Texas newspaper's watchdog reporting uncovers county's rubber-stamp spending of Hurricane Harvey relief money

A reduced version of the graphic that the Victoria Advocate ran with its story.

The Victoria Advocate in Texas has uncovered lax oversight of $2.1 million the county government spent with one contractor for Hurricane Harvey repairs at the local airport and other public properties.

Staff writer Jessica Preist’s reporting is a textbook example of local watchdog journalism that advances government transparency when elected officials fail to act in the best interest of taxpayers. Her story demonstrates how local newspapers can and should report on government financial procedures that often get buried as routine matters in public meetings where elected officials approve expenditures with little or no question.

That’s what Preist discovered when she looked into a contract awarded to The Virtus Group one month after the hurricane struck southeast Texas. The contract “did not include a scope of work nor did it set a cap on how much could be spent,” Preist wrote. Virtus did not have to compete for the contract because the Victoria County Commission declared an emergency to bypass a state law that requires a bidding process on projects of $50,000 or more.

“Some Victoria Airport commissioners first raised concerns about the Harvey spending at their June 27 meeting,” Preist wrote. “Those concerns led July 15 to a packed joint Victoria County Commission-Victoria Regional Airport Commission meeting, during which County Judge Ben Zeller and county commissioners Clint Ives, Kevin Janak and Danny Garcia defended the process.”

Only one of the county’s four commissioners, Gary Burns, questioned the approval process for payments to Virtus, but a business owner who often bids on county jobs also raised alarms. “It’s so far out in left field; it’s comical what they did over there,” John Clegg told the Advocate.

Following up on questions raised about the Virtus payments, the newspaper filed an open-records request for invoices, which showed the county issued six checks totaling about $2.1 million from Feb. 26, 2018, to April 22.

In Texas, a county with 10,200 or more residents must have a county auditor appointed by a local district judge to ensure independent oversight of public officials. The Advocate story included this from a pamphlet published by the Texas Association of County Auditors: “Both the county auditor and commissioners court are required, by law, to approve or reject claims for disbursement of county funds. . . . This system works, not because there is a county auditor and not because there is a commissioners court; it works because neither has creative or authoritative control over the other.”

Auditors have the power to tell elected county officials “no” to expenses, District Judge Stephen Williams explained to the newspaper. But as Preist’s reporting revealed, two previous auditors and the county treasurer all failed to provide proper oversight on the Virtus payments – and the current auditor apparently does not know she has the authority to deny approval of payments by the county.

The Victoria Advocate was established in 1846, making it the second oldest newspaper in Texas. The daily has been solely owned by the same family since 1961.