By:Bill King
On Wednesday, the Transportation Com- mittee of the Texas Senate held a hearing on a bill by Sen. Paul Bettencourt, which would implement some reforms to the Harris County Toll Road Authority (HCTRA) and force it to share some of its excess revenue with the City of Houston to compensate it for providing police and emergency services. Roberto Treviño, the HCTRA Executive Director, testified at the hearing in opposition to the bill, basically contending that the agency had no money to spare. Of course, that fell a little flat, considering the County Commissioners have transferred $1.1 billion out of HCTRA in just the last three years.
But the truly remark- able moment in the hearing came when Bettencourt asked Treviño how much cash HCTRA had on hand as of the end of the last fiscal year, September 30, 2024. Treviño said he did not have that number with him. After Bettencourt became incredulous that the Executive Director would not know how much cash the agency had; an aide to Treviño brought him a document, which he identified as the Annual Certified Financial Report (ACFR). After examining the document, Treviño told Bettencourt HCTRA had $697 million in cash on hand at the end of the year.
As you can plainly see, the ACFR reported that the cash and cash equivalents were just over $1.2 billion and that the $697,000 was in short- term investments. HC- TRA’s total liquidity at the end of the year was actually over $2 billion.
When Bettencourt caught Treviño redhanded, he attempted to cover up his misrepresentation by claiming that bond covenants restricted some portion of the $2 billion.
However, as you can see in the excerpt on the balance sheet above, restricted cash is separately itemized be- low the current assets line. In other words, the $2 billion absolutely did not include any restricted cash.
