Today the Joint Study Committee on Private Participation in Toll Projects (mandated by the private toll moratorium bill) invited boatloads of bureaucrats and private sector road building contractors (engineering firms, law firms, financial consultants, etc.) to sing the praises of private toll deals before state lawmakers (and the Governor’s 3 appointees, all pro-privatization and pro-TxDOT…think people who believe TxDOT walks on water, tells no lies, and is always right).

A few government folks warned Public Private Partnerships (or PPPs) are not prudent or do-able in all situations, but none repudiated them outright or recommended the Legislature do away with them. At a Senate Transportation Committee hearing March 1, 2007, PPP expert Dennis Enright with Northwest Financial in New Jersey said PPPs cost 50% more, the private sector assumes NO FINANCIAL RISK (though PPP advocates claim “risk transfer” is the advantage of doing a private deal), and recommended toll projects always stay in the public sector. No such moral clarity today. One thing’s clear: the highway lobby and the PPP chief cheerleader, Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation, have been very busy lobbying our elected officials since the hearing March 1, 2007.

It was all a taxpayer could do to keep his/her cool when listening to the spin and the brazen attempts to raid our wallets with the highest possible toll “the market will bear,” simply because they can. The hogs at the trough are alive and well and far outnumber the ordinary citizens who can take off work to sit in a 6 hour hearing (with no breaks, but lawmakers always have a “back room” stocked with drinks and food both in Austin at today’s meeting) before they can give a stitch of testimony against these sweetheart deals that amount to a public fleecing.

Read the TURF testimony (which we were not allowed to finish before being cut off) here.

A Secretary from the Florida Department of Transportation even admitted the primary funding source for their PPP deals is private activity bonds (or PABs), which is a pot of public money established by the feds to encourage private toll contracts (note how it’s cloaked with “private” in the title).

VA Secretary of DOT a STAR!!!!!

Deputy Secretary of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), Barbara Reese, stole the show today and displayed the kind of integrity and leadership we need at TxDOT. We liked her so much we suggested the Legislature get her down here to run TxDOT post-haste!

She described how Virginia’s DOT approaches transportation starting with “an unwavering commitment to the public good” (since someone has to pay that tax/toll) and total transparency (“no closed door deals”). They have a section of their web site where anyone at any time can examine the performance of any contract and, hence, the department’s technical and financial decisions on behalf of taxpayers.

Reese also noted that they’re very open and candid about what they’re doing and why, and emphasized they involve the public at every step of the process. She was specifically asked by one of the committee members if they proceeded with a project if the public didn’t want it, and she emphatically said, “No.” What a novel concept, actually listening to the public who pays the bills…TxDOT and our Texas politicians have a lot to learn about integrity and serving the public interest from VDOT.

She said 80-90% of their road maintenance has been outsourced from government to the private sector which has subsequently reduced the number of VDOT employees from 12,000 down to 8,600. Here’s the kicker. If a VDOT project wasn’t done in time or came in overbudget, “you have a lot of explaining to do and possibly could lose your job.” How refreshing! A government agency that will actually fire people who don’t deliver for the taxpayers! I’m concluding TxDOT’s recent $1 billion accounting error and ad campaign selling tolls roads and the Trans Texas Corridor to the public using TAXPAYER MONEY would have resulted in heads rolling at VDOT. Where’s the accountability at TxDOT?

Hogs at the trough get trotted out

Then out came the private sector firms (who will profit handsomely from PPPs and toll roads) blowing sunshine in lawmakers’ ears about what the private sector brings to the table. They talked about “risk transfer” and tried to claim since a private lender is involved in private deals, that the deal is more scrutinized than a public sector model. Oh really, is that how we arrived at the current subprime mortgage crisis? Because lenders were so good at “scrutinizing” buyers’ ability to make payments? Let’s remember who bailed that mess out…we the TAXPAYERS did. There is no private “risk” anymore. It’s the taxpayers, the taxpayers, and ONLY the taxpayers who pay the price for corporate America’s mistakes and our government’s malfeasance.

URS and other companies who do these traffic and revenue toll viability studies are known for perpetually OVERprojecting the expected amount of traffic that will take these toll roads, and when the cars don’t materialize, it’s once again the taxpayers who bail out the failed toll road, like we did on the failed Camino Columbia toll road in Laredo (and there’s plenty of examples of failed toll roads in Florida, and in VA and elsewhere). It’s a total scam, they’ll say and do anything to get these toll roads built, sell the bonds, get their money, and leave the taxpayers holding the bag. I’ve even heard companies admit they can’t tell TxDOT the truth because then they’ll never hire them for these studies again. It’s all about the money, folks. The public good gets checked at the door. It’s been long since buried in Texas.

Very few start-up toll roads are financially viable

Well, the fact most of these toll projects aren’t 100% toll sustainable has been abundantly obvious since day one of the Governor and Legislature’s shift to tolling. They’re using all kinds of public subsidies to make the projects work so that they can still toll you! Wisdom and prudence would say if the road can’t be paid for by the tolls, then don’t build it as a toll road, period. No so with today’s politicians. They instead choose to subsidize it so they can still tap the vein and get their revenue stream.

So don’t believe them when tollers claim you have a choice whether to pay to take a toll road. No you don’t, a heap of YOUR public money is going into nearly every one of these projects, but you won’t be able to drive on them without paying a toll, too, in a double or even triple tax scheme. Why do you think they’re tolling existing freeways? Because they can make an extra BIG heap of cash off roads already built and paid for!

Any discussion of market valuation is always very revealing. The purpose of market-based tolls is to “maximize the profits” from the road (as we warned when we tried to kill this provision in the bill last year). Lawmakers and private firms said so repeatedly at the hearing. This shift to tolling has always been about creating a new revenue stream for road builders without having to raise the gas tax. Politicians honestly think raising the gas tax will bring worse political fallout than tolling. Well, they’re learning that’s a false hope. See, it’s not that they’re averse to raising your taxes, they do it all the time, they think tolls can ultimately be blamed on local government decisions so they basically think they get to pass the buck with tolling. There’s no question that paying tolls on all new lanes/roads will be the largest tax increase in Texas history, period, and there’s blame at EVERY level of government.

PPPs more expensive than public toll roads

The private firms admitted PPPs cost the taxpayers more, not to mention loss of control, but they think it’s justified since in some circumstances the road can’t be built without the private money since many public tolling entities have maxed their proverbial bond debt credit cards. So instead of restrain government spending and rein-in the prolific use of leveraged debt to get new roads built, their argument is the public should pay even more to have a private company build, maintain, and control our roads in 50+ year deals for the ultimate quick fix.

The road building industry is hitting tough times, like all of us hit hard by the recession, so instead of tighten their belts like we have to, they want the taxpayers to suspend all rational fiscal policy and allow PPPs to continue in Texas when we can least afford them.

Tolls not a “user” fee

Sasha Page of Infrastructure Management Group (IMG), a financial firm that consults on such deals, even admitted the private sector attraction to toll roads is due to the “monopolistic characteristics” of toll roads. Cha ching! You got it! Again, the testimony of industry experts time and again shows toll roads are monopolies, they are not “free market” as tollers try to tell us. And, tolling is not a user fee, it’s a tax, especially when they use a mix of other public funds to build them.

Market valuation, in particular, is another Robin Hood scheme to jack up the toll beyond the actual cost of the road and milk that money from one set of motorists and give it to another set. A user fee is directly tied to the user of the road as it is with traditional turnpikes. Toll advocates complain the gas tax is flawed because the payer is too far removed from actual road use because all the money gets put in a pot and gets redistributed. Well, that precisely what they’re doing with market valuation and PPPs. All told, they’re putting the money in a pot and spending it elsewhere, not on the road where the toll is collected.

Advocates will say it’s not fair to raise the gas tax for everyone, like in rural Texas, to solve congestion in Houston or Dallas. First of all, rural areas get far more back in gas taxes than they put in and urban areas have donated to rural areas since the gas tax first started. There simply isn’t enough population in rural areas to support any highway being built/maintained. The bottom line is this: we’ve all decided public infrastructure and connectivity of all our roads, whether urban or rural, are important and necessary and we’ve all agreed to pool the money collected for roadways to support and maintain a STATEWIDE highway system. All Texans benefit from our highway system, whether it’s to get to work, get goods to market, or to visit Grandma in another town, we all use and need our highway system.

Toll advocates bring up this straw man gas tax argument to stir-up strife and division among various regions as an excuse to push the most expensive transportation tax, toll taxes, on all of us without a public vote.

Market valuation is hard for politicians to sell back home

Representative Wayne Smith, who is the House author of SB 792 that unleashed market valuation on Texans, told Geoff Yarema, with the law firm that represents TxDOT in PPPs, that he’s having trouble selling market valuation to constituents. “Telling people that we’re extracting the maximum revenue from a toll road to go build more toll roads where we extract the maximum revenue is hard to sell back home, can you help us with that?” Smith asked.

You bet that’s hard to “sell” to constituents, because they recognize runaway taxation and gouging when they see it! They’re tired of being gouged at the gas pump and add market-based tolls on top of it, and you have an all out taxpayer revolt brewing. We tried to warn these guys market valuation is DISASTROUS public policy and we begged them to kill it, but lawmakers wanted to go home at the end of the last session rather than fight with the Governor over toll road policy. Some of them may well be going home from Austin for good when this mess hits the fan in the voting booth!

Reason Foundation infecting lawmakers

Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation again suggested that the federal law prohibiting the public and private sector from competing with one another on such contracts ought to be repealed. I repeatedly ran into the Reason Foundation lobbyists in lawmakers’ offices at the Capitol during the 80th Legislative session. They have infected the Texas Public Policy Foundation and other “free market” think tanks convincing them toll roads and privatizing infrastructure is free market and the best way to finance transportation. But for all the reasons laid out above and throughout this web site, toll roads as conceived under PPPs and the new policies under Bush and Perry are anything but free market or good public policy. It’s the MOST EXPENSIVE, monopolistic, runaway, Robin Hood form of taxation put into the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats.

Link to article here.

Fight Back Against Big Oil
By Bill O’Reilly
Published in Texas Insider: 04-28-08
So now we have the presidential candidates running around telling voters that they will help solve the problem of high gas prices. Well, if you believe that, you’ll believe that Hugo Chavez drives a Yugo. It’s just bull.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are calling for “investigations” into “price gouging” by American oil companies. Good. There’s plenty of price manipulation going on and, under Presidents Bush and Clinton, little federal oversight. If a big oil company wants to tighten supply, for example, it’s a snap. Just slow down the refinery process by ordering extra “maintenance” or something.

But who is going to investigate Sens. Obama and Clinton on their opposition to oil drilling? The Democratic Party has consistently opposed new drilling and nuclear energy, as well. Even the dedicated liberal governments in France and Sweden bought into nuclear. But not the American left, no way.

On the Republican side, President Bush has done absolutely nothing about rising gas prices, which is part of the reason his approval rating is approaching 20 percent. He blames the Democrats. Fine. But the president should be telling all Americans to cut back their gas consumption by 15 percent. He should be urging us to use less gas. That would at least cut into big oil’s record profit margins.

Sen. John McCain proposes a gas tax “holiday” this summer. True, that would save the folks a few bucks, but it would also add to the massive spending deficit. The government better start balancing the budget soon, before Haagen-Dazs becomes more valuable than the U.S. currency.

The sad truth is that both political parties have sold out the folks. For decades, economists knew China and India were industrializing, and that those countries would demand much greater amounts of oil. Everybody knew that OPEC would slow down production and gouge the world if it could, and of course, now it can.

But if Americans would get angry and begin punishing the oil bandits, prices would drop. However, we are often a selfish people. We want those gas-guzzling Hummers and SUVs, and we’re paying a big price for that, above and beyond the sticker.

If I were president, I’d be on every program, leading the charge to buy less gas, urging folks to conserve energy in creative ways. I’d create peer pressure against the guzzle crowd. I’d name the names of greedy oil company CEOs making tens of millions of dollars while working folks suffer.

We need leadership on this energy business or it is going to cripple our economy. Our energy incompetence has already empowered our enemies.

So let’s get angry out there. We the people can do this. Big oil is not looking out for us. Let’s stop rewarding it.

Veteran TV news anchor Bill O’Reilly is host of the Fox News show “The O’Reilly Factor” and author of the book “Who’s Looking Out For You?”

Link to article here.

We all know TxDOT has been manipulating their budget to make it look like the gas tax will only cover road maintenance and no new road construction so they can push their toll road agenda. Sworn testimony in TURF’s lawsuit to stop TxDOT from using taxpayer money to sell tolls roads and the Trans Texas Corridor shows TxDOT has also moved up when a highway needs to be re-surfaced by 10 years from the industry standard in order to blow through their maintenance money even faster. So with that said, it still makes no sense to shift money from maintenance to building new roads if they claim there isn’t enough money to maintain them!

Panel relents, shifting $5 billion to new roadways
By Patrick Driscoll
Express-News
04/24/2008

The Texas Transportation Commission, buckling to pressure, decided Thursday to let highways decay some during the next decade rather than follow through on a scare to choke off all construction money — including funds for the U.S. 281 toll road.
Commissioners recently drew heat after saying funds were too scarce to cover both maintenance and construction, and that keeping roads in good shape was more important.

But commissioners, apparently feeling that keeping testy state lawmakers off their backs is even more important, voted 4-0 to shift $5 billion from maintenance to construction.

“Philosophically, I don’t think you let your house deteriorate and then go build a new garage,” Commissioner Ted Houghton said before casting his aye. “I think we’re headed down, no pun intended, a very rocky road.”

Among construction projects saved from the chopping block is the 8-mile U.S. 281 tollway north of Loop 1604 in San Antonio, which needs $112 million in public money along with toll-backed bonds for construction to get under way this year.

However, another $213 million public subsidy for toll lanes and interchange ramps along Loop 1604, from Culebra Road to U.S. 281, has been slashed to $104 million, which means some parts could be delayed, said Terry Brechtel of the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority.

“So one of our projects will get delayed if the Legislature doesn’t come up with new funding,” she said.

State lawmakers next year could authorize funds to support $6.5 billion worth of transportation bonds. The Texas Department of Transportation says that would provide about $5.2 billion for roadwork after engineering and land-purchase costs are subtracted.

How much of that could be redirected back into maintenance is unknown. Legislators could attach strings, and transportation commissioners would also have designs on it.

“If things should change, we can restore the money back into maintenance,” commission Chairwoman Hope Andrade said.

The Transportation Commission’s 11-year outlook leaves $12 billion for maintenance, half of what’s needed to meet a goal of getting nine out of 10 roads in good condition.

Officials estimate that just 80 percent of roads will be in good shape by 2019, down 7 percent from today. By then, $9 billion more will be needed to reach the 90 percent goal.

Right to New Judge Asserted in HD 73 Election Contest
Mandamus Requested from Third Court of Appeals
April 24, 2008

Today, State Representative Nathan Macias filed a Writ of Mandamus Petition and a Request for Temporary Relief with the Third Court of Appeals in Austin. Macias is asking the Third Court of Appeals to reverse assigned visiting Judge James Clawson’s decision to remain as the presiding trial judge over the election contest, contrary to Macias’ objection to Clawson’s assignment. Because of the extremely tight schedule for the election contest, Macias is also asking the Third Court of Appeals to expedite their ruling and stay the trial court proceedings until the Third Court rules.

Macias said, “Under the law, Chapter 74 of the Texas Government Code, every civil litigant has the right to one objection of an assigned visiting judge. It is simply a matter of right, not cause, and I trust the panel that hears the appeal will agree with our position.”

Presiding Judge of the region, the Honorable B. B. Schraub assigned Judge Clawson to hear this case because the sitting district judges of Comal County are statutorily disqualified from hearing the election contest.

Former District Judge and Macias’ lead counsel, Rene Diaz said, “We believe the assignment of Judge Clawson was a normal assignment made under the authority of the Government code, and objections to an assigned judge under Chapter 74 of the Government Code are routinely granted every day throughout the Texas civil court system. There simply is no recognized exception under the law for election contests.”

Diaz added, “If our position is correct, then all of Judge Clawson’s rulings at this point are null and void, and the case would automatically have to be tried all over again. Nobody wants that to happen. This trial is too important; therefore, we determined it best to seek a ruling from the Third Court of Appeals on this matter.”

Currently the election contest trial is set for May 19th, with a pre-trial hearing set for May 14th. It is unknown at this time exactly what effect the Third Court of Appeals ruling will have on the timeline of the trial, although Macias asked the Third Court to expedite their ruling on the Mandamus appeal.

Macias concluded, “We are anticipating a positive result both here at the appellate court and in the ultimate outcome of the election contest.”

Link to article here.

Fuel prices have been steadily driving up the cost of food. Read more here.

Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World
By JOSH GERSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | April 21, 2008

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing.

ROMEO GACAD/AFP/Getty

Click to enlarge>

Rice is stored at a National Food Authority warehouse at Manila, the Philippines, on April 17.

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

“Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.”

The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99.

“You can’t eat this every day. It’s too heavy,” a health care executive from Palo Alto, Sharad Patel, grumbled as his son loaded two sacks of the Basmati into a shopping cart. “We only need one bag but I’m getting two in case a neighbor or a friend needs it,” the elder man said.

The Patels seemed headed for disappointment, as most Costco members were being allowed to buy only one bag. Moments earlier, a clerk dropped two sacks back on the stack after taking them from another customer who tried to exceed the one-bag cap.

“Due to the limited availability of rice, we are limiting rice purchases based on your prior purchasing history,” a sign above the dwindling supply said.

Shoppers said the limits had been in place for a few days, and that rice supplies had been spotty for a few weeks. A store manager referred questions to officials at Costco headquarters near Seattle, who did not return calls or e-mail messages yesterday.

An employee at the Costco store in Queens said there were no restrictions on rice buying, but limits were being imposed on purchases of oil and flour. Internet postings attributed some of the shortage at the retail level to bakery owners who flocked to warehouse stores when the price of flour from commercial suppliers doubled.

The curbs and shortages are being tracked with concern by survivalists who view the phenomenon as a harbinger of more serious trouble to come.

“It’s sporadic. It’s not every store, but it’s becoming more commonplace,” the editor of SurvivalBlog.com, James Rawles, said. “The number of reports I’ve been getting from readers who have seen signs posted with limits has increased almost exponentially, I’d say in the last three to five weeks.”

Spiking food prices have led to riots in recent weeks in Haiti, Indonesia, and several African nations. India recently banned export of all but the highest quality rice, and Vietnam blocked the signing of a new contract for foreign rice sales.

“I’m surprised the Bush administration hasn’t slapped export controls on wheat,” Mr. Rawles said. “The Asian countries are here buying every kind of wheat.”

Mr. Rawles said it is hard to know how much of the shortages are due to lagging supply and how much is caused by consumers hedging against future price hikes or a total lack of product.

“There have been so many stories about worldwide shortages that it encourages people to stock up. What most people don’t realize is that supply chains have changed, so inventories are very short,” Mr. Rawles, a former Army intelligence officer, said. “Even if people increased their purchasing by 20%, all the store shelves would be wiped out.”

At the moment, large chain retailers seem more prone to shortages and limits than do smaller chains and mom-and-pop stores, perhaps because store managers at the larger companies have less discretion to increase prices locally.

Mr. Rawles said the spot shortages seemed to be most frequent in the Northeast and all the way along the West Coast. He said he had heard reports of buying limits at Sam’s Club warehouses, which are owned by Wal-Mart Stores, but a spokesman for the company, Kory Lundberg, said he was not aware of any shortages or limits.

An anonymous high-tech professional writing on an investment Web site, Seeking Alpha, said he recently bought 10 50-pound bags of rice at Costco. “I am concerned that when the news of rice shortage spreads, there will be panic buying and the shelves will be empty in no time. I do not intend to cause a panic, and I am not speculating on rice to make profit. I am just hoarding some for my own consumption,” he wrote.

For now, rice is available at Asian markets in California, though consumers have fewer choices when buying the largest bags. “At our neighborhood store, it’s very expensive, more than $30” for a 25-pound bag, a housewife from Mountain View, Theresa Esquerra, said. “I’m not going to pay $30. Maybe we’ll just eat bread.”

Link to article here.

In case you’re like me and had to rub your eyes and re-focus on the text to make sure I’m reading this right, some of our politicians are clearly drinking the tax-and-spend Kool-Aid that afflicts most politicos when they’ve been wined and dined sufficiently by lobbyists who demand more tax money for their industries.

We have a global economic crisis fueled by high gas prices that are subsequently driving up the cost of necessities like food. We have riots and food rationing around the globe, including in our own country. We have all time high home foreclosures, a mortgage and credit crisis, and these politicians have the unmitigated gall to champion not only gas tax hikes, but also the MOST expensive transportation tax, toll roads! They’ve LOST THEIR MINDS! The best solution: throw the bums out so they can return to the real world and be reminded of what it’s like to EARN a living in these tough economic times.

Toll roads, higher gas taxes predicted
04/21/2008
By Patrick Driscoll
Express-News

AUSTIN — When it comes to the big picture, two ranking members of the U.S. House Transportation Committee, one Republican and the other Democrat, were on the same page in separate speeches Monday.Building toll roads and leasing some to private corporations will be needed to keep traffic moving on the nation’s highways, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, and Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., told more than 1,000 people at the Texas Transportation Forum.

But so will higher gas taxes, though the pair differed on how.

Johnson said the 18.4 cents-a-gallon federal tax needs to go up at least a nickel and that states need to boost rates, too.

“We know there’s got to be an increase in the gas tax eventually,” she said.

Mica said the tax probably should be calibrated to rise with an inflation index and that a per-mile tax then should be phased in within a decade using vehicle-tracking technologies.

“Oh yeah, I think you’re going to have to do that,” he said.

Both talks hit on all cylinders for a crowd made up mostly of government and industry officials hungry to hear how more funds can be poured into transportation.

The Texas Department of Transportation, which held the forum, recently retrenched and targeted nearly all its gas tax and fee collections into maintenance.

“The reality is, we’re in a difficult financial situation,” TxDOT Assistant Director Phil Russell said at an afternoon session. “Right now, across the state, any addition in capacity is probably going to have to be looked at as toll lanes.”

Toll roads and privatization are at least part of the answer, said Johnson, who’s been working with a handful of members of Congress from Texas since last year to come up with a bipartisan list of recommendations.

“We cannot see how it can be done with just tax dollars,” she said.

Mica, who’s calling for a national vision and policy for transportation, said all funding options must be weighed.

Congress should consider taxes and fees, innovative financial packaging and public-private partnerships to harvest $1.5 trillion for the next five-year transportation bill, which is due next year, he said.

Such a bill would be five times larger than the current law.

“Hang in there, baby, you’ll see,” Mica said. “I think we can do it.”

____________________________________

Toll roads, education and wood chips
Toll-road warriors camped out at the Texas Transportation Forum through today spent due time fretting over why toll proposals ignite public uproars, and brainstormed on ways to soothe tempers.

The elusive balm is education, not to be confused with advocacy, they insisted. If people only knew how little funding there is to build and maintain roads for growing traffic, they’d jump on board to help find answers.

“Frankly, we neglected the public education aspect of it from the beginning,” said U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, a forum speaker who’s served on the House transportation committee since 1993.

Her colleague on the committee, and also a speaker at the forum, Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., had a different take. He said elected leaders need some lessons in transportation realities, and that will include the next president.

“Members of Congress do not know anything,” he said. “Let’s start with that.”

Mica said the current crop in Washington is too myopic, but nevertheless he’s beaming with hope, in part because this year’s elections will plant some new seeds.

“I’ve got a whole new cast of characters,” he said after his Monday night talk. “Bush will be back here in Crawford chopping wood.”

Speaking at lunch: Bush’s old buddy Gov. Rick Perry.

Link to article here. Read about the tax-and-spend free-for-all saga here.

Tollway agency approves deal with TxDOT on Highway 161
Sunday, April 20, 2008
By MICHAEL LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News
The North Texas Tollway Authority on Sunday unanimously approved a deal with the Texas Department of Transportation that sets the value of the State Highway 161 toll road at about $1.1 billion.

The vote ratifies a compromise reached Friday after leaders from both agencies met behind closed doors with key legislators to end a stalemate that had threatened to stall or even cancel plans to build the approximately 10-mile toll road in western Dallas County.

TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott said Sunday that TxDOT leadership already had ratified the agreement and had been awaiting approval by NTTA’s board, which held an emergency meeting Sunday afternoon to vote on the deal.

Construction contracts for the road already have been awarded, and work is expected to begin Monday.

NTTA has promised to decide by mid-summer whether it will build the toll road itself or step aside and let TxDOT contract with a private firm to build it.

Link to article here.

In case anyone needs reminding, we warned legislators this is EXACTLY what TxDOT would do. Lawmakers convinced themselves the Governor’s counterfeit moratorium bill, SB 792, and it’s horrific market valuation language, was the panacea to give them local control. We tried to tell lawmakers the veto power they were seeking cuts both ways; it still allows TxDOT to KILL a project if the local authorities don’t agree with TxDOT’s quick cash, “market value” figure as determined by Wall Street. “Market value” is code for how much money the government thinks it can make off its highway monopoly, resulting in tolls as high as they can get away with. Notice that the articles opine that if the two sides can’t agree on the maximum level of taxpayer gouging, that Hwy 161 will become a freeway. Heaven forbid, not a FREEway! Well, that’s what we the PEOPLE should demand!
Dewhurst, legislators to meet in Dallas to ease Highway 161 deadlock
Thursday, April 17, 2008
By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News
mlindenberger@dallasnews.com

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and other key legislators are expected to meet behind closed doors in Dallas today to end a deadlock over State Highway 161 that has threatened to derail plans to toll the highway, a development that could cost North Texas more than $1.2 billion in road funds.

Regional leaders have insisted that the 10-mile Highway 161 in western Dallas County be built as a toll road. But negotiations between the North Texas Tollway Authority and the state transportation department over how much the toll contract is worth unexpectedly collapsed late Wednesday night, just hours before construction crews were to begin building the highway.

The Texas Department of Transportation has insisted for weeks that if no agreement was in place by April 16, the road could not be built as a toll road.

That prospect prompted howls of protest from local elected officials. Senate transportation committee chairman John Carona, R-Dallas, stepped in Thursday to initiate the unusual last-minute involvement of some of Texas’ most powerful elected officials.

“I am working hard to facilitate open conversation between all parties involved in the construction of SH 161,” Mr. Dewhurst said in a written statement about his efforts to resolve the impasse.

Gov. Rick Perry’s deputy chief of staff and his top transportation adviser, Kris Heckmann, will also attend. House Speaker Tom Craddick was not invited and will not attend, his spokesman said Thursday.

Today’s high-level meeting is designed to produce an agreement, said state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, a transportation committee member who will also attend

“I think we need to sit around the room and have all the parties look eyeball to eyeball,” Ms. Shapiro said.

Racing to beat the April 16 deadline imposed by TxDOT, NTTA last week offered what it called its best and final offer. Its proposal valued the Highway 161 project at $1.2 billion and, if accepted by state transportation officials, would have let the highway proceed as a toll project. The Regional Transportation Council voted 16-13 on Tuesday to support NTTA’s proposal.

But TxDOT executive director Amadeo Saenz rejected NTTA’s proposal late Wednesday night. Mr. Saenz ordered work on the highway to be delayed and extended his own agency’s deadline through the end of the weekend to provide time for negotiations.

That decision “pulled the rug out from under the region,” Ms. Shapiro said.

But on Thursday, Mr. Saenz said that decision was based on what’s best for the region, and department leaders said Thursday that NTTA’s proposal was for hundreds of millions of dollars less than what the toll contract was really worth. Leaving that money on the table, they said, would only make it harder for North Texas to reduce congestion on its traffic-snarled highways.

Mr. Saenz said he is prepared to continue negotiating with NTTA throughout the weekend, and said he looked forward to the meeting with senior legislators today.

“We have to meet the deadline to build the project, or yes it will have to be a gas-tax road,” Mr. Saenz said. “Maybe it can be resolved over the weekend. We are very close.”

Michael Morris, director of the Regional Transportation Council, said he canceled plans to be in Washington to attend today’s meeting. He said that his discussions with NTTA and TxDOT on Thursday had helped the parties resolve many of their differences and that he expects them to reach an agreement today.

NTTA chairman Paul Wageman said his agency’s offer will remain on the table all weekend, but he said its board will not renegotiate the terms of the proposal. He said TxDOT should unequivocally accept the proposal that has been endorsed by the RTC.

“We are here to do what is best for the region,” Mr. Wageman said. “If TxDOT wants to extend the deadline that it has imposed on this project, which we have said all along is an arbitrary deadline, then of course we will not let our offer lapse during that time. But I also want to be clear: Our proposal is our best and final offer. We made our best effort to get this project moving and to bring value to the region. We’re not going to renegotiate our terms.”

Ms. Shapiro said it’s long past time for the agencies to agree on how the road will be built.

“The three entities have got to come to an understanding,” she said. “Sixty-two meetings were held between TxDOT and NTTA to resolve market valuation, and they still haven’t resolved it. The more time this takes, the more we in this region are the losers. We need this roadway so desperately.”

Mr. Dewhurst and the others at today’s meeting cannot order either party to reach an agreement – as both TxDOT and NTTA are state entities directly answerable only to their governing boards.

Nevertheless, TxDOT finds itself in an unusually vulnerable position, with the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission set to give it a top-to-bottom look, and a Legislature mostly hostile to its push for private toll roads ready to reconvene in January.

Mr. Saenz said today’s meeting will probably determine how quickly his agency and NTTA can come to an agreement on Highway 161.

“It all depends on what happens tomorrow,” he said. “The crux is that the project needs to be completed on a certain time schedule. … If there is no resolution, then I guess [it won’t be a toll road]. But I am hoping that there will be a resolution. If we have to, we can extend our deadline a day or two.”

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Link to article here.

Regional council could weigh in Thursday on Highway 161 toll road project’s next turn
Thursday, April 10, 2008
By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News

The Regional Transportation Council will consider Thursday yet another twist in what has been six solid months of deadlocked negotiations over the State Highway 161 toll road.

Parties on both sides of the dispute – which involves a billion-dollar toll road and the prospect of traffic relief for thousands of drivers on State Highway 360 – say this week’s proposal by the North Texas Tollway Authority could be the breakthrough they’ve been waiting for.

Monday’s proposal by NTTA to value the road contract at about $1.2 billion, if accepted by the state Transportation Department, could clear a key legal hurdle that has stalled negotiations for months.

But despite those hopes – and they could still be dashed – about all anyone involved in the talks can agree on is that the process itself has been deeply flawed.

When negotiations over the toll contract began in earnest last fall, expectations from all sides were sky-high.

Fresh from a bruising but richly rewarding fight over State Highway 121, regional leaders saw the approximately 10-mile toll road as another golden egg. They hoped to see an upfront payment of as much as $1 billion to help build other roads.

State transportation leaders said the Highway 161 negotiations would prove that private-sector competition would create the billions Texas needs to pave its way out of increasingly bad traffic jams.

And for NTTA, the Highway 161 project was the first chance it would have to test-drive the new powers the Legislature had bestowed upon it last year. Those powers essentially have given the authority veto power on any toll road project within its service area.

“Everybody agrees that the process needs to be revamped,” said Dallas City Council member Linda Koop, who is also vice chairwoman of the transportation council. “This is not a process that really works too well.”

No wonder.

The past six months have seen more than 60 meetings between NTTA and state Transportation Department officials, hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal and consulting fees, and a series of firm deadlines set by the Transportation Department that were promptly ignored.

“I have been to I don’t know how many meetings,” said Bill Hale, director of the Dallas district of the Transportation Department. “And I just don’t think we were going to get anywhere.”

At fault, Mr. Hale, NTTA officials and others said this week, is the procedure established by the Legislature last year that means if NTTA or its counterparts don’t agree on hundreds of toll road conditions, then projects simply can’t proceed.

NTTA and its statewide counterparts say the Legislature was wise to give them what it calls primacy over private competitors. But even they said the forced negotiations have been doomed.

“I find it to be cumbersome, bureaucratic, argumentative and frustrating,” said Art Story, director of public infrastructure and tollways for Harris County.

State transportation officials have opposed the new law from the beginning, saying private companies can pay more for toll roads than public agencies. They agree with NTTA and the others that the negotiation process contained in the law has not worked.

Private companies and public entities will always see the value of a proposed toll contract differently because they operate with a very different set of financial assumptions, Mr. Hale said. “There are some inherent differences in the way both sides approach a project like that,” Mr. Hale said. “And if you are trying to negotiate, I think you will always end up with” deadlock.

But after six months of meetings, he said, the Transportation Department may support NTTA’s price tag anyway, or accept its alternative proposal that would lead to NTTA stepping away from the project altogether.

“I am pretty optimistic,” Mr. Hale said. “Sometimes, though, the best deal isn’t the right deal, and you end up with a good deal instead.”

Ms. Koop said the transportation council could vote on a recommendation, or table the matter at today’s meeting.

What’s certain is that all the parties will be back in Austin next year asking for changes.

“We need to have a robust conversation about what works and does not work,” she said. “We need to make some recommendations.”