By Ben Wear

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF


Updated: 10:17 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011

Published: 8:40 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011

Gov. Rick Perry rejected a request Thursday from the Texas Transportation Commission to pay $381,000 a year to Phil Wilson, the incoming executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation.

Perry’s office, however, indicated in a letter that it would approve a salary above the statutory maximum of $292,500 for that position.

“Governor Perry has the utmost confidence in Mr. Wilson and his ability to lead TxDOT in the years ahead,” the letter said. But the challenges to the economy and the state budget, Boyd wrote, “require that we continue to adhere to practices that limit, to the greatest extent possible, expenditures of public funds.”

Commission Chairman Ted Houghton sent a letter Wednesday to the governor and to the Legislative Budget Board requesting permission to pay Wilson $381,000, based on a salary study showing that is the median pay for Texas chief executives in the private sector with comparable responsibilities. That salary would be nearly double what his predecessor Amadeo Saenz was making before his August retirement.

Wilson, currently a senior vice president and lobbyist with Luminant Energy , spent much of his career as a political aide to Perry and former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm . Perry appointed Wilson secretary of state, a position he served for one year, from 2007-08.

“Mr. Wilson is an individual with the appropriate blend of public and private experience to lead TxDOT as it continues to modernize and reposition itself as the premier department of transportation in the nation,” Houghton said in the letter.

The Transportation Commission, headed at the time by Wilson’s former supervisor at the governor’s office, Deirdre Delisi , last month voted to hire Wilson, who lives in Austin, after paying Grant

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