Road district questions linger as Woodlands man imprisoned
Three years ago, Adrian Heath told a group of conservative Montgomery County voters: “Something doesn’t smell right.”
That observation came in the opening moments of a long, rambling speech illustrated with slides projected on a screen. Heath’s presentation amounted to a jeremiad against an unusual, quasi-governmental entity known as The Woodlands Road Utility District.
Heath, 59, a longtime resident of The Woodlands whose speech is still laced with the inflections of his native Australia, was so distrustful of the road district that he tried to shut it down. He paid a high price: Last week he settled into a Montgomery County Jail cell to start a three-year prison term for voting illegally in a 2010 election for the district’s board.
The story of how a bespectacled suburban salesman with no criminal record became an imprisoned felon is inextricably linked with that of the utility district, a favorite target of Montgomery County’s robust community of limited-government activists.
The structure of the road district is similar to those of the state’s hundreds of municipal utility districts, explored in articles last year by the Chronicle’s James Drew. But perhaps the most frequent criticism of MUDs — that they lack accountability — is even more applicable to the Montgomery County road district.
One of the more curious aspects of MUDs is the key role played by “rent-a-voters” — a handful of people who take up residence in makeshift homes on vacant land and authorize millions of dollars in bonds before construction even begins on a development. This strikes many as a flimsy pretext for representative government.
But in a MUD, at least, real voters emerge over time as the development is built out.
The boundaries of the 2,475acre road utility district were drawn expressly to exclude residences, taking in only commercial properties such as The Woodlands Mall and the headquarters of Anadarko and Chevron Phillips. The handful of residents who voted to elect the board after the Legislature created the district in 1991
were promptly removed through de-annexation.
Supporters characterize this approach as a gift — free money! — to residential taxpayers, as the bonds that the district issues to pay for road projects are retired through taxes paid solely by commercial property owners. But a hotel or restaurant owner cannot cast a vote. No residents means no voters. No voters means no elections. And no elections means no accountability for a board that continues to issue debt and has spent $115 million since its inception.
It turns out that the people who drew the boundaries of the road utility districts overlooked a few residences — the district’s attorney said in 2015 that it had four registered voters. The framers of the Constitution, I suspect, would not have been impressed by an election with four voters.
Moreover, the utility district is a black box. I could find no website for it, nor any evidence that agendas of its board meetings had been posted online. In three days of calling around, I was unable to contact anyone who could answer questions about the district.
‘There is nothing free’
Nor is the district’s exclusively commercial tax base universally embraced.
“I am a commercial business owner in the Woodlands Township, and I’ve been paying tax to an entity that I didn’t know existed to pay debt that was issued without my consent,” said Gordy Bunch, the board chairman of the township, which functions as a local government in the unincorporated masterplanned community. “It’s the epitome of taxation without representation.”
Bunch says the taxes are reflected in the lease payments he makes to the owner of the building housing the offices of his insurance company. Critics say consumers ultimately pay for the taxes assessed on other businesses within the district’s boundaries.
“There is nothing free,” Bunch says.
Conviction upheld
Adrian Heath was equally skeptical in 2010. Convinced that the district was up to no good, Heath and nine cohorts checked into a hotel and listed it as their residence, mustering enough votes to elect new board members, who intended to oversee the district’s demise.
The defeated incumbents regained their positions through a lawsuit, and Heath and three others were convicted of voter fraud. Despite the ambiguity of the state’s voting residence law, appeals courts have upheld Heath’s conviction, and his only hope is that the U.S. Supreme Court will agree to hear his case. Most of the others involved either weren’t prosecuted or made deals for probation; the conviction of one defendant, James Jenkins, was overturned and the state is appealing.
It’s reasonable to question whether Adrian Heath deserves prison time for an ill-advised act of political mischief. But however his case turns out, the questions that he and others raised about the road utility district are legitimate and troubling. To borrow Heath’s words: Something doesn’t smell right.