year when he retired in August.
Other than Wilson, who began his new job Oct. 17, no one at the Transportation Department currently makes more than $200,000 a year.
The Legislature this year authorized TxDOT to pay its executive director and up to five assistants a maximum of $292,500 a year. The Legislature allowed the commission to seek permission from the governor and the Legislative Budget Board, a joint committee of the Legislature led by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus, to pay TxDOT executives above the maximum. The commission asked Gov. Rick Perry and the board if they could pay Wilson $381,000 a year, but Perry rejected the commission's request Oct. 13.
Wilson, commission chairman Ted Houghton and the other members of the Transportation Commission say annual salaries of $250,000 or more are necessary to attract top talent from private companies. We're not sure the talent to manage a state agency or assist in its management is exclusive to the private sector.
At any rate, it's not an argument the commission persuasively could have made when it decided to hire Wilson.
Wilson, 44, was a political aide to former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm for about 10 years, was Perry's director of communications and deputy chief of staff until 2007 when the governor appointed him Texas secretary of state, an agency with about 200 employees. He has no experience running an agency as large as the Transportation Department, which has 12,000 employees. Unlike every one of his predecessors at TxDOT, he is not an engineer.
He resigned as secretary of state in 2008 to become a lobbyist and senior vice president for public affairs at Luminant Energy. That's his significant private-sector experience.
We accept the argument that the Department of Transportation, like any state agency, or any private business for that matter, could stand a shot of fresh blood and fresh ideas from time to time. Institutions find themselves bound by tradition and hemmed in by insular management all the time.
But as we said earlier this month when the commission sought permission to pay Wilson $381,000, in a period of steep budget cuts it's insensitive, to say the least, to pay a new, unproven executive director a salary way beyond what most other state agency directors make — $292,500 is a healthy state salary. To significantly increase the salaries for his assistants compounds the insensitivity.
If you want to pursue a salary that steps toward the mid-six figures in the private sector, be our guest.
Otherwise, don't try to spell "money" from "public service."
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TxDOT to pay new execs $250,000 or more
By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 8:48 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011
The Texas Transportation Commission, setting aside for now how much more to pay Phil Wilson to lead the Texas Department of Transportation, granted him authority Thursday to pay a quarter-million dollars or more to each of five managers.
At least two of the executive positions would be newly created, and any or all of them could be hired from outside TxDOT.
The salaries for two existing positions that will see pay bumps — chief financial officer and deputy executive director — are currently $165,600 and $192,500.
Wilson, who since becoming executive director Oct. 17 has been making $292,500 a year, said he hopes to name at least four of the subordinates by the end of the year. Their hiring will be part of a face-lift of the 94-year-old , 12,000-employee department that includes creating an "innovation and modernization office" and another new office focusing on the agency's most important projects, and giving TxDOT's 25 district offices more autonomy.
"It'll be a new complexion for this agency," said commission chairman Ted Houghton , presiding over his first meeting after almost eight years as a commission member. "The point is to bring in new talent and thinking." The higher salaries are meant to attract candidates from the private sector.
Change was the overriding theme of Thursday's monthly meeting of the commission. Aside from having Wilson at his first meeting and Houghton in a fresh role, newly appointed Commissioner Jeff Austin III of Tyler was on hand for the first time. And the commission, displaced from TxDOT's state headquarters on East 11th Street for the next year while the building is renovated, met in a large conference room in an agency building on East Riverside Drive.
The board voted 4-0 — Commissioner Ned Holmes , who was absent for the September vote on Wilson's hiring, was once again a no-show — to authorize Wilson to pay a deputy executive director/chief engineering officer up to $272,000 annually. And the board vote allows salaries of up to $250,000 for a chief planning and project officer, a chief financial officer and an "innovative financing/debt management" officer.
Wilson, 44, will also be able to hire a fifth executive, also for as much as $250,000 a year, for an as-yet unspecified position.
"You have to at least be in a conversation that's competitive" with potential hires already making substantial salaries with private companies, Wilson said. "Having those extra resources will allow us to go get the kind of people to manage a multibillion dollar portfolio."
All of those salaries would probably exceed the pay of anyone currently working at TxDOT, Wilson aside, by a considerable amount. Former Executive Director Amadeo Saenz , who retired in August, was making $192,000 .
The Legislature, in the two-year budget passed this spring, authorized TxDOT to pay "Group 8" salaries (which have a ceiling of $292,500 a year) to its executive director and up to five "senior leadership positions." However, that same legislation allows the commission to petition the governor and the Legislative Budget Board — which includes Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, House Speaker Joe Straus and eight other legislators — for salaries above that Group 8 maximum.
The commission, at the time led by Deirdre Delisi , a former Gov. Rick Perry political aide, voted in September to hire Wilson at the maximum $292,500 and later asked for authority to pay him $381,000 a year. Wilson, who was a Perry deputy chief of staff working for Delisi before the governor named him Texas secretary of state in 2007 , was a lobbyist and senior vice president at Luminant Energy beginning in 2008. He left there to join TxDOT.
Perry, in an Oct. 13 letter, rejected the $381,000 figure and suggested that the commission and Wilson agree on something between $292,500 and $381,000. A commission member said in August that Wilson was making "in the high 300s" at Luminant.
Houghton said Thursday that, at least for the time being, the commission will not make a second request to exceed the statutory maximum.
"We're going to be playing that by ear," Houghton said. "Let everyone get to know Phil, and let him roll out his program."
Houghton said the agency has been dominated for too long by managers who have spent their whole careers at the agency, and thus are too steeped in TxDOT's mores and traditions to perceive avenues for improvement. Fresh faces, he said, won't have that problem.
"They'll run it and lead it," he said. "You're going to see some new faces in some important positions."