Michael Reed with the Houston Community Newspapers continues to dig into Houston's transit agency:

From Reed's story detailing what the paper says is a "sweet real estate deal":

A three-year contract approved by an outgoing Metro board in December could prove to be quite a lucrative one for their long-time real estate consultant, McDade Smith Gould Johnston Mason + Co.

If acquisition of land needed to build four light rail lines goes as planned — $134.98 million worth, according to the April 2010 board of directors report — the real estate broker could earn more than $4.8 million in commissions for that part of the project alone.

The best summary of the story is at blogHouston:

Among other fascinating tidbits, he notes:

• An apparent discrepancy between the actual deal amounts and the amounts reported in METRO's financial statements.
  
  
• A METRO vice president who, interestingly enough, is a partner at the real-estate agency.
  
  
• The daughter of a partner at the real-estate agency who is also apparently listed as a broker at the firm and just happened to find herself employed at METRO as an associate vice president for real estate services.
  

Also check out the conversations at Harris County Almanac and at  Swamplot.

We bring this up to praise good watchdog reporting, but also to remind readers that Texas Watchdog has spent some time digging into Metro as well.

Check out some previous stories we have done:

• Was she thrown under the bus? Metro attorney fired amid shredding controversy allegedly called employee a 'blond bitch'
  
• Metro wants Houstonians to take the bus, but makes sure top execs don't have to; Transit agency spending $125K annually on car allowances for high-ranking employees
• Taxpayer bill for Houston-area Metro's no-bid contracts adds up
  
• Metro says it lacks expertise to manage light-rail project; hired $2,400/day consultant who is associate of Metro CEO
  

Trent Seibert can be reached at 832-316-4994 or at trent@texaswatchdog.org.

Photo by Flickr user euthman, used via a Creative Commons license.