Today, Texas Watchdog has broken a big story on the Houston Airport System that details an intricate web of shadowy private-public companies (some of which are incorporated offshore) that are partly staffed by public employees of the Houston Airport System, with murky financial ties to the city, but which refuse to make financial records available to Texas Watchdog, to at least one member of City Council who has requested them, or even to City Controller Annise Parker.
Their detailed, five-part story is available here. We encourage you to click over and read the whole story. Obviously, many public information requests and man-hours went into putting together this story, which continues to raise even more questions about the Houston Airport System and the shadowy business relationships set up by the now-departed Richard Vacar.
One thing is now more clear than ever: Mayor White’s appointment of City Hall insider Anthony Hall (who approved some of Vacar’s expenses according to earlier reports) to review Vacar’s expenses and travel is a wholly inadequate response to the questions raised by Vacar’s departure, the last round of reporting done by Texas Watchdog, and certainly all the new questions raised by today’s reporting.
We encourage Mayor White to set up a task force charged with auditing how public employees and monies were used by these private-public entities, what (if any) liabilities the taxpayers may have for their activities (say, if one of our “partners” were to play the nationalization game that is all the rage in Latin America these days), and what the actual return on investment (if any) has been for taxpayers on these deals. That task force should NOT include Anthony Hall or any other “Houston Way” insider who has been involved with Houston Airport System activities, and would preferably include representatives chosen by the mayor, City Council, and the City Controller.
The public deserves more answers than it has gotten so far on Vacar’s departure and the interesting business relationships he established using the resources of the city.
