Legislative Letdown
The Harris County Commissioners Court needs more oversight as they waste millions of dollars in toll road money. But in a big legislative letdown for taxpayers, the bill that would have audited the use of toll road money died before becoming law.
It was a political wrestling match.
State lawmakers and Harris County commissioners going to the mat over all that excess toll road money that we’ve been complaining about for months.
This year, it’s supposed to be $290 million in extra money.
Even though lawmakers scored some points, Harris County won, too.
“You have to look at it from what your goal was to start, right? And then what the outcome was,” said Mano DeAyala.
The thing that Harris County seems to like the best? More secrecy.
EZ Tags are EZ money for Harris County’s toll road.
It’s automatic tax collection. Last year, more than $800 million collected.
It’s become a slush fund for commissioners—another way to tax us.
“It’s got an unincorporated area of the county, that’s not getting a lot of that money,” Paul Bettencourt said.
Senator Paul Bettencourt was one of the driving forces in Austin for more accountability.
He wanted the money divvied up as it should have been all along, based on road miles per precinct.
Rodney Ellis was getting way more of the slush fund that he should have.
And Bettencourt wanted to give some of the extra toll road money to the city of Houston to pay for all the police and fire work that was done on the toll road.
I went to Austin to help.
“I call it a slush fund. Ok? It’s not a surplus,” Wayne Dolcefino testified.
We had been reporting on the toll monster for a while, exposing ridiculous staffing contracts.
There was silence from the commissioners.
“This has become what I call a King Kong monster. And the Harris County Commissioners don’t control it. And the reason they don’t control it is because they’re all getting a piece of the pie,” Dolcefino testified.
The bill sailed through the Senate, but never came to a final vote in the Texas House.
“I think the bill did one very good thing and probably two very good things,” said DeAyala.
There’s nothing like the threat of a state law to light a fire under the butts of Harris County commissioners, probably because of the threat of a state audit.
Lord knows they need one.
“After consultation with our attorneys and executive session regarding the topic covered by the relevant House bills currently in the state legislature,” Lina Hidalgo said.
Commissioners knew they were in trouble. They voted to divvy up the toll road money based on road miles after all.
A win for Commissioner Tom Ramsey, who had been complaining.
“That reflected their road burn per precinct and that was a big win. The bill, I think, is responsible for that,” DeAyala said.
Of course, the commissioners put out, what we call, a little spin.
“I’m so happy that we resolved this at home and I am so happy we made those bills moot,” Leslie Briones said.
As for reimbursing the city of Houston, there’s no agreement, only talk of goodwill.
“So, the good news is we have the county saying they expect to enter into some agreement with the city and work that out. And again, I credit the bill for doing that too,” DeAyala said.
But here’s the catch—there will be no state audit.
We caught the Harris County Toll Road spending $200 million last year on a staffing contract they never bid out.
And more than a year later, after the auditor’s office confirmed the waste we found, nothing. Silence.
“We want to make sure that these HCTRA funds, these mobility funds, are never used for those things that they were not intended to be used for. And that’s why the audit is so important,” DeAyala said.
But, there is a consumer group that says it’s happy that the toll road bill didn’t pass.
“We have been a long opponent of surplus revenue,” said Terri Hall.
Terri Hall is the founder and executive director for Texans for Toll-Free Highways.
“We want the toll to come off and not just have guardrails around how they spend the money. We don’t want them spending any surplus revenue on anything. It should be going to pay off the debt and making it a free road,” Hall said.
Terri’s group got the Republican Party to put abolishing existing toll roads on its 2024 platform.
Instead of doing that, this bill would have made collecting surplus toll revenue part of state law.
“To basically say, hey, this surplus revenue scheme is okay. And as long as you split up the kitty with the current, you know, leadership all in agreement with who gets what, we’re all good with it. Well, guess what? I think the taxpayers need to have a say in that,” said Hall.
Some lawmakers claim the tolls—even surplus tolls—are all justified.
About 700,000 people come into the city of Houston on a typical workday, and they don’t pay a penny in city property taxes.
“This user fee on the toll road, if anything, it helps maintain or make sure that either property taxes don’t go up or go up as much,” DeAyala said.
Remember the warning Senator Bettencourt gave us.
“There’s a very good chance people are getting ripped off. But we don’t even know because we can’t even audit the fund,” Betterncourt said.
We will be watching. Lawmakers think the county might audit themselves without a state mandate.
Yeah, right.
“If that can’t be done, or won’t be for whatever reason, we’re back in 18 months,” said DeAyala.
Next time, we should pass a law requiring a public vote on surplus toll road money.
I’d put money on residents voting to pay off toll road debts and end the tolls entirely.
“Taking away their tools is what forces them to spend their money on the right things,” Hall said.
Keep up with us on social media:
