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Records Series Review
Series Title: Austin District Engineer administrative correspondence
Obsolete record series? No
Ongoing record series? Yes
Annual accumulation: about one cubic ft.
Agency holdings: The district office holds files from 2005 forward.
Description:
These records are the administrative correspondence files of the
Texas Department of Transportation's Austin District Engineer, dating
1997-2004. The district engineer serves as the director of the agency's
district office in Austin. Files are from the current and previous
engineers, Robert Daigh (2003-current) and William Garbade (1997-2002).
Types of materials are incoming and outgoing letters (and emails),
internal memoranda, project proposals, planning documents, environmental
reviews, internal newsletters, manuals, policy statements, minutes
from internal meetings, and reports. There is a box of files titled
"signature correspondence" - letters or memos from the
engineer to other agency officials/offices or to outside parties,
usually accompanied by the incoming letter or memo which initiated
his response. The remaining files (bulk of this series) are correspondence
with other Department of Transportation offices and officials, including
the executive and deputy directors, assistant directors, and most
of the divisions and offices in the agency. Correspondence with
the executive officials (and some division directors) often consisted
of letters sent to that official and then forwarded to the district
engineer for a reply or comment on the issue involved; also present
are memos sent to the executive officials (or directors) from the
district engineer regarding a query the engineer received or an
issue he wished to discuss. There are also internal memoranda sent
out from the executive offices to all district engineers, some memos
sent from various divisions to all district engineers. Outside correspondents
include legislators, congressman, other state offices, local officials,
contractors and companies working on projects, universities (such
as the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas)
and the general public. A small amount of routine correspondence
is present in the early "signature correspondence."
Topics covered include the planning, design, construction, and
maintenance of roads in the area covered by the Austin district
(central Texas and the Hill Country), such as the construction of
a toll road at US 183A, the State Highway 45 turnpike extension,
expansion of FM 1626 and building State Highway 130; appeals on
construction decisions (such as road expansions and closures, driveway
allowances, turning lane changes); right of way issues; metropolitan
mobility planning; regional implementation plans; toll roads and
toll booth construction; the Trans-Texas Corridor; airport improvements;
construction and maintenance of roads and bridges; research and
technology issues; environmental reviews and issues; proposed projects;
agency policy changes; proposed legislation and other legislative
issues; bonds; federal funding for construction projects; change
orders; access management for cities; transfer of maintenance and
jurisdiction of roads to local governments; vehicle registration
issues; vehicle safety; litigation or legal issues; local participation
rules; and bidding schedules. Files comprise eight cubic ft. We
have an older, smaller accession of Austin district engineer correspondence
that was not reviewed at this time.
Purpose:
The administrative correspondence of the Austin District Engineer
documents the planning, design, building and maintenance of roads
and other modes of transportation in the central Texas area.
Agency program:
The Texas Department of Transportation, in cooperation with local
and regional officials, is responsible for planning, designing,
building, operating and maintaining the state's transportation system.
This involves the planning, designing, and right-of-way acquisition
of state highways and other modes of transportation, plus transportation
research to save lives and money; highway and bridge construction,
and airport improvements; the maintenance of roadways, bridges,
airports, the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, and ferry systems; public
transportation, vehicle titles and registration, vehicle dealer
registration, motor carrier registration, traffic safety, traffic
information, and auto theft prevention.
The Texas Highway Department was created in 1917 (House Bill 2,
35th Legislature, Regular Session) to stimulate building and improvement
of roads throughout the state. The Federal Aid Road Act of July
11, 1916 (39 Stat. 355; 16 U.S.C. 503; 23 U.S.C. 15, 48), signed
into law by President Woodrow Wilson, initiated federal aid for
highways with the requirement that each state receiving aid have
a state highway department that controlled the building of roads.
The Department was to administer federal funds to counties for state
highway construction and maintenance and to provide for state motor
vehicle registration, fees from which were to generate the state's
required matching funds. The department began operation on June
4, 1917. After gathering information at public hearings over that
summer the commission proposed an 8,865-mile state highway network.
Further influence from the national level came with the Federal
Highway Act of 1921, which required state highway departments to
control the design, construction and maintenance of roads rather
than Texas' practice of allowing counties to undertake the work
themselves with oversight from department engineers.
In 1969, the Legislature created the Texas Mass Transportation
Commission (House Bill 738, 61st Legislature, Regular Session) to
develop public mass transportation in Texas. This agency was merged
with the Highway Department in 1975, creating the State Department
of Highways and Public Transportation (Senate Bill 761, 64th Legislature,
Regular Session). An executive order of May 1976 transferred the
Governor's Office of Traffic Safety to the Department. The Texas
Department of Transportation was created in 1991 (House Bill 9,
72nd Legislature, 1st Called Session), merging the Texas State Department
of Highways and Public Transportation, the Texas Department of Aviation
(created as the Texas Aeronautics Commission in 1945, name changed
to Texas Board of Aviation in 1989); and the Texas Motor Vehicle
Commission (created in 1971). In 1997 the Texas Turnpike Authority
merged with the Texas Department of Transportation (Senate Bill
370, 75th Legislature, Regular Session).
The Texas Department of Transportation's governing body is the
Texas Transportation Commission, originally composed of three-members,
increased to five in 2003 (Senate Bill 409, 78th Texas Legislature,
Regular Session). Commissioners are representatives of the general
public appointed by the governor with advice and consent of the
senate for overlapping six-year terms. Since 2003, one of the members
must represent rural Texas. The positions are part-time salaried
positions, and the chair (appointed by the governor) was originally
called the commissioner of transportation; since 2003, each member
is referred to as a commissioner.
The agency is headed by an executive director, who is assisted
by a chief financial officer; a deputy executive director; four
assistant executive directors overseeing district operations, engineering
operations, innovation project development, and support operations;
a special assistant for strategic policy and performance management;
and the general counsel. The Internal Compliance Program Office
reports directly to the deputy executive director and the Audit
Office reports directly to the Transportation Commission. Additional
offices include the Automobile Burglary and Theft Prevention Authority
Office, Office of Civil Rights, the International Relations Office,
and Office of Research and Technology Implementation.
The agency has twenty-one divisions and twenty-five district offices.
Divisions are Aviation, Bridge, Construction, Design, Environmental
Affairs, Finance, General Services, Government and Public Affairs,
Human Resources, Maintenance, Motor Carrier, Motor Vehicle, Occupational
Safety, Public Transportation, Right of Way, Technology Services,
Texas Turnpike Authority, Traffic Operations, Transportation Planning
and Programming, Travel, and Vehicle Titles and Registration. Districts
offices are located in Abilene, Amarillo, Atlanta, Austin, Beaumont,
Brownwood, Bryan, Childress, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso, Fort
Worth, Houston, Laredo, Lubbock, Lufkin, Odessa, Paris, Pharr, San
Angelo, San Antonio, Tyler, Waco, Wichita Falls, and Yoakum. A district
engineer manages each TxDOT district office. Each district oversees
the design, location, construction and maintenance of its area's
transportation systems. The Austin District covers the following
counties: Bastrop, Blanco, Burnet, Caldwell, Gillespie, Hays, Lee,
Llano, Mason, Travis, and Williamson.
(Sources include: Guide to Texas State Agencies, 11th edition (2001);
General and Special Laws; An Informal History of the Texas Department
of Transportation, Hilton Hagan, 2000 (previously available on the
TXDOT Website, the link has since been removed) and agency's website,
http://www.dot.state.tx.us/about_us/, accessed in January 2009.)
Arrangement:
The signature correspondence is filed first, the remaining files
are arranged by office. Within the folders the materials are further
arranged in reverse chronological order.
Access constraints:
A few emails are present that contain email addresses of individuals,
which are restricted.
Use constraints: None
Indexes or finding aids required for/or an aid to access? None
Problems: None known.
Known related records in other agencies: None known
Previous destructions:
Destruction requests on file in the Archives and Information Services
Division of the Library and Archives Commission were checked for
administrative correspondence of the district engineer's office
and none were found for this series or for equivalent or related
series.
Publications based on records: None
Internet pages based on records: None known
Series data from agency schedule:
Title: Administrative correspondence (the files from executive offices,
division
and office directors, and district engineers are to be reviewed
for archival value)
Series item number: 1.1.007
Agency item number: ADM01
Archival code: R
Retention: 3
Archival holdings:
Texas Department of Transportation, Austin District Engineer correspondence
and reports, 1974-1998, 2 cubic ft. These materials are unprocessed,
the call numbers are 2007/202-1 and 2. The accession contains one
box of correspondence and one box of reports.
Texas Documents Collection holdings: None
Gaps: No materials present prior to 1997.
Appraisal decision:
The files of the District Engineer are a microcosm of the agency
as a whole. There is correspondence documenting the interactions
between the executive officials of the agency (executive and deputy
directors, assistant directors) and the district engineer, who serves
as the director of the district office. The records reveal how the
various divisions and offices of the agency interact with the district
engineer, giving a good overview of district operations. In addition
to documenting the planning, design, building and maintenance of
roads and other modes of transportation in the central Texas area,
the correspondence provides information about policy changes occurring
in the agency, important legislative issues, contacts with legislators
and congressmen on projects in the area, planning issues, and other
topics. Because the Department of Transportation is such a large
agency with scattered operations all over the state, more than just
the executive office correspondence needs to be documented in the
Archives. The possible future accession of the correspondence from
the executive offices and most of the division/office directors
would likely make the correspondence from Austin (and other) district
engineer(s) found in these records superfluous. The Archives cannot
predict what the agency will eventually transfer to the Archives.
Another issue to consider is if the Archives accepted the correspondence
files of this district, should the correspondence files of the other
district engineers be transferred to the Archives. It is unknown
if the files in the other district offices are this substantial.
The Austin office, with its close proximity to the headquarters
area, may have a more complete recordkeeping operation than some
of the other district offices.
As the appraisal archivist conducting this review, I recommend
the Archives transfer these files to its holdings, but not make
an appraisal decision on all district engineer correspondence at
this time. Other offices could be different -- more or less substantial
than these files. When a full agency appraisal is done for TxDOT,
the Archives may decide to document some aspect of the regional
operations, but not all of the regions, perhaps keeping these files
and those of a few other district offices. There is enough unique
value in these records to warrant keeping them in the Archives in
lieu of correspondence from other areas. The files do show how the
district offices operated, which would not be as easily apparent
in the files of the executive offices and divisions. However, if
the administrative correspondence from the executive offices and
division directors is eventually transferred to the Archives, and
it covers these years, the Austin District Engineer files can be
reappraised.
After a review of this report by the State Archivist and assistant
director for Archives, it was decided to transfer these records
to the State Archives.
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