Big time freeway toller State Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, is correcting reports on her campaign and office-holder spending dating to 2000, her campaign consultant said Thursday, according to a Statesman report today:
In those years, Dukes spent almost $300,000 of campaign donations on lodging, travel, gifts, gasoline and other items. Almost a third of that was on credit cards, reported without detailing how much she had spent on each item, as required by the Texas Ethics Commission.
Based on that one bold red line of type above, it appears that Dukes violated state law.
Dukes was also caught this past week playing hookey in Vegas. According to blogger Matt Glazer (see the pic of her playing the one arm bandit), Dawnna was playing the slots in Las Vegas, when she was scheduled to be in an important Medicaid hearing last week:
The committee was scheduled to meet last Thursday. It met and the video and minutes are here.
Who is the only thing missing from the hearing? Dawnna Dukes. Who needs a boring hearing on Medicaid when the seductive lure of the Las Vegas slots beckons.
This is nothing new for Dawnna, remember when she missed a critical vote on education because she was on vacation in France?
Dukes continued irresponsible behavior is all good news for Brian Thompson, a lawyer who works at McGinnis, Lochridge & Kilgore who is considering a run at Dukes in the D primary.
In January of 2004, Dukes voted to toll MoPAC (a toll lane coming soon - they plan on reducing current lanes to "shoehorn" in a toll lane!)
On 9/13/2004, at a public transportation hearing, I exposed the payola that State Representative Dawnna Dukes received for her YES vote, to toll hundreds of millions of dollars worth of our public highways (see VIDEO here).
Rep. Dawnna Dukes expects her low income East Austin constituents to pay the steep cost of $1,000’s more a year, as the Dukes family receives freeway toll contracts, including a NO BID contract paid for with our tax dollars.
Dawnna Duke's sister, Stacy Dukes-Rhone, received a contract with the toll authority the morning after Dawnna Dukes voted YES for the Freeway tolls, after 93% of the public feedback opposed the plan
The nepotism revelation I made, and the TV news reports that followed, caused the Statesman to do a article on 9/18/04:
"Rhone (Stacey Dukes-Rhone), according to records and interviews with mobility authority officials, has been doing public relations work since February for the mobility authority under a contract with HNTB, the mobility authority's general engineering contractor for its first project, the U.S. 183-A toll road. That tollway, already under construction, was unrelated to her sister's vote in July.Rep. Dawnna Dukes vote included placing tolls on East Austin's 183 & 71 freeway expressways, which are already 100% fully funded with our gas tax dollars. These roads can open as free roads faster than if they were toll roads. Rep. Dukes also voted for freeway tolls again in 2005.
But Rhone also worked on public outreach on the seven-road plan in the runup to the July 12 vote. Her contract allows her to receive as much as $44,400.
According to Richard Ridings with HNTB, the lead engineer on the project, she has been paid $26,000 so far and has billed an additional $6,000.
Her contract specifies her start date as Feb. 1 this year, and the agency, in a letter to Barrientos released Friday, said Rhone has worked for the authority since Feb. 18. But Rhone did not sign the contract with HNTB until July 7. Ridings signed on July 13, the morning after the toll road vote."
As expected, Stacey Dukes-Rhone has received additional contracts as well. Including a NO BID toll contract for tens of thousands of dollars as listed in the Special Investigation the Texas Comptroller produced in 2005.
Comptroller’s report also found that Rep. Dawnna Dukes approved tolls costing up to $1 a mile. Eleven (11) times the national average. The Comptroller’s investigation illustrates how freeway tolls are “Favoritism and Self-Enrichment” and “Double Taxation without Accountability”.
Dawnna Dukes, the daughter of Eastside power broker Ben Dukes Sr., even places her vote above our Federal Law.
(Environmental Justice):
We must avoid
disproportionately
high economic effects on
low-income populations.
Title VI also states that we must “prevent the denial of, reduction in, or significant delay in the receipt of benefits by minority populations and low-income populations.”
Last year CAMPO removed large sections of its Environmental Justice website page. But, altering a web page doesn't not alter federal law. Rep. Dawnna Dukes is unfazed by the recent reports of the dangers of toll roads and toll booths, as the disproportionate accidents and deaths of her constituents are on the line.
