Transportation authority rips off Richland Hills

Paul Ballard, the president of the Fort Worth Transportation Authority since 2014, should be embarrassed and ashamed.

Ballard has offered up the thinnest of excuses for his agency blatantly ripping off its 7,800 customers in Richland Hills. Those customers have shown themselves time and again to be exceedingly loyal to the transportation authority, and this is the thanks they get?

The transportation authority has said it will abruptly end an annual sales tax rebate it has been sending to Richland Hills — a loss the city estimates at $210,000 this year. In the 24 years since Richland Hills joined the authority, rebates have totaled more than $2 million, the city says.

The authority also has paid rebates to its other member cities — Fort Worth and Blue Mound — to compensate for street repairs made necessary by frequent heavy bus traffic.

“That’s 100 percent of our road budget,” says Edward Lopez, the Richland Hills mayor pro tem.

Fort Worth voluntarily ended its rebates in 2006 in a policy change to devote that money instead to the transportation authority’s latest commuter rail project, the TEX Rail service planned between downtown Fort Worth and the north entrance to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.

Through some logical gymnastics, Ballard says that’s why no more refunds should go to Richland Hills.

He told Star-Telegram reporter Gordon Dickson it’s not fair to provide street money to Richland Hills when Fort Worth is putting its money into TEX Rail.

Not fair? Not fair to Fort Worth?

But Fort Worth will directly benefit from TEX Rail, and that project is a top priority of elected city officials.

Richland Hills is miles away from the TEX Rail route. Its city officials would be scorned by residents if they voluntarily devoted the sales tax rebate to TEX Rail, because the project is of no direct benefit to Richland Hills.

Stuck in a hole because that excuse doesn’t work, Ballard digs deeper.

He says the rebate is not required by any contract between the transportation authority and Richland Hills.

“I run the [transportation authority] like a business,” he told Dickson, “and if someone produces a contract saying we have to pay that money then I will pay it.”

A 24-year relationship and more than $2 million in previous payments implies a legitimate understanding, even if it’s not a formal contract.

And besides that, these are transportation authority customers.

A smart business leader would treat them better than this.

This story was originally published July 19, 2016 at 4:34 PM with the headline "Transportation authority rips off Richland Hills."