The 2011 Texas Legislature offers lawmakers the chance to provide more oversight of how the North Texas Tollway Authority collects fines and fees on unpaid toll bills.

State Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, is preparing a bill that would lower the fees and penalties charged to motorists on top of their tolls.

State Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, has already introduced Texas Senate Bill 343 which lowers the amount a toll authority can charge for an administrative fee from $100 to $50. However, NTTA does not charge the maximum fee of $100 — and its bills are still considered extraordinarily high by those who complain.

Motorists complain that a 45-cent toll bill can end up costing hundreds of dollars by the time NTTA is done billing those who haven’t paid.

For the past year, The Watchdog asked readers who complained about the NTTA’s practices to send Nelson their complaints in writing to help lawmakers understand the problem. Nelson’s staff said last week that her office has received 140 written complaints. She is still collecting them.

As readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Dave Lieber Watchdog column learned first, Sen. Nelson explains: “I am working on legislation to lower the cap on administrative fees that the NTTA can charge, and to have those capped fees apply to the entire invoice regardless of how many separate violations are on that invoice.

“My goal is to stop these fees from adding up to unreasonable amounts for vehicle owners, while allowing the tollway agency to reasonably cover their expenses.”

Whatever happens, the tollway authority won’t make it easy. Nelson said a year ago that when she questioned the NTTA, “they’ve been very defensive.”

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Criticism comes from the inside, too. Current NTTA Chairman Victor Vandergriff of Arlington complained in a public meeting a year ago that the authority’s budget may depend too much on penalty fees.

The payment system confuses many drivers. No signs on the toll roads explain the process. The NTTA no longer uses tollbooths. Drivers who keep a TollTag on their windshield must remember to keep enough cash in their accounts.

For vehicles lacking tags, license plates are photographed and bills are mailed after the fifth transaction. Car owners billed by mail are charged 50 percent more than what TollTag users pay.

Motorists are supposed to keep their addresses up to date with the state so the bills arrive properly. Sometimes, though, car owners say they never received initial bills but learned later that they owe hundreds of dollars.

The NTTA says that it mails the letters and that if they don’t come back, it considers them delivered.

In October, I reported how a woman went to jail for 27 hours for failing to appear in court for an unpaid toll bill that she estimates was for $11.

She said she never received the bill.

I won’t defend scofflaws who don’t pay their tolls. As a TollTag account holder, I certainly don’t want to cover other people’s costs. But I was curious about how much the biggest toll runners owe. A Public Information Act request to the NTTA provided the answer.

The NTTA won’t release names, but its records show that the No. 1 scofflaw owes $72,000, followed by four drivers who each owe more than $60,000.

How you can owe that much is beyond me. The NTTA won’t say how much is for tolls and how much is for fees and penalties.

For most customers who get into trouble, though, it’s small tolls and big add-ons. Two motorists have complained to me that although they tried to pay their bills, the NTTA still sent their accounts to its collection agency.

David Spruiell of Arlington says his toll bill was for $8.56, but “I obviously misread the bill.” He mailed a check for $9.56 — $1 more. The authority sent the check back with an explanation that he had overpaid. He says he tried to call twice but gave up when the lines were tied up. Next he got a notice from a collection agency that he owes $208.

When he called to complain, an NTTA staffer told him that he could negotiate to pay less. “This is a one-time offer,” he was told. “I’ll take $138 if you pay today.”

He didn’t take the offer.

“It’s not like I didn’t try to pay,” he says. “A late fee of $10 would be acceptable, but not $200. I don’t want to have a warrant issued against me, but this is crazy and reeks of abusive misuse of a public agency.”

The NTTA says it is not equipped to handle overpayments on its pay-by-mail system.

Roger Beaman of Mansfield acknowledges that he paid his $10.45 bill three days late. His problem? He forgot to write his car’s license plate number or invoice number on the check. He has two cars in his household. When the NTTA received the check, it credited it to the wrong car.

One car had a $10.45 bill, and the other had zero. But the NTTA put the $10.45 into the zero account, giving it a credit, while the other account went delinquent.

When he called to complain, a staffer promised to fix it but never did, he says. He kept trying. One NTTA staffer told him that if he sent $7.95, it would go away. He did as he was told, but that didn’t work either. A collection agency seeks $182.

“I can say their check-handling skills with my account would get a failing grade,” he says.

NTTA spokeswoman Kimberly Jackson says, “It is important that customers contact us early if they have any questions so we can work with them to resolve the issue quickly and at the lowest cost for the customer.”

Jackson says the NTTA plans to make an improvement: “We will be implementing a program in 2011 through a track-and-trace program with the U.S. Postal Service. We soon will be able to track when a letter was delivered.”

That will help, but it can’t come soon enough. The NTTA builds massive road projects, but it seems to have problems with the mail. When I called last month to order new Velcro strips for my worn TollTag, the NTTA sent me a replacement set.

Three different times.

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Read the previous Watchdog Nation report called “Here’s how to take back some of the authority from the North Texas Tollway Authority.”

Read the previous Watchdog Nation reported called “Watchdog Nation says: Give ‘em hell, Victor.”

Read about the woman thrown in jail at “Women goes to jail for unpaid toll.”

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is available in hardcover, as a CD audio book, ebook and hey, what else do you need. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

By Dave Lieber

For me, the good news about Texas electricity is that I have used five different power companies in the last five years and not once has the power gone out for any reason other than bad weather.

Uninterrupted power. That’s about the only good thing I can say.

Otherwise, it’s all bad. Costs are too high. Companies offer such confusing rates and service plans that many Texas consumers feel like victims of bait-and-switch schemes. And those whose electrical provider went bust found themselves slammed into high-cost plans.

The Texas Legislature started this mess in 1999, when it passed a law deregulating the electricity marketplace. Until recently, Texans were paying some of the highest electricity rates in the nation.

State lawmakers met again in 2009 and did not pass legislation that would have made some of the shady marketing practices illegal. Fortunately, the Texas Public Utility Commission issued some new pro-consumer pricing rules that went into in May 2009. Shopping for an electricity contract is now simpler and fairer than before. Click here to read the new rules.

Why should you care? Answer: as I originally shared exclusively with readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram – one of Texas’ finest newspapers – you can save hundreds of dollars a year. When it comes to making your family’s decision about which power company to choose, you have to be your own watchdog. When your current contract is set to expire, you will have to make major decisions:

Will you stay with your current company or switch to an unknown? Should you extend the contract for a year, a half-year, three months or go month-to-month? What about a fixed rate versus a variable rate?

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Here’s The Watchdog’s gift to you – The 2011-12 Guide to Picking the Best Electricity Provider:

1. TXU no longer rules. Get over the idea that TXU Energy, most likely your original provider, is the only company that can offer solid, uninterrupted service. And don’t believe the fallacy that TXU customers get serviced first when power goes out.
2. Oncor Electric Delivery is responsible for maintaining the transmission system. Everybody, TXU and its many competitors, uses them to handle repairs.
3. Switching is good. Act under the assumption that you should switch companies every year. The market is constantly changing.
4. You can find better deals and save hundreds of dollars a year, maybe even more, with this one decision. Electricity is measured by kWh, or kilowatts per hour. If you pay 10 cents a kWh instead of 14 cents, your monthly electric bill could be $100 or more lower.
5. Know your current contract terms. Before you can shop, know what you have. Do you know your kWh rate? It’s on your electric bill, and it might be higher than what’s available now. (In Texas, it ranges from 8 cents to as high as 25 cents.) Also call your provider and ask for the date when your contract expires. Find out, if you don’t know, whether your rate is fixed or variable. Start planning a possible switch two months before a contract expires.
6. Decide whether you want to play it safe or be a gambler. Do you want to lock in a fixed rate that you can afford for a longer period of time? Or are you willing to take a low price now and understand that a variable rate could spike depending on market conditions?
7. Conduct a thorough search. Go to this Web site: www.powertochoose.org. (If you don’t have an Internet connection, visit your public library and ask your librarian for help. Or ask a friend or relative to help you.) Click on “Go Directly to Offers”, and then enter your zip code. Also, check the company’s own Web site. Sometimes the company’s price might be cheaper than powertochoose.org
8. Pick your poison. In the left-side column, under “Rate Type,” pick either fixed or variable. (The Watchdog likes fixed since current market conditions are too volatile.) Under “Price,” type in a range of from 7 cents to 14 cents. That’s a good spread. Then hit submit.
9. Study the results. For the selection cited above, about a dozen companies recently offered rates between 8.9 cents per kWh and 13 cents. Contract lengths varied between three and 24 months. Each service plan comes with links to “Terms of Service,” “Facts Label,” “Signup” and “Special Terms.” When you click on these, you learn the nitty-gritty details.
10. Check out your favorite. After you find a company with a rate and contract length you like, learn more about them. Return to the original page, www.powertochoose.org, and click on “Customer Complaint Statistics.” The link marked “Residential Retail Electric Provider Complaint Scorecard” leads you to a state scorecard showing complaint ratings for a six-month period based on a four-star system, similar to movie ratings. Except, here, you don’t want four stars. Another link on the home page, called “REP Complaint Summary,” shows you what the complaints were about.
11. Check out other sources. If the company comes out good enough on complaints, dig a little deeper. What are angry customers saying about this company? To find out, use an Internet search engine this way: Put the name of the company in between quote marks and then follow it with the word “ripoff.” Do the same with the word “scam.” If only a few results come up from disgruntled customers, don’t worry. But if there are several dozen, do a search for the company’s name and “Better Business Bureau.” You’ll be able to pull up the company’s report in the BBB region of its headquarters.

Final switch tips. When you make your final selection, don’t call your current electricity provider to cancel. That could cause problems. Sign up with the new company, and it will handle the transfer. Try to sign up at least four to six weeks before your plan expires so the overlap between the two billing cycles is negligible. Some people switch too late and pay higher prices during the transition.

Remember, there’s no loss of power when you switch. It happens, and you don’t even know it.

Until the bill comes.

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is available in hardcover, as a CD audio book, ebook and hey, what else do you need. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

A Colleyville man didn’t have a great Sunshine Week, which was created to promote open government. Louis Womack recently read in the Star-Telegram about an internal investigation at the Colleyville Police Department, and he sent city officials written questions.

Is the investigation complete? What was the outcome? How much did it cost?

Good questions from a taxpayer watchdogging his city.

But the answer he received perplexed him: “Please be advised that the Public Information Act does not obligate the city to respond to questions,” Assistant City Manager Kelly Cooper wrote, adding that Womack could refine his open-records request to seek documents.

Only Womack didn’t file an open-records request; he just asked questions. He didn’t know that officials don’t have to provide answers, just documents.

City spokeswoman Mona Gandy explains: “Typically, we would have gone to some effort to explain how you make a public information request. That’s not what happened in this case. We’re going to consider this a lesson learned.”

This week, the city added language to its Web site to explain open-records procedures.

The Sunshine state?

When it comes to making public records available, Texans do have something to celebrate this Sunshine Week, which ends Saturday. A recent survey by several journalism organizations examined how good a job all 50 states do of making records available on the Internet. Texas received a perfect score, the only state to do so.

Cue The Watchdog’s applause!

But The Watchdog can’t celebrate after examining some bills filed at the Legislature.

“A lot of bills scale back the availability of public information,” says Fred Hartman, chairman of the Texas Daily Newspaper Association/Texas Press Association Legislative Advisory Committee.

Here’s one: House Bill 3641 by freshman Rep. Doug Miller, R-New Braunfels. It would allow a government entity to determine whether someone requesting open records is an “abusive requestor” who submits requests “to harass, abuse, or waste public funds and/or time of public officials or employees.”

The bill allows a government entity to sue to stop the requestor and halt the release of information for up to 90 days.

Miller did not return a call. But Comal County Judge Danny Scheel told The Watchdog that he asked Miller to file the bill to stop Central Texas newspaper publisher Doug Kirk from filing what Scheel considers harassing requests.

Some people, he said, “purposely clog up our systems with open-records requests to be able to get off our backs. These are the kind of people we want.”

Scheel said 90 percent of the requests to the county come from Kirk, who runs weeklies in Bulverde and Canyon Lake and who unsuccessfully ran against Scheel. Kirk doesn’t always pick up and pay for information he requests, Scheel said.

“We’ve been dealing with this monkey for years,” the judge added.

Kirk told me that the county stalls and so he gets what he needs elsewhere. “They dodge the questions I ask,” he said.

Hartman, a newspaper executive based outside Houston, said that the bill would punish a number of people for the actions of one.

Here are other open-government bills on The Watchdog worry list:

Senate Bill 280 (Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, and Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth) would make public employees’ home addresses, home telephone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers confidential. Open-records advocates say they have no desire to know a Social Security number. A home address and date of birth, however, are important identifiers that allow watchdogs to search government databases and find, for example, whether a person is double dipping with two public jobs.

The public would face greater difficulty learning about government nepotism and the background of public employees, including any criminal records, too. “We strongly oppose this,” Hartman says.

House Bill 649 (Yvonne Davis, D-Dallas) would allow property owners to remove their names from appraisal district public records posted online.

“There’s no compelling reason to do this,” Hartman says. “There are no problems” with the information in the public domain.

If the bill passes, the public would not be able to find out, for example, if political cronies got sweetheart appraisals from crooked assessors.

Elected officials and others could disguise bribes through property transfers that nobody would ever know about.

Senate Bill 375 (John Carona, R-Dallas) would allow the Transportation Department to keep specific vehicle accident records confidential.

Texans could not learn about the most dangerous bridges, intersections and roadways, which was the intent of the original request for the data, says Brian Collister, a San Antonio TV reporter and board member of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.

“This huge, great resource on motor-vehicle accidents would be sealed off from the public,” he says.

Hartman says the number of bills cutting off information is alarming because “the more people know what our government does, the more effective and responsive it can be.”

Other worrisome bills Here are other bills that could hinder public oversight:

• Senate Bill 253 (Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls) would allow county and municipal governments to award contracts worth up to $50,000 without public bids. The limit is now $25,000.
• Senate Bill 624 (Royce West, D-Dallas) would allow changes of $50,000 or less to school district contracts without school board approval — and public notice.
• Senate Bill 460 (Mario Gallegos Jr., D-Galena Park) would keep secret some information pertaining to personnel hearings for police and firefighters.
• Senate Bill 1127 (Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio) would keep secret some information about components used in creating customized drugs and medical devices at pharmacies.

Track bills Follow bills through the Texas Legislature by tracking them at www.legis.state.tx.us. Sign up for e-mail alerts.

Find out who your legislator is at votesmart.org.