North Texas Tollway Authority board members will be required to share more details of their personal incomes with the public, and won't be allowed to participate in discussions of matters in which they have even an apparent conflict of interest.
Those are among the highlights of a new ethics policy that was approved unanimously Wednesday by the nine-member tollway board.“When people trust each other in organizations, they work more productively and the business thrives,” tollway general counsel Thomas Bamonte said during a presentation of the new rules.The board also named Bamonte as its permanent ethics officer. In that position, he will serve as a referee of sorts in determining when a board member should or shouldn't abstain from a discussion or a vote, or report income from a company with tollway authority ties. The new policy requires board members to report possible or even apparent conflicts of interest to the ethics officer, board chairman and executive director -- and those officials together will make a ruling on whether enough of a conflict exists to restrict the board member's involvement in a proceeding.Several board members applauded the new policy, and said they're eager to move forward after some prickly conflict of interest problems surfaced last year. In October, the agency disclosed in a Chisholm Trail Parkway bond report that the FBI had opened an inquiry into possible conflicts of interest involving tollway officials."I think it's going to help us shine a bright light on the entire operation of the agency," board chairman Kenneth Barr of Fort Worth said. "We will be discussing this in the next few weeks, as the board meets and we try to get started on training. I think it's important to move quickly in extending these items to the senior staff, too."In October, the Star-Telegram reported on several potential conflicts of interest involving board members. Barr, for example, disclosed that he had prior business relationships with lawyers who had been hired to perform legal work related to the Chisholm Trail Parkway project.Early in 2011 Barr had made a motion that the minority-owned firm Newby-Davis -- comprised of Gov. Rick Perry's former chief of staff Brian Newby, who is African-American, and state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth -- be hired to handle right-of-way legal matters for Chisholm Trail Parkway, which is now under construction.Newby and Davis are both lawyers with Fort Worth's Cantey Hanger firm. Barr keeps an office in Cantey Hanger's building on the west side of downtown Fort Worth. In 2009, Barr, Newby and Cantey Hanger attorney David Chappell formed a partnership named Barr Newby Chappell Consulting, according to records at the secretary of state's office. Nearly two years later, when the tollway board voted unanimously to hire Newby Davis, Barr said it was an oversight that he didn't ask the tollway authority's legal counsel whether he should abstain because of his past relationship with Newby and Chappell. He said he had forgotten about the 2009 partnership, which had been for a business opportunity that never materialized and was dissolved.Also, Barr's brother Andrew Barr is employed by the tollway's long-time outside legal firm, Locke Lord -- although Andrew Barr has never worked on a tollway-related business.Another board member, David Denison of Lewisville, disclosed last year that he had a prior business relationship with an investment firm that sold property for the Chisholm Trail Parkway, a planned 28-mile toll road from I-30 near downtown Fort Worth to U.S. 67 in Cleburne.The tollway authority's legal counsel determined that Barr and Denison didn't have conflicts of interest under the agency's old rules.But critics said those old rules didn't go far enough, and didn't require nearly as much financial disclosure as other state and local government bodies.Board member Michael Nowels of Lewisville expressed frustration during Wednesday's discussion. He asked Bamonte to clarify that the new ethics policy "does nothing but strengthen and clarify" rules that have been on the tollway's books for years -- and Bamonte agreed with the essence of that comment. Twitter, @gdicksonHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
