Link to article here.

Hundreds of toll foes turn out for state Senate panel’s hearing
Patrick Driscoll
Express-News
03/02/2007

AUSTIN — Hundreds of frustrated people from around the state converged on a hearing held by a Texas Senate committee Thursday and clamored for a rollback on the state’s rush to place tolls on new road lanes.

A somber cadre of Texas Department of Transportation officials — shadowed by lawyers and advisers — held its ground amid jeers and members told the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee why they want to partner with private firms to build toll roads.

But the latest ally of the toll critics, committee Chairman John Corona, R-Dallas, who called the hearing, said he and other legislators have given TxDOT too much tolling power in recent years.

“We are all collective sinners,” he said. “TxDOT has refused to listen to the people, and the Legislature has been entirely too reluctant to provide the revenues necessary for TxDOT to have alternatives.”

One word best describes the main issue: money.

TxDOT officials say they don’t have enough, and critics say tolls as proposed are a tax that will gouge like never before.

“It’s greed, plain and simple,” said Terri Hall of the San Antonio Toll Party. “Toll roads in the hands of a private company automatically translates into the highest possible toll tax.”

A few speakers, facing the crowd’s wrath, stuck up for TxDOT.

With gas taxes frozen since the early 1990s, funds must be scraped from somewhere to build highways for the state’s growth, insisted Joe Krier, president of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.

“We know that as the state continues to grow, our problem continues to grow,” he said. “We’ve got to have more transportation routes.”

Experts disagreed on what’s best.

Dennis Enright, a principal at NW Financial Group in Jersey City, N.J. who’s been involved in dozens of public-private agreements, said governments are essentially trading future profits for upfront cash by letting private corporations run toll roads.

In the end, motorists would pay higher tolls to foot the bill for the profits and steeper interest rates, Enright said.

“My recommendation is you should find out if it can be done by the public sector more efficiently,” Enright said. “If it can, it’s a vital public asset.”

While it makes sense to let the private sector handle risky toll ways, such as some in lightly traveled rural areas, he said there’s little risk with toll roads in congested metropolitan areas.

TxDOT is negotiating contracts with private consortiums to oversee proposed toll projects in both rural and urban areas, including the cross-state Trans-Texas Corridor and additional lanes on 47 miles of Loop 1604 and U.S. 281 in San Antonio.

Mark Florian, a managing director with Goldman Sachs, sees it differently, saying private firms can lower loan costs through tax deductions and by investing their own cash.

Corona has filed several bills to reign in TxDOT’s toll ambitions and give the agency other options, including a bill to index both state and federal gas taxes to construction inflation.

But that measure can’t go anywhere unless a related bill being pushed by House Transportation Committee Chairman Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock, makes it out of the House.

Krusee’s bill would raise less than half as much money, which means lawmakers would need to forge a compromise. If that happens, Gov. Rick Perry would then have to sign off.

“But I can tell you this,” Corona said. “Whether there’s a governor’s veto or whether there’s cooperation from House members or not, people of Texas want change. They are not agreeable to current transportation policies.”

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Austin, TX, Friday, March 2, 2007 – During a Senate Hearing on Transportation Policy and Toll Roads yesterday, the State Auditor revealed that the Texas Department of Transportation miscoded invoices to read “engineering” when the money had actually been spent on Public Relations. Angry citizens are calling on the Attorney General to investigate this corrupt agency.

“If a corporate CEO had done this to their shareholders, they’d be in JAIL!” declared a shocked Terri Hall, Director of the San Antonio Toll Party and a newly formed statewide non-profit group defending and educating citizens from the current toll policy called TURF. Citizens gasped when the Auditor’s office revealed this information at yesterday’s hearing.

A record 800 witnesses heard this testimony at Senator John Carona’s hearing yesterday, and citizens may get his ear on this to launch an Attorney General investigation.

“Heads need to roll,” stated Hall. “This gives us that much more to accomplish at today’s protest march and rally” where citizens work to shape public policy.

“That ought to be refreshing, citizen-driven public policy!” said Hall.

For more details on testimony at yesterday’s hearing: here.

Submitted By:
Terri Hall, Director of a grassroots group called the San Antonio Toll Party with more than 5,000 supporters, and Founder of TURF, a new non-profit group that’s uniting concerned citizens across the state.

The people of Texas have had it. We’re in the midst of a Texas-sized tax revolt because these toll contracts are the epitome of selling off Texas to the highest bidder and a total betrayal of the public’s trust. It’s abundantly clear to citizens that our Dept of Transportation is not nor will it EVER listen to Texans with regards to this new shift to tolling and the controversial financing for them called public-private partnerships. This agency has violated its fiduciary duty to the public, and has instead become a tool for private corporations to enrich themselves at the expense of the taxpaying public.

The enabling legislation’s purpose has been perverted into something even lawmakers no longer support or recognize. Considering that even one of the author’s, Senator Steve Ogden, has come out in recent days stating he was duped by the original legislation and will work to right “his past sins,” it’s evident that TxDOT’s corruption, lack of accountability, and, frankly, arrogance, must be stopped by the Legislature.

We already pay a road user-fee, it’s called the gas tax. This myth that the gas tax is somehow insufficient is a farce. In fact, it’s been so efficient in funding our highways that there is enough leftover for 6,000 earmarks at the federal level, like the bridge to nowhere in Alaska, and over $9 billion in diversions on the state level for unrelated things like tourism promotion and cemeteries, not to mention the 25% diverted to public education.

The Legislature has stolen our highway funds, and WE THE TAXPAYERS demand you give them back. If that money had not been stolen from us, we would not be discussing tolls across Texas! We don’t lack funds; our politicians lack fiscal accountability.

We have $7 billion in mobility and revenue bonds available. TxDOT’s budget has tripled just since 1990, and doubled since Rick Perry took office. WE DO NOT LACK FUNDS! Couple this with the fact that TxDOT is tolling highways that we’ve already built and paid for like 281 in San Antonio, and the deal just signed on 121 in Dallas, and it’s further proof this isn’t about lack of money, accelerating road projects, or congestion relief, it’s greed, plain and simple. One of the companies bidding on toll projects all over Texas just posted a 76% increase in profits. Profit is one thing, but obscene profits through monopolies is exploiting the public’s roadways and amounts to thievery!

This same company, Macquarie, said this in an article in the Australian as quoted in the Waxahachie Daily Light, February 28, 2007 which “described Texas as ‘the toll road El Dorado’ in a recent online article that also referenced ‘vast toll road riches up for grabs in Texas.’ A Spanish term, El Dorado means ‘the golden one’ and typically is used as the name of a fabled land of gold and riches. More recently, the term has been used metaphorically to reference any place where wealth could be rapidly acquired, according to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia.”

Then a recent report commissioned by the Governor’s own Business Council done by TTI at A&M shows we do not need toll roads to meet our future transportation needs. It also showed TxDOT over-inflated their projected needs by $30 billion. Governor Perry also stated in a Statesman article dated August 26, 2006, that TxDOT’s supposed “funding gap” is nothing more than a wish list if money were no object.

The economic impact of tolling existing corridors has not been properly studied. Businesses along toll corridors are nearly non-existent. This will hurt economic development in these corridors not bolster it as tollers claim. Tolling an existing corridor will also limit availability of gas, goods, and services for residents who now access these businesses. TxDOT’s assumption that projected growth in these corridors will stay the same both with and without tolls, is not only inaccurate, it’s implausible, and defies logic and economic principles. People change their behavior when you put a toll on a road. It creates avoidance rather than an attraction to that highway.

Toll roads that just opened here in Austin have toll rates of up to $1.50 a mile, and with the State Auditor’s report revealing the 12% guaranteed profit for these private companies, it explains the obscene toll rates we’re already experiencing much less the continued escalation WITHOUT limit that’s sure to come over 50 years! We’re talking about $2,000-4,000 per year, likely more than that, to use our PUBLIC highways. These insidious toll contracts take away our freedom of mobility to line the pockets of private corporations.

Truth is we don’t know what’s in these contracts that are being negotiated in SECRET, and even our elected officials cannot see the terms of these contracts UNTIL AFTER IT’S SIGNED and parts of them are still NOT DISCLOSED to the public to this day as these robber barons hide behind the term “proprietary information” that our own Attorney General thinks is bunk!

We wholeheartedly object to these non-compete agreements that will hold our free lanes hostage to private companies and replace them with inferior, less efficient access roads. The non-competes PROVE TxDOT’s version of tolls won’t solve congestion; they’ll manipulate it for profit.

Toll roads cannot work unless there is horrific gridlock on the surrounding free lanes. Over the next 50 years, these foreign companies stand to make billions on our PUBLIC infrastructure. Take the deal just inked for 121 in Dallas. The government gets $5 billion from Cintra and the taxpayers pay-up astronomical toll taxes expected to be $100 billion over the next 50 years for just that one highway. Cintra will make 20 times the money they invested! This is truly highway robbery!

And the Trans Texas Corridor…the real story is, they want this corridor to benefit foreign interests, mainly China, not Texas. Recent news articles tell us the Port Authority of San Antonio has been working actively with the Communist Chinese, to open and develop NAFTA shipping ports in Mexico that will enter the U.S. through the Trans Texas Corridor (or NAFTA superhighway) for the purpose of increasing its annual handling capacity from 100,000 containers to 700,000 containers initially, with possible expansion to two million containers by 2010. That’s the congestion problem they’re seeking to solve, the source is not Texas truckers and commuters but the massive new influx of Chinese goods into the U.S. via Mexican ports, trucks, and rail.

The State Auditor’s report affirms that TxDOT has overestimated the benefits and underestimated the costs of the corridor and it shows that taxpayer money will in fact be used to build this monstrosity.

The taxpayers have a right to vote on matters of such grave public interest. We are the owners of government, not an unelected bureaucracy behaving as dictators of public policy.

This amounts to increasing our cost of transportation from pennies a day under gas tax to dollars per day under an unaccountable toll system in the hands of a foreign company for private gain WITHOUT THE PUBLIC’S CONSENT! I cannot find a SINGLE study to show that raising the cost of transportation is good for the economy.

The taxpayers not TxDOT have the final say on the public’s roads. This agency and this Governor are corrupt, they’ve overstepped their authority, they’re guilty of abusing their oath of office, they’re not listening to nor serving the public, and it’s up to you to return our public highways and our government to the PEOPLE!

We URGE you to pass Senator Carona’s bill outlawing non-compete agreements, pass Rep. Kolkhorst’s and Leibowitz’ bills to abolish the Trans Texas Corridor, to pass Rep. Pickett’s bill to abolish the Transportation Commission and replace it with an elected officer accountable to the PEOPLE, and pass a host of other much needed reforms to return the highway system to the taxpaying PUBLIC!

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As reported in the Waxahachie Daily Light, February 28, 2007:

“The Australian, a newspaper based in Sydney, described Texas as ‘the toll road El Dorado’ in a recent online article that also referenced ‘vast toll road riches up for grabs in Texas.’ A Spanish term, El Dorado means “the golden one” and typically is used as the name of a fabled land of gold and riches. More recently, the term has been used metaphorically to reference any place where wealth could be rapidly acquired, according to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia.”

________________________________
Can’t you hear them laughing all the way to the bank? This is the sort of corporate greed and cavalier attitude that drives these toll companies. And this company is the same one who has purchased Texas and Oklahoma community newspapers in the path of the Trans Texas Corridor in order to control the media coverage of the opposition.Read the full article here.

______________________________
And here’s another galling statement by someone who is supposed to guard the public interest up in Dallas:

“‘People are so desperate for transportation in the 121 area, they’d be throwing money out the window in sacks’ for a toll road, Michael Morris of the Dallas-area Regional Transportation Council said at a legislative hearing last week.” — Austin American Statesman, February 28, 2007.

_______________________________
They think we poor serfs are desperate enough to impoverish ourselves and pay ANY amount of money to drive on our PUBLIC highways. If this offends you, prove them wrong and turn out to Senator’s Carona’s Public Hearing March 1 in Austin at the Capitol Annex Auditorium and the “Don’t Tag Texas” Rally March 2 on the south Capitol steps. Let’s show them the true independent Texas spirit and that we’re NOT going to tolerate this! Texans own Texas highways, not foreign profiteers salivating over our wallets and counting on our desperation!Read the full article here.

Link to article here.

State audit critical of Trans-Texas Corridor proposal
By David Tanner
Landline Magazine February 28, 2007

Texas Gov. Rick Perry continually states that the Trans-Texas Corridor will be a cost-effective project for Texans with the private sector paying the bulk of the bills. But last week, the Texas State Auditor’s Office pulled no punches in shooting down that claim and others made by the Texas Department of Transportation.

In an audit released Friday, Feb. 23, State Auditor John Keel said the taxpayer burden could be nearly $14 billion.

Keel and his team want Perry, lawmakers and TXDOT to be accountable for every dime and be honest about how much of the bill taxpayers could be footing.

The leg of the multi-modal toll system of commuter lanes, truck-only toll lanes, railways and utility lines known as the TTC-35 only makes up 14 percent of the proposed 4,000-mile network, yet it takes up 57 percent of the early cost estimates.

During promotional efforts for the corridor, TXDOT officials have claimed the network would cost about $184 billion. The state auditor pointed out that the proposed 600-mile TTC-35 alone – which makes up less than one-seventh of the entire TTC project – would cost $105 billion.

The proposed TTC-35 would run from the Mexican border at Laredo, TX, north and east to the Oklahoma border, parallel to and possibly including parts of Interstate 35.

Auditors said the project runs the risk of costing billions in taxpayer dollars for the proposed railway lines – up to $14 billion – and other development costs for the corridor.

“There is a lack of reliable information regarding projected toll road construction costs, operating expenses, revenue, and developer income,” auditors stated, adding that it’s “not possible to accurately estimate profits due to many unforeseen variables.”

The audit called for more public information, oversight mechanisms and demanded third-party estimates for toll revenue and operator profits.

State transportation officials were mostly agreeable to the findings, but did refute a finding about taxpayer dollars potentially being used to subsidize a 12 percent anticipated profit margin for the builder and operator, Cintra-Zachry.

“TXDOT will never be required to make payments so that Cintra-Zachry gets a 12-percent return,” transportation officials wrote in their response, adding that TXDOT is not responsible for compensating the developer if profit expectations are not met.

The 73-page document is available for review in its entirety, including the TXDOT response, on the State Auditor’s Office Web site.Visit http://www.sao.state.tx.us/Reports/report.cfm/report/07-015 to read the auditor’s summary of the findings and for a link to the actual audit report.

Link to article here.

Toll rates to increase so high, state leaders can’t even say
Texans can expect to pay more to drive on state-run toll roads — a lot more.
Houston Chronicle
February 27, 2007

But just how much more, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst can’t say because of confidentiality agreements that the Texas Department of Transportation has with private companies building the toll roads.

“I’m about as angry about what’s happening with the Texas Department of Transportation,” Dewhurst said moments after he skewered the Texas Youth Commission after reports of inmate abuse by top agency officials.

Although Dewhurst could not specifically say how much toll rates will be in the future, he described those rates as “astronomical.”

TxDOT is negotiating with private companies that allow them to build roads and charge tolls for large upfront fees.

“The Legislature has no idea what those agreements are,” Dewhurst said.

The toll road contracts run for 50 years.

Halfway into the contract, toll rates will skyrocket to unimaginable levels, warned Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Chair John Carona, R-Dallas.

And state leaders will be restricted because of “significant penalties for building other roads, competing roads,” Carona said.

At some point Texas will either have to pay billions of dollars to buy back the toll roads or “accept very high rates for very long periods of time.”

Carona proposes to link the state’s gasoline tax rate to the consumer price index for automatic adjustments to keep pace with inflation. The state’s gasoline tax, now at 20 cents per gallon, has not changed since 1991.

The state’s current gasoline tax is 3.6 cents under the national average.

Link to article here.

Finance chairman warns of political force against reform
By Laylan Copelin
Austin American Statesman
February 27, 2007

Fearing that state officials lack the collective will to act, the Senate Finance Committee chairman said this morning that three state agencies must be reined in despite the embarrassment it may cause.

Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, cited the Texas Department of Transportation, the Texas Youth Commission and Texas Southern University as severe problems that he fear will be swept under the Capitol rug.

“Two of them are broken,” he said. “And one is out of control.”

In an interview with the American-Statesman, Ogden warned that political forces were trying to keep lawmakers from dealing with the issues to avoid embarrassing the Legislature and Gov. Rick Perry.

He said he was speaking out to put a spotlight on the problems of fiscal mismanagement at Texas Southern University in Houston, sexual abuse allegations at a Texas Youth Commission facility and the transportation department’s negotiations with private developers to build and toll a system of roads.

“There’s a huge political force out there saying, ‘We don’t care or this is too embarrassing,” Ogden said. “What keeps the Legislature from hiding from problems, you have to shine a spotlight on it.”

He urged reporters to pay greater attention to the three issues and pledged to use the appropriations process to make changes.

“If I was king, TYC and Texas Southern would be in conservatorship — that means fire everybody and start over,” Ogden said. He predicted there would be more resignations at TYC — the executive director quit last week — and said he believes there is evidence of a cover-up at the agency.

The allegations of sex abuse at a TYC facility in West Texas are “as bad as it gets,” the senator said. “Isn’t this what the lieutenant governor it talking about giving the death penalty for?”

The powerful senator said the transportation department has “too many tools in their arsenal” to construct highways and the Legislature should take some of them back.

Ogden said he is concerned about the department’s plans to allow private contractors, for a large upfront fee, to build roads and charge tolls — perhaps forever. He said the department has as many as 21 projects under consideration.

“Do we really want to be turning over state highways to private contractors?” Ogden said.

The irony is that Ogden was the Senate author of the bill that in 2003 expanded the commission’s powers to construct roads.

“I’m trying to correct the sins of the past,” Ogden said.

He is considering legislation that would force the tolls to go away once a highway is paid for. He said he is concerned with plans to use toll revenue, long after a highway is paid for, to build more roads.

He said the Legislature is hearing from constituents who want the agency’s powers curbed.

“Every (legislative) member is paying a political price for what they are doing,” Ogden said. “TxDOT needs to be more sensitive and accountable to the Legislature.”

The executive director of the Texas Youth Commission resigned last week after internal review found that agency officials had ignored, for more than a year, staff complaints that administrators at a West Texas State School had molested young inmates.

Texas Southern University is asking for $25 million in emergency appropriations because of fiscal mismanagement, including hundreds of thousands of dollars inappropriately spent on the president’s house while the basements of classroom buildings are flooded and the athletic department has overspent its budget by $2 million.

The transportation department has steered the state into controversy with plans to execute the governor’s plans for the Trans Texas Corridor by negotiating agreements with private developers to build the roads and charge tolls.