When disaster strikes in Texas, fast money follows.
And, according to a new data analysis, that fast money frequently flows to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s top donors.
The report Awarding Influence by watchdog group Public Citizen found that donors to the governor’s Texans for Greg Abbott PAC received nearly $1 billion in no-bid state contracts from 2020 to 2024. Those came as Abbott declared state emergencies over the COVID-19 pandemic, border security and a variety of natural disasters — a move that enables the state to dispense with normal rules requiring it to assign contracts to the lowest bidders.
Donors to Texans for Greg Abbott racked up $950 million through 89 no-bid state contracts awarded during those disaster declarations. Meanwhile, the same companies — often contributing via subsidiaries, PACs, their executives and even executives’ spouses — poured a combined $2.9 million into Abbott’s PAC from 2014 to 2025.
The data doesn’t indicate Abbott or his contributors broke the law, said Adrian Shelley, Public Citizen’s Texas director. However, it does give Texans reason to question how the state is spending their tax dollars and whether top political donors get special treatment, he added.
“I absolutely think it contributes to the widespread impression that there’s unequal access to government in Texas,” Shelley said. “This is just another example of something that we see as a trend in Texas government, which is that big-money donors get special favors from the state.”
The Current reached out to Abbott’s office for comment on the report but got no response by press time.
In one case detailed in the report, Converse-based Doggett Freightliners of South Texas received two no-bid contracts in 2022 and 2023 valued at a combined $1.6 million. State paperwork for both contracts identified their subject as “fees” and included no details about the scope of the work, according to the study.
Meanwhile, Doggett CEO William “Leslie” Doggett has contributed more than $1.7 million to Texans for Greg Abbott since 2014, either personally or through his business, according to the report.
In another example, emergency-management company Gothams LLC pulled in nearly $640 million in state contracts in 2020 and 2021 as the state grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic.
After Gothams’s work for the state slowed in 2022, company founder Matthew Michelsen ponied up a total of $600,000 in contributions to Abbott’s PAC, according to Public Citizen. Between 2023 and 2024, the state money began flowing again, and Gothams pulled in a total of 10 contracts with a total value exceeding $66 million, the report states.
In its analysis, Public Citizen recommends Texas lawmakers update contracting laws to implement the following safeguards:
- Banning no-bid contract awards to companies whose PACs, officers or families of officers have made significant political donations within the last election cycle.
- Blocking recipients of no-bid contracts from making contributions above a given threshold for a given period of time.
- Establishing more thorough and transparent reporting process for the awarding of no-bid contracts following disaster declarations.
- Imposing penalties for noncompliance, including contract forfeiture and bans from future state work.
The report acknowledges that no-bid contracts are sometimes needed for quickly deploying resources in the wake of disasters. However, Shelley said Abbott has tended to keep disaster declarations in place for prolonged periods, freeing the state to dole out no-bid contracts for months or years.
“We need a Texas Ethics Commission with teeth, and we need some laws to rein in these kinds of contracts,” he added.
UT-San Antonio political scientist Jon Taylor said Public Citizen’s report highlights Texas’ lack of strong campaign finance laws and its lax enforcement of existing rules.
“This stuff doesn’t pass the smell test,” Taylor said the report’s findings. “It gives the impression that the state government under Greg Abbott is engaging in quid pro quo. It’s the perception of corruption.”
The abundance of no-bid contracts detailed in the study reflects Abbott’s frequent use of disaster declarations to give himself more executive power, Taylor said. When state legislators passed a law in the 1970s extending governors’ emergency powers, they intended it only to be invoked during natural disasters, he added.
However, Abbott in 2021 took the unprecedented step of declaring a disaster for more than 30 counties based on a rise in illegal border crossings, which allowed him to reallocate previously designated state funds to fund his border wall. The year before, he issued a statewide disaster declaration when Black Lives Matter protests broke out following the murder of George Floyd.
“Abbott’s turned the use of the Texas Disaster Act into an art form, and this is the outcome,” Taylor said of the report.
Taylor said he supports Public Citizen’s policy recommendations. However, he doesn’t expect the state’s Republican attorney general or comptroller to follow up with an investigation. Nor does he expect the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature to pursue stronger regulations.
“This is what you get when you have 30 years of uninterrupted Republican rule,” Taylor said.
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