Congratulations: Your Pork Wins!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDQkjZZq_cU
This youtube spoof was put together in response to this initial blog post:
Congratulations: Your Pork Wins!
Submitted by MQSullivan on the Empower Texans blog on Fri, 05/09/2008 - 11:25am.
Seriously, way to go TxDOT. Sure, you guys miscounted $1 billion. You've
said you cannot build roads again because you're broke. But, hey, you did just
win 15 excellence in advertising awards!
According to the Texas Government Insider, TxDOT received the award from something called the "American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators." Even bureaucrats need to pat themselves on the back sometimes.
The ads getting the awards were for promoting vehicle registration.
And, gee, I thought the big expiration date and threat of getting ticket from a
burly state trooper were already fairly effective advertising...
No word on what these advertisements cost -- and it'd probably make us
shudder if we knew -- but Mr. and Mrs. Texas, take a bow for your generous
financing. Just try not to think how many lane-miles could be built, or traffic
reduced, with the dollars the state has spent on various advertising programs
over the years.
Think of it this way: Our frivolous spending was a lot better than any
other state's frivolous spending!
Posts
4 comments:
Michael and Randy,
It might help if you got your facts straight before going postal on TxDOT. Michael over estimated the number of awards by 6/9=67%. I’m pretty sure that’s more of an error than the TxDOT “bureaucrats” made when they somehow counted bond proceeds twice and projected $1.1 billion more available for construction contracts than they should have projected.
I don’t know what the overall projected letting volume was but I’m pretty sure the $1.1 billion error was on the order of 25% or so of that total. I’m not saying that your reporting error has the same significance as their calculation error, but at least it proves that you’re human too.
Michael seemed to not know about the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators so here is the link to the Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAMVA
Here is the full text of the article from the Texas Government Insider:
"TxDOT marketing, ad campaign sweeps awards"
The Texas Department of Transportation's Vehicle Titles and Registration Division recently won nine of 15 awards given for excellence in advertising and marketing by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.
AAMVA is an international organization that annually recognizes the best in public education and information campaigns from state and national governments. Austin advertising agency, ThinkStreet, helped lead the sweep with six of the nine TxDOT awards. The remaining three TxDOT awards were for in-house developed projects.
Winning entries were for the "Put Texas in your corner" vehicle registration compliance campaign and awards for the campaign's e-newsletter, the "Apply to be Texan" newcomer information brochure, the outdoor campaign to promote online vehicle registration, and the Web site www.registeredtexan.com.
Thanks for the correction -- a revised video has gone up with the corrected "9" number.
http://www.youtube.com/v/O40iAsSrRyA
No answer for the "love the Transtexas Corridor" advertising scheme, the massive accounting errors, the money spent from road funds for parks, the use of TxDOT to give school districts for the construction fo sidewalks... and the list goes on? Those are all facts. Ours was not an overestimation, but a typo. Not sure the same can be said of the billions in wasted tax money used by TxDOT over the years! Not only do their mistakes (advertising campaigns and the like) cost taxpayers money, but fixing the mistakes do, too!
I am actually very well aware of who the AAMVA is -- another shill group comprised of, and for, bureaucrats.
Hopefully the new TxDOT commissioners can fix the agency that seems intent on being broken.
-Michael Quinn Sullivan
www.EmpowerTexans.com
Freedom, I'm not knocking your work ethic or your job as an engineer at TxDOT. I know you are a man of integrity and you are doing the best job you can. You are the type of person that TxDOT should be supporting to the fullest. Those who have high integrity and work to ensure that our highways are safe.
The management of TxDOT, like all other state and federal agencies, is all looking for ways to generate revenue instead of looking for ways to meet their mission statements. The missions and roles of the bureaucracies eventually all become the same...chase the revenue stream because cutting costs are not an option.
As another example, my agency is chasing a Chet Edwards earmark for a project in Waco next year. We don't have a project proposed yet. The size, scope, and details of the project will be determined by the size of the earmark, not necessarily the need for the data.
This is true for more than just TxDOT. TxDOT is a good example and an easy target right now as their former Commission actually said in a Senate hearing last year that he was not accountable to anybody except the Governor. That indicates that he was not listening to the taxpayers interests nor was he meeting with the Legislature to do anything more than find out how to get more money.
It is perfectly acceptable for taxpayers to ask where and how their money is being spent. When financial problems are found, it makes those footing the bill very skeptical of the agency, especially when the leadership of the agency has tried to keep many of its details and contracts hidden from the Legislature and the public.
The Attorney General may be looking into whether state agencies should be allowed to advertise at all. There may be a bill proposed banning state-funded advertising campaigns for the purpose of attracting additional revenues.
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