Watchdog Group Wants Investigation Of TxDOT’s Toll Road PR Campaign

A group I’m not terribly familiar with, Texans Uniting For Reform And Freedom, is asking Travis County DA Ronnie Earle to investigate whether or not a TxDOT public relations campaign to promote toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor is, in fact, legal:

It’s not only an inappropriate and wasteful use of our gas tax dollars by an agency perpetually claiming it’s out of money for roads, but it’s ILLEGAL for a PUBLIC agency to take a policy position and use the public’s tax money to sell them something using an under-handed PR campaign.

The State Auditor already found TxDOT “cooked the books” Enron-style on the Trans Texas Corridor mismarking funds as “engineering” when in fact, they spent it on PR. The Auditor’s office testified to this before the Senate Transportation Committee on March 1, 2007. See the report entitled “An Audit Report on the Department of Transportation and the Trans-Texas Corridor” released in February 2007.

Please open an investigation and prosecute this agency for its repeated illegal activities. The people of Texas want justice. When Ken Lay cooked the books at Enron, he was sent to jail. The same needs to happen with those guilty of breaking the law at the highway department.

It’s certainly not an un-thorny thicket that the TexasTURF folks ask Earle to dive into. First and foremost, PR campaigns by the state and state agencies are a matter of routine, from public university’s radio commercials to “Don’t Mess With Texas” commercials and the “Check The Date, Love Your State,” campaign concerning vehicle registration.

There is, however, a significant distinction in that those things are for a pretty legitimate public service. A PR campaign for toll roads does indeed seem a little more, “smarmy.” Whether there is anything in the state constitution (doubtful) or statutes to make it illegal (who knows?) is another matter. I’m as anti-toll road as the next person, but I’m not sure that there is grounds for declaring TxDOT’s actions actually “illegal.” Their only hope is probably going to hinge on whether or not the PR campaign was actually something the legislature specifically authorized through the appropriations process. If the Lege knew and planned for money to go to this purpose, then that’s one thing. If they can show, however, that it was not the legislature’s intent to fund something like this, and that TxDOT is using money appropriated for other purposes for this campaign, they may have a better shot.

Still however, that may be a better issue for a civil lawsuit. I’m not sure a state agency’s diversion of appropriated funds from one line-item to another is something within Earle’s domain, or is something specifically “illegal.” I think these folks might have a better shot with a civil suit in state court. Either way, at least they are doing something to try to stop this stupid and wasteful ad campaign.

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