Veering to the Right

John W. Johnson

The leadership at the Texas Transportation Commission — made up of the board of three commissioners that oversees TxDOT — is shifting toward the political right, in a phenomenon that is taking place in all corners of the state. In Texas, where the governor’s authority is conspicuous mostly by its absence, power comes largely from appointments to boards and commissions that run the state agencies, and to some degree, by extension, the state. And as the terms of the last of the Ann Richards appointees end, another wave of Bush appointees is coming in, in many cases creating boards and commissions that were wholly appointed by our current governor, George W. Bush.

On the Texas Transportation Commission, the transition between the administrations is finally complete. The term of Richards’ remaining appointee, Ann S. Wynne of Austin, has just ended, and the nomination of her successor, Bush appointee John W. Johnson, was confirmed by the Texas Senate in March. Johnson is a successful businessman with connections to the oil fields of West Texas, just like the governor who appointed him. President and chairman of Permian Mud Service Inc., a Midland/Odessa-based oil-field service company, he has also served as president of the Southwest Bank of Texas, and on the board of trustees at Vanderbilt University.

Will a Bush monopoly on the Transportation Commission change the way roads are built, or the way state transportation business is done in Austin? Though Ed Collins, who works for both TxDOT and CAMPO, said he wasn’t familiar with Johnson’s potential priorities as commissioner, the membership of the commission does indeed have an affect on Austin and its transportation future. “There could be [an effect],” he said. “Each commissioner brings his own knowledge and philosophy of how things should go.”

Wynne, the outgoing commissioner, pushed for the development of a 20-year long-range plan for TxDOT, and she was also known as champion of diversity in the TxDOT workforce, which was a larger priority of the Richards administration than it is in Bush’s. Johnson was unavailable at press time to comment on his possible agenda as a commissioner. But he, along with his colleagues on the transportation commission, will be important figures in the unfolding of Austin’s transportation destiny. –Jenny Staff

This article appears in April 9 • 1999 and April 9 • 1999 (Cover).

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