TxDOT director announces departure
He gives no explanation of why he will leave at the end of this year.
Joe Weber, a former threestar Marine general chosen only last year to run the Texas Department of Transportation, announced Tuesday that he will step down at the end of the year.
In his announcement to the agency’s 11,000 employees, Weber called his past 18 months “a true highlight in my life,” according to a statement released by TxDOT. “It has been an incredible honor to serve both for you and with you,” Weber told them.
Weber, 65, who was not made available for an interview with the American-Statesman, did not explain in the statement why he is leaving the $299,000-a-year job after what will be 21 months. Agency spokesman Bob Kaufman, asked about Weber’s motivation for leaving, said that the agency, which primarily is responsible for maintaining
and expanding the 80,000-mile state highway system, would have nothing to add.
State Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, a former Texas Transportation Commission member and now chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, called Weber “a good man who was doing a great job.”
“There have been some rough waters with TxDOT in the Legislature over the past number of years,” Nichols said. “But I thought he was a very calming presence. He came in and he listened, and worked very closely with the Legislature. ... He didn’t have the depth of experience as far as design and engineering, but you don’t really have to. It’s a management job.”
But Nichols said he is distressed that TxDOT has had nine executive directors in the 18 years he’s been involved with it as a commissioner and senator. Phil Wilson, Weber’s predecessor, served less than 30 months.
“We need stable leadership in the top rungs of TxDOT,” he said. “Constant turnover of executive directors is terrible.”
Weber, who came into the job with no background in the transportation industry, was forced to hit the ground at a trot after trouble emerged in July 2014 with the agency’s transition from one toll-tag processing firm to another. The change led to customers getting delayed and outsized toll bills — or in some cases being wrongly billed for tolls already charged to their tag accounts — and to legislative hard feelings as the 2015 session approached.
Weber’s debut in the job also coincided with the campaign — successful, it turned out — for a statewide constitutional amendment called Proposition 1 to direct oil and gas severance tax revenue to highway building. That measure passed in November 2014, meaning Weber and his top staff had the pleasurable but pressurized task of deciding how to spend an extra $1.7 billion this year.
Weber’s term also included a legislative session that, after the toll tag problem was addressed and subsided as an issue, offered an additional opportunity for even more TxDOT funding, this time from existing sales taxes. Weber and his top lieutenants were a near-constant presence at the Capitol this spring, often testifying before committees, as yet another proposed constitutional amendment worked its way through the Legislature.
Proposition 7, which would provide at least $2.5 billion more annually to TxDOT starting in 2017, goes before voters in November.
The legislative session also produced two new members of what is in effect Weber’s boss, the five-member transportation commission. The new board members, including board Chairman Tryon Lewis, a former legislator and state district judge, and banker J. Bruce Bugg Jr., were appointees of new Gov. Greg Abbott rather than Weber’s longtime friend, former Gov. Rick Perry.
Lewis could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
State Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said he had gotten a heads-up from Lewis about Weber’s departure.
“It’s not a surprise. We all had sort of wondered how long” Weber would serve, Pickett said, given the turnover above him and the retirement in August of John Barton, his deputy executive director. “He relied a lot on his No. 2.”
Pickett predicted the transportation commission will work quickly to find a replacement, “someone who has got a deeper root system” in transportation.
Weber, a 1972 Texas A&M graduate, had served as Texas A&M University’s vice president for student affairs before being selected in April 2014 to lead TxDOT.
State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, said that Weber had moved the agency toward funding what is estimated to be $4.3 billion in expansion of Interstate 35. Some of that work will begin next year.
“Austinites, in particular, owe Gen. Weber thanks,” Watson said in a statement. “He recognized that reducing traffic congestion along our stretch of I-35 would have ripple effects throughout the state’s transportation network. We’re on a path to make those improvements ... and I appreciate this commitment to that long-term vision.”