Texas Democratic Party: Moving Texas Forward

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has been the subject of intense public outrage over massively wasteful toll road projects, mismanagement and back-room deals. TxDOT’s mismanagement of taxpayers’ dollars is scandalous – and is emblematic of a state agency under Republican control.

• Nothing illustrates how one-party Republican rule is bad business for Texas as plainly as the billion dollar accounting error made by Rick Perry’s hand-picked officials at the Texas Department of Transportation. After announcing a funding shortfall in November 2008, TxDOT officials failed to own up to their math malfunction for months, and only admitted to the error when questioned at a Texas Senate hearing. (Source: San Antonio Business Journal)

• Discovering its billion dollar blunder meant TxDOT had to yank promised road projects from congested Texas communities – in Houston, TxDOT’s ineptitude forced a $161 million deduction in road funds, while in San Antonio, $71.5 million in maintenance and construction funds disappeared. (Source: San Antonio Express-News)

• Although Perry’s TxDOT officials couldn’t pave the way for the transportation projects they’d promised, they found plenty of cash to sink into the Trans-Texas corridor, Perry’s unprecedented plan that would have destroyed as many as 500,000 acres of Texas farm and ranch land and imposed a toll tax on Texans. The cost for TxDOT to merely plan the massive toll road exceeded $59 billion. (Source: Fort Bend Herald)  What’s worse, when TxDOT announced last month that the taxpayer-financed Trans-Texas Corridor was dead, Rick Perry made it clear TxDOT could still pursue elements of the plan under a different name. (Source: Dallas Morning News)

After making their one-billion dollar accounting mistake, TxDOT reacted just like Rick Perry does when confronted with politically damaging information – they stuck their heads in the sand until cornered and then proceeded to make the situation worse.  As long as TxDOT is under Republican rule, Texans can continue to expect the corruption, ineptitude and mismanagement that have become the hallmark of this failed state agency.

Next : #8: Perry’s HHSC: Bad For Texans’ Health

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To read more about Republican mismanagement, corruption, and  pay-to-play politics, visit the TDP’s “Top Ten State Agency Scandals” campaign by clicking here.