Montgomery Court Watch

The 2025 Road Bond · what voters approved and who is building it

A $480 million road programme, passed by 615 votes

What this page is. Public records, each with its source, retrieval time and file hash. It does not suggest or imply that any person or entity has engaged in illegal or improper conduct. Many people and entities have the same or similar names; open the source before relying on a match. Figures marked derived are computed from the records by the rule on the Method page and are not findings. Corrections.

Montgomery County voters authorised $480,000,000 in road bonds at the election of 3 May 2025 — one ballot item, Proposition A. It carried 5,764 to 5,149, a margin of 615 votes, on a turnout of 2.43%. Since then the Commissioners Court has voted 33 road-bond items naming $23,995,492 of work. This page is that roll, beside the campaign contributions on file from the same firms.

Nothing on this page says one thing caused another. Firms with corporate PACs give to county officials across Texas, and most of this giving predates the bond. The reason to put the two rolls side by side is that the same court votes both.

$480,000,000authorised by voters, Proposition A$120,000,000 per precinct over the life of the bond
2.43%turnout11,001 ballots of 452,309 registered
$355,650,000authorised but not yet issuedas of 2025-09-30
$23,995,492named in road-bond items33 votes since Aug 2025
8 of 19firms that both won bond work and gave9 of the 19 have a PAC at all
$133,850from those firms to county officials49.6% of all county PAC money
$269,850all PAC money in the county fileacross 76 committees
Read the share with its denominator.

$133,850 of the $269,850 that political committees gave county officials — 49.6% — came from 8 firms now doing 2025 Road Bond work. PAC money is itself 12% of the $2,233,157 in the county contribution file; the rest is individuals.

Every total here is a floor.

749 of the 2,176 contribution rows lost their dollar amount to OCR of the scanned filings. Those gifts are counted but contribute nothing to a sum. See corrections.

How the money was authorised

  1. 11 Feb 2025 — Court passes the Order Calling a Bond Election for 3 May 2025, on Commissioner Gray's motion, seconded by Commissioner Wheeler; signed by County Judge Mark Keough and County Clerk L. Brandon Steinmann. Proposition A asks to issue $480,000,000 of road bonds under Article III, Section 52 of the Texas Constitution, maturing within 30 years. A separate item the same day approves the programme "with the assumption of no tax rate increase" and records: "$120,000,000 is set per commissioner over life of bond." That is $480,000,000 divided across four precincts, and the minute is exact.
  2. 3 May 2025 — One proposition on the ballot. It carries 5,764 for, 5,149 against (52.82% for), with 87 undervotes and 0 overvotes. 11,001 ballots were cast out of 452,309 registered voters — 2.43% turnout, 53 of 53 precincts reporting. Returns canvassed by the court on 13 May 2025.
  3. 27 May 2025 — $8,000,000 out of Fund Balance to pre-fund projects before the bonds sold, $2,000,000 per commissioner.
  4. 15 Jul 2025 — LJA Engineering takes the General Engineering Consultant contract for the programme, not to exceed $2,000,000 over five years. LJA first pitched the programme in December 2024 for $10,000; Commissioner Gray voted against deferring that proposal.
  5. Jul 2025 — First series sold: Unlimited Tax Road Bonds, Series 2025, par $124,350,000 plus $4,704,593 of premium, $129,054,593 gross.
  6. 29 Jul 2025 — Court approves allocating $128,000,000 "as projects are ready based on milestone encumbrance." Gray moved, Riley seconded, Wheeler voted no. That figure is this first tranche net of issuance costs — not the authorisation, which is $480,000,000. As of 2025-09-30, $355,650,000 remained authorised but unissued.
  7. 15 Jan 2026 — $1.9m of interest earned on the proceeds; $1.4m allocated, $350,000 to each precinct equally.
The milestone method is why no single vote shows a full number.

Most awards here are paid in installments capped at $1,000,000 until final payout. One item spells the mechanism out: on 9 Jul 2026 the court accepted a further $3,901,213.82 to Texas Materials Group for Sorters Road Segment 2, bringing encumbrance to $7,802,427.64 against a total project of $15,604,855.26. Read any single amount below as the contract, not as cash paid.

A correction this page carries about itself

An earlier draft of this page led with $120 million as the size of the programme. That is the per-precinct share. The authorisation is $480,000,000. The error came from reading the Commissioners Court minutes alone: the minutes never reproduce the bond order, which is an exhibit, and the only figure they carry is the per-commissioner one. The figures above are now read off the order, the canvass and the county's audited annual report, each linked below.

Contributions to each official from firms doing bond work

Gray
$60,100
Riley
$59,000
Keough
$14,500
Hayden
$250

from firms doing bond work

County campaign-finance reports as filed with Montgomery County Elections. These are contributions from corporate political committees, not from individuals. A contribution is not a payment for anything and is lawful; Texas sets no cap on giving to a county commissioner.

Award value by precinct

Precinct 1
$6,815,740
Precinct 2
$599,838
Precinct 3
$3,931,274
Precinct 4
$8,565,788

awarded

Precinct is taken from the item's own words. The split is as much a scheduling fact as anything — Precinct 4's projects reached procurement first. 2 item(s) worth $4,082,852 name no precinct.

Every firm on the bond roll

Firms that won work and gave nothing are listed too. A firm with no contributions is a finding, and dropping it would turn this into a list of firms that gave.

19 of 19 rows
total 33total $23,995,492total $137,350total 70

Every road-bond item the court has voted

33 of 33 rows
total $23,995,492

What this page is not, and what would move it

Not a finding of wrongdoing

Corporate PACs giving to officials who vote contracts is lawful and ordinary in Texas procurement. Engineering firms with no bond work give too — the county file carries PACs for Cobb Fendley, RS&H and Raba-Kistner, none of which appear on this roll.

Not a timing claim

A permutation test on contribution timing against award dates in this county returned null (p = 0.597). Most of the giving here predates the bond: EHRA, IDS, Halff and Terracon were giving from 2023, before the programme existed.

What would settle it

The monthly road bond programme financial report the court "receives" at almost every meeting — the dollar detail lives in the backup, not the minutes. The selection files for the Chapter 2254 engineering proposals. The bond order, the canvass and the audited annual report are already in hand and linked below. See Requests.

Where the authorisation figures come from

Road-bond items are extracted from the Commissioners Court minutes by data/tools/bond_awards.py, which checks itself on every run against 14 awards read off the scans by hand and currently finds 14 of 14. minutes (staged.minutes_fts — Montgomery County Commissioners Court minutes)county campaign-finance reports (elections.mctx.org) (Contributions are as filed; 795 of 2,179 contribution rows lost their amount to OCR, so every total here is a FLOOR.) · provenance · method · corrections