DART’s lax board travel protocols should serve as cautionary tale

When you serve as a high-level policymaker, travel sometimes comes with the job. You might hop on a plane to Austin or Washington to seek funding from state and federal officials, or you might set off to other cities for training and networking with industry insiders.

It’s to be expected that board members who oversee a public transit agency would make some of these trips. But recent reporting by KERA News and an internal audit by Dallas Area Rapid Transit revealed a lack of guardrails around board travel that raised suspicion about expenses.

DART updated its travel policy and tightened accounting rules in March after the audit findings. Other government agencies should review their own policies and learn from the messy lead-up to DART’s new travel rules.

Let’s start with the December 2023 audit, which was obtained by KERA. DART’s chief audit officer found that board members “overall” adhered to travel rules but said internal controls needed to be strengthened. The auditor cited overpayments to travelers for expenses that DART had already covered, travel expenses that did not include detailed receipts and inconsistent record-keeping regarding travel requests and approvals.

A five-year review of board travel expenses by KERA found board member Paul Wageman had been reimbursed by DART for a legislative trip in which he represented himself and the city of Plano, not DART. Former board chair Michele Wong Krause of Dallas was reimbursed more than $50,000 over five years for board travel, including international trips, while board member Flora Hernandez expensed trips from a vacation site in Colorado to attend DART meetings in Dallas last summer.

It’s worth stepping back to review explanations for some of these expenses. As former board chair, Wong Krause said she had additional responsibilities including regularly scheduled visits with federal officials. She has also served in leadership roles in the American Public Transportation Association, an industry group that advocates for agencies like DART. She said she was reimbursed by APTA for the group’s leadership retreats or events in which she represented the industry group as its chair. Wong Krause said her DART reimbursement requests as board chair had been approved by agency staff.

Hernandez told us she had scheduled time off last summer but was asked to be in Dallas to secure a board quorum to vote on parcel purchases for the Silver Line project and avoid delays. She said her travel expenses were approved by the DART board chair and the agency’s legal counsel.

The reasons for these trips appear to be within the bounds of what’s appropriate for a DART board member. But lax enforcement of accounting rules and the absence of reasonable limits on spending understandably drew scrutiny.

The DART board’s new travel policy sets a $6,000 annual limit on travel expenses per member, not including conference registration fees. All international travel must now be approved by a majority of the board. The policy also clarifies that DART will be reimbursed for canceled trips for which the agency had already paid.

It’s worth noting that the DART board’s travel rules will be difficult for the public to reference because they’re not pinned anywhere on the agency’s website, as of this writing. DART should take a page from its industry advocate, APTA, which makes its own board travel policy easy to find.

Travel may happen for valid government business, but costs add up. Every government body should review its protocols to ensure prudent limits and proper reimbursements. If taxpayers must live within their means, so should their government agencies.

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