Texas lawmakers battle with Land Office over transparency in Alamo restoration

by Alex Arriaga, Texas Tribune

Lawmakers who agreed earlier this year to dedicate tens of millions of dollars to update the Alamo are now asking for greater transparency about how the money is being spent.

Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, whose General Land Office is the state agency overseeing the landmark's restoration, was grilled Tuesday by Senate Finance Committee members on what they said was a "convoluted" structure of nonprofits contracted for fundraising, maintenance upkeep and planning the future of the Alamo.

Over the past year, the Land Office, in partnership with the city of San Antonio, has developed a multi-million dollar master plan for the site, which includes preserving the Alamo Church and developing a museum to house a vast collection of Alamo artifacts donated by British rock legend Phil Collins. During their 2017 session, the Legislature allocated $75 million toward the upgrade of the site, in addition to $32.5 million allocated in 2015.

The project is an ambitious one — so ambitious, Bush told committee members Tuesday, that he didn't have the resources to hire enough staff to oversee it when he took office in 2015. Instead, a private, nonprofit endowment called the Alamo Endowment was created — with Bush as chairman of the board of directors — and a subsidiary of that endowment called the Alamo Trust hired nearly 70 staffers to maintain and oversee the site.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2017/12/05/lawmakers-battle-transparency-alamo-plan/