TOLL ROAD EXPOSED!
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The County auditor has launched a comprehensive review into toll road temporary worker contracts following our investigation. We told you we were GETTING SCROOGED and now we have the goods to prove it. Lawmakers are calling for a state audit into the quarter billion dollar surplus. Watch as the toll road is exposed.
“Merry Christmas uncle Ebeneezer… God save me from Christmas. It’s a ton of humbug.”
We all know we’ve been getting scrooged…
We paid so much in tolls last year… the Harris County Toll Road Authority had a quarter of a billion dollars in surplus revenue left over.
Did they pay off the toll roads? No… did they lower tolls? No…
The state legislature allowed local politicians to give themselves the money to spend.
Since the money started flowing… County Commissioners have ignored huge red flags at HCTRA…
Extravagant spending in the hiring of temporary workers.
Phone operators… Image readers…
We finally have the government records.
We can prove you’ve been ripped off.
There are now major developments in this investigation
“What outrages the public is they pay a toll and 250 million a quarter of a billion dollars doesn’t even go for the toll roads that they’re driving on right now,” said Member of the Texas State Senate Paul Bettencourt.
“I think it’s shocking you’ve got a system that has really no accountability effectively…That’s what really wrong here,” he added.
It looks like our work may help end this toll road fleece job in the new year.
We don’t want to ruin the holiday… But it may be time for another chat with this guy… Robert Treviño… The head of the toll road, who is paid a staggering $485,000 a year.
“It’s icky,” stated Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo in January.
The Harris County Judge and Scrooge are on the same page.
“God knows they cost more than they are worth.”
Last Halloween we began to show you how you were getting tricked.
Harris County already had a contract to provide temporary workers to all departments.
But the toll road wanted their own special deals… E-mails claimed they wanted to be more generous than the rest of the county… Even though staffing companies had already agreed to a price.
“HCTRA requires a higher level of service… and would like to be able to pay more competitive salaries,” reads this one from November of 2023.
They called it wiggle room.
Wayne [over the phone]: “I’m Wayne Dolcefino. I’m working on a story about how the Toll Road Authority has $250 million in surplus revenue. And I’m wondering, why don’t we lower the tolls, do you know?”
Customer Service Rep: “May I place you on a brief hold?”
Wayne: “Sure.”
I’m not surprised the Toll Road Call Center operator didn’t have an answer for me.
But she is paid to answer the phone… at one of three HCTRA call centers.
HCTRA spends 12,500 every month just to lease space at the non-profit Baker Ripley.
Boy, those folks get our money in so many different ways.
Under the county-wide contract… vendors providing call center operators were going to be paid $17.85 an hour.
The employee would get a few dollars less in actual pay.
Electronic Transaction Consultants are one of the toll roads’ biggest vendors… but since January 2021 the company has billed toll road customers almost 47 million dollars ($46,887,498 dollars).
They also provided temporary call center operators… along with two subcontractors…
One is one the nation’s largest minority-owned companies… Chase Source of Houston…
It’s run by attorney Tony Chase… who chaired the county COVID relief fund.
Well connected to Houston politics… his company has cashed in on the toll road largess.
$5.2 million between June of 2022 and October of 2024.
Then there’s a woman-owned Hispanic company called Employment and Training Centers… Irma and Roberto Gonzales started it… they even have their own day in this city.
They specialize in bilingual workers…
ETC has already been paid $6.5 million by the toll road since June 2022.
Let’s take a closer look at one of the invoices for these temporary workers.
August 2022… look at the total for just one month.
$1,075,025… nearly $1.1 million…
Examine how much they are billing for CSRs… the customer service reps. The ones we could be paying less than $18 to… Those companies are billing those workers at a staggering $38 an hour.
Let’s go to the chalkboard… that’s at least twenty dollars an hour per employee.
This one invoice, 192 call center operators over a year. That means we are paying 7.9987200 more than we have to.
Our crack investigators reached out to temporary workers on that million-dollar August invoice to see if they had shared in the toll roads’ ridiculous generosity. And they weren’t happy.
“Oh wow… That’s a lot. They should have paid us more,” claimed one.
“Yeah, when I worked for ETC I was paid $15 an hour”, explained another.
This guy was paid $15 an hour by Employment and Training Centers while they turned around and charged the toll road $38 an hour for his time…
A one hundred fifty percent markup. Typical staffing companies add thirty percent to the price over what they pay.
“Wow, so I was just getting paid, and they were taking the balance,” stated this employee.
He’s now a full-time HCTRA employee.
“I make $20.54.”
So let me get this straight… the whole point of temporary workers was to make government cheaper… Not more expensive… what numbskull at the toll road thought it was okay to pay a staffing company so much more… smells, doesn’t it?
“I definitely wasn’t making nowhere near $32, if I was, I would have stayed there,” a former worker declared to us.
We don’t know what this call center manager was actually been paid by Chase Source…
But look at what the toll road paid to this customer service manager.
$110 an hour… that’s $215,000 a year.
A lack of accountability that’s been actually allowed by the County Purchasing Department.
In this email assistant purchasing director, Juanita Patterson told ETC they…
“May elect to pass the four percent annual increase to their employees or continue to add to their bottom line.”
It’s an email like that gives rise to the insane waste of money we are exposing… why in the world do we care about enriching the companies and not the people working for them?
One department at the toll road wanted its own staffing contract because they brag they keep the lights on at HCTRA.
Actually, you keep the lights on.
The relationship that group has with the vendors will be vital…
The companies chosen… Chase Source and ETC. The same two companies we’ve now busted … allowed to charge ridiculous markups for temporary workers.
“Do you care about the staffing employees? Does price not matter anymore?” Wayne asks HCTRA Executive Director Roberto Treviño.
Why should toll boss Roberto Treviño care? He got a forty percent this year…
Precinct 3 commissioner Tom Ramsey’s office has now requested a comprehensive review by the County Auditor into excessive markup and transparency issues…
“These practices may not only be financially imprudent but also fail to meet the transparency and fairness expected in county contracts.”
The District Attorney’s office has also been notified of the billing markups.
“Well I think it’s shocking that you’ve got a system that has really no accountability effectively, that’s what’s really wrong here,” expressed Bettencourt.
That lack of accountability was glaring in the most recent HCTRA staffing contracts approved months ago… price was only 25% of the scoring.
In the end, the lowest prices were simply ignored… allowing HCTRA to funnel more money to ETC. HCTRA has even refused to provide us ETC contracts that you pay for because the company doesn’t want you to see their rates…
State lawmakers were livid…
“Harris County’s abuse of the people’s money and resources must be stopped,” demanded Texas State Rep Briscoe Cain.
But Harris County commissioners were silent at first… they directly benefit from the toll road surplus produced last year.
In 2019 that surplus was $125 million, this last year it skyrocketed to $250 million.
State law says that money has to be used for road projects in the county.
But these few words at the end of the law… “or related projects” has opened up the toll road surplus money for other uses.
Precinct 1 commissioner Rodney Ellis spent from the surplus fund… 42% of his budget.
We now have a list of who got the money… but we are just beginning to examine where they spent it.
These are two park projects in acres homes… Ellis is spending up to $11 million in toll road money here… sure it will have a hike and bike trail. But it’s hardly a road project.
The auditor raised questions years ago about some of the spending on parks… but the county attorney said it was legal.
The county attorney spends toll road money for salaries.
“What outrages the public is that they pay a toll and 250 million dollars in Harris County doesn’t even go for the toll roads that they are driving on right now,” argued Bettencourt.
I sounded off on the FOX What’s Your Point show…
“We’ve allowed this thing to become a slush fund. This is what’s wrong with this country. Its government is arrogant and greedy.”
With a state law that holds no one unaccountable.
“The state has no oversight state, they can’t audit it.”
Former mayor Bill King has tried to unravel where the money is going
“It’s ridiculous to have this amount of money with this little transparency of what’s happening with the money,” he assured.
The toll road still has seven to eight billion dollars in debt.
So why isn’t the money paying the roads off so they can be free someday? Or is this a perpetual tax to keep paying for roads we’ve paid off?
“That’s what’s going to make people unhappy and they should be.”
Senator Paul Bettencourt says he will introduce legislation to crack down on the use of this toll road surplus…
The roads may be owned by Harris County… but the land they cover is state-owned.
“So, one of the bills I’m planning on filing is that you can have a state audit.”
To require the money to be spent paying off the roads… or lowering the tolls.
“I think that if you don’t lower the fees and you don’t pay off the debt you have an unaccountable fund that’s not auditable. Yeah, there’s a pretty good chance people are getting ripped off, but we don’t know because we can’t even audit the fund,” added Bettencourt.
The staffing scandal at HCTRA may produce new state procurement laws… which call for the best value for taxpayers…
Paying a company $38 an hour so their executives can get rich is hardly that.
“I’m going to be looking at best practices across the country. Because unless you have a standard that you can measure against, so what gets measured gets fixed, all of this is an open loop and it’s subject to fraud,” concluded Bettencourt.
