Getting Scrooged
Share this story:
Meet the government agency that has a quarter of a billion dollar surplus (way more than they need) – The Harris County Toll Road Authority! I’m here telling you folks that this Christmas we’re GETTING SCROOGED!
“I got into broadcasting because I wanted to give… Sometimes I hurt because I give too much,” says Bill Murray’s character in the 1988 Christmas movie Scrooged.
Enough about me. What are we going to do about that cash cow the Harris County Tow Road Authority? Because we’re getting Scrooged.
“Are you talking about the EZ Tag? Everyone should get it,” states Commissioner Rodney Ellis in a commercial.
Last holiday season we brought you an early Christmas gift from your free-spending Harris County Commissioners Court.
News of a discount for new toll road EZ Tags… TV commercials that cost more than $300,000 just to create… plus ad time.
“Harris County were passing savings on to you,” continues Commissioner Leslie Briones in the ad.
The politicians even suggested we put EZ Tags on our Christmas trees…
“This holiday season, give someone an EZ Tag with savings for all,” says Commissioner Adrian Garcia.
They just wanted to make it easy for us to get around… It was the Christmas spirit, I guess.
“For a couple of hours out of the whole year we are the people we always hoped we would be,” says Bill Murray’s character in Scrooged.
Before Halloween, we started exposing the wasteful and unnecessary spending on temporary workers at the toll road…
How HCTRA intentionally eliminated the lowest prices being offered by long-term vendors so they could pay more than they had to.
And how the County Purchasing Department we pay to watch stuff like this let the toll road get away with it.
Wayne [over the phone]: “Do you have a problem with the way they did it?”
Juanita Patterson/Asst. Purchasing Agent: “I can’t answer that.”
But a video released by the County Purchasing Department during our investigation showed even long-time respected County staffing companies thought what the toll road had done was an insane waste of money.
Commissioners Court approved the new contract in secret earlier this year, not even disclosing who won…
“Our pricing that we were able to compare using the open records request was anywhere from ten to fifty percent lower than the awarded vendors,” claimed representative of Open Work Stephen Santrach in a September meeting.
Up to ten million in unnecessary spending… Your toll dollars at work.
And we just couldn’t let that be the ghost of Christmas future for Harris County taxpayers.
State lawmakers were livid.
“That’s backwards. A toll is a tax, a toll is a fee, a fee is a tax, a tax is a fee,” declared State Senator Paul Bettencourt.
“Ignoring the price of these toll road proposals is a direct insult to the people paying the freight. It’s simple, toll fees are taxes. The people using the roads expect their tax dollars not to be wasted,” stated State Representative Briscoe Cain.
But from Harris County officials. Both Democrat and Republican… silence… Now we know why.
No one seems to want to bite the hand that feeds them… Because the more tolls we pay, the more money they get to spend…
In 2019 Harris County commissioners got to split up $125 million in what they call excess toll revenues… Money for pet mobility projects.
You know what they are divvying up this year… After peddling the EZ Tags… New records from the County auditor say it is now $250 million in excess tax… I mean toll cash… A quarter of a billion dollars.
That’s a 100 percent increase in five years to the politicians’ pet projects… That’s along with the property tax increase this year…
Scrooged: “And if you like it and you want it you’ll get greedy for it.”
Maybe that’s why none of our local politicians seem to care that we spent 892 million dollars in tolls last year ….
Hey HCTRA even provided clothing choices for Commissioner Garcia for his toll road Christmas pitch… Guess he went with the sweater.
“Just playing our jazz music driving down the road getting taxed out the wazoo,” said Marcus Davis on TV.
On Sunday morning TV, my friends at “What’s Your Point?” asked a really good question.
“With all that continuous largesse… Why did Lina Hidalgo, Leslie Briones, and Adrian Garcia pass an eight percent tax increase?” asks Greg Groogan.
Even the County Attorney got to dip into the toll road slush fund this year…. $1.4 million for salaries and benefits…
“It feels insanely icky,” expressed Lina Hidalgo in a January meeting.
It may explain why only Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo said something when the toll road boss got a forty percent pay raise this year… Her office doesn’t share in the toll road party.
“Nobody is so good that they deserve a forty percent salary increase overnight,” she added.
Roberto Treviño makes nearly $500,000 a year.
But hey you don’t deserve answers…
“You don’t want to talk to all the people who pay the tolls and pay your salary?” Wayne asks Treviño with no response.
“You know, the toll road make so much money they don’t care how they are spending it,” affirmed Briscoe Cain.
Internal e-mails we had to fight to get show the toll road claimed they needed their own staffing contracts because the salaries being paid under the existing countywide contract were too low.
“The current contract is not desirable to the group. I have pushed as hard as I possibly could…” one staffer explained to Purchasing.
But it doesn’t pass the smell test… The toll road already had wide discretion in how much they pay temporary workers…
“Depending on the vendor you pick, you can pay more generous rates.”
Take a call center agent:
A’1’s pay rate was 16.50 cents an hour.
Smarter HR 20.25 cents an hour.
Genuent 28.00 dollars an hour.
That’s almost a 70% difference in what we pay one temp… Twenty thousand more for just one person.
But that wasn’t good enough for the toll road.
HCTRA even wanted to set up a separate staffing contract for just one single department on the toll road.
“Tolling OPS is the group that literally keeps the lights on here at HCTRA and the relationship that group has with vendors will be vital.”
And that may be the real explanation of what’s going on here… The toll road really just wanted to hire a preferred vendor.
Maybe one that wasn’t chosen for that county-wide contract. Like employment and training centers…
Since the new toll road staffing contracts went into place… That Hispanic-owned firm has been paid $698,000 in just two months.
What is it costing you…
Take those folks reviewing license plate images at the toll… A-1 had folks who read license plate images for $14 an hour.
Yet the toll road is willing to pay ETC and its bilingual workers more than $37 an hour.
“So, you’re saying the Harris County Toll Road Authority is totally fine paying an extra 550 for that position?”
But why? The whole point of hiring temporary workers was to make government cheaper… What’s the point of Harris County having billing rates for temporary workers if HCTRA is going to just volunteer to pay more… to their favorite vendors?
HCTRA is now paying $25.46 an hour for ETC customer service reps… Last year they could pay as low as $17.85… A 42% increase… In one year.
And ETC is only the new staffing company that is trying to stop you from even seeing what their rates are.
Even seeing their contact with you. What are they hiding…?
“Do you care about the price of these staffing employees? Does price not matter to you guys?” Wayne asks Treviño, again with no response.
In this email… An HCTRA official even admitted the staffing company racket was being manipulated by top executives:
“I have been roped in and called by multiple people at the executive level, this has added a level of confusion and complexity for which I profoundly apologize.”
What? The government making something more complicated, confusing… That explains my rare alliance with Lina Hidalgo on this one issue… An audit has already confirmed the toll road is one of those places with sloppy purchasing practices.
“We need to send all of this mess to the purchasing department and independent purchasing department and take it out of these offices,” Hidalgo said in a press conference.
But this goes beyond sloppy… It is intentional overpaying.
The new county purchasing director Paige McInnis did agree to review the new toll road staffing contract after our investigation began.
And this week announced an internal audit had proven it needed to be done over…
“We will be working to rebid this project to ensure all aspects of the procurement piece are handled in order and documented as they should be. I will be partnering with HCTRA on this, as after my internal audit, there are things purchasing needs to tighten up.”
I’ve got a better idea… Cancel the contracts today… Start paying as little as possible, not as much as possible…
And reduce the cost of tolls…. If you’ve got a quarter of a billion dollars in excess revenue…We’re getting scrooged.
Keep up with us on social media:
