Comptroller Hegar ‘shocked and utterly embarrassed’ about condition of facilities

[TexasTowelie]

When Texas’ new chief financial officer appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday to outline his office’s own monetary needs, he reminded upper chamber budget writers that he vowed during his campaign to make the comptroller’s office “a model for all state agencies” in terms of tightfistedness.

However, Comptroller Glenn Hegar — a Republican and former state senator — also said the office needs more money to upgrade its buildings, explaining that he had recently gone on a tour of 28 field offices and had “absolutely been shocked and utterly embarrassed by the condition” of them.

Hegar did not get too specific, but suggested the problems involve “basic sanitation” and gave one example of an office where tissue paper had been stuffed into a hole in the wall.

“I tell my staff I may not may not be a big fan of the Wizard of Oz, but I know what Dorothy felt like: We are not in the Capitol anymore,” he said, drawing a comparison between the field offices and his own, housed inside the immaculate LBJ Building near the Texas Capitol.

Read more: http://politics.blog.statesman.com/2015/02/03/hegar-shocked-and-utterly-embarrassed-about-condition-of-facilities/

[font color=green]It's amazing what you discover after running on bare bone budgets for several years.[/font]

[tanyev]

1. So that's the secret of Rick Perry's Texas Miracle.

Why am I not surprised?

[CurtEastPoint]

2. Glory holes stuffed w/toilet tissue? How rude!

[TexasTowelie]

3. Especially when it is previously used toilet paper!

[CurtEastPoint]

4. Is there a 'gag' emoticon? LOL!

[DhhD]

5. Don't believe Hegar-$2,800 per office chair.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/02/03/left-behind-hhsc-departures-two-2800-chairs/

[TexasTowelie]

6. My initial reaction was that maybe HHSC purchased some chairs that were ergonomically designed

because a state employee might need special accommodations under the ADA. I'm tall and when I was working 55-60 hours a week I frequently had back pain so the first chance I had to snatch a chair with a higher back I went for it. However, the price for these chairs is completely unreasonable whether it is for an agency official or for a legislator in a committee hearing room at the Capitol. I used to be the property inventory clerk within my division when I worked for the state so I hope the person holding a similar position at HHSC attaches a GPS monitoring tag to those chairs to keep track of their movement. The amount spent for each of those chairs is enough to provide SNAP benefits for 14 months to a single adult and the public has a right to be upset with that extravagance.

That being said, I cannot discount Hegar when he reports that there are facilities that need renovation and repair. I frequently saw office space which had deferred maintenance and at times was not safe including the times that I visited the HHSC office in Austin. Due to the age of facilities most state offices can only be graded as class C office space even after remodeling and a lot of the offices rank even lower with water-stained ceiling tiles and antiquated HVAC systems. There are also many fake walls due to the number of times that offices were subdivided and partitions were put up for cubicles. I recall one office that I saw that was about 9'x9' with weird angles (acute and obtuse) and a 2' diameter pole smack in the middle of the room. It was difficult to wedge a desk into that office and the person sitting at the desk could only roll the chair back about six inches without hitting the pole. Another office was a 6' wide with a door leading outside to a balcony that was used as the smoking area so that employee was constantly being disturbed by all of the smokers.

[TexasTowelie]

7. I forgot to mention that at one time I was in the same office building as the

State Fire Marshal's Office. Since it was a state building it was exempt from the fire code ordinances of Austin. I'm aware of the number of fire code violations within that building and other state office buildings in Austin and how those violations endangered the lives of the people in those buildings.