Falkenberg: Who has the power to do something?

sure. But there was the fact that Stick used to be in business with a 21CT lobbyist.

And that $20 million contract was poised to balloon to $110 million when reporters learned of it last month. Indeed, 21CT was making generous political contributions shortly before its lucrative contract extension went up for approval, including $10,000 to then-soon-tobe Gov. Greg Abbott. He has since returned the donation.

Still, even after reports that the contract was awarded without competition and potentially amid conflicts of interest, the Chronicle’s Rosenthal reported that the agency’s executive commissioner, former Houston state Sen. Kyle Janek, continued personally pushing lawmakers to approve the steep contract extension.

The 21CT contract is under investigation, and four of the agency’s highranking officials, including Stick, have stepped down in recent weeks. I won’t even get into reports of policy violation in hiring and up-front tuition payments.

Meanwhile, Janek, a well-tanned, wellconnected anesthesiologist, remains head of the agency. New Gov. Abbott has said he’ll wait until his own investigation is complete before deciding Janek’s fate.

There’s no need to wait. The problems involving the 21CT contract aren’t isolated issues.

Consider AT&T, the Dallas-based telecommunications giant whose PAC also happens to be a “mega-donor” to former Gov. Rick Perry, having contributed more than $500,000 to his campaigns. A pattern of problems

In December, longtime State Auditor John Keel found serious conflicts of interest and oversight problems in a deal between AT&T and … yep, the health and human services agency. The audit found that staffers assigned to monitor the contract failed to verify AT&T’s performance and allowed the project’s cost to balloon from an estimated $1 million to $105 million.

The agency didn’t even know how much it had paid AT&T, said auditors. Unlike the Austin company, AT&T went through a competitive bidding process, but one has to question the veracity of it: one of the employees evaluating the bid used to work at AT&T, auditors found.

Problems like these even go beyond the health and human services agency.

Chronicle reporters Rosenthal and Mike Ward recently confirmed that the Travis County district attorney’s public integrity unit had been looking into another case of no-bid contract dealing by Perry’s administration, this time at the Department of Public Safety.

It involved more than $20 million in contracts given to a Virginia defense contractor, Abrams Learning and Information Systems Inc., to help the state of Texas redevelop border security strategies. See if you see a pattern here: Abrams had little experience in the work it was hired to do. Abrams didn’t have to bid for the contract.

And how did DPS get around the state’s openbidding laws on this one? There’s loophole in the case of emergency. Perry had proclaimed on the campaign trail that border security was an “emergency.” And that was enough. But wait, there’s more

It was the emergency that kept on giving. According to reports, the company was initially approved for $471,800 in March of 2006 to establish the state’s Border Security Operations Center in Austin. Only three months in, that amount was hiked by $680,000. It just kept growing.

And Travis County’s investigation? It died a quiet, sudden death when Perry vetoed funding for the public integrity unit. He said he vetoed the funding because District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg wouldn’t resign after her embarrassing drunken driving arrest.

But this latest revelation casts even more doubt on that claim. Maybe, just maybe, those grand jurors who indicted Perry for threatening Lehmberg, weren’t crazy after all.

Now, the only reason we know as much as we do about how our money is being misspent in these cases is because a few dogged reporters told us. Official investigations underway can provide more answers.

But here’s another irony: officials at the Health and Human Services Commission are using the “ongoing investigations” as an excuse to block the flow of public records requested by reporters. A gaping loophole in the Texas Public Information Act, passed a few years ago, lets them get away with that.

Who writes these laws? Who signs off on this bad spending? Who has the power to do something about it?

Mostly people who call themselves conservatives.

A few influential Republican state senators have already condemned the shady contracting and one has called for stronger action at HHSC than has thus far been taken.

But it’s up to the new crop of “conservative” leaders in Austin to remember the modern definition of that word still includes fiscal responsibility.

lisa.falkenberg@chron.com