Sine Die…81st Legislative session over!

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Terri Hall

WE DID IT!
HB 300 IS DEAD!

It was messy, and full of drama, but the grassroots, with the help of infighting among lawmakers over the “local option” gas tax hike, managed to slay a beast of a bill that would have unleashed horrific provisions upon Texans for GENERATIONS to come.

Thank you for all the phone calls and emails to your legislators, and for your support and sacrifices to come to Austin to give testimony to these committees and hung in there when it felt like they weren’t listening and would NEVER do right by the PEOPLE of this great State.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for sticking with us through these 5 months of hard-fought battles during the session and for many of us, years of uphill struggles to bring accountability and fix transportation policies that are outright rip-offs. Without this grassroots army, the train wreck would have continued unabated with untold damage.

Play by play…
The final version of the bill from conference committee wasn’t even posted until 11:40 PM Saturday night. We had 24 hours to read a 1,000 page bill….IMPOSSIBLE! I was able to get a side by side report of the actual, final changes in text (that report was 178 pages!) and managed to inform lawmakers of the horrible provisions still left in HB 300 to give us ammo to KILL HB 300. Read them here.

We put out a call for supporters to meet us at the Capitol yesterday for a last push to prevent lawmakers from selling off Texas highways to foreign corporations and KILL HB 300. When we arrived, word got out that Senator John Carona announced he was going to filibuster HB 300 because his “local option” 10 cent gas tax hike was taken out of the bill.

Support in the House started to waiver as it appeared HB 300 was going down in the Senate. The House bill wasn’t eligible for a vote until 11:40 PM, just 20 minutes before the clock ran out. If they couldn’t pass it, they still had to pass the safety net bill before the stroke of midnight. It was going to be tricky!

An added wrinkle…
We found out about some chicanery with the safety net bill (after hearing we were trying to kill the sunset bill and push TxDOT’s sunset to next session). HB 300 author Carl Isett magically changed TxDOT’s sunset date in the safety net bill to 4 years instead of the 2 years as it was originally written. Apparently this was a move to force lawmakers to choke down his anti-taxpayer, anti-reform HB 300 under the guise that it was better than nothing. But rather it smacked of dirty politics to try and say, “you take our bill or get no change at TxDOT for 4 years.”

After we made the rounds and staffers were tight-lipped about their reps position for or against the bill, Rep. Vicki Truitt threatened to filibuster HB 300 in the House (following Carona’s footsteps, she wanted the 10 cent gas tax hike and was willing to KILL the bill over it).

Then, House Transportation Chairman Joe Pickett at one point threatened to “release the conferees” and call up the senate bill for a vote instead of the House bill hoping to vote it down handily to send a message to the Senate that the House didn’t want their bill. School children behave better than these people. The Senate version was chalk full of the WORST provisions imaginable (worst case scenario), including the 10 cent gas tax hike. So I didn’t find the move particularly funny. It was an awful scare until I figured out what Pickett was doing.

By the time the dust settled, it was 11:40 PM and they never called up HB 300 (already declaring it DEAD, for all the wrong reasons, but dead nonetheless) and went straight to the safety bill. Now the safety net bill, having been hijacked and no way to change it since all the final version of bills had to have been filed by midnight Saturday, needed to DIE. We couldn’t let TxDOT off the hook for another 4 years. But if the safety net bill didn’t pass, TxDOT would be dissolved (many would cheer such a scenario, but not lawmakers who live and die by getting road projects built for their districts).

So Rep., David Leibowitz led the charge and stalled passage of the bill and midnight came and went and NO HB 300 and NO safety bill passed.

TxDOT ABOLISHED (for a few hours)
For about 16 hours, TxDOT was officially ABOLISHED! Oh, I slept well last night…

Today, the House was only to do technical changes (like remove conflicts within bills, mismarked section numbers and the like), but they AGAIN broke their own rules and managed to extend TxDOT for another 2 years (which was the original plan, just a lot more messy!) through a resolution. Lawmakers would do anything to avoid a special session, so they snuck the continuation of TxDOT into a resolution on stimulus funds (and where to deposit them).

The House officially adjourned, sine die only moments ago. While we didn’t reform the agency and get the GOOD provisions passed, we averted diaster and CDAs, that sell our highways to foreign companies, sunset August 31. If CDAs die, TTC-35 dies with it. The TTC-69 was excepted OUT of the moratorium bill last session (which we vehemently opposed), so CDA contracts for that corridor can continue until 2011.

The local government 391 commissions we’ve been forming all over the state will now be the only thing (aside from litigation) standing between East Texas and a possible 1,200 foot wide Trans Texas Corridor!

CDAs may have been snuck into another bill somewhere…
With the “chubbing” over Voter ID, many bills died in the House. So the Senate started attaching their bills to House bills and there were a flurry of conference committee reports filed at midnight Saturday with no way to read them all to see if CDAs got snuck into a bill. Considering the House arrived at sine die before the senate today, and since both chambers routinely suspend their own rules, the Senate may have slipped CDAs into a bill today AFTER knwoing for certain that CDAs will sunset this summer absent the passage of HB 300.

What’s also uncertain is what happens to the bills that gave RMAs the authority to enter into CDAs if CDAs are going to sunset? Which law will take precedence over the other? So there are many open questions and disaster may be lurking around the corner. But for today, we can enjoy a BIG VICTORY #2!

KILL HB 300: Trans Texas Corridor to proceed despite repeal of corridor

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Terri Hall

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Grassroots call for lawmakers to KILL loaded TxDOT sunset bill
Trans Texas Corridor to proceed despite repeal of corridor

(Austin, TX – May 28, 2009) The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) sunset bill, HB 300, now over 1,500 pages long, has too much baggage for taxpayers to swallow. HB 300 ends the private toll moratorium (which hands our PUBLIC highways to PRIVATE, foreign toll operators), keeps the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) alive, opens a new loophole to toll existing freeways, allows counties a 10 cent gas tax hike, raids public employee pension funds to invest in risky private toll roads deals (Revolving Fund/Transportation Bank), reduces the number of elected officials on transportation boards, and more.

A heavy piece of “baggage” that put the grassroots over the edge was Amendment #1 by Senator Glenn Hegar that slipped the Trans Texas Corridor back into the bill after repeatedly assuring lawmakers during floor debate that the Trans Texas Corridor is “DEAD.”

TURF also obtained a memo last week from lobbyist Gary Bushell, with Alliance for I-69, revealing that he and ex-Transportation Commissioner turned Texas Senator, Robert Nichols, brokered a deal to allow the private toll contract with ACS of Spain for the Trans Texas Corridor TTC-69 to proceed as planned, despite the outcry of more than 28,000 Texans who went on the record against the project. (See the negotiated amendment to Nichol’s SB 17 that protects the private investor’s interest over the public interest here).

Bushell is the same lobbyist the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) illegally hired using taxpayer money to lobby elected officials in the path of the TTC, which is the subject of several bills before the Texas Legislature in response to a TURF lawsuit currently awaiting a ruling by the Third District Court of Appeals.

“So this backroom deal-making not only betrays Texans, including those in Hegar and Nichols’ own districts, it’s also a betrayal of his fellow legislators who have voted to repeal and repeatedly promised the public that the Trans Texas Corridor is ‘dead,’” proclaims an outraged Terri Hall, Director of Texas TURF.

Also slipped into the senate version is a bill by Senator Tommy Williams to add license plate cameras to state highways, Senator John Carona’s bill to lift the cap on payments to LOSING BIDDERS on toll contracts (used to be $1 million cap, then in 2007 dropped down to $250,000, now there would be NO limit), and a provision to allow TxDOT to increase speed limits on the Trans Texas Corridor and certain toll roads up to 85 MPH with the intent of reducing speed limits on competing free roads (to drive more traffic to high speed toll roads).

“HB 300 abandoned the original Sunset committee recommendations long ago, and it’s been loaded up with too many anti-reform, anti-freedom, anti-taxpayer provisions for Texans to choke down,” states Hall.

TURF is advocating the legislature KILL HB 300 and pass what’s called a safety net bill that moves TxDOT’s sunset to next session, when they hope Texans will have a new Governor.

“No meaningful reform of this agency is possible as long as Rick Perry hold a veto pen,” Hall predicts.

Terri Hall is the Founder of Texas TURF. TURF is a non-partisan grassroots group of citizens concerned about toll road policy and the Trans Texas Corridor. TURF promotes non-toll transportation solutions. For more information, please visit their web site at: www.TexasTURF.org.

###

Lawmakers at odds over TxDOT Sunset bill

Posted on May 27, 2009 by Terri Hall

Link to article here.

Senate bill merges variety of transportation proposals
Monday, May 25, 2009
By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN – Two years of planning, positioning and politicking over the multibillion-dollar business of building roads in Texas will come down to a single bill in the Senate as soon as today, when members will spend hours arguing over how to build more roads for more people without spending much more money.

The Senate bill is a witches’ brew of proposals, from gas tax schemes to toll road dreams, that would further Gov. Rick Perry’s pursuit of private toll roads, give lawmakers more direct oversight of the Texas Department of Transportation and let North Texas counties ask voters to raise their own taxes to build more roads and, perhaps, more rail lines.

But the one thing it would not do is radically prune the power of the Texas Department of Transportation, and that might just be enough to kill it altogether. A version that passed the House this month would be far stricter with the 14,000-employee agency and would give local planning councils the upper hand in making decisions about roads and bridges.

Whatever the Senate approves some time early this week would head to a conference committee, where five members from each chamber will try to settle on a version. If they can’t agree, every significant idea for changing transportation policy this year would be in jeopardy.

The chambers have two enormous differences: First, the House’s determination to rein in the transportation department and with it the governor’s power to set transportation policy for Texas. The Senate approach is milder. Second, and perhaps more significant, is the desire by North Texas officials to be able to raise taxes to fund road and rail projects, with voters’ approval.

“Many of my friends in the House and the public just want to start over with the agency, rather than fix it,” said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate. “But I am not sure that is possible, or very practical. There are great people on the [Texas Transportation] Commission who really have in their hearts the best interests of Texas. So I want to help this agency and want to help turn it around.”

Pickett’s argument

Weakening the department is essential, argued House transportation chairman Joe Pickett, D-El Paso. For years, he has said, the department has played the role of “the heavy” throughout Texas, often forcing projects and approaches to projects on communities that ought to have the final say themselves.

He said he isn’t surprised the agency has found such strong allies late in the legislative session.

“TxDOT has a lot of influence and unfortunately the culture is such that they believe they are sole dictators instead of being our partners,” he said.

His views may clash with the Senate’s, but they have support from members of the public still seething over Perry’s vision for the Trans Texas Corridor, a massive private toll plan that is dead in theory but lives on in the rapidly expanding network of toll roads in places like Dallas. Nor is Pickett entirely alone in the House, where “TxDOT” has been considered a bad word for years.

Transportation committee member Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving, said she’d rather see the session end with no transportation reform at all than with the mild changes envisioned by the Senate.

“I would not say that coming out of the session with nothing is a success,” she said Saturday. “But it is far more important to come out with a bill that brings substantive change in the way TxDOT operates.”

Perry may have the decisive influence on these issues. Senate transportation chairman John Carona, R-Dallas, predicted the governor would not accept any bill that greatly diminishes the role of the agency or removes his influence on what Perry has called his signature issue.

Local-option taxes

But even more of a possible deal-breaker is the proposal that means the most to North Texas, where local officials are nearly frantic as they await the result of six years of lobbying to win the authority to call tax elections for transportation projects.

Carona calls that provision – the “local-option tax bill” – his single biggest priority.

“I can tell you this: I am not going to budge on the local-option bill,” he said. “I simply won’t accept a bill that comes out of the conference committee that does not include it.”

The measure would let counties ask voters to accept a menu of tax increases including up to 10 cents per gallon of fuel. It could raise more than $500 million a year for North Texas alone, depending on which counties participate. Most North Texas counties want to use the money for rail projects, but that would require voters’ approval of a constitutional amendment.

Other senators also strongly support it. Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, said it’s all but certain that the majority of senators on the conference committee will insist that the bill include the local-option tax proposal.

But Pickett and others in the House said if Carona digs his heels in over the local-option provision, the transportation bill could die altogether.

“His priority may be local option, but I do not believe that is the House’s priority,” Pickett said.

He said he also supported a bill that would have incrementally raised gas taxes statewide to keep up with inflation, but it died because the full House would not support it. “Local option is probably similar,” he said.

Some conservative House members endorse the local-option measure as a last-ditch effort to give Dallas the tools it needs to remain economically competitive.

“The last thing I want to do is support a tax,” said Rep. Angie Chen Button, R-Garland. “But I do support this.”

House members are already irked that the Senate weakened the changes to the transportation department, and they were irked again when Carona slid the local-option tax proposal onto the Senate version, in part to avoid a House debate.

If no bill at all passes, the transportation department could go out of business, since the agency is subject to the “sunset” process, a periodic review of agencies that determines their effectiveness and necessity. Perry could call a special session to focus on transportation to avoid that, but it’s more likely that lawmakers would give the agency a two-year extension, starting the fight over again in anticipation of a 2011 showdown.

For the department and its supporters, that would be fine. And even its harshest critics would rather hold out for more sweeping changes.

“TxDOT needs a complete overhaul, and it may not happen for another two to four years,” Pickett said. “Both bills have so much additional baggage at this point, we will have to see. Anything is possible.”

Hutchison decries privatized toll roads, tolls on existing highways

Posted on May 22, 2009 by Terri Hall

Link to article here.

It’s All About Fairness to Taxpayers, Drivers
By U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
May 22, 2009

Maintaining and improving transportation infrastructure in Texas has become nearly as daunting a proposition as driving down Loop 410 at rush hour. San Antonio and Texas as a whole have fast-growing populations, but face the challenge of crumbling and overstressed highways and consistent funding shortfalls. Clearly, something’s got to give, and it can’t be the quality of our roads – or fairness to Texas taxpayers. As we work to meet our transportation needs, we must think broadly and avoid band-aid solutions that will ultimately exacerbate the problem.Recently, there have been renewed calls for tolls on highways that have already been built and paid for with federal tax dollars. I believe taxing Americans twice for the same asset is fundamentally unfair, and I oppose any effort to place tolls on existing interstate highways.

Double taxation is not the only concern. Overemphasis on tolling has serious implications for community safety and local infrastructure. Studies show that motorists will change their driving patterns to bypass the tolls. This will redirect traffic from our highways to remaining free roads, and, in turn, congest our local streets, compromise neighborhood safety, and overburden small capacity infrastructure.

Furthermore, tolls on existing interstates will divert truck traffic to other roads. A recent study predicted that a 25-cent-per-mile toll on an interstate highway would cause nearly half the trucks to divert to other routes. Many of our communities are not equipped to handle heavy commercial traffic, and the safety of local drivers could be put at risk by the increased presence of trucks on small roads.

Today, I introduced legislation to prevent tolling of existing free federal highways, bridges, or tunnels built with federal funding, so that taxpayers are not taxed to use a road for which they’ve already paid. I’m for more highways and even tolls, when proposed the right way. The legislation does not prohibit tolls on new construction. If local communities and states want to cooperatively construct a toll road, they should be able to do so. If the state or community wants to expand their highways and toll for building new lanes, they can choose that alternative. In these situations, the taxpayers know exactly what they are getting. Many times a vote is required to approve these projects, but in any case, the taxpayers can hold the relevant officials accountable.

There has also been discussion in Texas and elsewhere of states attempting to purchase highways from the federal government and place them under state ownership or lease them to foreign investors for the purpose of tolling them. This is also an ill-conceived proposal that fails to address our underlying transportation challenges.

The debate on tolling illuminates the broader need to reform the federal highway program. Its antiquated funding formula, which has made Texas a donor state, is no longer serving the best interests of each state and its motorists. Our national transportation mission should evolve to maintaining and improving infrastructure, so that states don’t resort to band-aid solutions, such as tolling existing freeways.

In April, I introduced a bill that would permit states to opt out of the federal highway program and instead be rebated federal fuel taxes collected within their borders. Today, Texas receives 92 cents back for every dollar sent to Washington, up from 76 cents from when I came to the Senate. My bill would allow Texas to finally see 100 percent of its gas tax dollars, and ensure all of our funds could be used to improve transportation in Texas.

Washington shouldn’t take Texas tax dollars and send them to other states. Likewise, Texans shouldn’t be charged time and time again to drive on roads they already paid for with their hard earned tax dollars.

House poised to sell Texas highways to foreign corporations

Posted on May 19, 2009 by Terri Hall

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

House set to sell Texas highways to foreign corporations, end private toll moratorium
Bill would go to Governor’s desk and become law

(Austin, TX – May 19, 2009) The Texas House is set to vote on whether to end the moratorium on private toll contracts and vote to re-authorize them for another 4 years. Comprehensive Development Agreements, called CDAs in Texas (also known as public private partnerships or PPPs), would hand over an untold number of our PUBLIC highways to PRIVATE, mostly foreign, corporations for a half century at a time. Senator John Carona’s bill, SB 404, is eligible to be taken up by the full House tomorrow.

“Texans don’t want their PUBLIC highway system sold to the highest bidder, nor do they want corporate-run toll roads that cost commuters 75 cents a mile to get to work,” said Terri Hall, Founder of Texas TURF.

Private toll road contracts are due to sunset this fall. In 2007, Texans stood-up and demanded a moratorium on CDAs and sent a bill to the Governor with a combined vote of 169-5.

“The public is largely unaware of what our politicians are about to ram through. They think they took care of it two years ago only to wake-up to find the nightmare continues unabated,” Hall notes.

These deals cost taxpayers 50% more, are failing all over the country, and result in extremely high tolls, like the DFW contracts just signed with Spain-based Cintra that will charge commuters 75 cents a mile to get to work. That’s $3,000 a year in new toll taxes.

In fact, just days ago, Florida’s “Alligator Alley” couldn’t get a single bidder to privatize that tollway. TURF thinks lawmakers need to wake-up to the economic realities that selling our highways to the highest bidder, and relying on rosy traffic counts that amount to pure speculation to make these multi-billion dollar boondoggles work will fall flat, leaving the taxpayers to bailout yet more corporations.

“Public infrastructure that Texans depend on for daily living shouldn’t be under the control of private companies whose primary motive, naturally, is profit, not the public interest,” states Hall.

TURF believes that especially in these economic times, the higher toll rates charged by these foreign toll operators are completely unsustainable. CDAs also eat-up our existing gas tax and other public funds to privatize and toll our public roads, taking away virtually ALL of our available funding for non-toll roads.

CDAs are the most risky and most expensive method of delivering toll projects. Testimony from Dennis Enright of Northwest Financial in New Jersey before the Senate Transportation Committee March 1, 2007, seems to have been quickly forgotten by the Legislature. Mr. Enright said there is no risk transfer to the private entity and that CDAs cost the taxpayers of a minimum of 50% more than public toll roads. Mr. Enright rightly called toll roads monopolies by their very nature. He also said it’s always best to keep these projects in the public NOT private sector.

A second bill, SB 17 authored by Senator Robert Nichols, is tied to Carona’s SB 404. If the House votes to re-authorize CDAs, it’s contingent upon SB 17 passing as well. SB 17 purports to protect the public from private toll contracts and make CDAs only a last resort. However, the way the current bill, SB 17, is structured, if the public toll entity cannot get the financing together to do a public toll road, they’d have to pass the project to TxDOT who would hand it to the private developer.

“The bill doesn’t give the public any protection, but shows TxDOT how it can just wait it out and then hand projects to the private companies,” Hall points out.

The bill also allows the whole evaluation process to be waived and TxDOT and public tolling entities can jump precipitously into CDAs.

“So what’s the point of the bill, if they can waive the requirements and get a free pass?” asks Hall.

Texas examples…

The recent I-820 deal in Tarrant County uses a host of public money (gas taxes, federal TIFIA loans, private activity bonds or PABs) to subsidize this PRIVATE toll contract, yet Cintra gets the right to toll Texans for 50 years and take all the profits out of state. In fact, TxDOT plunked down more cash for the project than did Cintra! (Read it here.)

The LBJ freeway CDA project to toll I-635 uses public employee pension funds to invest in the deal, with toll rates of 75 cents a mile and can rise monthly. TxDOT will even pay Cintra for the loss of the “prevailing toll” revenues due to HOV users and Cintra is guaranteed 12% to 23% PROFIT! (Read more here.)

Their models show only 10 & 11% of all traffic will be able to afford to take these billion-dollar toll lanes. The congestion, or variable, tolling actually jacks-up the toll rates to guarantee certain speeds or pay TxDOT a penalty for slower travel times. This means they purposely price cars off the toll lanes as a financial incentive.

“So what’s the point of all this risky, multi-generational leveraged debt? Mobility or making money? We’re headed for an infrastructure bubble that is destined to fail, which is likely to ensure massive taxpayer bailouts when they do. All those cars not on the toll road will be sitting in traffic, contributing to our air quality issues and being late to work while still paying taxes for highways (gas tax) and not getting a thing for it,” Hall observes.

TURF is urging Texans to call their State Representative and tell them not to let private corporations takeover our public highways. Tell them “NO” to SB 404 and SB 17, and “NO” to more sweetheart deals.

Read how CDAs are failing all over the world on our CDA Fact Sheet here.

###

HB 300 update: VICTORY #1 comes with a sting

Posted on May 8, 2009 by Terri Hall

HB 300 Update

VICTORY #1 comes with a sting

GOOD NEWS:
NO TOLLS ON EXISTING ROADS, REPEAL OF TRANS TEXAS CORRIDOR, and ELECTED LEADERSHIP at TxDOT GET IN THE BILL!

BAD NEWS:
PRIVATE TOLL CONTRACTS SNUCK INTO BILL WHEN HALF THE HOUSE ABSENT!

SEE URGENT ACTION ITEM BELOW

Here’s how it happened…

First, Rep. Jose Menendez of San Antonio withdrew his amendment to re-authorize the private toll contracts (CDAs) that sell our highways to foreign corporations & another BAD amendment involving CDAs by Wayne Smith of Baytown was also withdrawn during debate last night. There were actually three amendments to re-authorize private toll contracts and END the moratorium Texans demanded and they are: Rep. Jose Menendez of San Antonio, Rep. Stephen Frost of Atlanta, and Rep. Larry Phillips.

Last night when the majority of HB 300 was heard, the author of the bill, Rep. Carl Isett said that private toll contracts (CDAs) would be dealt with in committee next week, so House members thought disaster was averted. Then, this morning when they took up the rest of the bill with what was dubbed the non-controversial stuff, when half the House wasn’t even on the floor, Phillips got his amendment voted through, without a recorded vote, without a whimper of opposition totally under the radar!

WE MUST STRIP Phillips’ CDA sweetheart deals OUT ON THIRD READING OF THE BILL, HB 300, Monday!

THE GOOD NEWS:
Thanks to your calls and emails, we prevailed on many GOOD key battles against the BIG MONEY & lobbyists who have wined and dined our legislators for nearly a decade to swindle Texans into these sweetheart deals (while they laugh all the way to the bank). A HUGE hats off to the leadership of Rep. David Leibowitz of San Antonio and Rep. Lois Kolkhorst of Brenham for leading the charge to get these MAJOR amendments into HB 300. Texans owe them a HUGE debt of gratitude. They never faltered, they never wavered, they are true Texas HEROES of our cause! But this is just the first step. WE MUST STRIP OUT Phillips’ private toll contract provision that sell our highways to the highest bidder UPON THIRD READING OF THE HOUSE BILL, HB 300, Monday!

Hang in there with us to see this through…

We’re still sorting through all the various amendments, but the other BIG news is we changed the HORRIBLE loophole-laden language and amended HB 300 with a BULLET-PROOF prohibition on tolling existing roads! We’ve fought hard for 4 years (some of our folks in Austin have been fighting for going on 5 years) to FINALLY resolve this nightmare! We’re on the edge of REAL victory. So stick with us!

Then, we also got a complete REPEAL of the Trans Texas Corridor into HB 300 (though Joe Pickett tried to strip it back out in a sneaky amendment). It’s nothing short of a MIRACLE! On top of that, we managed to get ELECTED leadership at TxDOT! Though not a single elected commissioner, the consensus was behind Rep. Leibowitz’ amendment to ELECT 14 REGIONAL commissioners and one statewide commissioner to run TxDOT. THAT IS AN ENORMOUS VICTORY for accountability and reform of this rogue agency!

Several of our other amendments also got in and some were withdrawn or tabled. HB 300 is a 200 page bill that had 166 proposed amendments, so when we get all the adopted amendments sorted out, y’all will be the first to know.

WE MUST FIGHT TO KEEP OUR AMENDMENTS IN THIS BILL!
HB 300 needs to survive a third reading in the House then…Next up, the Senate!

The Dallas/Ft. Worth delegation is in abject panic over the Leibowitz amendment prohibiting tolls on existing roads. They fear 820, 635, and others won’t be able to move forward if the bill passes with his amendment. So there will still be a battle on the third reading of the bill, with North Texas legislators likely trying to carve out specific projects from the prohibition on tolling existing highways. So our folks in DFW had better flood your legislators with calls to have your voices heard.

Senators to the PEOPLE: “You won’t get your amendments”…
Then, the REAL fight will be in the Senate where Senator John Carona told me pointblank at the beginning of the session that we the people would NOT get elected leadership at TxDOT, period! He also rammed private toll contracts (CDAs) through the Senate. In addition, Senator Robert Nichols told me that only HIS loophole-laden version of the bill dealing with tolling existing roads would pass this session.

What’s at stake…
So get those phones ringing and keep them ringing! If we don’t KILL CDAs, foreign corporations will have the power to control EVERY MILE WE DRIVE for a half century at a time! The deals already in the works will cost the average commuter over $3,000 a YEAR in new toll taxes. If we don’t GET a REAL ban on tolling existing highways and get stuck with Nichols’ loopholes, our freeways will be converted to tollways unabated!

CALL NOW!

Call your state legislators and tell them NO CDAs & keep the Leibowitz version of no tolls on existing roads! We will NOT accept their cow dung in order to get our good amendments!

Repeat this message…

1) No private toll contracts that sell our highways to foreign corporations (strip Phillips sneaky amendment to extend these contracts that end the moratorium!)
2) YES to Leibowitz’ version of BAN on tolling existing roads (freeway to tollway conversions, a HUGE double tax rip-off)
3) No Trans Texas Corridor
4) YES to elected leadership at TxDOT

Find your state legislators here.

Call the Capitol switchboard (512) 463-4630 between 8 AM – 5 PM. To reach your legislators after 5 pm or over the weekend, get his/her direct phone numbers here…

You can also email your state legislators by using this formula:

Plug in the name of your STATE Representative to: firstname.lastname@house.state.tx.us

Plug in the name of your STATE Senator to:
firstname.lastname@senate.state.tx.us

But at this stage of the game,
PHONE CALLS ARE BETTER!

Tollers plan to raid public employee pension funds

Posted on April 29, 2009 by Terri Hall

Link to article here.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Transportation “bank” gets Senate approval
Texas Monthly blog

The Texas Senate just gave unanimous approval to Sen. John Carona’s SB 1350, which sets up the Texas Transportation Revolving Fund — a transportation “bank,” really — that will leverage $1 billion in transportation bonds authorized by Prop 12. According to the bill’s analysis, the revolving fund will allow funds to be continuously recycle: the sale of loans will provide additional capital to the fund.

Carona was held up in passage only by a string of laudatory speeches, started by Finance chair Steve Ogden who complimented Carona’s “creativity” in setting up the fund, which could provide up to $20 billion in financing. The revolving fund could provide a vehicle for the Texas Retirement System and Employee Retirement System to invest in state infrastructure, a policy Ogden supports.

However, Ogden noted after passage of the bill that the Senate budget bill provides for debt service to fund the Prop. 12 transportation bonds, while the House’s budget bill does not. He hopes to persuade the House conferees to support the concept — which allows the state to use sales tax revenue, and not just the gas tax, to build highways.

Carona’s bill was headed to speedy passage with no comment when Ogden remarked on the lack of fanfare for such an important measure. “It’s all part of my humble nature,” Carona replied.

Congressmen file bill to end PUBLIC subsidies for PRIVATE toll contracts

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Terri Hall

Link to article here.

Bills filed to stop ‘double dipping’ on private toll roads
By David Tanner
Landline Magazine
April 27, 2009
U.S. senators have filed a pair of bills to stop private-sector toll operators from double dipping into the pockets of taxpayers.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association applauded the move, saying the bills filed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-IA, benefit highway users by eliminating subsidies for private toll roads.

“Taxpayers should never have been paying to provide these sweetheart benefits to the private sector to begin with,” OOIDA Director of Legislative Affairs Mike Joyce told Land Line.

“These two bills are a step in the right direction in protecting highway users from double – and even triple – taxation in deals that have gone down with the private sector.”

Bingaman and Grassley, both members of the Senate Finance Committee, introduced S884 and S885 to eliminate subsidies for privatized highways.

The first bill, S884, would stop states from receiving federal tax funding and private-sector money for the same toll road.

The other bill, S885, would put a limit on the toll operator’s current ability to write off the cost of the asset over the long term.

S885 would make it more difficult in the future for private investors to profit from subsidies, as happened with the privatization of the Chicago Skyway in Illinois. Private toll operator Cintra-Macquarie, a Spanish-Australian bank partnership, was allowed a 99-year tax write-off as part of the Skyway lease.

The Bingaman-Grassley legislation urges Congress to tighten up the tax write-off criteria.

“The tax code’s exceedingly generous cost-recovery provisions create a perverse incentive to tie up critical American infrastructure in private hands for generations to come,” Bingaman stated in a press release issued by both lawmakers.

“What we have is the tax tail wagging the dog, with dangerous consequences for America’s transportation policy. We must eliminate this perverse incentive and stop subsidizing these private highway operators – who are primarily Spanish and Australian banks – with American tax dollars.”

Grassley, the Senate Finance Committee’s top Republican, believes the bills will keep more taxpayer dollars in the Treasury for other projects.

“Our bills would protect taxpayers from the triple whammy of funding highway construction, giving generous tax breaks to private industry to maintain the infrastructure, and then paying tolls to use that infrastructure,” Grassley stated.

Both bills were sent to the Senate Finance Committee for review.

Joyce said a number of highway user groups are turning up in support of the bills.

“These are two extremely well-respected members of the Senate with a great knowledge in tax and financing issues. We applaud their actions on behalf of all truckers and all highway users,” Joyce said.

“We will fight side by side with them to see if we can get this language passed on its own or in the highway bill if need be.”

– By David Tanner, staff writer
david_tanner@landlinemag.com

Highway 100% paid for with gas taxes opens as TOLL road!

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Terri Hall

Link to article here.

This demonstrates the complete HIGHWAY ROBBERY taking place all over Texas. Not only do they want to toll our existing highways, now even new highways built and 100% paid for with gas taxes are also being turned into TOLL ROADS. Even worse, the money they’ll make off this road that’s already paid for won’t even build more roads, it’s all going to pay off the MOUND of debt accumulating on Austin’s other FAILED toll projects that don’t have enough traffic to pay for themselves without the rest of us bailing them out!

Area’s latest tollway is no cash cow
Profit from Texas 45 Southeast will be used to make up red ink on other three TxDOT toll roads here.
By Ben Wear
Austin American Statesman
Monday, April 27, 2009

How times have changed: There’s a 7.4-mile-long toll road opening in greater Austin in three days, weather permitting, and you don’t know about it.

Well, now you do. After a ribbon-cutting Thursday afternoon, Texas 45 Southeast will run from a point on Interstate 35 a few miles north of Buda to U.S. 183 near Mustang Ridge, flowing seamlessly into the south end of the Texas 130 toll road. After a promotional period of one to two months (depending on whether you have an electronic toll tag or not), passenger vehicles with tags will pay $1 to drive it, and everyone else will be billed $1.33 by mail. Truckers will pay about four times that.

The new road will make it easier for cross-country travelers to evade Austin traffic by taking Texas 45 Southeast and Texas 130 around the east fringe of the metro edge.

It might save Lockhart commuters a few minutes. And getting from San Marcos to Bastrop or Elgin will take less time.

But what Texas 45 Southeast won’t do, based on figures from the Texas Department of Transportation, is make extra money for other Central Texas transportation projects, at least not in the lifetime of most people who currently hold a driver’s license.

The oddity of this is that no money was borrowed to build Texas 45 Southeast. The cost of about $180 million came purely from gas taxes and vehicle fees, unlike most toll roads, which use a combination of debt and taxes. So it would seem that the tolls would be almost pure profit that could give the area badly needed road and rail cash.

Not so, for a number of reasons.

First of all, the road won’t bring in outrageous amounts of money, at least not at first. The first-year estimate, according to TxDOT Chief Financial Officer James Bass, is about $1.6 million, or about $4,300 a day. At about a dollar a ride, you can see they’re not expecting much traffic initially on the four-lane expressway. Even in year 10 TxDOT is expecting only about $5.1 million of toll revenue.

About a third of that initially will go to operations, principally processing the tolls.

What’s left over after operations and maintenance, now and decades in the future, won’t be available, however.

Instead, it will go to help pay for the expected operating deficit on TxDOT’s other three toll roads in Central Texas: Texas 130, Texas 45 North and Loop 1.

Those roads do have debt, about $2.2 billion of it. The annual debt payments start out large — about $36 million this year — and then grow to elephantine size. The projected debt payment in 2042 is almost a half billion dollars. TxDOT does not expect them to make a profit until that year, though one has to wonder how.

Until then, Texas 45 Southeast, along with many millions annually from TxDOT’s statewide kitty, will help make up the red ink.

A transportation source of mine years ago used a colorful, unprintable metaphor to describe how much money Texas 45 Southeast would generate when it opens.

Maybe so. But don’t expect it to generate more roads.

Privatization of public "assets" collapse due to lack of money

Posted on April 26, 2009 by Terri Hall

Link to article here.

Airport Check-in: Chicago Midway won’t be privatized
By Roger Yu, USA TODAY April 26, 2009

•Chicago’s plan to privatize Midway Airport has collapsed due to private investors’ inability to raise enough money amid the rough economy. Late last year, a consortium of investors, led by Citigroup’s Citi Infrastructure Investors, agreed to pay the city $2.5 billion for a 99-year lease, which would have made Midway the first major domestic airport to be privatized.

Chicago’s latest announcement comes less than a month after the city and the investors, which also include YVR Airport Services and John Hancock Life Insurance, revealed that they would need more time to finalize the transaction given the tightened credit market.

Chicago Midway was one of the earliest applicants for the federal experiment to allow privatizing up to five U.S. airports, only one of which can be a hub.

Chicago may still resurrect its privatization plans “when the market conditions improve,” spokesman Pete Scales says. “But who knows when that is? We don’t have a time frame when we might issue a request for proposals.”

Under the agreement, Chicago will still keep the $126 million letter of credit it received from the investors.

World’s best airport

•Incheon International in South Korea is the world’s best airport, according to the Airports Council International’s latest annual survey. This is the fourth consecutive year that the 8-year-old airport, about 30 miles southwest of Seoul, has won the trade group’s top “Airport Service Quality” award.

ACI didn’t specify why the airport won the award, but Incheon’s press release touts its Airstar mall of stores (which includes an Internet lounge, a sauna and a transit hotel), “top-quality shopping facilities” and “various cultural and artistic events.”

Singapore, Hong Kong, Central Japan Airport near Nagoya (also known as Chubu Airport) and Halifax round out the top five. In the North America category, Austin ranked third, the highest among U.S. airports.

• SuperShuttle International, the largest airport shared-van company in the USA, says it will begin service at Pittsburgh International on May 1.

• Chicago O’Hare lost the highest percentage of travelers in 2008 among the 10 largest domestic airports, according to the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. O’Hare’s scheduled boardings fell 8.3% to 31.3 million. Other large airports that saw fewer travelers in 2008: Las Vegas (-6.9%); Phoenix (-6.5%); Los Angeles (-5.9%); Dallas/Fort Worth (-4.6%); and Houston Bush (-4.3%).

Atlanta Hartsfield, whose traffic rose 1.2% in 2008, remains the busiest airport in the world, with 43 million travelers. Denver replaced LAX as the fourth-busiest airport in the USA in 2008.

In 2008, the number of scheduled domestic and international passengers on U.S. airlines and on flights to and from the USA on foreign airlines fell 3.5% to 809 million.

ROUTE NEWS

• Delta will begin non-stop flights to Dallas’ Love Field starting July 6. The carrier will offer three daily round-trip flights between its Memphis hub and Dallas’ downtown airport.

• US Airways has resumed service to Paris Charles de Gaulle from its Charlotte hub after an eight-year hiatus. The seasonal service, flown on Boeing 767 aircraft, will operate daily through Oct. 24.

• JetBlue says it will launch four daily non-stop flights between Boston Logan and Baltimore/Washington on Sept. 9. The move comes shortly after Southwest, a JetBlue competitor, announced that it will start flying the same route later this year.

JetBlue also plans to start daily service from New York John F. Kennedy to Barbados on Oct. 1, adding to its growing number of flights to the Caribbean.

Every Monday, we report on the latest news in airports across the USA. See something noteworthy in your travels? E-mail your suggestions to ryu@usatoday.com.