Link to PDF of Paul Burka’s Texas Monthly article here.

Some highlights from the article:

“Existing highways built with tax dollars ought not to be converted to toll roads; this is double taxation. Commuters should not be forced to tithe for the privilege of using a freeway overpass…”

AND

“All the rhetoric over whether to toll or not to toll has obscured a much bigger issue, which is privatization of transportation…”

John Carona of Dallas who will Chair the senate transportation committee said: “Within thirty years’ time, under the existing comprehensive development agreements (public-private partnership contracts used in these new toll arrangements), we’ll bring free roads in this state to a condition of ruin.”

AND

“TxDOT will no longer be able to respond to the transportation needs of the state, other than to say: if you don’t like traffic, use the toll road.”

His Way or the Highway
By Paul Burka
Behind the Lines
Texas Monthly
December 2006

Now that Rick Perry has won another term, his transportation plan moves on down the road. What kind of a toll will it take on Texas?

Every day I can look out the window of my office in downtown Austin and watch traffic creep along Interstate 35, half a mile away. The time of day doesn’t seem to matter, nor does the weather: morning or evening, wet or dry, the snarl persists. Part of this is due to the unwieldy design of the downtown exit and entrance ramps, but the main reason is the volume of traffic, much of it commercial. I dread the drive to Dallas, which I last made on the Friday afternoon before the Texas-Oklahoma football game—surely the worst day of the year for such a trip. It took me forty minutes to negotiate the eighteen miles from downtown to the suburb of Round Rock, and much of that time was spent idling in a canyon of eighteen-wheelers.

The announcement several years ago that the Texas Department of Transportation—TxDOT, as it’s widely known—would build a toll bypass known as Texas 130 east of Austin was cause for celebration. Texas 130 was particularly welcomed by community leaders in the fast-growing town of Pflugerville, which abuts Austin to the northeast. The annexation, years earlier, by Austin of a strip of land along I-35 had kept Pflugerville from reaping the taxes generated by the high-dollar commercial property along the freeway frontage.

Now, with the completion of another brand-new toll road, Texas 45, which will tie into the bypass, Pflugerville could look forward to development along the flanks of the new highway, which would relieve homeowners from bearing the principal responsibility of paying for city services. But when TxDOT announced the design of Texas 45, it had no Pflugerville exit and no frontage road, and that made the adjacent property unattractive for development. What was the reason for this oversight? It was no oversight, according to state senator-elect Kirk Watson, who, as mayor of Austin, had served on the board of the federally mandated regional mobility planning organization for the Austin area. “TxDOT,” he says, “wanted to maximize its toll revenue.”

A single nonexistent exit on a single yet-to-be-completed highway is of little consequence in the big picture of transportation policy in Texas. And yet the missing Pflugerville exit is emblematic of why so many Texans are upset about that policy and why it became an issue in the governor’s race: The importance of roads is not merely to make sure that you and I can get from point A to point B rapidly and safely. Roads create wealth. They multiply property values. They bring economic development. They improve the quality of life. But as Texas turns more and more to toll roads, critics of  TxDOT fear that the tail is wagging the dog, that the funding mechanism has become an end in itself, and that a mammoth state agency has lost sight of its duty to serve the public and instead serves its own ends.

This is not going to be a screed against toll roads or against Rick Perry’s multi-highway Trans-Texas Corridor plan, though the opponents have made some legitimate points. Existing highways built with tax dollars ought not to be converted to toll roads; this is double taxation. Commuters should not be forced to tithe for the privilege of using a freeway overpass, as TxDOT wanted to do on another Austin expressway—conjuring up the memory of Ludwig of Bavaria, who built his medieval castle on an island in the Rhine, the better to extract tolls from passing boatmen. Yet toll roads are an essential part of our transportation future. The current revenue stream, which depends on a twenty-cents-a-gallon tax on gasoline, one fourth of which goes to education, is not enough to meet the state’s needs. Without toll roads, gridlock will continue to strangle Texas cities.

All of the rhetoric over whether to toll or not to toll has obscured a much bigger issue, which is privatization of transportation. TxDOT’s plan for toll roads is to surrender public control of these roads by entering into “comprehensive development agreements” (known as CDAs) with private companies, such as the partnership between Cintra, a Spanish company, and Zachry construction in San Antonio, which is building the first link in the Trans-Texas Corridor, an alternative to Interstate 35 known as TTC-35. Cintra-Zachry paid $1 billion to TxDOT for the right to collect tolls for the next fifty years.

I’m not going to make a xenophobic argument, as Carole Keeton Strayhorn did in her gubernatorial campaign, that this is a land grab by foreign companies. It doesn’t really matter whether the company operating the toll road is American or European or Qatari. What matters is whether the arrangement protects the public interest. Here is what John Carona, a Republican state senator from Dallas who is the new chairman of the Senate committee that deals with transportation, has to say on that subject: “Within thirty years’ time, under existing comprehensive development agreements, we’ll bring free roads in this state to a condition of ruin.”

It may seem as if the system of granting a concession to private companies in return for money, like restaurants at an airport, is a great idea—“free money” that TxDOT can use to build other toll roads, enter into still more concession agreements, and build still more toll roads, as if the agency had succeeded in creating a perpetual-motion machine to finance roads in perpetuity.

But alas, there is no free money, and there is no perpetual-motion machine. The private companies that will build and operate the toll roads are in business to make a profit. In order to ensure that profit, they must have people who want to drive on their roads. And—here’s the rub—in order to be sure that people will want to drive on their roads, the CDAs with TxDOT will contain non-compete clauses that prohibit TxDOT from building new roads or upgrading existing highways. Any improvement to an existing highway that is not already planned at the time TxDOT enters into the contract is prohibited. That billion-dollar concession limits TxDOT’s ability to improve nearby secondary roads. How about adding extra lanes? Sorry, prohibited by the CDA. An HOV express lane? Not a chance. This is why Carona says that free roads will be reduced to ruin. TxDOT will no longer be able to respond to the transportation needs of the state, other than to say: If you don’t like the traffic, use the toll road.

Oh, I almost forgot. About that free money: It may be free for TxDOT, but it isn’t free for you and me. The billion dollars represents the present value of future toll revenue. TxDOT finds it attractive for the same reason that buyers of lottery tickets ask for the “cash option.” They want their money up front—so they can use it now, so that it won’t be eaten up by inflation—rather than have it dribble in over twenty years (or fifty). Meanwhile, the private toll road operator wants to get that billion dollars back. And the way the company will get it is by raising its tolls over fifty years, largely unrestrained by the public sector. Tolls will be market based—that is, whatever the traffic will bear. In effect, TxDOT’s free money amounts to a tax on our children and our grandchildren.

Concession agreements are not the only way to build toll roads, just the most expensive one. (Carona likens it to “renting to own.”) In fact, toll road authorities have functioned in Houston and Dallas for years by using the conventional method of  building the roads: issuing revenue bonds that will be paid off with toll revenues over a period of twenty to thirty years. When major league baseball first came to Arlington in the seventies, I drove to games from Dallas on the Dallas—Fort Worth Turnpike. In twenty years (1957-1977) the bonds were paid off and the turnpike became a free road, Interstate 30. It remains free today.

The Dallas North Tollway followed a similar pattern, except that when the original section, from downtown to Interstate 635, was paid off, tolls continued to be collected so that the tollway could be extended farther north. The Harris County Toll Road Authority has built 101 miles of toll roads, including a section of the Sam Houston for which I gladly pay $1.25 four times in order to drive to my hometown of Galveston without having to contend with Houston traffic. This method of financing is, in the long run, far cheaper for the public than concessions and higher tolls. In the past, TxDOT cooperated with these local authorities—for instance, by making right-of-way available—but since Rick Perry has been governor, a much more aggressive department seems to regard the local toll agencies as competitors. The North Texas Tollway Authority wanted to build Texas 121, for example, but TxDOT stepped in and forced the NTTA to cede control of the project, thereby allowing TxDOT to do another concession agreement. The NTTA will be allowed to collect the tolls, but that is all.

How did we get to this point, and what can we do about it? For years, state budget writers have been dipping into the pot of money that is earmarked for highways to fund the Department of Public Safety, on the theory that state troopers are responsible for highway safety. This ploy diverted $700 million from road building in the current biennial budget. At the same time, lawmakers have refused to raise the gasoline tax since 1991. In a Republican era, any kind of tax increase is unthinkable, even if its purpose is to further the cause of free roads. TxDOT played politics too, putting more projects on its approved list for future construction than it could afford; now it uses the length of the wish list to win the support of local transportation planning organizations for toll roads, warning communities like Austin and El Paso that their only other option is to wait 25 years for free projects.

The final step was the 2003 legislative session, when Republicans controlled all the levers of power—House, Senate, governor—for the first time. Major bills were rushed through the Legislature with little debate or discussion. One of these was the omnibus transportation bill that authorized concessions and other mammoth changes in the way we build highways. Few lawmakers knew what was in the bill. The Senate gave it only cursory inspection. The result was a scheme in which TxDOT will be taking in billions of dollars from the private sector with no oversight by the Legislature, no responsibility to say how that money will be used, and no assurance for the public that free roads, as well as toll roads, will benefit from that money. Governor Perry has strongly supported transparency, accountability, and oversight in public education. He could do the state and the public a great service by insisting on the same standards for highways. Otherwise, we are headed for the worst public policy fiasco in my lifetime.

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Link to photos and info here.

Texas Good Roads, the largest special interest group of road builders in the State, began their billboard campaign to push the Trans Texas Corridor on a public who clearly doesn’t want it. What’s interesting is they waited until AFTER the election to begin their brainwashing and propaganda campaign…hmmm. Is there any doubt who’s pushing this boondoggle? It’s the highway lobby, and our politicians like Rick Perry are all too accommodating due to the lobby’s generous campaign contributions and promise of lucrative private sector jobs in a corrupt system that needs legislative reform come 2007!

Yet another example of how TxDOT’s approach to tolling makes NO SENSE! The first Executive Director of the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority (our tolling authority), Tom Greibel, swore up and down that the toll roads would be all electronic (of course, he’s been proven a liar already since the Hwy 45 tollway that just opened in Austin opened with toll booths!). He also said when asked how would out of towners know to go buy a toll tag or how would they enforce payment on out of state motorists, he said they’d take a picture of the license plate and send them a bill. Read the radio report of what’s taking place on the new tollway in Dallas (FYI: Hwy 121, 100% PAID FOR with gas taxes, should NEVER have opened as a toll road; it’s a money grab!), and this claim by Greibel is also proven a falsehood.

As reported by a supporter in Waco:

The new Toll Road HWY 121 Project that is up around the Dallas area is up and running. Our Gov. Perry had delayed the tolls till after the election. Come this Friday, the toll is beginning. One small problem, there are no toll booths only cameras. As you drive through TxDOT takes a picture of your license plate and sends you a bill each month. One problem is that if you have out of state plates, Texas does not have a agreement with any other state to find out who you are so they can send you a bill. TxDOT has said out of state drivers cannot legally drive on the toll road. Cities along the toll road can have their police pull over out of state drivers and ticket them. Some cities will not do this and have told TxDOT.
Typical TXDOT. Clueless………………
This was on KRLD 1080 this morning.

Link to editorial here.

Seems the Editorial Board needs to tune into other local news sources who have already broke the story that our politicians have diverted nearly $10 billion in gas taxes to unrelated earmarks like tourism promotion and cemeteries. This State doesn’t lack money and our repeated surpluses and TxDOT’s 117% budget increase on Rick Perry’s watch prove it. What the State lacks is fiscal discipline, funding priorities, and respect for taxpayers’ hard-earned money.

Non-compete agreements that prevent efficiency and the expansion of free lanes, privatization with no caps or an end point for tolls, and granting monopolies also dominate the public’s concerns and without fiscal accountability (like getting rid of the DOUBLE TAX toll projects that are already partially or 100% funded with taxpayer money) and taxpayer protections in place, the public should not sit idly by “to give toll roads a chance.”

Editorial: First few tolled miles right move for Texas
11/18/2006
Express-News

The first 27 miles of a regional toll road system were unveiled this month in the Austin area.

The roads are part of a push to use tolls to finance the state’s transportation infrastructure, including the Trans-Texas Corridor. The pet project of Gov. Rick Perry, the TTC will eventually snake throughout the state and include rail, pipelines and toll roads.

San Antonio likely will have more than 70 miles of tolled roads, most of them on the North Side.

Toll roads, particularly along highways that already have been constructed, have come under fire from opponents who say it is little more than an attempt to fleece motorists. They say motorists should not have to pay to ride on roads that already have been paid for.

But state money isn’t unlimited. The gas tax has not been raised in 15 years, yet the costs of building and maintaining roads has increased with inflation.

The Texas population is expected to double by 2040. If the state doesn’t address the transportation infrastructure now — with tolls being only one of many tools — we’ll be hurting in the next few decades.

Unless people are willing to pay more at the pump, the money has to come from another source.

Critics have rightfully decried the private nature of the multimillion-dollar negotiations with private consortium Cintra-Zachry. Toll roads are in the public’s interest, and these contracts should not be shielded from view.

But the reticence of state leaders and the consortium to supply information is not a good enough reason to oppose toll roads.

Voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment in 2001 that created the Texas Mobility Fund to back state bonds for transportation projects, including toll roads.

That was a forward-looking vote, and opponents should give toll road projects a chance.

Link to poll here.

Bexar County Commissioner Lyle Larson and State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, are among those pushing Texas lawmakers to cease diverting dollars from the state highway fund to pay for non-highway-related programs. Supporters of the plan say it would save more money for highway construction and cut down on the need for controversial toll roads. Critics say it could negatively impact important programs like tourism promotion and medical transportation for the needy that currently depend on highway funding appropriations.

Do you think the practice of diverting some state highway fund dollars to non-highway related programs should be ended or continued?

85% of respondents said to end this practice!

From the Lone Star Report, November 13 edition

Toll roads were a non-starter on election day
Mike Krusee (R-Round Rock) gets only 50 percent of the vote in a solidly Republican district? And his Democratic opponent is within five percent? This is but one example of the unpopularity of the state’s current transportation policies.

Most successful candidates ran as fast and as far as they could from the governor’s policy of making almost all new freeways toll roads. The Trans-Texas Corridor also did not play well on election day for a variety of reasons.

The Legislature will likely revisit this issue, which could put lawmakers on a collision course with Gov. Rick Perry.

It remains to be seen exactly what changes to current policy will gather steam at the Capitol. But transportation will be an issue in the spring.

Link to article here.

End of the Revolution
Advice to Republicans: Don’t go back and check on a dead skunk.
BY DICK ARMEY
November 9, 2006
Opinion Journal

If there was still any doubt, the Republican Revolution of 1994 officially ended Tuesday night with the loss of at least 28 seats and majority control of the House of Representatives. As I write this, the race in Virginia that will determine if the Republicans also lose control of the Senate is too close to call, but leaning Democrat.

It was a rout.

How did we get here? The war in Iraq and historical voting patterns that favor the opposition party in off-year elections are factors suggested by many post-election pundits. Certainly, the mounting problems in Iraq were on voters’ minds, but responsibility for the conduct of the war lies with the executive branch, and President Bush was not on the ballot.

That said, this was a national election, driven by national issues. One big issue in exit polls suggests widespread voter backlash against the “culture of corruption.” There is something to this, I think. Over time, too many Republicans in the governing majority forgot or abandoned their national vision, letting parochial interests dominate the decision-making process.

All enterprises have a life-cycle. The Republican takeover in 1994 was the culmination of years of agitation by a relatively small group of political entrepreneurs in the House. Before we could beat the Democrats and their “culture of corruption,” we had to beat the old bulls of our own party. They too were driven by a parochial vision, and had grown complacent with the crumbs offered them by the majority. It is often said that Newt Gingrich and I “nationalized” the election in 1994, but what the Contract with America really did was establish a national (as opposed to a parochial) vision for the Republican Party. When we took control, that positive Reagan vision of limited government and individual responsibility provided a great deal of discipline and allowed us to govern accordingly. Our primary question in those early years was: How do we reform government and return money and power back to the American people?

Eventually, the policy innovators and the “Spirit of ’94” were largely replaced by political bureaucrats driven by a narrow vision. Their question became: How do we hold onto political power? The aberrant behavior and scandals that ended up defining the Republican majority in 2006 were a direct consequence of this shift in choice criteria from policy to political power.

Nowhere was this turn more evident than in the complete collapse of fiscal discipline in the budgeting process. For most Republican candidates, fiscal responsibility is our political bread and butter. No matter how voters view other, more divisive issues from abortion to stem-cell research, Republicans have traditionally enjoyed a clear advantage with a majority of Americans on basic pocketbook issues. “We will spend your money carefully and we will keep your taxes low.” That was our commitment. This year, no incumbent Republican (even those who fought for restraint) could credibly make that claim. The national vision–less government and lower taxes–was replaced with what Jack Abramoff infamously called his “favor factory.” One Republican leader actually defended a questionable appropriation of taxpayer dollars, saying it was a reasonable price to pay for holding a Republican seat. What was most remarkable was not even the admission itself, but that it was acknowledged so openly. Wasn’t that the attitude we were fighting against in 1994?

I’ve always wondered why Republicans insist on acting like Democrats in hopes of retaining political power, while Democrats act like us in order to win.

I’ve also wondered why Republicans let their fears and insecurities get in the way of important reforms. They missed the opportunity of a lifetime by failing to embrace retirement security based on personal ownership. Instead, from both parties we heard about “saving Social Security”–to the extent we heard anything at all. Republicans should be for reforms that free individuals and their families from failed government programs. We should not be for “saving” failed government programs. When we took on welfare reform in 1995, we knew we were taking on a Goliath. Once we threw the first rock, we knew we had to finish the job. Otherwise, the worst claims of our opponents would have stuck with us in future elections. With legislative success, the horrible accusations of our opponents were replaced with reduced welfare roles, and the individual dignity and self-sufficiency that naturally followed.

In 2006, instead of heavy lifting on substantial reforms, House and Senate leaders attempted to rally their political base on wedge issues like illegal immigration and gay marriage. Instead of dealing with spending bills or retirement security, the Senate dedicated two full legislative days to a constitutional ban on gay marriage that no one expected to pass. No substantive legislation was passed dealing seriously with border security and legitimate guest workers (funding for a 700 mile fence was finally authorized, but no funds were appropriated). In both instances, it was pure politics, designed to appeal to angry factions of the GOP base. While Republicans managed to hold conservative Christians, they alienated independents, who represent 26% of the voting population. For the first time in 10 years, independents sided with Democrats by a wide margin. Candidates that bet on the high demagogy coefficient associated with illegal immigration, notably in Arizona, lost.

You can’t build a winning constituency based on anger. The American people expect more. That is a lesson Democrats will soon learn if they wrongly interpret the election results as a mandate to “get even.”

Moving forward, my advice to Republicans is simple: Don’t go back and check on a dead skunk. The question Republicans now need to answer is: How do we once again convince the public that we are in fact the party many Democrats successfully pretended to be in this election? To do so, Republicans will need to shed their dominant insecurities that the public just won’t understand a positive, national vision that is defined by economic opportunity, limited government and individual responsibility.

We need to remember Ronald Reagan’s legacy and again stand for positive, big ideas that get power and money out of politics and government bureaucracy and back into the hands of individuals. We also need again to demonstrate an ability to be good stewards of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money. If Republicans do these things, they will also restore the public’s faith in our standards of personal conduct. Personal responsibility in public life follows naturally if your goal is good public policy.

Besides the obvious impact on the House and Senate, Tuesday’s elections will no doubt redefine the Republican field going into early presidential primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. It will be up to grassroots activists in those battlegrounds to establish a constituency of expectations that anyone aspiring to be the next president of the United States must satisfy. To voters I say: Demand substance and you will get it. To Republican candidates for office I say: Offer good policy and you will create a winning constituency for lower taxes, less government and more freedom.

Mr. Armey, House majority leader between 1995 and 2002, is chairman of FreedomWorks, a national grassroots advocacy organization.