Our Elected Officials – Their Power, The Purse and Their Use of Misinformation

Road bond is a good example of the unabashed use of taxpayers' money to promote a special interest agenda

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Opinion

By Charles O'Dell, Ph.D.

Taxing and public spending authority provide the means for controlling the public decision making process. And when elected officials control the public decision making process they can exercise greater control over voters through the use of propaganda and selected information.

The 2008 Hays County special interest road bond is a case in point.

Last year, despite misinformation provided by Hays County Commissioners Jeff Barton and Will Conley, and the pro-Road Bond PAC that raised $65,000 from special interests to promote the bond, and tons of public official endorsements, including State Representative Patrick Rose, voters resoundingly turned down a special interest road bond that would have cost taxpayers in excess of $172,000,000.

Undeterred by the voters, Barton and Conley are back with an old/new road bond that will cost taxpayers more than $207,000,000 if approved. But this time Barton and Conley are overtly using public funds to control the public decision making process by misinforming voters.

First, create the illusion of citizen involvement

Here’s how they spent hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to market a more bloated special interest $207,000,000 road bond to voters.

To create an illusion of citizen involvement, the commissioners’ court road bond majority comprised of Barton, Conley and Ingalsbe, voted to create a Citizen Road Bond Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee of appointed citizens was told to evaluate proposed local road projects and recommend to commissioners’ court which should be added to the special interest road bond projects carried over from the 2007 road bond.

Each commissioner appointed two members of the Advisory Committee and the County Judge appointed the chair, for a total of nine members. This allowed the court’s pro-road bond majority to appoint a majority of pro-road bond citizens.

The court then solicited local road projects from local governmental entities throughout the County as possible “sweeteners” to the basic and most expensive special interest road projects carried over from the 2007 road bond. About forty local projects were proposed to the Citizen Advisory Committee.

Transportation consultants were hired to hastily hold four public workshops, one in each commissioner precinct, where they had citizens rank a set of predetermined criteria, and then use those criteria to somehow rank the forty local projects submitted from around the county.

Approximately twelve citizens attended the workshop held in Wimberley, twenty five in Dripping Springs, thirty in San Marcos and maybe a hundred in Buda. I participated in the Wimberley and Dripping Springs workshops. Participants were asked to rank the forty county-wide local projects but few citizens were familiar with all the local projects in their own precincts, much less those in the other three precincts. It was a seriously flawed process but the objective was to give the appearance of a citizen driven process and to provide cover for elected officials.

Second, add a sprinkle of local project sweetners

The consultants tallied the meaningless workshop results and submitted them to the Citizen Advisory Committee charged with selecting local road projects and recommending them to the court. The goal was to sprinkle in local projects in each precinct to fool/attract voters throughout Hays County.

Evidence of how meaningless the citizen process was is further demonstrated by Precinct 1 Commissioner Debbie Gonzales Ingalsbe who interjected widening of rural CR 266. Ingalsbe lives on CR 266, but the primary objective was to widen a two-lane rural road to a four/five lane rural road with public financing for two developers, Houston tobacco attorney John O’Quinn who owns 450 acres on CR 266, and local developer W.C. Carson who owns 1,600 acres on CR 266.

Once local projects were selected by the Citizen Advisory Committee and recommended to commissioners’ court it was then time to market the $207,000,000 road bond.

Third, roll out the special interests & taxpayer paid marketing scheme

This is being done through a coordinated effort between the three pro-road bond commissioners and the Hays Families for Safe Mobility Political Action Committee. Virtually all funding for the PAC mailings, signs and promotions came from special interests located in Houston, Waco, McAllen and other areas outside of Hays County. These special interests simply want a piece of the bond action, and some have contributed to the election campaigns of Barton and Conley.

Five members of the Citizen Advisory Committee and Commissioner Barton are all listed as members of the Political Action Committee that is working in close coordination with those county officials pushing the road bond, Barton, Conley and Ingalsbe.

Photo taken from the road bond PAC web site with Commissioners Barton and Conley, front and center.

Using low-ball guesstimates of how much additional property tax will be required to pay for a total county long-term debt exceeding $300,000,000 if the bond is approved, and in the face of the most serious global economic recession since the Great Depression, the commissioners spent hundreds of thousands of tax dollars for consultants and to print the County’s propaganda brochure entitled, Hays County 2008 Road Bond Proposition, and mail it to 80,000 households.

Over 40,000 Hays County citizens have voted during early voting. An additional 40,000 Hays County citizens are expected to vote tomorrow on Election Day. The road bond is not a partisan matter and it should be defeated once again by voters. Defeating it a second time will send a strong message to our elected officials that voters will not be controlled by propaganda, whether from a PAC, official charades or an official brochure paid for by our tax dollars. Demand that the public interest be served, not special interests.

For less than half the cost of today’s proposed $207,000,000 special interest road bond being pushed onto us in this deepening economic recession, we could pay for ALL forty of the locally proposed road improvement projects instead of just those selected as “sweeteners.”

I voted AGAINST this 2008 special interest road bond, and if I lived in precincts 1 or 3, I would hold those elected officials accountable for trying to control the public decision making process through misuse of our tax dollars. A road bond with merit wouldn’t require propaganda for voter approval.

As co-founder of Hays Community Action Network (HaysCAN) in 2003, Mr. O’Dell strives to carry out the mission of ensuring open, accessible and accountable government. He is a long time and close observer of the workings of the Hays County Commissioners Court. He earned a degree in Agricultural Education and a Masters in Ag Economics at Texas Tech, and, later, a Ph.D. at The University of Maryland while employed as a Research Economist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Washington, D.C. Texas born and raised on a family farm, O’Dell is a Hays County Master Naturalist and a board member of the Ethical Society of Austin.