HCTRA is wonderful! (according to HCTRA) while investigative reporters circle...
Part 2 guest post from Oscar Slotboom documenting the outrageous looting of HCTRA. You can find Part 1 here.
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Before the main content of this post, I want to mention that Channel 2 News did excellent reporting about the Harris County Toll Road Authority (news report, YouTube video) a few days after my May 1 post about HCTRA. Reporter Mario Diaz focused on the $399 million diversion of toll revenue, and asked HCTRA director Robert Trevino in advance to provide examples of projects built with toll money. (Trevino couldn't provide anything.) Diaz also mentioned the lack of improvements to the toll system in spite of high tolls and heavy traffic congestion, but did not provide any details about the long delays for planned projects.
The interview with Trevino is another instance of Trevino appearing clueless about the financials of his agency, similar to his appearance at a Texas Legislature hearing in 2025. When he wasn't claiming to not know an answer, he gives a wrong answer at 3:23 in the video, answering with 2024 revenue ($874 million) instead of 2025 revenue ($1,028 million). This is a convenient wrong answer, giving the appearance that HCTRA is collecting less from the public.
Is Trevino, with his $491,218 annual salary, really as clueless as he appears, or is he playing dumb to avoid answering hard questions? I'm inclined to think he's playing dumb to avoid confirming the ugly truth about toll diversion, agency mismanagement and poor project delivery. He is very highly paid to be a rubber stamp for the agenda of Harris County Commissioners Court, which is to plunder toll money from HCTRA.
Looking at the comments for the YouTube video, the report struck a nerve with viewers, with plenty of anger about HCTRA management.
If you watched the evening local news last year you most likely saw HCTRA's advertising campaign. The six advertisements are available on HCTRA's YouTube page in the "Commercials" section.
The most heavily run ad features retired local anchor personalities Jerome Gray and Lisa Foronda in a simulated news situation, "reporting" to us about the benefits of an EZ Tag.
Another ad uses the newsroom situation to tell us facts about HCTRA. Of course these are the facts HCTRA wants us to know, not the ugly truth.
There are two Spanish language videos, including a newsroom video featuring Beatriz De Alvarado and Claudia Deschamps.
Another ad features a cute girl to promote awareness of emergency assistance.
This campaign continued month after month, and I was soon thinking: how much is HCTRA spending on all this advertising?
Surely HCTRA's financial statement reports its advertising and marketing spending, right? Wrong! There is nothing in the financial statement relating to this type of spending. This is in contrast to Houston Metro's annual financial statement (page 25), which specifically reports marketing expense, $14.2 million in 2025. For HCTRA, advertising must be mostly included in the $283 million "Services and fees" expense, which I call a black hole due to lack of information about this spending.
Looking at the Harris County 2026 budget document (pages 42 and 56), HCTRA has a $17.5 million budget line item for "Communications and Marketing". This is a recent item, with zero funding shown for years prior to 2025. The document says, "The program is responsible for marketing, graphic design, mailing materials, mapping, asset management, and the creation of map/GIS exhibits," but no spending details are provided for specific objectives. "Toll mapping and graphics" appears to be expensive, with a $2.94 million budget increase in 2026. $12 million is probably a reasonable estimate for the cost of the 2025 advertising campaign.
The Harris County procurement portal shows two contracts for "Branding, Marketing and Strategic Communication Services for the Harris County Toll Road Authority", but cost is not shown.
Did the $14 million marketing expense in 2025 pay for itself with increased revenue? It's possible, because toll revenue rose from $874.5 million in 2024 to $1,028 million in 2025. However, population and economic growth is expected to increase traffic on the toll roads, without any advertising needed, and HCTRA's financial statement (page 10) says, "This increase was largely due to HCTRA’s cost recovery efforts associated with the invoicing services provided under the tolling service agreements."
With the public becoming increasingly aware of the huge diversion of toll revenue with poor financial transparency, and the long delays in getting projects done, I think the main purpose of this advertising campaign is public relations to improve HCTRA's image. I've also previously reported on a possible ulterior motive for large public agency advertising budgets, possibly making it less likely that traditional media will do negative reporting. Thankfully, at least Channel 2 has maintained journalistic integrity.
A more accurate news report
Using the HCTRA advertising concept of a simulated news broadcast, here's a better depiction of the reality of HCTRA:
Jerome Gray: Our investigative staff has studied the Harris County Toll Road Authority financial statements and discovered that a large percentage of your toll money is not being used for the toll road system.
Lisa Foronda: In 2025, $399 million of the tolls you paid were transferred to Harris County, and over the last six years 40% of your toll payments, amounting to $1.9 billion, have been diverted to Harris County.
Gray: In spite of our specific requests, neither HCTRA nor Harris County has been able to provide a detailed accounting of how your toll money is being spent by Harris County commissioners.
Foronda: If you drive across the Sam Houston Tollway Ship Channel Bridge, you've surely noticed that the project is taking forever. The bridge was originally scheduled to be completed in 2024, and the current schedule is to finish the bridge by 2030.
Gray: But that's the not only HCTRA project way behind schedule. If you're stuck in traffic on the toll roads, you're probably wondering when HCTRA will build long-promised improvements to remove toll barriers, add connection ramps and build the long-planned Hardy Toll Road downtown extension. These projects are delayed year after year, and HCTRA's web site does not say when they plan to get these much-needed projects done.
Foronda: If you're a longtime user of the toll roads, paying high tolls year after year, you're probably wondering if the older toll roads are paid off and will ever become freeways. In fact, the original three sections of the Sam Houston Tollway, from the Southwest Freeway to the North Freeway, generate $1 billion dollars every three years, enough to pay for the cost of its construction and improvement. Will Houstonians ever get any toll relief?
Gray: The short answer is no, there will never be substantial toll relief. As long as HCTRA has debt, they can charge high tolls on all toll roads and transfer the money out of the toll road system. Even as HCTRA transferred $399 million of your toll money to Harris County commissioners in 2025, HCTRA issued new debt which won't be paid off until 2055.
Cute young girl in the HCTRA commercial: That's right, when I'm a grown-up I'll be paying high tolls to use the toll roads. When I'm as old as grandma, I'll still be paying high tolls to use the toll roads!
If current management of HCTRA continues indefinitely, the young girl featured in the HCTRA commercial will face of lifetime of artificially high tolls.
Labels: governance, government transparency, HCTRA, toll roads
posted by Max Concrete @ 5:29 PM
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