The North Central Texas Council of Governments terminated Director of Transportation Michael Morris Tuesday evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Morris served as director for 35 years.\u00a0\u00a0Executive Director Todd Little informed employees of Morris\u2019 termination by email, and appointed assistant director Dan Kessler as the interim replacement.<\/p>\n
Johnson County Commissioner Rick Bailey believes Morris\u2019 removal is a \u201cwrongful termination\u201d related to an ongoing lawsuit with Denton County filed against members of the executive board of the Regional Transportation Council. The lawsuit states its purpose “is to stop the executive board of NCTCOG, which is currently unlawfully constituted, from taking continued ultra vires actions, and to correct is structure to be lawfully constituted.”<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are 45 members in this council, and one person has stepped up and made this decision,\u201d Bailey said. \u201cWe were working this out, but it was not to the liking of fiscal agents such as Todd Little.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bailey said\u00a0he and other members of the council are working diligently to reinstate Morris\u00a0and want to \u201cretain\u00a0his knowledge of the region.\u201d\u00a0He\u00a0also said\u00a0Morris was fired due to\u00a0a \u201cpolitical fallout\u201d\u00a0with other higher council officials.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no explanation or any kind of paper trail. It\u00a0was for\u00a0no reason,\u201d Bailey said.<\/p>\n
Other council members expressed shock,\u00a0saying they had no idea the termination was coming prior to the announcement.<\/p>\n
A specially called\u00a0Regional Transportation Council meeting was\u00a0initiated\u00a0by Morris\u00a0on Tuesday\u00a0morning\u00a0prior to his termination.\u00a0Unspecific executive board\u00a0items,\u00a0which were meant to be discussed at\u00a0last\u00a0month\u2019s\u00a0meeting but were not\u00a0due to\u00a0the\u00a0lawsuit,\u00a0were listed in the agenda.\u00a0The agenda also\u00a0stated\u00a0discussions\u00a0around\u00a0a\u00a0request\u00a0for\u00a0$5 million\u00a0in emergency council funds\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0renegotiation of a three-party agreement between the council, RTC and the Texas Department of Transportation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The council is expected to address his termination at\u00a0Thursday\u2019s\u00a0meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Todd Little\u00a0has not responded to\u00a0immediate\u00a0requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Morris has not responded to immediate requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The North Central Texas Council of Governments terminated Director of Transportation Michael Morris Tuesday evening.\u00a0 Morris served as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[18763,223,95012,430,287,27,29,28,88032,88572,840],"class_list":["post-271852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-nctcog","tag-news","tag-news-texas","tag-north-texas","tag-politics","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tp-dallas-fortworth","tag-tp-transportation","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}