The North Texas Tollway Authority keeps making the "news".
WHY? Because they've been through 5 guys in 5 years. WHY did the latest head resign? Because he was going to be fired.
WHY? Because he thinks some of the million(s) of tax dollar relationships with some of the same companies since the 1950s are too cozy. And maybe all those connections the board members have with the companies and politicians could be considered a conflict of interest.
Hell, this is Texas...WHO are we kidding?
Is it time for the sunset of NTTA?
It ain't the only "Authority" that's overdue.
When it comes to Toll (Toal?) Roads and Rivers, it's all about WHO you know.
Some notes YOU can't afford to miss in the Fort Worth
Star-Telegram articles this week.
The recommendations come after several potential conflicts surfaced involving individual board members, as well as the tollway authority’s institutional relationship with a handful of firms that are paid tens of millions of dollars per year to perform engineering, legal and other services.
Board chairman Kenneth Barr of Fort Worth disclosed that his brother is a lawyer with Locke Lord, a firm that does about $6.9 million a year in tollway authority legal work. Barr said he consulted with the tollway authority’s legal counsel, also a Locke Lord attorney, before accepting a board position in 2008 to ensure there was no ethical conflict.
The report said the tollway authority had “perceived and potentially real conflicts of interest” with HNTB, an engineering firm that is currently under contract for about $15 million a year in tollway work. When asked later what that meant, Alvarez & Marsal managing director Ron Orsini said the audit has uncovered a situation in which one HNTB consultant was approved to pay an invoice for another HNTB consultant – all with the tollway authority’s blessing.The report didn’t attempt to catalog how often the arrangement existed, or how long the practice had been in place, Orsini said.
Ethnicity has become an issue in recent months, when tollway staff disclosed that most of their contracts are awarded to firms governed by white males – although the report points out that the tollway authority is making progress in diversifying its contractors.
But the report also found that tollway staff publicly discussed winners of procurement contracts before the board had voted to approve the contracts.“Some board members did not trust the staff’s procurement process. It’s not clear when a procurement officially ends,” said Eric Noack, Alvarez & Marsal vice president.
