The TSPCB is a nine-member board, consisting of six government-appointed members and three state ex-officios, currently under the direction of Executive Director Murray Walton. The Sunset Advisory Commission was set up to evaluate and make changes to how the Texas Structural Pest Control Board conducts its business.
The TSPCB has been a target of pest control operators in recent years. In 2001, the board underwent a management change and shortly thereafter its philosophy changed from compliance assistance to 100 percent enforcement, a change that has not set well with many PCOs, according to Ken Myers, executive director of the Texas Pest Control Association (TPCA).
“The board, in the last couple years, had evolved from being in compliance-assisted mode to being, more or less, paperwork auditors who were not looking at complaints from the perspective of if damages were being done to the consumer or the environment and that has not set well with operators in the state,” Myers told PCT. “Members and non-members were looking at these enforcements and the word that came up a lot was ‘petty’ — as opposed to being out looking for unlicensed individuals and operators.”
Or, as one Texas PCO, who asked not to be identified, told PCT: “It’s just a horrible situation. Ten years ago, they used to work with you. They’ve refused to work with anybody. They did it to themselves.”
Still, not everyone has been displeased with the TSPCB’s performance. In an Austin American-Statesman article, Texas Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, said he needed more time to consider such a significant change. “There have been complaints by pest control operators … but none by environmentalists or consumer groups … and that tells me it is working,” he said. “It’s a bad way to govern, to just shut down an agency.”
And TPCA is not necessarily in favor of the Texas Structural Pest Control Board being dismantled, Myers said. Rather, the general consensus among TPCA members is that they would rather see the board remain, with a focus shifted away from 100 percent enforcement and back to compliance assistance. “I think the philosophy we’ve developed is that ‘it’s better to deal with a devil you know, than to deal with a devil you don’t know,’” Myers said. Thus, when the TPCA board meets in December one of its agenda items will be to save the TPCA board.
The Texas Legislature will vote on the Sunset Advisory Commission’s recommendations in January.