When catastrophe strikes in Texas, quick cash follows.
And, in accordance with a brand new information evaluation, that quick cash continuously flows to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s high donors.
The report Awarding Affect by watchdog group Public Citizen discovered that donors to the governor’s Texans for Greg Abbott PAC acquired practically $1 billion in no-bid state contracts from 2020 to 2024. These got here as Abbott declared state emergencies over the COVID-19 pandemic, border safety and quite a lot of pure disasters — a transfer that permits the state to dispense with regular guidelines requiring it to assign contracts to the bottom bidders.
Donors to Texans for Greg Abbott racked up $950 million by means of 89 no-bid state contracts awarded throughout these catastrophe declarations. In the meantime, the identical corporations — usually contributing through subsidiaries, PACs, their executives and even executives’ spouses — poured a mixed $2.9 million into Abbott’s PAC from 2014 to 2025.
The info doesn’t point out Abbott or his contributors broke the regulation, stated Adrian Shelley, Public Citizen’s Texas director. Nevertheless, it does give Texans cause to query how the state is spending their tax {dollars} and whether or not high political donors get particular therapy, he added.
“I completely suppose it contributes to the widespread impression that there’s unequal entry to authorities in Texas,” Shelley stated. “That is simply one other instance of one thing that we see as a development in Texas authorities, which is that big-money donors get particular favors from the state.”
The Present reached out to Abbott’s workplace for touch upon the report however received no response by press time.
In a single case detailed within the report, Converse-based Doggett Freightliners of South Texas acquired two no-bid contracts in 2022 and 2023 valued at a mixed $1.6 million. State paperwork for each contracts recognized their topic as “charges” and included no particulars in regards to the scope of the work, in accordance with the examine.
In the meantime, Doggett CEO William “Leslie” Doggett has contributed greater than $1.7 million to Texans for Greg Abbott since 2014, both personally or by means of his enterprise, in accordance with the report.
In one other instance, emergency-management firm Gothams LLC pulled in practically $640 million in state contracts in 2020 and 2021 because the state grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic.
After Gothams’s work for the state slowed in 2022, firm founder Matthew Michelsen ponied up a complete of $600,000 in contributions to Abbott’s PAC, in accordance with Public Citizen. Between 2023 and 2024, the state cash started flowing once more, and Gothams pulled in a complete of 10 contracts with a complete worth exceeding $66 million, the report states.
In its evaluation, Public Citizen recommends Texas lawmakers replace contracting legal guidelines to implement the next safeguards:
Banning no-bid contract awards to corporations whose PACs, officers or households of officers have made important political donations throughout the final election cycle.
Blocking recipients of no-bid contracts from making contributions above a given threshold for a given time period.
Establishing extra thorough and clear reporting course of for the awarding of no-bid contracts following catastrophe declarations.
Imposing penalties for noncompliance, together with contract forfeiture and bans from future state work.
The report acknowledges that no-bid contracts are typically wanted for rapidly deploying assets within the wake of disasters. Nevertheless, Shelley stated Abbott has tended to maintain catastrophe declarations in place for extended durations, releasing the state to dole out no-bid contracts for months or years.
“We’d like a Texas Ethics Fee with enamel, and we’d like some legal guidelines to rein in these sorts of contracts,” he added.
UT-San Antonio political scientist Jon Taylor stated Public Citizen’s report highlights Texas’ lack of sturdy marketing campaign finance legal guidelines and its lax enforcement of present guidelines.
“These things doesn’t move the scent take a look at,” Taylor stated the report’s findings. “It gives the look that the state authorities below Greg Abbott is partaking in quid professional quo. It’s the notion of corruption.”
The abundance of no-bid contracts detailed within the examine displays Abbott’s frequent use of catastrophe declarations to provide himself extra government energy, Taylor stated. When state legislators handed a regulation within the Nineteen Seventies extending governors’ emergency powers, they meant it solely to be invoked throughout pure disasters, he added.
Nevertheless, Abbott in 2021 took the unprecedented step of declaring a catastrophe for greater than 30 counties primarily based on an increase in unlawful border crossings, which allowed him to reallocate beforehand designated state funds to fund his border wall. The yr earlier than, he issued a statewide catastrophe declaration when Black Lives Matter protests broke out following the homicide of George Floyd.
“Abbott’s turned using the Texas Catastrophe Act into an artwork type, and that is the end result,” Taylor stated of the report.
Taylor stated he helps Public Citizen’s coverage suggestions. Nevertheless, he doesn’t count on the state’s Republican legal professional common or comptroller to observe up with an investigation. Nor does he count on the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature to pursue stronger rules.
“That is what you get when you have got 30 years of uninterrupted Republican rule,” Taylor stated.
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