Road Kill
For five years Angelina County voters have been screaming for better roads. County Judge Keith Wright may face an uphill battle to get reelected because of broken promises, and mounting ROAD KILL.
Road Kill
The guy from the rock band The Hives sings a lot better than I do.
But back in the day I could at least play congas in a rhythm and blues band called Miss Francis and the Rhythm Fish.
Kinda useless trivia now.
But music is the way I’ve chosen to send a message to some of the politicians in Angelina County.
“He may hate to say I told you so, but me? I don’t mind at all, which is why we are back in Angelina County to investigate the consequences of the latest roadkill,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
“We can stand out here until the cows come home if you want to,” James McMullen said.
Looks like the cows just came home.
“You’re about to get me aggravated,” McMullen said.
The first time we met the Angelina County road administrator, well… it didn’t go so well.
“I’m wasting my time talking to you,” McMullen said.
We told you James McMullen was a county cluster from the very beginning, remember how he screwed up a simple bid for a used tractor.
“And I come back to you and you refuse to talk to me. You refuse to take my phone calls. You ain’t even went up there and looked at your shoddy work because I can’t tell you now. If you was on my job site, I would go run you off.”
It was well documented complaints were mounting.
We even caught McMullen on tape complaining about the very folks who paid his salary.
“People call and fuss regardless of what you do, so you just go on and do what you think is best and try to move forward,” James McMullen.
Those bothersome people fussing at you include parents worried about school buses filled with kids or postal workers who are telling you how hard it is to deliver the mail in 2025.
In the vote to finally suspend McMullen so they could fire him, the verdict from the Angelina County commissioner wasn’t news to us.
“I just feel like the incompetent of doing the road right now road and stuff,” Tom Berry said.
“Patching roads is not patching the way it is supposed to be, moving while you’re behind on that, ditches aren’t cleaned the way they ought to be,” Kenneth Jeffrey said.
But even to the very end, Angelina County Judge Keith Wright seemed to be making excuses for McMullen’s obvious lack of communication skills, even with the county commissioners.
“If you bring somebody in the private sector into the public sector, that’s a heck of a transition. In the public, you have to deal with the public and the media, you got to deal with everybody,” Wright said.
It was Wright who apparently fought attempts to get rid of McMullen much earlier.
He may be on the way out, but McMullen will likely become an albatross on Judge Wright if he stays in a race to get reelected.
He will have to explain why crappy roads were being repaired crappily again.
“I think we’re putting out some material that’s not going to hold up. The biggest problem is how it is applied,” Jeffrey said.
“If I had my druthers, I would not do any oil sand,” Wright said.
Because even if it is put on right, a road of oil sand swill only lasts six to seven years, much less than asphalt would.
And Judge Wright knew that.
“But our main problem with our roads is there’s no base—I mean, you’re just right on top of the dirt,” Wright said.
So why did we do it?
Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we. We’re taking a look at a pretty new oil sand road laid under McMullen’s leadership.
Look what you guys are paying for.
“We’re going to test this out and see how it measures up against the plastic spoon here. Look how easily it is flaking away.”
Want to see the result of other road work in Angelina County. Tidwell may be a good place to look. It’s a patchy mess.
Judge Wright is an engineer, voters should be asking why he didn’t question all this stuff three years ago.
Instead, we caught Wright exaggerating the number of roads that were being repaired.
The Lufkin Daily News announced Wright’s plan to run for reelection next year.
Despite all the roadkill…
The failure to fix many of the roads the judge promised to fix, year after year.
“It looks like we should finish close to 30 miles.”
And now there’s evidence some of those roads were done improperly… and already are falling apart.
“The problem is we have a lot of heavy trucks. You have oil and gas trucks, you have logging trucks, you have garbage trucks,” Wright said.
But that was also known five years ago, that’s no surprise.
“It’s been five years since Angelina County voters sent a very clear message that they wanted to eliminate the political corruption in the way road work was being handed out,” Dolcefino told the camera.
We had shown you the asphalt trail leading to the homes of politicians and their buddies in our Kicking Asphalt reports.
“I guess were done,” Dolcefino said.
“Yeah, we’re done,” Terry Pitts said.
No, we’re not. Terry Pitts isn’t a county commissioner anymore… but I suspect history in Angelina County will detail the true damage he did when he retaliated after losing the political power to peddle asphalt.
An engineer named Chuck Walker from the City of Lufkin was the first person hired to run the road system free from politics.
And Walker quickly busted county commissioners for allegedly falsifying the amount of road work they had actually gotten done with six million bucks taxpayers let them borrow. He told the DA Janet Cassells, there was silence.
But when Pitts complained, both Walker and his top aide got charged with theft, those cases are still pending.
“We’re learning about a whistleblower complaint filed by a former Angelina County road engineer against the county,” KTRE News.
The firing of Walker has had financial consequences for taxpayers. Angelina County had to pay him $150,000 to settle his whistleblower lawsuit.
And finding Walker’s replacement proved difficult, no engineer wanted the job.
Pitts was the county commissioner who moved to hire McMullen three years ago, the architect of the unit road election smelled a rat from the very beginning.
“And that’s what they were looking for, somebody they could control,” Bob Flournoy.
Angelina County taxpayers will now pay the price.
“We’re going to look at increasing what we’re gonna pay an engineer, see if we can get more interest because last time we didn’t get anybody.”
The judge has realized they should be using more asphalt again, but that will increase costs and lower the miles completed.
At the courthouse, there is talk of another contender for the new county road administrator.
“It’s Terry Pitts… I’m not kidding. But his own words may come back to haunt him,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“I want to talk about asphalt,” Dolcefino said.
“About what?” Terry said.
“Asphalt,” Dolcefino said.
“I don’t know nothing about asphalt,” Terry said.
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