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.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

San Antonio, TX, April 15, 2009 – TURF Founder, Terri Hall, addressed thousands in attendance at the San Antonio Tea Party today at the Alamo. The event hosted Glenn Beck, Ted Nugent, and slew of concerned citizens speaking out against unresponsive government and runaway taxation and spending. Hall spoke about the tax burden of converting existing freeways into toll roads, which is a DOUBLE TAX. She also addressed the shift away from affordable, gas tax-funded roads to public private partnership (PPPs) toll roads, which hands our public infrastructure over to private corporations who charge extremely high tolls, like 75 cents a mile (as evidenced in the two deals inked with Cintra in the DFW area).

The text of the speech is below.

I think the words of a patriot of the past, Thomas Paine, that were uttered in 1776, reflect where we find ourselves again today in America.

He said:
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

Is that not so true today? Fellow Patriots, the Trans Texas Corridor and the widespread proliferation of toll roads, particularly the use of public private partnerships to exploit the eminent domain powers of govt and join it with the financial self-interest of private corporations, is nothing more than an all-out assault on our freedom: the freedom to travel, the freedom to own private property, and the freedom from oppressive taxation and overbearing government. And that, my friends, is tyranny! Though not easily conquered, it can and must be crushed.

The NAFTA Superhighway, known as the Trans Texas Corridor (or TTC for short) to Texans and called a myth by those trying to silence the truth, is very real and even has some segments already under construction. It’s a 4,000 mile, multi-modal network of toll roads, rail lines, utilities, telecommunications, and pipelines of all sorts. It will be up to 1,200 feet wide (4 football fields wide) and will take a total of 580,000 of private land. Two foreign companies partnering with an American company have been given the rights to develop the TTC, which includes the right to build the most lucrative segments without being subjected to competitive bidding, leaving the taxpayers to subsidize the parts that aren’t toll viable.

The TTC will literally bisect whole cities and towns slicing them in two, giving residents, farmers, and schoolchildren no access to the other side of this 1,200 foot wide tollway. In fact, the law states the private operator only has to build overpasses where the corridor intersects state hwys and interstates. So on TTC-35 there are only 5 exits in the entire state of Texas!

So make no mistake, this nightmare called the TTC is alive and well. We’ve personally attended most all of the nearly one hundred TTC hearings since 2006. When more than 40,000 Texans have gone on record against it, politicians take notice. But instead of KILL this nightmare; they try to find new ways to put lipstick on their pig.

Last year, there was an announcement disguised as a victory, where the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, said it would now expand existing highways (primarily Hwy 59) to build TTC-69, instead of building a massive new corridor through rural Texas. But guess what? There’s always a catch when billions of dollars are to be made, and when multi-national corporations are chomping at the bit to get their cheap Chinese goods into the U.S. exploiting cheaper Mexican ports, trucks, and labor.

Let me read to you what the winning bidder, ACS of Spain, said was the purpose of this corridor:

“The TTC-69 will connect the Mexican border with the Gulf of Mexico coastline, Houston and major industrial and logistics centres in Texas with the north of the country.

…ACS (and its partner) the Texan concessionaire Zachry American Infrastructure, have become the successful bidders for the design, planning and development, as strategic partners of…TxDOT, of the TTC-69 infrastructure corridor for the next 50 years.”

The purpose for these corridors is international trade, not congestion relief as our politicians claim, and they have no intention of killing their plans to build these trade routes at Texans’ expense.

Oh they’ll tell you your free lanes will still be there, but they’re fixin’ to do to freeways here in San Antonio (281 &1604) and that is, toll the existing freeway lanes and make the only free lanes, frontage roads. Calling it highway robbery is no exaggeration!

It’s a DOUBLE TAX to charge us again for what we’ve already built and paid for. Concerned citizens through TURF have also been on the front lines fighting the use of stimulus money to build toll roads in yet another DOUBLE TAX scheme. The Transportation Commission voted to use 70% of the federal stimulus funds to build toll roads, yet you’ll have to pay another tax, a toll tax, to drive on them!

Within TWO weeks of TxDOT’s announcement that it’ll use existing roads for TTC-69, TxDOT signed the public private partnership contract with ACS of Spain and Zachry of San Antonio that gives them 12% guaranteed annual profits, a no-bid right to cherry-pick the most lucrative segments to profit from, and they’re not even bringing their own money to the table since 3/4 to 100% of the construction cost will be paid for with YOUR MONEY…that’s right, Texas lawmakers are stealing gas taxes, and public bonds and loans to build the NAFTA superhighway but they’ll charge you again and again to drive on it and give all the profits to Zachry and ACS of Spain!

On January 6 of this year, TxDOT also announced that its renaming the TTC, “Innovative Connectivity” Plan, because 40,000 Texans stood-up against the Trans Texas Corridor. Now they try to fool us by giving this detested project another fancy name, which in reality is just more lipstick for their pig!

We’ve been brow beat with a pack of empty talking points by think tanks and government alike, that these public-private toll deals are free market, and the silver bullet to funding infrastructure without having to raise taxes, because the private partners bring all the money to the table, not cash-strapped govt, and it’s the private partner, not the taxpayers, who carry the financial risk, they’ll say.

Well, all you have to do is dig into any one of the 5 contracts in TX and those in other states (Indiana, Illinois, Florida, and Virginia) to know that not one of those things is true. First of all, a toll is a tax, and, in the case of public-private partnerships, it’s a tax in the hands of corporations, not elected officials! Try 75 cents a mile on for size. That’s the published toll rate Cintra, also based in Spain, will charge on two projects inked just weeks ago in Dallas Ft. Worth.

Second, there is no risk to the private operator when the taxpayers are subsidizing these projects with HEAPS of public money, including gas taxes, and when the state grants investors a non-compete agreement that prohibits the expansion and construction of free roads that “compete” with their tollways, they can guarantee congestion on the free lanes for a half century or more.

When these sweetheart deals fail, like we’ve seen with the mortgage crisis and the subsequent global financial meltdown, it’s the taxpayers on the hook for the debt, not these global corporations.

One contract even gives TxDOT a financial incentive to lower the speed limit on the competing “free” interstate, I-35, to drive more traffic to the high speed Trans Texas Corridor,

Our government has become the puppet of private industry and they’ve figured out how to team-up to make billions off the public’s roadways. These highways belong to WE THE PEOPLE, not the government, not the road lobby.

They have NO right to steal our land in the name of “public use” when it’s really about private gain and big government profiteering that will relegate those who cannot afford the tolls to second class citizens. Eminent domain has always been used for roads, but now for the first time, the government can literally steal your land, pay you next to nothing for it, and give it to a private company for private profit. It’s the Kelo vs. New London case wrapped up in a different colored bow applied to roads.

In Texas, they even passed a law, called quick take, that allows the govt to vacate the landowner within 90 days of notice of condemnation whether or not your case is settled. This almost guarantees the landowner will have to take the state’s offer, because who can re-locate hundreds of head of cattle in 90 days without compensation?

There is a massive war going on in this country between the pro-privatization special interest groups and freedom-loving Americans. The laws have already been dramatically altered to allow these public-private partnerships, and politicians have orchestrated a shift away from an affordable, gas tax funded freeway system to a new policy of prolific and oppressive toll taxation. They’re planning to toll the living daylights out of urban commuters in order to give their cronies government-sanctioned monopolies over YOUR roads that you depend for daily living.

We experienced uncharted territory when gas hit $4 a gallon last year, above the inflation-adjusted high of 1980. We’re back up to $2.00 a gallon right now. The mentality inside the beltway and in Austin is that no matter what they decide to charge us in new toll taxes, that motorists will pay it. They know we have to get to work. We won’t have real alternatives.

This is oppressive taxation on top of skyrocketing fuel costs. There’s only so much money in the family budget that can go to transportation before it takes money away from the necessities. We already see the dramatic decline of the standard of living in America in a very short period of time. It’s only going to get worse, they tell us, in order to condition us into accepting the globalists’ agenda.

Toll roads ultimately chop up our public freeways into a two-tiered highway system; one for those who can afford thousands a year in new toll taxes, and another one those who can’t. And those who can’t afford the toll roads will become second class citizens stuck in congestion while still paying gas taxes, and will also face the reality of having their freeways downgraded to access roads. This is not only UN-Texan, it’s UN-American!

So isn’t this what we’re conditioned to accept in government? We’re endlessly being asked to tighten OUR belts, while both our state and federal governments siphon-off our gas taxes for diversions that don’t even pertain to roads, and squander the rest on frivolous earmarks, like the bridge to nowhere?

How about TxDOT spending $9 million of taxpayer money to wage an ad campaign to advocate tolls roads and the Trans Texas Corridor? TURF filed a complaint with the Travis County District Attorney’s office immediately upon learning of this illegal use of taxpayer money. The DA’s office did nothing. So we filed a lawsuit in civil court to stop TxDOT from spending anymore of our money on taxpayer-funded lobbying.

• Through our lawsuit we’ve discovered that indeed TxDOT has been engaging in illegal lobbying. They can’t say they’re not lobbying when invoices show they’ve hired 5 registered lobbyists to the tune of $100,000 a month to lobby elected officials in Texas and in Washington, particularly targeting local elected officials in the path of the Trans Texas Corridor.
• We found documents that show the purpose of the ad campaign is to “neutralize” toll and TTC opponents and to target counties opposed to the TTC in order to turn the tide of opposition.
• PR firm stated: “The political environment needs to be changed to make it less hostile to the TTC.”  The goal of the campaign is to define the benefits of the TTC to the majority of Texans and help inoculate it from negative attacks.”

• They’ve conducted push polls on the taxpayers’ dime to garner support for the TTC.
• The testimony from someone in the State Auditor’s office found TxDOT knowingly ginned-up bogus funding shortfalls in order to push toll roads!

I’m afraid this doesn’t stop in Texas. Just last summer, a new lobby group called Transportation Transformation or T2 announced that not only TxDOT, but 3 other state DOTs have officially teamed up with the bond investors and private toll road and corridor interests to directly lobby Congress in Washington for more public private partnerships and toll roads.

TURF has actively worked to effect change through the Texas Legislature for the last two sessions. I was appalled at the level of corruption and outright contempt for the average citizen in Austin. When we go to testify for and against bills, we are literally the only ordinary citizens in the room. In fact, these hearing rooms are packed with lobbyists and even 3 & 4 rows deep of standing room only in the back. Do you want to know why your phone calls and comments aren’t heeded in Austin? Because special interests and lobbyists run our government from the shadows. I like to call them the shadow government. We never elect them, and we have no influence over them at the ballot box. They exist solely for their own self-interest; to exploit you and I, the taxpayers, in order to increase our tax burden for their own benefit. It’s a feeding frenzy at the public trough.

In a book by a friend and member of TURF’s Advisory Committee, Dr. Pat Choate called Dangerous Business, the Risks of Globalization for America, he includes an entire section that lists page after page of elected officials turned lobbyists now making six figure + incomes lobbying their former colleagues in Congress for money, lots of it. And this is from just the last two Administrations. That’s why they don’t listen to us any longer, even if we are successful at booting them from office, they know that they and their families will be taken care of by the big money for the rest of their lives. It’s abundantly clear that our elected officials no longer represent us.

We have volunteers handing out an important flyer to you today that gives you a list of bills currently before the Texas Legislature, which is just a taste of the taxation free for all happening in Austin this very hour. Last session, the Legislature placed a moratorium on these public private partnership toll road contracts, but it was a counterfeit moratorium since at least a dozen of the contracts were taken out of the moratorium as evidenced in the two just signed and given to Cintra who will charge us 75 cents a mile to get to work!

The Texas Senate just passed two horrific bills last week: one to re-authorize the private toll contracts that sell our highways to the highest bidder, and the other to allow counties to levy a litany of local taxes on everything that moves like:

– an impact fee for new residents
– a tax on passenger vehicles
– a vehicle registration tax
– a vehicle sales tax
– a sales tax
– a local gas tax increase
– a tax on every mile driven (with no limit)
– a congestion tax for “high congestion areas during peak hours” (in addition to their plan to toll those areas!)
– a driver’s license tax
– an emissions tax and even
– a tax on a parking space.

And that’s not counting other transportation taxing zones that come after your property taxes, too! These are just two of over 400 transportation bills, dwarfed by the grand total of 7,000 bills working their way through the Legislature. One would create an entire state agency that does nothing but write these public private partnership contracts! We cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand or simply wish it all goes away. We need your help to stop this runaway taxation and threat to our freedom to travel!

WE MUST TAKE OUR GOVERNMENT BACK! We need to fight for elected representatives who are public SERVANTS and statesmen, not self-absorbed politicians who exploit those they are elected represent. That means some of you need to be willing to run for public office. All of us need to support candidates who value the Constitution more than winning re-election, and we all MUST get involved in the political process in some way in order to preserve our precious Republic for future generations.  We need leaders who take an oath to always put the public interest above special interests, principle over Party, and values over what’s politically expedient.

It all starts with educating ourselves and our children on the Founders, their lives, and the principles and they fought and died for in order to establish a country based on self-governance, set apart from those before her and after her that still stands as a City on a Hill today, like in this book, For You They Signed, by Marilyn Boyer, that has character studies on the lives of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

We need a new generation of patriots willing to mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to once again establish a free Republic for OUR posterity! We must demand fundamental reform to ensure checks and balances and to put the power back in the hands of the PEOPLE as the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees a free people. If we don’t, our government is on track to bankrupt us and future generations.

So I ask you, have we had enough? I cannot help but be inspired by the resolve of another patriot, Patrick Henry, who said in his famous speech that sparked a revolution:

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

We need to ask ourselves, will we allow our government to shackle us with oppressive taxation just to get to work and go about daily living? Will we allow our government to carve a 1,200 ft wide swath through the heartland of America and sacrifice private property rights in the name of foreign trade and commerce? Or will we continue to fight a new revolution, a taxpayer revolt, a political movement to stop the sale of America’s freeways to the highest bidder on Wall Street, to stop tolls across Texas and America, protect our right to own property without fear of government abuses, and preserve our way of life and our precious freedoms bought with a price from those who came before us?

They, those who have sold out American freedom in favor of the almighty dollar and the intoxication of power, aren’t counting on you and me and this freedom movement taking our government back. But as for me, and I think all of you here today and the hundreds of thousands who couldn’t be with us, the resounding answer is: give us liberty!

May this event spark a movement of ordinary citizens from all walks of life and all political stripes who have had enough of abusive, overbearing government and who see the dire necessity to change course. We stand at a crossroads, and may this day, April 15, 2009 mark a turning point back to Constitutionally-restrained government, and one that’s OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, and FOR THE PEOPLE!

We invite you to get involved and join us on the frontlines of a taxpayer revolt to preserve our freedom to travel by visiting our table right next to the KSLR and WOAI booths to the right of the stage or going to the Texas TURF.org web site. No one else can do it for us; we MUST do this ourselves. Government certainly doesn’t fix itself. We often feel like Peter, the little Dutch boy who had his finger in the crack of the dike and held back certain disaster for his homeland. We need more people in this fight. It will take a Texas-sized tax revolt to stop the assault on our freedom and prosperity.

But most importantly, never give up, do not falter, and NEVER waver in the cause of liberty. If this one homeschool mom can start a movement that spread across this state to influence the Texas Legislature, all the way to Washington D.C., and recently even to Denmark, so can each and every one of you. Thank you and may God bless and preserve what our Founders’ inherently knew was a fragile Republic, the United States of America!

Link to story here.

Opening the door to more private toll road contracts (UPDATE)
By Peggy Fikac – Houston Chronicle
Transportation officials could enter into new agreements with private companies to operate toll roads – with restrictions – under a pair of bills approved today by the Texas Senate.

The measures, which still need House consideration, represent the latest steps in the battle over leasing toll roads to private companies.

Lawmakers allowed the public-private partnerships in 2003. In the face of a public outcry, they put a moratorium on new agreements (with exceptions) four years later.

Both the moratorium and the ability to enter into such agreements are set to expire later this year.

Senate Bill 404 by Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, would extend the authority of the Texas Department of Transportation and regional mobility authorities to enter into so-called comprehensive development agreements through at least 2015 – but only if protections included in another bill also take effect.

Those protections in SB17 by Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, include specifying that local authorities and then the state have first right to develop a project as a publicly owned and operated one.

In addition, Nichols’ bill says a contract with a private entity must specify a purchase price in case the state ever needed to buy back the project. The current standard is “fair market value,” which would leave the state on the hook for an unspecified amount of money.

Carona said the private toll agreements are needed as one financing tool, especially since lawmakers for years have balked at raising the gasoline tax that also funds roads.

Anti-toll activist Terri Hall of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom said the private toll agreements amount to selling the state’s highways in exchange for quick cash. She and like-minded activists want transportation officials’ authority to enter into such agreements to expire.

Hall also said the protections in SB17 could be waived. I’m waiting for some clarification on that from Nichols’ office.

UPDATE: Nichols’ office said steps in the process could be waived – such as maximum timelines for making a decision – but not protections.

Senators also approved another transportation-related bill, SB970, by Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, to would delete a requirement that TxDOT’s executive director be a registered professional engineer.

It would add the requirement that the executive director be experienced and skilled in transportation planning and development and organizational management. That bill also goes to the House.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Austin, TX, April 1, 2009) 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. Private toll road contracts are due to sunset this fall. Today, the Texas Senate will vote on whether to extend these contracts called Comprehensive Development Agreements (CDAs) in Texas also known as public private partnerships (PPPs). CDAs need to sunset. In 2007, Texans stood-up and demanded a moratorium on CDAs and sent a bill to the Governor with a combined vote of 169-4.

So what happened to our politicians? Do they think Texans have changed their mind and will choke down the loss of control of our public highways and such oppressive taxation?

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

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. Especially in these economic times, that’s completely unsustainable. There were 20 lawyers present at the signing of the SH 130 CDA. TxDOT has squandered at least $18 million on legal fees alone for just the TTC-35 CDA. When TxDOT is claiming we’re out of money for roads, CDAs are the height of hypocrisy.

CDAs are the most risky and expensive method of delivering toll projects. How quickly the testimony from Dennis Enright of Northwest Financial in New Jersey before the Senate Transportation Committee March 1, 2007 has been forgotten. 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.

So why are CDAs being discussed at all? 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.

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. 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?

Texas examples…

The recently signed I-820 deal includes gas taxes, federal TIFIA loans, and other public money 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 project to toll I-635 uses public employee pension funds to invest in the deal, which is risky and fiscally irresponsible, 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!

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 is the most insidious of all where they jack-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!

Call your state lawmakers and tell them not to let private corporations takeover our public highways. Tell them NO to SB 17, and NO to more sweetheart deals.

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

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.

Protecting the public interest is PARAMOUNT! How we do that is the open question here today.

We have some concerns with HB 2929/SB 17 as drafted. CDAs need to go away completely. CDAs are almost universally opposed wherever we go in Texas, they cost 50% more, are failing all over the country, and result in extremely high tolls, like the DFW contracts just signed that will charge commuters 75 cents a mile to get to work! That’s $3,000 a year in new toll taxes. Especially in these economic times, that’s unsustainable!

And knowing how TxDOT operates and how it has become an extension of private industry instead of the guardian of the public interest, we think there are some gaping holes through which TxDOT will gladly leap through using the language of this bill, particularly the loophole that allows them to waive all the requirements and pass go…to hand the project directly to private toll operators.

HB 2929/SB 17:

– Allows compensation to the private developer for the future loss of toll revenue (Sec. 301.103) in the form of a non-compete agreement for up to 30 years. Though you could argue the Dept. can still build anything in an MPO plan and for safety and maintenance, we’ve seen TxDOT strip-out projects from the MPO plans in anticipation of selling bonds where the bond investor required a non-compete. So this will be manipulated in favor of the private investors placing the public interest at risk (by guaranteeing congestion on surrounding free roads for 30 years).
– We feel strongly that the State Auditor should still review these contracts. Even on a public toll project, US 281 in San Antonio, the Auditor reviewed the terms of a design-build CDA and found the RMA had not properly factored the price of gas into their toll viability studies and recommended they re-do the study. The public deserves this extra protection.
– Allows the private developer to receive “fair market value” for a PUBLIC road. We’d like to see the bill require transparency on the debt owed (to avoid a self-reported figure) and have the calculation of “fair market value” scrutinized for soundness by the State Auditor or the public will, once again, be left holding the bag.
– TxDOT will naturally decline the project as a public project in favor of a private concession as they’ve already demonstrated when asking Harris County to sell their toll system to a private entity. The way this is structured, if the public toll entity like an NTTA cannot get the financing together (or the bonding capacity), they’d have to pass this to TxDOT and then TxDOT could hand it to the private developer, especially to use private funds to subsidize a toll project that can’t stand on its own feet (that isn’t 100% toll viable) (Sec 373.054). So this section ultimately doesn’t give the public protection, but shows TxDOT they can just wait it out, not provide any public subsidies (like TMF funds, other discretionary funds, etc) until they get possession of the project and then they can hand it to the private companies.
– Allows TxDOT & toll entity to waive these steps, which defeats the purpose of the bill (Sec 373.057) and allows them to jump precipitously into a CDA.

Ultimately, we’d like to see an honest, legitimate process to evaluate ALL road projects with a process that helps us determine FIRST between tolled and non-tolled, then go to a public or private toll road evaluation scenario. This assumes most projects will be tolled. All these pots of public money being used to subsidize toll projects that won’t collect enough toll revenue to pay for the cost of construction, operation, and maintenance simply should NOT be built as toll projects. If they’re not 100% toll sustainable, don’t build them as toll roads! To subsidize toll projects with public money is a DOUBLE and TRIPLE tax scenario unduly burdening our citizens for generations to come.

What it comes down to is, the citizens do not trust any process where the status quo Transportation Commission is still in place. As we described, TxDOT can quite easily hand over a massive portion of our highway system to private operators through CDAs (even using this process) that would cost 50% more than publicly owned projects and are faltering or failing all over the country. Not one PPP could even be held up as a model during the CDA Study Committee hearings, not even by the FHWA Administration who has been pushing this stuff.

Instead of investing so much time and effort on how to cage the beast of CDAs unleashed by HB 3588 in the Williamson era, allow them to ride off into the sunset as scheduled and chart a new course. Modestly raise the statewide gas tax and get back to the business of building and maintaining a STATE highway system, instead of a slice and dice, hodge-podge separating rich from poor, urban and rural, and the city-state system you’re creating versus ONE unified and uniform system we can all easily access and be proud of again.

Link to article here. The best line of the whole hearing came from Rep. Yvonne Davis (and more than once): “Is this agency worth keeping?” She questioned if we’re going to micromanage TxDOT this closely, why not scrap the whole agency and start over. To this we cheered and said, “Amen!”

Fixing TxDoT before dusk. Isett possible?
TxDoT’s sunset bill to be Picketted apart in committee. BY Ben Wright
The Newspaper Tree.com
April 1, 2009

House Bill 300 is a big deal for both the Texas Department ofTransportation and Texas.

According to it’s author state Rep. Carl Isett, R-Lubbock, it would“change the agency from top to bottom” creating a “whole new paradigm” that would allow localities to “chart their own destinies” when it came to transportation planning.

“Our vision for this bill is to transform this agency (TxDoT) from one that now acts as the final arbitrator … to one that acts as a partner with our local communities,” Isett told reporters after a public hearing for the bill yesterday.

The Lubbock representative added the bill would make TxDoT more transparent by creating an online reporting system to show the progress of projects.

“Every Texan will be able to get online and look at their project and see the process,” he said.

The most obvious and potentially controversial provision of HB 300 would do away with the five-member Texas Transportation Commission, which El Pasoan Ted Houghton currently sits on, and replace it with a single commissioner appointed by the Governor. Another provision would create a Transportation Legislative Oversight Committee consisting of six appointed state reps and senators.

TxDoT would be headed by a single administrator while the committee would be there to ensure accountability.

The bill represents several years of work and research into TxDoT, one of the state agencies up for review and possible elimination this session by the Sunset Advisory Commission. According to Sunset’s website, the commission’s staff produces a report with recommendations on agencies under review. The report then goes to the commission, made up of members of the Texas House, Senate and members of the general public. (See document below.)

The commission, which votes on its decisions, can accept or reject any aspects of the staff report in crafting legislative recommendations. HB 300 represents “verbatim the recommendations of the commission,” Isett said. As such, the author does not agree with everything his bill would do, particularly the downsizing of the Texas Transportation Commission from five commissioners to one.

“I personally don’t support that. I know that the Senate does not support it so we’ll just have to see how that plays out,” said Isett, who believes more commissioners means more input from different parts of Texas in TxDoT decisions.

“Multiple commissioners give El Paso a commissioner. They give Lubbock a commissioner. They give Central Texas a commissioner,” Isett said.

Furthermore, Isett believes only having one commissioner could jeopardize TxDoT’s transparency. Because the transportation commission has five members, it is subject to the Texas Open Meetings Act, and its decisions are made, “in the light of day,” Isett said.

But the five-member commission has hardly been transparent, argues Terri Hall, representing the group, “Texas Turf” at Tuesday’s hearing. Hall wants to see the five-member TTC replaced by a single elected commissioner.

“I think an agency is more accountable, more efficient and more streamlined when you have elected leadership,” Hall said after the hearing. She also called HB 300 “woefully inadequate” and questioned whether the bill truly represented the Sunset Commission’s recommendations.

“I’m hearing from people on that commission that ‘this is not the bill we wanted. … It’s Isett’s bill, not necessarily the commission’s bill,’”Hall said.

Hall’s testimony at the hearing raised concerns about how the Bill. Texas turf are concerned about a clause which would require TxDoT to maximize alternate (private) sources of investment in road building.

“How is the agency supposed to do that without toll roads?” Hall said, arguing that toll roads are “taxation without representation” and make TxDoT a “de facto taxing agency.”

Hall said if private entities want to build toll roads fairly, they should offer landowners market rate for rights-of-way, finance the deals themselves, and recoup their investment through toll revenue.

But according to Hall. That is not what happens.

Because TxDoT have become the “arm of private toll operators,” such companies are able (through TxDoT) to use eminent domain to take the land, pay for nothing and run roads for profit.

“That is not only un-Texan. It is an outrage,” said Hall.

The bill will now be worked on by the House Transportation Committee, chaired by state Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso. On Tuesday, testifying witnesses and committee members all agreed that, as-is, HB 300 isn’t a done deal.

“In my opinion, the bill needs to address a lot of the questions brought up here today,” Pickett said.

But the key to fixing TxDoT may have nothing to do with the number of people on the TTC, how many private contracts are doled out, or the number of toll roads that get built.

Pickett wants to roll his own bill, HB 2589, into HB 300, to change formula funding and hand more decisions on spending transportation dollars to local communities. In essence, that would mean more money would come to the local MPOs and less would go to TxDoT’s discretionary pot.

By putting controversial decisions like toll roads and private contracts in the hands of the local communities, Pickett thinks that many of the problems associated with TxDoT would be eliminated.

“I believe if we use and strengthen the language I‘ve got in (HB) 2589, then a lot of the other issues we’ve got become a moot point.” Pickett said.

Isett seemed open to that idea Tuesday. Regarding HB 2589 and HB 300 he said, “we have to make sure all the pieces fit together.”

But Hall remains cautionary. While believing HB 2589 could go a long way to improving HB 300, she was keen to stress elected leadership as the solution for TxDoT.

“We’re trying to make it very clear that the status quo is not acceptable,” said Hall. “We’re already at the point where we would like to see TxDoT scrapped completely. They are a king on a high throne and they don’t answer to anybody.”

Related Documents:

• Sunset’s Jan 09 report on TxDoT