Bob Perry’s Paper Tiger
August 19th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Poor Bob Perry. What’s millions in political contributions worth these days if you can’t protect your own agency from the slings and arrows of the Sunset Commission?
Today the commission’s staff recommended what thousands of Texans have been begging the Legislature to do for five years: scrap the Texas Residential Construction Commission.
Back in 2003, when the TRCC was created, it was hailed as the consumers’ friend. If your brand new home was riddled with cracks and leaks, you, the Texas consumer, would have the TRCC on your side to act as mediator with the home-builder.
It sounded good on paper, but like many regulatory agencies in Texas, the TRCC is dominated by the very industry it’s supposed to regulate.
The Sunset Commission staff sums up the TRCC in its report: “Current regulation of the residential construction industry is fundamentally flawed and does more harm than good.”
No need to read the entire 75 pages. You’ll get the gist of just how rotten the agency is from the two-page summary at the beginning of the report.
In 2005, the Observer wrote about the homebuilding industry’s lavish donations to the Republican Party — more than $8.9 million to candidates and political action committees. Bob Perry, head of Perry Homes, the top contributor of them all, gave more than $6.9 million from 2001 to 2005. In 2007, the Observer reported that the TRCC couldn’t enforce its own permitting decisions — builders who had lost their permits were still openly working.
The TRCC, stacked with home-builders and builder-friendly appointees, forces homeowners to wait for months for relief that most often never comes. Homeowners must file a complaint with the agency. They also have to complete the agency’s “dispute resolution process” before they can get on with their lives and file a lawsuit or go to arbitration.
When the TRCC does rule in favor of a consumer, it has no power to compel a home-builder to repair the damages
I wouldn’t say goodbye to the TRCC just yet. The Legislature will have the final say on the Sunset recommendations next year. And Bob Perry is still the state’s top political donor.
