Toll hikes hit when travelers can least afford it

Just as we've contended from day one, lawmakers will take the easy way out and rely on tolls, that cost taxpayers exponentially more than gas tax funded roads, which allows them to continue to raid gas taxes for other purposes, even to subsidize toll roads (as they're doing in Texas)! Also, note how the unelected bureaucrats that run these toll authorities cite the "legal obligation" to pay their bills (ie - bond debt) so to them, it's a license to keep jacking up our taxes to drive with no accountability, regardless of taxpayers' ability to pay their own bills, all in the name of paying off debt. More proof that bonds are deferred tax increases!

Toll Roads, Bridges Targeted for Major Fare Hikes

By Judson Berger

Published June 18, 2011 | FoxNews.com

Travelers and commuters feeling the pain at the pump should prepare for another financial hit -- at the tolls.

As the summer travel season gets under way, several states are considering or have already approved steep hikes in the fees drivers pay to cross bridges, highways and tunnels.

Particularly in the mid-Atlantic region, local transportation boards scrambling to find more money for maintenance and other projects are decisively turning to toll booths to pay the way.

And the changes will not be gradual.

In Maryland, where some of the most sweeping increases have been proposed, the Maryland Transportation Authority earlier this month unveiled its plan to raise rates at seven of its eight facilities.

The proposal would affect several Baltimore-area roads. But the proposal has really riled residents on the Eastern Shore, where the state plans to jack up the Chesapeake Bay Bridge toll from $2.50 to $8 by summer 2013. That bridge is the state's only central route across the bay and links the D.C. and Baltimore regions to the popular summer hangout of Ocean City -- Maryland's more family-friendly version of the Jersey shore.

Melanie Pursel, executive director of the Ocean City Chamber of Commerce, suggested a toll increase is probably overdue but expressed concern that such a steep hike could hurt business.

"What it is is the amount and the rate of increase in such a short period of time ... not only for tourism, but just overall commerce," Pursel told FoxNews.com.

She said families planning a week in Ocean City probably won't nix their vacation over a bridge fee. As for day trippers, "They might think twice about it when it's $8."

But state officials, who are holding a series of tense hearings on the plan, say the money is needed to pay for maintenance and other highway projects in the Baltimore/D.C. regions. The proposal is projected to bring in $77 million the first fiscal year -- money that over time would go to fixing up major bridges, highways and tunnels.

"The MDTA board has scaled back projects and reduced expenses to delay an increase in tolls a long as possible," board member Louise Hoblitzell said in a written statement. "But we have a fiscal responsibility, let alone a legal obligation, to pay our bills."

Under the Maryland proposal, rates at several facilities would rise on Oct. 1 and rise again in July 2013. For travelers on Interstate-95, the major thruway on the eastern seaboard, this means eventually paying $8 instead of $5 for the highway and $4 instead of $2 for the Baltimore tunnel by 2013. Commuters are eligible for significantly discounted rates, though those would also rise under the plan.

AAA spokesman Lon Anderson, who also sits on Maryland's transportation funding commission, expressed concern about toll hikes throughout the region, not just in Maryland. He said lawmakers are leaning too heavily on tolls to pay for transportation needs, while refusing to raise the gas tax and raiding the transportation funding they do have for other purposes.

Though gas tax hikes are by no means popular, Anderson said they would be more equitable.

"This reliance on tolls means fewer people are paying more expense," Anderson said.

Next door in Virginia, he said, officials are setting a "terrible" standard by jacking up the toll rate on the highway to Dulles International Airport in order to pay for an eventual Metro line there. The third in a series of toll increases on that road is scheduled for the beginning of 2012.

Elsewhere, the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission last month approved increases at its seven toll bridges, from 75 cents to $1, effective July 1. In justifying the decision, the commission noted that they held off on raising toll rates during the recession when other regional toll agencies did not. The basic toll rate has been at 75 cents since 2003.

A separate Delaware River bridge commission is planning a toll increase on the same date for the Delaware Memorial Bridge connecting New Jersey and Delaware. That rate will go from $3 to $4.

For tourists on the way to North Carolina's Outer Banks, officials this year also tripled summer weekend rates on the Chesapeake Expressway to $6.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/18/toll-roads-targeted-for-major-fare-increases/#ixzz1PyGYm2jN

TSA groping bill added to special session after activist exposes Perry's a fraud

Link to article here.

If there's any looming doubt that Rick Perry is a fraud, let this incident serve as further proof. While he's off galavanting around the country pretending NOT to run for President and giving speeches about an overbearing federal government and conducting book signings for his book about the same, called Fed-Up, Texas lawmakers fulfilled Perry's requirement that they need to show him they have the votes to pass the bill to ban TSA groping patdowns (or he wouldn't add the bill to his call for a special session to address the State's unfinished business). Perry not only doesn't care a flip about what's going on in Texas, he was ignorant that Sen. Dan Patrick had garnered the votes needed to pass the Senate and that Rep. David Simpson had gathered an unprecedented 112 co-authors in the House and wrote a letter to the Governor informing him of such. Perry was also ignorant of the fact that while Perry was off campaigning, fellow Texans Rep. Barbara Nash and Texas Public Utilities Commission Chairman Barry Smitherman had just been victims of aggressive TSA patdowns which made the news.

Simpson & Patrick have been on a mission to protect Texas travelers from invasive patdowns despite the TSA thugs who threatened to shutdown all flights to Texas if they passed the ban. Now all Texans and the much of America knows that Rick Perry is all talk and no action. Only after this huge faux pas caught on camera went viral on YouTube and among the grassroots (that subsequently melted down his phones), did Perry add this bill to the call.

Updated: Perry Adds TSA Anti-Groping Bill to Call

by Brandi Grissom and Beth Brow, Texas Tribune
6/20/2011

Gov. Rick Perry this evening announced the addition of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) anti-groping legislation to the agenda for the special session. In a statement, he said lawmakers could consider legislation "relating to the prosecution and punishment for the offense of official oppression on those seeking access to public buildings and transportation."

The announcement came after state Rep. David Simpson, R-Longview — a Tea Party favorite — sent a letter to Perry on Sunday requesting HB 41 be added to the call, after attempts to pass it during the regular session were thwarted when the Department of Justice suggested the measure was in violation of federal law.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, in his own statement, said he was "very pleased" Perry added the bill to the call. "The Obama Administration overstepped its bounds by implicitly threatening to shut down air traffic in Texas if we passed this bill. After working closely with the Attorney General's Office the last few weeks, I'm confident that we can pass legislation that addresses these threats, while protecting innocent passengers and preserving our state's rights," he said.

The bill would criminalize any intentional, knowing or reckless touching of a person's private parts during a security screening, including through clothing. John E. Murphy, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, wrote in a letter to the Texas House and Senate that Simpson's bill would interfere with the TSA’s civil aviation security responsibilities. The letter and a regular session visit of two TSA officers to Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston and the Senate sponsor of the bill, effectively killed support for it.

House Bill 41 was passed unanimously by the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee on June 14, and is co-authored by 112 legislators of both parties. Patrick filed similar legislation in the Senate (SB 29) on June 15 and delivered a letter to Perry’s office saying he had the votes to pass it in the upper chamber. Simpson said in his letter that there is “broad bipartisan support” for the bill, and that it is Perry’s time to “protect innocent people from unreasonable searches of their person by their own government.”

Simpson said the TSA letter that precipitated the bills' failure during the regular session would not intimidate members of the House if it is brought to call, but he has changed the bill slightly in the event of a federal response. The original legislation would have been enacted immediately upon passage, but HB 41 would be effective 90 days after passage “so the TSA can respond and so there can be some breathing room,” Simpson said.

Over the weekend, Perry was in New Orleans signing copies of his new book Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington when he was asked about the future of anti-TSA legislation in Texas. He responded that the Legislature "doesn’t have the votes on either side” to pass the bill.

“I said, ‘bring me a multitude of votes,’” Perry said. “...And they never had those votes.”

In the video posted on the website tsatyranny.com, Perry said he had not seen Patrick's letter indicating the Senate had the votes. Perry said there was "probably not enough time" left in the session to bring up the legislation.

Simpson said he spoke to Todd Hunter, chairman of the Calendars Committee, and said he felt there was enough time to bring the bill to call. Simpson said it would take about a day to pass through the House, and is waiting for the governor's call.

"I know that he received that letter Wednesday of last week and there’s 112 co-authors in the House, so how he can say that there’s not enough votes in either house is incredible to me," Simpson said. "Maybe he’s unaware of it, but I hope that’s why I wrote my letter."

An official in Perry’s office said the governor could still add bills to the call, but he wants to see a general consensus from both sides of the aisle.

TxDOT plans road with developers - leave public, elected officials out

Link to article here.

Once again, TxDOT threatens to yank funds from a region if they don't do what TxDOT says. What's more egregious is TxDOT hashed out the whole road plan behind closed doors with DEVELOPERS, not in an open process with the public and elected officials. The Transportation Commission, which Ted Houghton sits on, adopted new rules to prevent such strong arm tactics with local officials who TxDOT is supposed to coordinate and collaborate with on its projects. But this shows that it was window dressing. The leopard can't change its spots and the Texas Legislature just gave this out of control agency a license to continue such behavior by passing a statue quo sunset bill instead of adopting recommended reforms.

City left out in emails between developers, TxDOT on Trans Mountain Road project

By Chris Roberts / EL PASO TIMES
Posted: 06/21/2011 12:04:00 AM MDT

Helping developers lay the groundwork for a profitable strip of big-box retail stores appears to have been a priority for state highway officials working on a plan to widen Trans Mountain Road's western reach, according to emails obtained by the El Paso Times.
Texas Department of Transportation officials worked closely with those property owners and their representatives, which included Hunt Companies, Plexxar Industrial Realty Group, and Desert View Homes.

More than a year later, when the plan became public, it was a full-blown freeway project with four interchanges and sweeping ramps connecting to Interstate 10. As objections arose and modifications were proposed, TxDOT officials and others made it clear that delays could mean $85 million in state funding would be diverted to other Texas highway construction projects.

Emails obtained by the El Paso Times through a Texas Public Information Act request indicate that developers had open access to TxDOT officials and actively participated in the design process. There is little communication with city representatives or staff until late 2010, when the design was essentially complete.

That design presented to the El Paso City Council in March was solid when it came to access for mall shoppers and commercial traffic. It had problems with the proposed entry to the Franklin Mountains State Park, hike and bike lanes and protection of mountain vistas.
Two City Council members also challenged the data used to support

the preferred freeway option. Nonetheless, the City Council approved the plan, and the Federal Highway Administration is now reviewing it to ensure there are no violations of the National Environmental Protection Act.
"When we got it, all of the deals had been made," said city Rep. Susie Byrd, who supported an alternative to the freeway. "We and members of the public could not influence the design.

Property owners, they certainly should have a say-so, but should they be the only ones to have influence?"

Texas Highway Commissioner Ted Houghton and Chuck Berry, TxDOT's El Paso District engineer, declined to be interviewed.

"The new work product is in draft form at this time," Berry wrote in an email. "Not even a portion of it should be released or its contents discussed for public review at this time. I look forward to sharing the information when it has been approved for public review."

Hunt Companies also declined to comment. Messages seeking comment from Brent Harris, with Plexxar Industrial Realty Group, were not returned Friday. Emails and subsequent interviews provide insight into how the road was designed and pushed through the City Council. TxDOT withheld some documents for various reasons, including the fact that the local Sierra Club has threatened to sue the department over the expansion plans. Debate on what to do with Trans Mountain Road began when city leaders decided in 2008 to make it part of a loop around the city. Although it will be used mostly by local traffic, congestion was already a problem where the road narrowed to two lanes on the West Side. There was little disagreement, particularly in light of recent fatal accidents, that the road needed to be widened. A $17 million project was proposed.

Then about $85 million from the sale of Texas general revenue bonds was approved for the project by the Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees TxDOT. Houghton is on that commission.

"Ted Houghton is looking out for El Paso's interests," said city Rep. Beto O'Rourke. "He picked up what he thought was the city's mandate, which was to complete the loop - most Texas cities have an unbroken loop - and he made it part of his mission. He really pushed some of this stuff through and did it in the most efficient and effective way he could."

Developers were consulted regularly throughout the concept and design phases of the project, with one of the first meetings scheduled in July 2009, according to the correspondence provided. The first query from a City Council member asking for more detail on the project came more than a year later, in August 2010.

Among the ownership groups involved are Hunt Companies, with billions of dollars in real estate investments nationwide; Desert View Homes, which already is building a residential development on the far western end of Trans Mountain; and Plexxar Industrial Realty Group, which helped develop the Northwest Corporate Center industrial park in the Trans Mountain area. Plexxar's Harris has also been involved in the Downtown renovation.

Early in the process, correspondence shows, property owners asked to fast-track the project.

"We no longer can plan and design these types of projects in a vacuum, the issues of hike and bike trails and other amenities need to be addressed by all parties," Houghton wrote in an August 2009 response to property owners and others, including city Rep. Steve Ortega, chairman of the Metropolitan Planning Organization's Transportation Policy Board. Houghton said some of those elements were out of his control. "There was give and take on both sides," Ortega said in an interview. " The development looked as best as it possibly could given the fact that development was going to take place whether the widening was going to take place or not."

In a November 2009 email, Harris objected to the design of on and off ramps connecting to an interchange on the 3.6-mile strip of highway. About two weeks later, a state highway engineer in Lubbock sent emails pleading for a final decision from property owners on the "Plexxar bridge" so it could be included before a deadline passed.

" We are going with the Plexxar underpass (overpass) option," Harris wrote on Dec. 8, 2009.

That interchange, however, was not a part of the city's Master Transportation Plan. Previous engineering studies indicated that it was not needed, Byrd said in an interview. State highway officials, in the correspondence, said the purpose of that structure was to handle commercial traffic. It would keep most of the commercial traffic off other arterials.

It was not until late 2010 that emails begin to regularly include city staff other than El Paso Water Utilities officials who supported the plan. An Oct. 20 meeting was scheduled to "set a course and strategy" for such things as right-of-way donations and desired zoning changes, according to an email from Hunt's Justin Chapman. "TxDOT has encouraged us to include the city because they are an important piece of the puzzle and an interested stakeholder," he wrote.

One of those staff members was Mathew McElroy, deputy director of the city's Planning and Economic Division.

The city planning department "was not involved until the design was done by TxDOT and they had an agreement" with property owners on zoning, McElroy said in an interview. And when the El Paso City Council began to consider the plan, City Manager Joyce Wilson told council members that her staff had limited input.

And as early as October, state officials were warning that any delays could result in a loss of funding. The state money was much in demand, they said. TxDOT officials also warned in emails that the property owners might withdraw about $5 million in donated rights-of-way if the plan was changed. If the land had to be taken by eminent domain, the email said, that could result in delays of a year or more.

"They really had the city over a barrel," O'Rourke said. "We were not very sophisticated or savvy."

In mid-October, Ortega sent a detailed email to TxDOT asking whether a number of issues - including adding 10 feet to the freeway buffer, making open space designations and removing the Plexxar overpass - would cause delays that could endanger the project.

Three days later, an email from TxDOT El Paso's Eduardo Calvo to other department personnel stated, "The key here is to provide an answer if anything that the city is proposing would result in a delay of the NEPA process. In my opinion, yes, anything council proposes will provoke a delay."

Council members still were waiting for a TxDOT environmental assessment that would provide details of the plan. It was supposed to have been released in October, but it had been delayed.

A draft copy of the assessment was circulating among state agencies connected to the project, including the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Kathy Boydston, leader of the department's Habitat Assessment Program, said at the time she was asking for wildlife crossings. But, she said, TxDOT was not bound by those recommendations.

"We have a lot of responsibility and very little authority with them," Boydston said at the time.

A copy of the environmental assessment was provided to the city in February, according to an email. It contained data on projected traffic growth, conflict points - where traffic, pedestrians and bicyclists meet causing safety problems - and other information supporting the need for a freeway.

One of the problems for Byrd was that alternative concepts had not been given serious consideration, which is required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Byrd and O'Rourke were interested in a boulevard design expected to support more sustainable and desirable development. O'Rourke said in a council meeting that the concept had been used successfully on high-volume roads in other cities.

And observers digging into specifics found safety, environmental and aesthetic problems with the plan. Entry into the Franklin Mountains State Park required drivers to cut across oncoming freeway traffic. Biking and hiking lanes were either too close to fast-moving traffic or repeatedly intersected by driveways. There was no provision for wildlife crossings. And it appeared that towering overpasses and nondescript buildings would block unique views of the Franklin's peaks and crags.

Critics said the additional interchange was unnecessary and would create pollution and traffic congestion by adding unneeded capacity. The four interchanges also pushed the freeway's footprint closer to the Franklins, obstructing views, they said.

Ortega proposed keeping all city-owned land on the eastern end of the project near the Franklin Mountains State Park as open space to protect views and arroyos. That proposal ultimately failed amid concerns it would cause delays that would threaten funding.

Meanwhile, TxDOT officials conducted public hearings and took comment - both oral and in writing - they said would be included in material sent to the Federal Highway Administration.

But there was more. Traffic growth projections and conflict points appeared to have been miscalculated in ways that favored the freeway concept.

During a City Council meeting, O'Rourke asked why the plan used a 2007 traffic estimate instead of a recently completed one.

The variance was large - about 70,000 car trips per day by 2035 in the older estimate to 31,000 trips in the new estimate. The old estimate was based on a healthy economy, which anticipated development in Santa Teresa and the northern areas of El Paso, Byrd said in an interview.

Berry, at the time, said it was like worst-case and best-case scenarios, with the reality somewhere between. The new estimates, he said, were available only as the Trans Mountain plan was being finalized.

And it did not matter anyway, he said, because the basic requirements, including conflict points and other issues still supported the freeway design.

Then Byrd found problems with the way conflict points were identified. TxDOT, she said, had underestimated the dangers of the freeway model.

Byrd, in emails, asked TxDOT numerous times to rerun the models using the different data on traffic projections and conflict points.

"They haven't done that," she said last week.

Property owners tracked the process closely, emails show, monitoring an Open Space Advisory Board meeting and asking to speak with Berry after Byrd called one of them. One email from Harris to Hunt colleagues, Berry and others under the title "Trans Mountain" stated, "The protesters are out on Resler."

They also solicited support from City Council members, noting in one email that they "might be able to switch a few votes pretty quickly by explaining it more clearly."

Hunt's Chapman notes in an email that he is being pressured to go to City Hall and canvass the members.

"On the city side, I think we were caught asleep at the wheel," Byrd said at a City Council meeting earlier this year. "If we had more time to influence the design on this, I think you'd have a different outcome."

O'Rourke, who will leave office in the coming weeks, said constituents in his district are facing a similar issue with the proposed southern relief route, also part of the loop around the city. He said he uses his experience with the Trans Mountain Road project to advise them.

"I am telling them, 'Do not wait for the public comment period,' " O'Rourke said. "Once you get to the public comment period, it's a done deal."

Perry lies about foreign creditors

Link to article here.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is clearly testing the waters regarding a presidential bid though he promised Texans he wouldn't before they re-elected him last November, told a Republican gathering in New Orleans over the weekend that Texas doesn't have "some foreign creditor to finance deficit spending" like the federal government does. Wanna bet? By selling off Texas' public buildings and roads to foreign corporations like Cintra and Balfour Beatty, Perry and the Legislature are clearly making future generations of Texans pay for a bailout of lawmakers for their chronic underfunding of and raiding of highway funds. Entering into public private partnerships for every sort of infrastructure is the flavor of the month that lawmakers turn to in order to hawk-up our public 'assets' (like taking out a second mortgage) to get quick cash rather than match spending with revenues or end gas tax diversions for non-road purposes. In other words, PPPs give politicians a get out of jail card to engage in spending beyond their means, using the same 'foreign creditors' that Perry denounced.

For more on the bills passed that allow this, go here. Also, Texas currently has 20 deals in the works with none other than China.

Texas defers its responsibilities more than Perry would have America believe

Jason Embry, Commentary

Published: 7:25 p.m. Monday, June 20, 2011

Key to Gov. Rick Perry's I-may-be-running-for-president summer tour is the contrast he draws between the way Texas and federal officials write their budgets.

"In Texas, we believe that you can't defer tough decisions for tomorrow's generation," Perry told Republican activists in New Orleans on Saturday. "And unlike Washington, we don't have some foreign creditor to finance deficit spending."

You've got to give him that second part. The two-year state budget that lawmakers wrote this year is balanced, and it doesn't rely on foreign creditors.

The first part of Perry's statement, however, isn't so simple. Texas may not be deferring tough decisions to tomorrow's generation, but it is deferring them to tomorrow's Legislature.

To start, lawmakers are putting the finishing touches on legislation that would defer about 
$2 billion in payments to school districts until the opening days of the next budget cycle. This accounting trick has broad support in the Legislature, and for good reason. It gives lawmakers a chance to free up more money for the rest of the budget this year, but schools get the money soon enough in the next budget cycle to prevent any major disruptions. Still, it is a way to avoid the tough choice of balancing the budget with spending cuts alone.

But the more significant issue is that legislators balanced the budget by leaving almost $5 billion in expected Medicaid costs unfunded.

Medicaid, which provides health care for the state's poorest residents (mostly children and elderly people), is a required program that uses state and federal dollars. The Texas version provides some of the least generous benefits in the country.

The Legislature is supposed to fund Medicaid over the next two years based on how much state health officials say it will cost, but this year lawmakers decided to pay only part of the bill. That decision may have allowed lawmakers to prevent even deeper spending cuts or tax increases, but it also means lawmakers will find a $5 billion invoice waiting for them when they arrive for the 2013 legislative session.

Lawmakers also avoided any real discussion of the long-term deficit in the tax structure that will indefinitely complicate efforts to invest in Texas schools, colleges and universities.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, a Bryan Republican who is perhaps the most candid state official who has any real power at the Capitol, told the Houston Chronicle that this year's Legislature "basically kicked the can down the road in almost every area."

One other note about Perry's speech in New Orleans: Before he started talking about deferring tough decisions, he bragged that Texas had left $6 billion in the rainy day fund. If anyone is still wondering why Perry so strenuously resisted spending that money to cope with this year's shortfall, even though he had advocated using rainy day money in previous years, you just got your answer.

Goldberg: Public Private Partnerships are corporate bailouts

Glenn Beck interviews Jonah Goldberg on his book that exposes how big corporations and regulators work hand in hand to rip-off taxpayers using public private partnerships (PPPs). Texas lawmakers opened the floodgates to PPPs in the 82nd regular legislative session for roads and every other type of public infrastructure, where they hawk-up Texas sovereign land and 'assets' like highways, public buildings, schools, water supply facilities, ports, etc. to private, even foreign, corporations in sweetheart deals with massive public subsidies that result in 75 cents per mile in new toll taxes to use our 'public' roads.

See it on YouTube here.

Formula One racetrack subsidy affront to taxpayers

Link to article here.

While we're being told there's no money to build roads without tolls, state leaders led by Comptroller Susan Combs have seen fit to 'find' $250 million in the State budget to subsidize a Formula One Racetrack to benefit Red McCombs. It smacks of cronyism and it's thievery of the public coffers for special interests.

Texas Taxpayers Finance Formula One Auto Races as Schools Dismiss Teachers

By Darrell Preston and Aaron Kuriloff
May 11, 2011
Bloomberg

The "Circuit of the Americas" 3.4 mile long Formula One auto racing track, now under construction in Austin, Texas, U.S., is seen in this artist's rendering. Source: Circuit of the Americas via Bloomberg

Texas, which may balance its budget by firing thousands of teachers, plans to commit $25 million in state funds to Formula One auto racing each year for a decade.

Four years after motorsports’ most popular series left the U.S., Texas investors including Clear Channel Communications Inc. co-founder B.J. “Red” McCombs are building a 3.4-mile (5.5-kilometer) track to bring the event to Austin. Comptroller Susan Combs has agreed to pay $25 million for races through 2022, a subsidy questioned by critics and lawmakers as the state cuts costs to close an estimated $15 billion two-year deficit.


“I don’t understand why 25 people in Austin could not put up $1 million each if they thought this was a good opportunity instead of the state making a $25 million commitment,” said Senator Dan Patrick, a Houston Republican. “The developers should find the money through private sources.”

As many as 100,000 teachers in Texas may be fired because of spending cuts to cope with the state’s budget crisis, according to Moak Casey & Associates, an Austin-based education consultant. For $25 million a year, the state could pay more than 500 teachers an average salary of $48,000.

“I have to wonder why the state of Texas is all over funding for this racetrack and not the school-funding crisis,” said Ewa Siwak, 44, who teaches German in the Austin Independent School District and whose job at Bowie High School is being cut. “Tax dollars for education should be a higher priority.”

No Traction

Formula One races have failed to gain traction previously in the U.S. Since the 1970s, the series has been hosted by Long Beach, California, as well as Las Vegas, Detroit, Dallas, Phoenix and, most recently, Indianapolis. The races there ended in 2007 on declining attendance.

With 20 million Texans within 250 miles of Austin and a growing Formula One fan base in Mexico, the city’s annual race will be successful, Steve Sexton, president of track developer Circuit of the Americas LLC, said in a telephone interview.

By building the Circuit of the Americas track, backers aim to attract automakers such as Fiat SpA (F)’s Ferrari Group, Renault SA (RNO) and Daimler AG (DAI)’s Mercedes that compete in Catalonia, Shanghai and Istanbul. Racing-team owners include U.K. billionaire Richard Branson and Indian liquor magnate Vijay Mallya. Races from Montreal to Sao Paulo draw thousands of fans, including those paying $1,200 apiece for a seat in Monaco’s grandstands.

Each race in Austin is projected to generate enough tax revenue to recoup the $25 million from a state Event Trust Fund pool, according to Allen Spelce, a spokesman for Combs, a Republican. He said the plan calls for putting the $25 million into a revolving account for paying annual event-related costs.

$250 Million Subsidy

If the financing works as projected, the decision will use $250 million in state tax revenue for the races over 10 years.

“With places struggling, spending that much money on an essentially one-off event is tough to do,” said Michael Cramer, a former president of baseball’s Texas Rangers and hockey’s Dallas Stars who runs the sports and media program at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s a very high cost of entry.”

Texas, like other states cutting budgets for schools, nursing homes and basic services, uses economic-development spending to bring in jobs and seed growth. That often involves giving up tax revenue generated by a project to pay part of the cost. New Jersey is providing $200 million of tax-increment financing to help develop the American Dream in the Meadowlands, which will be the biggest mall in the U.S. when it opens.

“I’m not sure of the wisdom of using tax dollars to fund a racetrack,” said Siwak, the Austin teacher. “They’re giving so much tax dollars away I don’t think they could make it up with the racetrack.”

Economic Outlook

Combs’s office estimates a Formula One race in Austin next year will spur $300 million of spending, Spelce said in an e- mailed statement. Construction of the $242 million track, which has begun, is projected to add 1,300 temporary jobs and pump $400 million into the economy. The venue will seat 120,000 fans.

The state isn’t investing in the track development, Spelce said in the e-mail. He said the Legislature authorized the use of the money from the Major Events Trust Fund in 2009.

“The funding generated by the activity offsets the state’s investment,” Spelce said. “It is important that the state continue to generate new economic activity to ensure that Texas continues to grow.”

Formula One racing attracts the wealthy who sponsor teams and draws fans from around the world, said Zak Brown, chief executive officer of Just Marketing Inc., an agency based in Zionsville, Indiana. JMI, as it’s known, focuses on motorsports.

Sport for Wealthy

“It’s a lifestyle of the rich and famous,” Brown said in a telephone interview. “The whole industry has a lot of wealth around it, a lot of politics.”

The cost of holding races has made it too expensive for sponsors without a public subsidy, said Mark Cipolloni, president of AutoRacing1 Inc. in Robbinsville, New Jersey. The company runs a website that covers motorsports.

“It isn’t cost-effective for an independent race,” Cipolloni said. “Most races in major cities wouldn’t be held without public support.”

The state’s $25 million is being paid to London-based Formula One Management Ltd. to hold the race in Austin, Sexton said. Formula One, owned by London-based CVC Capital Partners Ltd., a private-equity firm, is run by Bernie Ecclestone, the chief executive officer of the series.

“It’s going to Mr. Ecclestone and Formula One to get them to bring the event here,” Sexton said.

Outside Intended Use

Paying such a fee goes beyond the intended use of the state fund, which was set up to support bringing annual events to Texas by rebating increased taxes they generate to cover costs including security and traffic control, said Richard Viktorin, an accountant with Audits in the Public Interest. The Austin- based group opposes government support for the races.

In the past, the event fund has been used to subsidize professional football’s Super Bowl championship game, college basketball’s Final Four tournament and business meetings such as a Chick-fil-A Inc. convention.

“It’s off-balance-sheet financing for a rich man’s sport,” Viktorin said. Combs is “supposed to be a fiscal officer for the state. She’s not controlling that fund.”

Formula One participants and sponsors have wanted to return to the U.S. since 2007, when the last race was run in Indianapolis, Ecclestone said in a telephone interview. Indianapolis began hosting the event in 2000. Interest waned after defective tires led most entrants to withdraw in 2005.

U.S. Venue

“No one wanted to hold it,” Ecclestone said, until the Austin promoters stepped in. “Carmakers and team sponsors are also keen to have a race in the U.S. to help leverage their backing of teams.”

Formula One’s popularity has declined in the U.S., partly because there haven’t been any races in the country in recent years and partly from a lack of successful American drivers since Eddie Cheever and Mario Andretti, JMI’s Brown said.

“It’s moved around,” said Brown, who praised the Austin track’s design. “There was a 10-year period where there was no Grand Prix,” or Formula One race, in the U.S, he said.

The Austin event is expected to benefit from its proximity to Mexico and South America, where the series has grown in popularity, said Ecclestone. Austin’s city government also may invest $4 million a year in tax revenue to facilitate the event, the Austin-American Statesman reported. The city hasn’t been asked to provide any incentives, said Matt Curtis, a spokesman for Mayor Lee Leffingwell.

Tourism ‘Booster’

“It’s going to be a major booster in our convention and tourism industry,” Curtis said. The “return is very significant.”

Formula One races won’t be the track’s only use. Developers have booked international championship motorcycle races, called MotoGP, starting in 2013, Sexton said. He said they’re also trying to bring in concerts, conferences and other events.

Austin and the state are unlikely to recover their investment directly, Cipolloni said. However, the race will expose the city to a wide audience of tourists and executives that could help recruit companies and create jobs, he said.

“They won’t collect tax money equal to the $25 million” from the state, Cipolloni said. “It’s just a way to get exposure for the city.”

Sexton, a former president of Churchill Downs Inc. (CHDN)’s horse track in Louisville, Kentucky, which hosts the Kentucky Derby, agreed that events at the Austin circuit will do more than just generate new tax revenue.

“It will bring in an affluent audience that has never been to the city,” Sexton said. “It should have a substantial economic impact.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Darrell Preston in Dallas at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; Aaron Kuriloff in New York at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Bike trail to cost $1 million a mile

Link to article here.

So after years of being told there's 'no money' to fix our roads without tolls, TxDOT drops $350 million subsidy for a foreign-owned toll road out of the sky for Houston area's Grand Pkwy and now $4 million for a bike trail that will cost over $1 million a MILE! Calling it misplaced priorities is too kind, it's piracy of the public treasury!

Bike trail grant is set but city needs $800K in local funds

By Kiah Collier

San Angelo Standard-Times

Originally published 09:56 p.m., June 6, 2011
Updated 10:13 p.m., June 6, 2011

SAN ANGELO, Texas — At its meeting today, the San Angelo City Council will consider accepting a $3.2 million grant from the Texas Department of Transportation that would fund the bulk of the long-awaited "Red Arroyo Shared-Use Pathway Project." The catch is that it must first decide where to come up with $800,000 in local matching funds needed to receive the money.

First conceived during a streak of bike-and-pedestrian planning meetings in 2004, the project calls for a 3.7-mile concrete trail through the Red Arroyo that connects Knickerbocker Road to Sherwood Way. The TxDOT grant, which the city secured in July 2010, would pay for roughly 80 percent of the $4 million project. The city is responsible for the remaining 20 percent.

Doray Hill, interim director of the San Angelo Metropolitan Planning Organization, said it doesn't yet have a dedicated funding source for the match. At today's council meeting, Hill will recommend reallocating funds from three municipal funding pots: $400,000 to $500,000 from the city stormwater department budget, $325,000 half-cent sales tax dollars previously dedicated to the South Concho Park project and $125,000 from "outside or private organizations."

Although the city has until 2014 to pay the match, it must show where it's getting the money when it signs the agreement by the end of July.

"When you execute this agreement, you're saying you have the money," Hill said. "In the event that we don't secure the funds, then we're not going to execute the agreement."

The heads of both city departments have agreed to front funding — letters of support are included in the council agenda packet — and Hill said representatives from private groups interested in making up the difference will be present at the meeting.

In his letter, City Engineer Clinton Bailey said stormwater improvements, including detention ponds, already planned for the area could be integrated into the project.

"If integrated into the proposed Red Arroyo project, these stormwater systems could also serve as pedestrian amenities providing interesting views, community fishing ponds and education centers," Bailey said in the letter.

Hill said the debate may come down not to the reallocation of funds, but another matter: the city will have to pay $10,432 within 30 days of finalizing the agreement. Hill said that could come from the city's general revenue or other sources.

"Those are just more internal details to work out," he said. "I'm sure it's going to be a question of 'Where do you plan on getting the initial down payment from?' We have possible sources."

Even though the city has continued to tighten its belt amid financial challenges — it balanced its budget on a $2.3 million shortfall last year — Hill said the highly vetted project is a priority for the community and he is sure a funding source will be secured.

"This is something the city has been working on for several years, so I'm confident we've got the funding," Hill said.

A city memo says providing the local match would "give the city a unique opportunity to leverage approximately $3.2 million that can be used to develop an area that is underutilized, but has enormous potential."

Hill said the design phase of the project — hailed by many as San Angelo's first major move in becoming an active, modern city — would take several years. Construction on the trail wouldn't begin until 2015, with an estimated completion in 2016 or 2017, he said.

TxDOT transportation enhancement grants have helped fund other local amenities, such as the Santa Fe Depot and the San Angelo Concho River Visitors Center Trail.

Private toll road, not a good deal, says Deal

Link to article here.

Toll-road deal might not be good deal, says Deal

June 7, 2011, by Jay Goodman, Atlanta Journal Constitution

Under prodding from Gov. Nathan Deal, the state Department of Transportation has suspended a new toll project along I-75 north of the Perimeter into I-575 in Cherokee County.

If you’ve driven it at rush hour, you know there’s a real need for additional capacity in that corridor. That unmet need explains why three major international consortiums were ready to negotiate for the right to build and own the toll project, which they see as a potentially profitable business.

The state has a lot to gain as well. The hundreds of millions of dollars in private investment that the project might attract would stretch Georgia’s transportation budget, freeing up resources it could invest elsewhere. But there’s a catch, or more accurately a few of them.

First, the new toll lanes were intended to be “managed,” meaning that if the lanes got too crowded, the toll would automatically rise high enough to discourage additional drivers from using the lanes. Those drivers who couldn’t afford or justify the additional cost would be forced to use the existing, more crowded lanes.

DOT studies confirm that lower-income Georgians would be less likely to use the so-called Lexus lanes, even if it saved them time. Those studies also document that building the additional toll lanes would not ease congestion in the existing 1-75 lanes. Any drivers lured into the less-congested toll lanes would quickly be replaced by new drivers who are currently discouraged from using the interstate by traffic.

Finally, even with heavy traffic in that corridor, the toll lanes would not come close to paying for themselves. To make the project pencil out, the state would have to subsidize private investment by as much as $450 million.

Apparently, that’s what got the governor’s attention. He has asked the DOT board to halt the project pending approval of a federal loan to help lower the state’s costs.

That’s an important point: Transportation debates in Georgia often run aground on the claim that transit and rail systems ought to be self-supporting, as if they were businesses. But as the example of the toll project demonstrates, most highways don’t pay for themselves either. (Neither does the street outside your home, by the way.) The same is also true of freight transportation, which is why Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed were in Washington, D.C. last week trying to shake loose federal money for the deepening of the Savannah harbor.

Yet for some reason, I don’t recall state legislators insisting that such projects be abandoned because highways and harbors ought to be able to paying for themselves, without taxpayer subsidy. Apparently that is a test applied only to mass transit.

It’s also important to be clear about the nature of the “public-private partnership” proposed for the I-75 toll project and similar projects. While such projects would be privately run and owned, they’re not normal businesses. For example, a key point of negotiation between the state and private investors would be the ability of toll road operators to bar new transportation options from competing with them in that corridor. Overall, the amount of profit that private companies make in such an arrangement is driven less by the efficiency with which they operate than by the skill with which they negotiate with public officials.

That makes openness important. Under the original process laid out by DOT officials, Georgians would not be allowed to know the details of any deal negotiated on their behalf until after the final contract had been signed. It’s as if your lawyer were to negotiate a house purchase on your behalf, then refuse to let you read the contract until after you signed it.

That’s unacceptable. If the proposal is revived, it should be with the understanding that the entire contract will be made public for least a month before state officials can make it final.

– Jay Bookman

Perry for Prez? Just say 'No'

While Rick Perry is galavanting around the country pretending NOT to run for President, the business of taking care of Texas is being left to a Legislature (in a special session called by the Governor) that's hostile to taxpayers, property rights, and freedom.

Texans thought they sent a message to politicians of all political stripes last November — we’re fed-up (no mistake that was the title of Perry's latest book) with out of control taxation, debt, spending, and big government and politicians who proceed on that course do so at their own peril. While Governor Rick Perry tried to convince tea partiers and grassroots conservatives that he took up the mantle of limited government and low taxes, there’s plenty of evidence that the Governor's promises are nothing more than empty rhetoric.

Apparently, Texas is for sale since the Texas Legislature is drinking Rick Perry's Kool-Aid to sell-off virtually everything not nailed down using controversial public private partnerships (PPPs). Perry's priorities are not what the grassroots have been demanding like ending diversions of road taxes to non-road uses. It’s not cleaning up the highway department. It’s not getting all of Texans’ gas taxes back to Texas. It’s not reining-in the $31 billion in road debt (most of it used to subsidize toll roads, a DOUBLE TAX, and they just added $3 billion more in Prop 12 road debt to the budget). It’s selling off Texas to the highest bidder (with PPPs), which is the MOST expensive (75 cents a mile in tolls, like adding $15 to every gallon of gas you buy kind of expensive), anti-taxpayer method of funding infrastructure. Yet he'll tell you with a straight face he's balanced the budget without raising taxes.

PPPs represent eminent domain for private gain, which is what caused much of the backlash to the Trans Texas Corridor, where PPPs were the financing mechanism that grants these private entities the control of not just the facility, but the right of way/surrounding property where private companies make a killing on concessions. Texans hold private property rights sacred, and PPPs throw gasoline on the Trans Texas Corridor fire that Perry is attempting to convince Texans has been extinguished.

A repeal of the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) finally passed, yet through a bill just enacted 15 Texas road projects can be sold-off to foreign companies for a half century giving those entities the ability to cash-in and effectively own and control all the hotels, restaurants, and gas stations along those tollways, Perry got his Trans Texas Corridor piece by piece without the radioactive TTC name attached.

So while Perry trapses all over the country with his limited government, lower taxes rhetoric, he and his party are basically granting government a blank check to trample on property rights and pick winners and losers — who will lose their land to benefit another, not for matters of public necessity. If the government can steal your land, it’s tantamount to stealing your wealth. Who said Republicans aren’t socialists? PPPs are just the sort of wealth redistribution they like — giveaways to their cronies and special interest friends. Steer clear of Rick Perry. He's hazardous to your wallet and your freedom!

Trinity toll backers withheld key info to win voter approval

Link to article here.

This is why calling for public elections to approve toll projects won't work. The backers LIE, LIE, LIE and don't give the public all the information, especially any negative info that could derail the special interests' agenda! Note how the NTTA, already under fire for a litany of problems (more here and here), was a key player in withholding information from the public prior to the election for the Trinity toll road project.

Trinity toll road’s backers told only part of the story to win 2007 vote

By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER
Dallas Morning News
04 June 2011

Just days after Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt vowed in March 2007 to block a toll road in the Trinity River floodway, top federal highway officials in Texas met with the Army Corps of Engineers to ask an urgent question:

Given the corps’ concerns about such projects after Hurricane Katrina two years before, would the Army permit the road to be built between the levees, as Dallas officials so badly desired?

How the corps answered and, more critically, how the city later would use its answers as the focal point of a heavily funded campaign to defeat Hunt’s ballot initiative help explain the raw feelings that four years later cling to the still-stalled and still-controversial Trinity toll road.

Minutes of that March meeting — part of a cache of thousands of emails recently released to The Dallas Morning News after nearly two years of delays by the Army — show that the corps’ assurances were never so direct as the city and the road’s chief cheerleaders made them out to be.

The messages also underscore the internal debates, worries and, in some cases, warnings about the viability of the toll road that contrast with the united picture of inevitability projected by city leaders and road supporters.

In its reply at the March meeting, the corps said a 2000 study had determined that putting a road in the floodway was “plausible” — and that “nothing prohibits the roadway from being located in the floodway,” according to minutes taken by the highway officials.

Those statements from the corps became a centerpiece in the city’s campaign against Hunt’s initiative.

“The Army Corps of Engineers and TxDOT and NTTA have studied this,” then-Mayor Tom Leppert said in a typical exchange during a League of Women Voters debate on Sept. 25, 2007. “They are the experts … and every single one of them says it’s viable and it works, it can be done, and there is no reason not to believe it is [going to be] done.”

But that didn’t tell the whole story. The meeting summary shows that the full message from the corps was more carefully nuanced.
“The … [corps] agreed with the base assumption that a floodway alternative is a plausible concept, although it will be difficult to meet all the requirements to do such,” the minutes say. “The … [corps] confirmed that ‘nothing prohibits the roadway from being located in the floodway, as long as the floodway operates effectively — which will be solely a corps determination.’”

The city’s public arguments for the tollway didn’t include the kind of warnings contained in the corps records.

Hunt, who recently won re-election and remains opposed to the toll road, said the omissions were inexcusable.

“The corps and certain urban planners had told the city their concerns and that changes needed to be made,” she said. “But that didn’t keep Tom Leppert from proclaiming that the corps had signed off, and that the toll road was paid for.

“This came up frequently. It would be very — how can I put it? — almost an offhand remark by the mayor. ‘Look,’ he would say, ‘there is nothing to worry about. Everything is fine with the corps, and we’ve got the money, and there’s nothing to worry about.’”

Leppert, who left office this year to campaign for U.S. Senate, did not respond to requests for interviews. As a result, it’s unclear whether he ignored the caveats attached to the project or was unaware of them.

The toll road project that Hunt was trying to stop is just one part of a grander vision known as the Balanced Vision Plan, part of a massive effort to develop the barren acreage along the river into a giant park with lakes, white water for kayakers and long-planned levee improvements.

Leppert and other supporters believed that if Hunt succeeded in removing the road, the coalition behind the larger project that had been carefully assembled over years of effort would unravel.

Voters defeated Hunt’s proposal in November 2007, 53 percent to 47 percent.

As the campaign unfolded in late 2007, Leppert and other road supporters argued again and again that the road was not only essential but ready to be built. But the emails released by the corps show a series of potential problems for the road, which ultimately must be approved by the federal government. The failure of the levees in New Orleans two years before had intensified the corps’ scrutiny of projects affecting levees.

And the emails show, for instance, that the city and the North Texas Tollway Authority were aware that technical requirements adopted after Katrina would prompt the corps to “severely scrutinize” parts of the toll road design.

Similar cautions had been delivered to the NTTA at a February 2007 meeting, when tollway authority managers asked the corps point-blank whether the project was possible.

“Can there be a road in the floodway, or is it a non-starter?” NTTA asked, according to corps records.

Corps officials again said it was possible, but only if the NTTA could do something that had never been tried: Design a major toll road within a floodway so that it did not interfere with the corps’ ability to “maintain the required level of flood protection.”

Paul Wageman, NTTA chairman in 2007, said the tollway authority did not see its role as weighing in on the ultimate path of the toll road.

Instead, he said, the authority was eager to show it could build roads like the Trinity, which was the city’s top priority. The authority’s deal with Dallas was to design the road, using Regional Transportation Council funds, to a point at which federal authorities could make a final determination about where it would be built.

The Dallas-based commander of the corps’ Southwest division wouldn’t comment about the referendum.

‘Squirrelly project’

But while the kinds of reservations contained in the emails released last month never made it into the public discussion of the project that year, they were known well enough behind the scenes to worry an official with the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington.

She wrote to the Pentagon in May 2007 to express concern that the post-Katrina review by corps headquarters could torpedo the project — even if the Texas-based corps commander had signed off.

“This is regarding the Trinity Parkway project in Dallas,” began Ruth Rentch, an official overseeing the Federal Highway Administration’s work on the Trinity from Washington. “It is a squirrelly project that is proposing to put a roadway in the floodway.”

Rentch appeared concerned that even if corps officials in Dallas approved an alignment between the levees, the project could get “blown out of the water” by corps commanders in Washington. She wanted to know if that was really the case.

The corps’ national transportation liaison at its Pentagon headquarters wrote back shortly. “The answer to your question is yes,” the official said. “But I am certain we can achieve our mutually desired outcomes on this project in a timely fashion.”

That didn’t appear to reassure highway officials in Washington or in Texas.

“Hmmmmmm,” a Federal Highway Administration engineer based in Austin wrote to Rentch in Washington.

She replied: “Hmmmmmmmmm is right! … Not sure about these dynamics.”

‘NTTA PR machine’

The road’s champions began to coordinate a common message even before Hunt announced her anti-road petition drive on March 13, 2007.

The night before, Martin Malloy, president of Halff Associates, one of the big engineering firms the NTTA hired to advance the toll road, sent an email to NTTA officials and others under the subject: “IMPORTANT … Angela Hunt to start petition drive.”

He said board members of the Trinity Commons Foundation, an advocacy group, had sprung to action during a meeting earlier that day to solicit support from political heavyweights. Among them: former Mayor Ron Kirk, former Dallas County Judge Lee Jackson and state Rep. Barbara Mallory-Caraway.

Malloy said the road’s supporters should urge voters to keep intact the entire Trinity River project, including the road. The best strategy, he said, “is a strong warning against cherry-picking. … It is time to move forward decisively and not waste time on second-guessing the plan.”

“The NTTA PR machine needs to get ready to respond if this happens tomorrow,” he said.

‘Potential deal-killer’

NTTA did respond.

Within a week, the authority’s acting executive director, Jerry Hiebert, met with Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm about the campaign to support the toll road, according to an email account of the meeting.

A few weeks later, on April 4, he sent a strongly worded public letter to then-Mayor Laura Miller, a road supporter, arguing against Hunt’s efforts to keep it out of the floodway.

“We are troubled that once again there seems to be an attempt to unilaterally remove the transportation element” from the plan, wrote Hiebert, who had stepped away from a role with a key contractor on the Trinity project, HNTB Corp., to temporarily lead NTTA.

His letter conceded that the corps ultimately would have to approve the project, but in pushing back against Hunt, he left out a string of other concerns by NTTA that he and his governing board knew could prove fatal to the project.

Funding was uncertain — and still is, as the project’s funding gap remains at $1 billion or more, should it be approved. Another major sticking point was whether the corps, as it insisted then and still does, would retain the right to close or even remove parts of the road in response to a flood.

“That, to me, was a potential deal-killer, and it hasn’t been resolved,” Wageman, the NTTA chairman at the time, said in a recent interview. “It just wasn’t time yet to resolve it, with so many other issues ahead of it. But we would have trouble with our bondholders if we tried to finance a road that could be shut down at the corps’ discretion.”

Coordinated messages

As the campaign unfolded, the road’s boosters sought to coordinate their messages with the media, the emails show.

In May, a KERA radio reporter asked NTTA, the city of Dallas and the corps for interviews about the toll road.

The morning after one interview, a corps spokesman wrote to counterparts at the city and NTTA to apologize for not briefing them earlier. “Interview went well and [she] did not ask any ‘tough’ or controversial questions. We tried to stay neutral concerning the Ms. Hunt petition drive and other issues with proposed placements of the toll road.”

NTTA spokesman Sam Lopez wrote back a few minutes later with good news, saying the reporter had just interviewed a senior NTTA manager, who succeeded in staying on message.

“Perfect timing. … She kept trying to bring up the petition ramifications. Kevin did a good job of saying ‘We don’t know yet.’ He kept on point that the Trinity Parkway is still in the environmental process stage, [route] alternatives are still on the table …”

Wageman said such close coordination was routine, though he said the city did not dictate what his staff could say.

“They wanted to know what we are saying,” Wageman said, “and there was an informal protocol developed among the various PIOs [public information officers] so the city would be told what we were saying when we said it.”

‘Just tell us’

When the city won the toll road referendum in 2007, Leppert immediately vowed to speed up construction.

But within six months, a string of setbacks related to the corps’ sensitivity to construction within the levees had put the road on hold, where it remains.

It’s unclear whether his successor will support the toll road — former Police Chief David Kunkle opposes it, and businessman Mike Rawlings is waiting to hear what the corps ultimately decides.

Meanwhile, corps leadership has rotated, too, at the local, regional and national levels.

The new Dallas-based general in charge of the Southwest division says a decision on whether the toll road could be permitted in the floodway is still years away. It will come no sooner than 2014, if there are no further delays, he said last month.

After watching the project for a decade, Wageman said that if the city and its partners are waiting for a definitive answer from the corps about their plans for the toll road, they may be waiting forever.

“The frustration that I think all the stakeholders have is just, ‘If this can’t happen, just tell us,’” Wageman said. “What I have come to conclude is that the corps will not tell you that it can’t be done.

“I don’t think they see that as their role necessarily. But the impediments to successfully satisfying their concerns — which are legitimate concerns about safety — may drive the local decision-makers ultimately to the point where they conclude it can’t be done. The corps doesn’t see its role as to say yea or nay.”

TIMELINE

1998 — Dallas voters approve a $246 million bond package to pay for a series of improvements to the Trinity levees, plus parks and other amenities. About $84 million is dedicated to pay for a high-speed toll road built by the North Texas Tollway Authority.

1999 — The Army Corps of Engineers concludes that building a toll road between the levees as the city plans is possible, if “stringent” conditions are met.

2003 — Mayor Laura Miller persuades the Dallas City Council to adopt a Balanced Vision Plan, a reconfigured plan for the floodway that scales back the road and moves it away from the Oak Cliff side of the river.

August 2005 — Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans, breaching its aging levees. Some observers say the corps is partly to blame.

October 2006 — The corps changes procedures for approving projects that would affect a federal levee. Projects like the toll road need approval by the corps’ chief of engineers at the Pentagon.

November 2006 — Because of “escalating concerns” about plans to build the road between the levees, the corps tells the NTTA that it will not permit the road to be built along the route preferred by the city. This prompts the Federal Highway Administration to begin a revised environmental review, and the NTTA designs an alternative route to address corps concerns.

March 14, 2007 — Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt calls for a referendum on preventing the toll road from being built between the levees.

March 20, 2007 — At a meeting in Fort Worth, corps officials tell Federal Highway Administration officials that the toll road concept is “plausible” but that it would be “difficult to meet all the requirements.”

April 30, 2007 — The corps’ Fort Worth district commander writes to Miller to clear up “inaccuracies” in the toll road debate. He reiterates that the corps would have to approve any project that affects the levees. “While the requirements for approval of this project are challenging,” he adds, “the corps and NTTA are committed to working towards acceptable and safe solutions for locating and designing this road in the floodway.”

June 16, 2007 — Businessman Tom Leppert wins a runoff to become mayor, vows to see the Trinity toll road completed and becomes chief champion of a campaign to defeat Hunt’s ballot proposal.

Sept. 25, 2007 — Leppert tells a campaign audience: “The Army Corps of Engineers and TxDOT and NTTA have studied this. They say it is safe. They say it is environmentally sensitive, and they say it is economically viable. … They are the experts … and every single one of them says it’s viable and it works, it can be done, and there is no reason not to believe it is [going to be] done.”

November 2007 — Voters defeat Hunt’s proposal, prompting Leppert to vow speedy progress on toll road construction.

December 2007 — The city asks the NTTA to begin further design of the toll road, accepting the risk that if its preferred route is disallowed by the corps, the money spent would be wasted. The risk is necessary to meet Leppert’s speeded-up timetable for completion.

December 2007 — The corps conducts a periodic inspection of the Trinity levees.

April 2009 — Work on the toll road stops as the corps announces that the levees failed the 2007 inspection. National levee experts for the Army say they cannot be sure the levees will protect downtown Dallas from a flood.

WHAT’S NEXT

 

2011 or early 2012 — The Army Corps of Engineers will approve Dallas’ plan for fixing levee problems identified by corps inspectors in 2009. The city is working with engineering advisers to develop a plan to make the fixes.

Once that is done, federal highway officials will use information from the levee remediation plan to complete a new environmental review of the toll road. Public hearings and a new City Council vote for a preferred route could follow as soon as later this year or early next.

Shortly thereafter, the city must detail for the U.S. government how it plans to pay for the toll road, which is expected to cost at least $1 billion more than the amount currently available.

Late 2012 or 2013, at the earliest — The Federal Highway Administration will issue a final decision on where the toll road can be built, choosing among alternative routes and the option of not building the road.

The highway administration will could wait to issue that decision until the corps completes a feasibility study for the overall Trinity River project. A corps commander has said the feasibility report won’t come until at least 2014.

If the corps doesn’t agree, the toll road won’t be able to be built within the floodway, no matter what decision the highway administration makes.

New, post-Katrina rules mean that even if the local commanders determine that the road can be built within the floodway, the Army’s chief of engineers at the Pentagon will have to personally determine that the road would not hurt the levees’ ability to protect Dallas from a flood.

Getting the records

It took The Dallas Morning News more than two years to obtain from the Army Corps of Engineers the public documents necessary to describe the behind-the-scenes concerns about the Trinity toll road that were never shared with the public during the 2007 referendum campaign on the road’s future.

Why did it take so long?

In short, because the corps wanted it that way. While corps officials initially agreed with The News that the records were in the public interest and should be released, they then subjected the records to a level of scrutiny and redaction that slowed the release process almost to a standstill.

For a full accounting of the long and torturous process of getting the records, go to transportationblog.dallasnews.com.

Toll chief may get FIRED for ending special interest monopoly

Link to article here.

No good deed goes unpunished...

Allen Clemson, the North Texas Tollway Authority's new executive director, faces dismisal over challenging the agency's penchant to hire only from a handful of "legacy consultants" who have monopolized the contracts at the authority. This is why the NTTA needs to be under a microscope and, if necessary, abolished! The taxpayer abuses are rampant!

NTTA chief could face dismissal over his efforts to limit reliance on legacy consultants

BY MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER
Dallas Morning News
03 June 2011

Allen Clemson is about to learn how difficult it can be to make the kind of institutional changes he's attempted to do in the 24 months since he became the fifth executive director in two years to lead the North Texas Tollway Authority.

The lesson could include his firing in two weeks, an event that would put NTTA on track to look for its sixth leader in four years at a time when concerns over its leadership in the Texas Legislature led to narrowly defeated attempts to subject the authority to review by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission.

Board members unhappy at the way he has led the agency, especially his push to reduce its dependence on a cadre of key consulting agencies that have filled scores of key roles at NTTA for decades, insisted Thursday that the board conduct a performance evaluation for Clemson at its next meeting on June 15.

An attempt to reach Clemson Thursday was unsuccessful. NTTA chairman Victor Vandergriff, who supports Clemson, confirmed Thursday that the agenda item will allow members unhappy with Clemson to seek his firing. Vandergriff said it's unclear whether there will be enough votes among the nine directors to remove Clemson, but conceded it was possible.

Vandergriff said Clemson's push to shake up the hold by the long-time consultants has brought consequences.

“He has moved to change them out,” Vandergriff said. “And for that he has caught some fire. As I've said before, if you look collectively at all that we do here at NTTA, at the end of the day it is about the money — and there is a lot of money involved here.”

But Vandergriff said any review of Clemson's tenure should include a review of his time as chairman.

After all, he has pushed the authority to review its relationships with contractors from the chairman's seat, a steady effort that began immediately upon his being selected to be chairman late last summer.

His goal has been to force NTTA to evaluate whether it would be better off hiring employees to fill some of the key roles now held by consultants, and then to decide if the current contractors are the best choice.

In late 2009, The Dallas Morning News reported that relying on the so-called legacy firms that have worked with NTTA since its founding as the Texas Turnpike Authority in 1953, had cost millions of dollars in unnecessary spending and played a role in NTTA's until-then poor record of using minority contractors.

Clemson vowed then to insist that all five legacy firms be subjected to rigorous competition as their contracts came up for renewal in 2010, and made a point of noting that he was new to the authority and would not be swayed by ancient relationships.

Last year, Clemson directed his staff to do just that, and some of the largest stars in NTTA's firmament — including HNTB Corp., its general engineering consultant since 1953 — were recommended for replacement.

But several members of the board, including the then-chairman, Paul Wageman, felt the staff was moving too fast to jettison firms that had become pillars of NTTA operations, especially at a time when it was just moving to add two new major toll roads to its portfolio, State Highway 161 in Dallas County and the Southwest Parkway in Tarrant.

Wageman and others became convinced then that Clemson and his staff were determined to change the roster of consultants for the sake of change.

Wageman stopped the process in its tracks just weeks before his tenure on the board ended. That alarmed state Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, who would later bring a bill in the 2011 Legislature to subject NTTA to state oversight. That bill died in conference in the final days of the session.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, too, became determined to force NTTA to re-evaluate its reliance on contractors, and along with Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, pressed NTTA to look for ways to spread some of its key roles like engineering and legal services to new firms, including minority- and women-owned firms.

When he took over as chairman, Vandergriff reversed course again for NTTA and has led the staff through a painstaking evaluation of the authority's business model — a process that is expected to lead to the replacement, once again, of some of the key consultants.

Already, much of the legal work that has been done by powerhouse firm, Locke Lord Bissell and Liddell, has been removed from the firm to be made available to a roster of smaller firms located throughout the NTTA's service area. That didn't come without a great deal of resistance on the board and from external voices, however.

An attempt to reduce further the role played by its outside general counsel was stopped, however, and led to the departure of the in-house lawyer who Clemson had hired the year before. Many board members felt that service by Frank Stevenson, who has worked on NTTA matters for his entire career, was too valuable to lose.

It's too soon to say whether reducing Locke Lord's influence will result in savings for the NTTA, or whether the quality of its legal representation will suffer.

But what has been evident is that Clemson has been confronted at every step with opposition. The consulting firms themselves and lobbying groups have worked overtime to discredit the notion that NTTA could save money by hiring more key staffers as employees rather than depending on the outside consultants to supply those workers.

Vandergriff said there are other “irritations” among Clemson's critics on the board, but that they are focused mostly on the issue of putting the contracts with the legacy consultants up for new bid.

“You've seen evidence of that in meetings. The concerns have centered a lot around our procurements and consultants, and the manner and method and timing of those procurements. Different people have different irritations, but that is the major core of it,” Vandergriff said. “There is also a sense that the NTTA that was, is maybe no longer the same entity.”

What he meant by the latter was that by seeking to evaluate NTTA's reliance on contractors, Clemson and Vandergriff have done more than simply ask the authority to examine its business model. The firms that have, in some cases, worked for NTTA since the 1950s has literally built the agency, writing its statutes, designing its roads, and have been responsible for much of the innovation that has made it one of the most-watched toll authorities in America. Many of its influential former leaders have urged NTTA to move slowly in abandoning what they see as its founding model.

Vandergriff said the push back from consultants themselves has been strong, though from he has seen it has not been through attempts to individually persuade board members to keep them.

“I don't know if its been some overt action, or some direct action to do that,” he said. “I can't say that I’ve seen that. But clearly their presence and their commentary in public settings and in the workshop settings has an influence on folks. HNTB is one of our major consultants — and they are a great company with a lot of outstanding people — and there are some on the board who hear what they say in the public settings and are concerned.”

The local leaders who helped form NTTA in 1997 did so with a clear idea that the authority should not become a bloated state transportation agency, as they felt TxDOT had become. Instead, they wanted to keep NTTA's staff small and let the work be done by the every best lawyers, engineers and planners available.

But Vandergriff said in an era when NTTA is building toll roads in all four of its counties, it must do a better job to spread the work around. In addition, it was long past time to re-evaluate the authority's dependence on the legacy contractors, given that the firms were supplying so many of the mid- and upper-level professionals who performed NTTA's most complicated tasks.

In 2009, The News showed that the habit of reliance upon the contractors had grown so pervasive that NTTA was paying more than $400,000 a year for some maintenance engineers who would have been paid perhaps $70,000 a year plus benefits by a state agency.

In other cases, the authority was paying hundreds of dollars to communications consultants to perform duties as routine as preparing a board members' packet of information in advance of each meeting.

Clemson vowed this would change, and some of it has.

But Vandergriff said the work is not yet done. “I feel like in dog years I've lived a 1,000 years during the four years I've been on the board. They've been pretty rigorous. Prior to 2007, it wasn't easy, but what the NTTA did was it built the (Dallas North Tollway) north, and parts of a couple other roads and a few tunnels and bridges. The pace and the expectations were different then.”

That changed in the Paul Wageman-era, as he put it, as NTTA has become the primary builder of new highways in North Texas.

“NTTA is at a crossroads, it has to evolve its operations to meet regions expectations and our own operational expectations. Its important for us to have our own soul. And if your key employees are working for other people, then that's where there loyalty is ultimately going to be.”

The board meeting on June 15 will be held at NTTA's headquarters in Plano. Vandergriff said the discussion of Clemson's performance will be held in open session.

Texas for Sale: New laws sell Texas to highest bidder

Texans thought they sent a message to politicians of all political stripes last November — we’re fed-up with out of control taxation, debt, spending, and big government and politicians who proceed on that course do so at their own peril. While Governor Rick Perry tried to convince tea partiers and grassroots conservatives that he took up the mantle of limited government and low taxes by declaring certain pet issues as “emergency items” in the 82nd regular legislative session, there’s plenty of evidence that the Governor and the Legislature’s priorities don’t remotely resemble those of the electorate (the water rights war, making Texas the repository for the nation’s nuclear waste and the original ‘loser pays’ tort reform bill are just a few examples, many more to follow).

Whether it was Voter ID, eminent domain reform, or the sonogram bill, such grassroots hot button issues got watered down demonstrating it was more about political pandering and serving up red herrings to distract the grassroots than about meaningful reform. Yet, bills that had massive grassroots support, like ending tolling existing roads, groping TSA patdowns, and naked body airport scanners, all failed to pass. With all the GOP talk of throwing off federal government interference in Texas, the Texas Senate cratered to threats from the Justice Department to make Texas a no-fly zone if it passed the patdown ban. Guess all that huffing and puffing amounted to mere election-year rhetoric to get re-elected.

Texas landowners need not apply
The author of SB 18, the eminent domain bill, Sen. Craig Estes called it a carefully brokered deal with special interests, brokered behind closed doors before the session even started, and Texas property owners weren’t invited. The bill does NOTHING to protect landowners from having their land taken and handed to another private party in the name of a laundry list of ‘public uses,’ the cornerstone of the landmark Kelo case from which Texans remain unprotected. SB 18 also fails to protect property owners from eminent domain for economic development and blight, and that’s by design based on what the Legislature had in store later.

Name your price & they’ll sell you Texas
A steady stream of bills to sell-off Texas infrastructure to private corporations flooded the pipeline during the 82nd Regular Session of the Texas Legislature with a key bill, SB 1048, to authorize state and local governments to privatize virtually every kind of public infrastructure (except roads) and charge user fees or lease payments for the public to access its own buildings: schools, hospitals, nursing homes, water supply facilities, ports, mass transit, libraries, even telecommunications and pipelines.

Chair of the House Transportation Committee Larry Phillips authored the most sweeping public private partnership (PPP) bill pertaining to roads (HB 3789 that never even got a hearing in Committee when the grassroots got wind of it), with Rep. Bill Callegari (HB 2729 passed both chambers) and Rep. John Davis carrying bills (HB 2432 the companion to Sen. Mike Jackson’s SB 1048) for other types of civil works projects. In total, more than 30 bills to privatize Texas infrastructure were filed this session.
Apparently Texas is for sale and SB 1048 will be Katie-Bar-the-Door on selling off virtually everything not nailed down. The priorities of this Legislature are crystal clear. It’s not what the grassroots have been demanding like ending diversions of road taxes to non-road uses. It’s not cleaning up the highway department. It’s not getting all of Texans’ gas taxes back to Texas (HB 3390 that died in the Senate Transportation Committee). It’s not reining-in the $31 billion in road debt (the House caved in conference committee adding $3 billion more in Prop 12 debt to the budget). It’s selling off Texas to the highest bidder, which is the MOST expensive, anti-taxpayer method of funding infrastructure.

TURF along with over 100 grassroots groups delivered an Open Letter (note: this version of letter includes only the list of groups, not individuals, due to file size) with 2,000 signatures (collected in just one week) to Perry and every single legislator putting them on notice about PPPs and transportation issues, yet the Legislature ignored the public opposition.

The bill was written by British infrastructure firm, Balfour Beatty, which doesn’t sit well with a plurality of Texans who don’t like the idea of foreign ownership of our public infrastructure. Unlike the 52 year cap on road PPPs, SB 1048 gives no limit on the length of time a PPP can last (one example given in Austin was for 100 YEARS) or whether such broad authority expires.

Two anti-taxpayer provisions in SB 1048 are the fact taxpayers secure the private entity’s debt (2267.061 (f)) and it authorizes public subsidies for private profits by raiding taxpayers’ money through loans from the State Infrastructure Bank, which is currently NOT authorized in law (Sec. 2267.060 (2)). The House voted for Rep. Lois Kolkhorst’s amendment to the TxDOT Sunset Bill, SB 1420, to ensure the Phillips’ Amendment regarding the State Infrastructure Bank could not lend taxpayer money to private entities (both amendments were later stripped). Yet, no one insisted upon the same protection in SB 1048.

Eminent domain for private gain
PPPs represent eminent domain for private gain, which is what caused much of the backlash to the Trans Texas Corridor, where PPPs were the financing mechanism that grants these private entities the control of not just the facility, but the right of way/surrounding property where private companies make a killing on concessions. SB 1048, in Sec. 2267.001 (10) (a), grants the private entity rights to apurtenance, which the legal definition given by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law is “property (as an outbuilding or fixture) or a property right (as a right of way) that is incidental to a principal property and that passes with the principal property upon sale or transfer.”

In Sec. 2267.002, SB 1048 also uses the term ‘public purpose’ (which could mean a shopping mall) as opposed to the stricter ‘public use,’ to ensure the taking through eminent domain is for a legitimate public necessity). Texans hold private property rights sacred, and these bills will throw gasoline on the Trans Texas Corridor fire that lawmakers are attempting to convince constituents has been extinguished. Kolkhorst’s TTC repeal bill, HB 1201, passed both chambers but will Perry sign it?

So Texas lawmakers are basically granting government a blank check to trample on property rights and pick winners and losers — who will lose their land to benefit another, not for matters of public necessity. If the government can steal your land, it’s tantamount to stealing your wealth. Who said Republicans aren’t socialists? PPPs are just the sort of wealth redistribution they like — giveaways to their cronies and special interest friends. Democrats also like PPPs because it gives government more power. PPPs are a BIG step in enacting the U.N.’s Agenda 21 policies whose stated goal is to abolish private property and restrict mobility.

Sweetheart deals, government-sanctioned monopolies
Michelle Malkin called PPPs corporate welfare. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were PPPs, which required massive taxpayer bailouts.

PPPs socialize the losses and privatize the profits that amount to horrible public policy. Such contracts are sweetheart deals that eliminate competitive bidding and grant government-sanctioned monopolies (with guaranteed profits) to the well-connected.

Public interest not protected, kept secret
These contracts can be negotiated in SECRET, without financial disclosures (like financing, the structure of the ‘user fees’ or lease payments, viability studies, public subsidies, or whether or not it contains non-compete clauses or other gotcha provisions). There is no meaningful public access to PPPs before they’re signed, and the few guidelines created simply exist to advise governmental entities outside the public purview.

Corporations granted power to tax
Sec. 2267.057 of SB 1048 allows a private entity “to collect lease payments, impose user fees.” This means a private entity will have the power to levy a tax. Ditto for PPPs for highways.

The public cannot pressure nor hold accountable a private corporation if the ‘fee’ or ‘tax’ is too high. PPPs are the marriage of the corporation with the state and grants monopolies to private entities for a private rather than a public benefit. Such deals also violate the public trust and the fiduciary duty of lawmakers to protect Texas taxpayers. It’s piracy of the public’s assets, and state lawmakers of BOTH parties passed these bills by huge margins, effectively selling off what doesn’t even belong to them — our roads and infrastructure belong to the PEOPLE of Texas.

SB 1048 & HB 2729 include the sale of schools and public hospitals, and since PPPs grant private, even foreign, corporations a right to operate and maintain the “asset,” it grants authority to privatize the public sector workforce now in place. Now decisions will be made based on private profits, not the public interest.

Tolls in perpetuity comin’ your way
Tolling authorities got their every wish granted this session under the moniker of ‘local control.’ Two bills in particular, HB 1112 and SB 19, represent a huge policy shift away from traditional turnpikes where the toll comes off the road when it’s paid for to granting authority to keep tolls in place to fund other projects. HB 1112 by Rep. Phillips allows toll entities, in effect, to toll in perpetuity and use borrowed money to secure more borrowed money, the same multi-leveraging methods that caused the subprime mortgage crisis.

It’s like building roads with credit cards, and such risky multi-leveraged debt also means Texans will be tolled in perpetuity by un-elected boards (with the exception of El Paso’s tolling authority board), making it one of the most anti-taxpayer bills of the session.

SB 19 by Sen. Robert Nichols, known as the ‘primacy’ bill, gives toll entities the right of first refusal on all toll projects in its jurisdiction. However, when toll entities exercise a right of first refusal, under Nichols’ bill, they also get development rights for ALL future segments of the project. SB 19 also grants toll entities ownership of the road in perpetuity. This virtually guarantees tolls will be charged in perpetuity and that these projects will be never become non-toll roads. These effectively grant a limitless power to tax to UN-elected toll entities.

Robin Hood tax grab
Some have dubbed this practice known as ‘system financing’ as Robin Hood since it steals toll taxes from one corridor and pledges it to another corridor (that those same users may not use). It can also involve increasing the toll on one segment to gain ‘surplus revenue’ to pledge to another project and so on, making it impossible to take tolls off the original road. The Texas Constitution currently prohibits perpetuities in Art I, Sec. 26, though Sen. Chris Harris advanced a Constitutional amendment, SJR 13 (which died in the Calendars Committee in the House), to change that.

Toll authorities even got the right to conduct their own environmental studies, which is like the fox guarding the henhouse, ensuring the preferred alternative is always a toll road, not a free road.

No sunset on what’s wrong at TxDOT
TxDOT and toll agencies didn’t get left behind in the PPP feeding frenzy. SB 1420, the TxDOT sunset bill, will allow 15 Texas road projects (complete list below) to be sold off to foreign companies, a move Texans persistently and loudly object to. One of the worst parts of the bill aside from ending the ban on various forms of PPPs, are the sweeping changes to the environmental review process. It allows TxDOT to grant local toll authorities environmental clearance under certain circumstances (1- if the project is in a Metropolitan Planning Organization’s plan, 2 – if the Transportation Commission says the project is eligible, or 3 – if the toll entity pays TxDOT for the review), even projects requiring federal review.

The new terms allow TxDOT to enter into an agreement with local toll entities and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) where TxDOT does the environmental review on local toll projects, which essentially delegates the environmental clearance to TxDOT if certain terms of that agreement are met (Section 201.753). While TxDOT’s environmental decision still goes to the FHWA for final clearance, basically, the FHWA will simply rubber stamp the determination and review done by TxDOT.

Federal oversight has provided one of the few ways Texans have stopped unwanted toll projects, including the Trans Texas Corridor. TxDOT was caught doing grossly inadequate studies and even fraudulent environmental studies for which TxDOT was eventually prohibited by FHWA from conducting the new environmental review on US 281. So as such a bad actor, TxDOT is the LAST agency that should be given the right to grant environmental clearance for toll projects.

The great property tax heist…for ROADS!
The sunset bill also expands the use of Transportation Reinvestment Zones (TRZs) to heist property taxes to fund transportation projects. Local governments can designate any area it considers underdeveloped a TRZ and raid the anticipated property tax increases to pay for not only transportation, but also virtually anything else government wants to fund as well. TRZs expressly grant governmental authorities to get into the business of economic development, yet another property rights abuse. Don’t count on your property taxes ever being lowered when government can sell bonds dependent on ever increasing property taxes. A stand alone bill with similar language to expand TRZ authority also passed (HB 563 by Rep. Joe Pickett).

All this coupled with the fact that we ended up with a status quo Transportation Commission (NO CHANGE to the governing structure of this rogue agency at all) and few meaningful reforms to TxDOT were adopted (after multiple scathing sunset reviews and audits), the entire session was a transportation-taxpayer nightmare and a special interest dream.

Lawmakers ‘Just Say No’ to Lemonade Stands, Roadside Vendors
After a similar bill died in the Transportation Committee, your local county governments lobbied to ensure passage of HB 1768 that gives counties with a population of 450,000 or more the power to regulate roadside vendors (think taxes or putting you out of business), including the sale of pets, and anything that collects money, even your kid’s lemonade stand! At a time when Texans are looking for additional sources of income to help make ends meet, this is big government overreach when Texans can least afford it. Yet Perry and our politicians keep trying to convince us that Texas is the last bastion of freedom, limited government, and lower taxes!

A few victories
Often a session is characterized more by the bad bills that were stopped versus the good ones that got passed. That’s definitely the case with the 82nd Regular Session. The revolving debt bills, HB 3218 and HB 2802 that were tacked onto the TxDOT sunset bill, were successfully stripped out in conference. While the final repeal of the Trans Texas Corridor finally made it to the Governor’s desk (HB 1201), the passage of SB 1048, HB 2729, and SB 1420 essentially revive a Trans Texas Corridor-style sale of Texas infrastructure through Public Private Partnerships.

Aside from halting the Constitutional Amendment that would have repealed the ban on perpetuities, a bill to install automatic license plate readers in DPS vehicles failed, along with bills to take away lanes open to both autos and bikes and make them bike-only lanes and one to establish police checkpoints to verify auto insurance (‘Papers, pleez’). Then there are the bills to increase the gas tax, one solely dedicated not to building roads but to retiring mounting road debt, that also died. There are too many other bad bills to chronicle here, but for a full list, go the “Grassroots Action Center” at www.TexasTURF.org for a comprehensive list.

The message to the grassroots is clear. Sit down, shut up, and hand us your money, your property, and your freedom. When elected officials brazenly thumb their noses at over 100 grassroots groups and fail to even respond to their Open Letter (aside from passing all the legislation they said ‘NO’ to and allowing the bills they did want passed to die), the electorate had better take heed and respond appropriately and demand accountability by getting their pound of flesh at the ballot box. After all, every single one of them is up for re-election next year, thanks to the census and redistricting. Anything less is hazardous to your freedom!

List of Texas highways eligible to be privatized:
(1) the State Highway 99 (Grand Parkway) project (outer loop around Houston through Harris, Montgomery, Liberty, Chambers, Galveston, Brazoria and Ft. Bend counties — click on MAP HERE);
(2) the Interstate Highway 35E managed lanes project in Dallas and Denton Counties from Interstate Highway 635 to U.S. Highway380;
(3) the North Tarrant Express project in Tarrant and Dallas Counties, including on State Highway 183 from State Highway 121 to State Highway 161(Segment 2E);
(4, 5, 6) on Interstate Highway 35W from Interstate Highway 30 to State Highway 114 (Segments 3A, 3B, and 3C); and
(7) on Interstate Highway 820 from State Highway 183 North to south of Randol Mill Road (Segment4);
(8) the State Highway 183 managed lanes project in Dallas County from State Highway 161 to Interstate Highway35E;
(9) the State Highway 249 project in Harris and Montgomery Counties from Spring Cypress Road to Farm-to-Market Road 1774;
(10) the Highway 288 project in Brazoria County and Harris County;and
(11) the U.S. Highway 290 Hempstead managed lanes project in Harris County from Interstate Highway 610 to State Highway 99
(12) the Loop 1 (MoPac Improvement) project from Farm-to-Market Road 734 to Cesar Chavez Street;
(13) the U.S. 183 (Bergstrom Expressway) project from Springdale Road to Patton Avenue;or
(14) a project consisting of the construction of: the Outer Parkway Project from U.S. Highway 77/83 to Farm-to-Market Road 1847; and
(15) the South Padre Island Second Access Causeway Project from State Highway 100 to Park Road 100.

Lessons from South Bay Expressway bankruptcy

Link to article here. FYI, Robert Poole is one of the top players that lobbies for public private partnerships (PPPs) that socialize losses and privatize the profits. So in his essay, he tries to defend the indefensible and tries to say there were no taxpayer bailouts. Really? How do you explain the nearly $80 million loss of taxpayer money on the portion of the taxpayer-backed federal TIFIA loan that won't be repaid? Taxpayer beware!

Lessons from bankruptcy of South Bay Expressway

By Robert J. Hawkins

10:17 a.m., May 27, 2011

The South Bay Expressway continues to be held up as an object lesson for those thinking of entering into private-public partnerships for highway projects -- make that toll-road projects.

The latest is from Bob Poole, director of transportation policy for the Reason Foundation.

Poole asks the obvious -- and it seems, nearly inevitable -- question: "What happens if the owners of the private toll roads go bankrupt?"

He cites the $2 billion Clem Jones Tunnel project in Brisbane, Australia and the South Bay Expressway in San Diego County.

In both cases the heavy-duty bank investors get priority over all other claimants -- but even they get the short end of their original investment. Some get nothing for their troubles.

In both cases, the highway projects kept running through bankruptcy and reorganization, notes Poole.

Here's how Poole breaks down the local settlement:
"Under the terms of the settlement, owner Macquarie lost all its $150 million equity investment. A group of 10 banks that held $363 million in debt settled for $210 million in new loans (58 percent of the previous amount) and a 68 percent ownership stake. The federal TIFIA (Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act) program, suffering its first-ever default, wrote down its $172 million loan to $93 million, while gaining the remaining 32 percent ownership stake."

Poole's conclusion?

Toll projects are risky ventures.

"The best way to deal with that riskiness," he writes, "is to shift it from general taxpayers to sophisticated investors who are prepared to balance the occasional loss in exchange for solid long-term returns in other cases."

You can read Poole's entire essay here.

Feds threaten to make TX no-fly zone over patdown bill

Link to article here.

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINES

Feds to Texas: We'll make you a 'no-fly' zone

Fight over Obama-led TSA decision to grope sex organs ratchets up

Posted: May 25, 2011
11:50 am Eastern
By Bob Unruh
© 2011 WND



TSA 'enhanced pat-down'
The Department of Justice under Barack Obama's direction has threatened to make the state of Texas a "no-fly" zone if state lawmakers pursue legislation that would protect airline passengers from having their sex organs groped by Transportation Security Administration officials without probable cause.

The threat came yesterday from U.S. Attorney John E. Murphy, who warned state lawmakers, "Texas has no authority to regulate federal agents and employees in the performance of their federal duties or to pass a statute that conflicts with federal law."

He said if state lawmakers would move forward with their plans to protect airline passengers from what critics have termed sexual assault in airport security lines, "TSA would likely be required to cancel any flight or series of flights."

The letter's impact was immediate, as one state senator told the Tenth Amendment Center he would not pursue his bill. But just as immediate was the outcry over the "tyranny" being imposed by the federal government and warnings that if this year's bill isn't successful, there certainly will be more to follow.

State Rep. David Simpson, who sponsored the state plan in the House and notes that it protects federal agents doing constitutional searches, suggested the federal government review the U.S. Constitution, under which its agents are supposed to be acting.

"Instead of threatening to shut down flights in Texas, why doesn't the TSA just show us their statutory authority to grope or ogle our private parts?" he asked. "All that HB 1937 does is require that the TSA abide by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. We aren't even prohibiting the pat-downs, per se. We're just saying you can't go straight to third base. You have to have a reason – you have to have probable cause – before groping someone's sexual organs."
Simpson called on the spirit of President Reagan for people to continue the fight over what he called the "brazen show of disregard for the dignity and the constitutional rights of American citizens," saying, "If not us, who? And if not now, when?"

Simpson previously has accused the Obama administration of turning the nation into a police state with its invasive pat-down procedures at airports.

The Republican lawmaker criticized airport procedures that require travelers to either pass through a scanner that images the entire body or submit to an intrusive pat-down.

He said metal detectors are far more effective, noting instances in which the detectors caught banned objects while the body screeners missed them.

The Texas plan would classify any airport inspection that "touches the anus, sexual organ, buttocks or breast of another person including through the clothing, or touches the other person in a manner that would be offensive to a reasonable person" as an offense of sexual harassment under official oppression.

Transportation Security Administration agents could be charged with a misdemeanor crime, face a $4,000 fine and one year in jail under the measure.

Murphy said that's unacceptable, and federal agents have to be able to touch sex organs as they please.

"The proposed legislation would make it unlawful for a federal agent such as a TSO to perform certain specified searches for the purpose of granting access to a publicly accessible building or form of transportation," he demanded. "That provision would thus criminalize searches that are required under federal regulations in order to ensure the safety of the American public."

"If the Administrator [of the TSA] determines that 'a particular threat cannot be addressed in a away adequate to ensure … the safety of passengers and crew of a particular flight,' he 'shall cancel the flight or series of flights,'" he threatened.

Citizens who organized the TsaTyranny.com website in reaction to the invasive federal procedures immediately alerted their constituents.

"What I am telling you is not a fable, a bad dream, or Hollywood fiction. It didn't happen in Communist China or the former Soviet Union. It wasn't declared by the former President of Egypt or Tunisia or Generalissimo Antonio de Santa Anna. And it didn't happen in 1770 or 1835," said spokesman Wesley Strackbein. "It happened yesterday; it happened in America; and it was declared by officials representing the United States government.

"On Tuesday, agents of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) bullied Texas senators in person, and a DOJ letter was sent to Speaker of the Texas House Joe Straus and President of the Texas Senate David Dewhurst which told Texas to bow in submission to despotism or pay the consequences. Members of the Texas legislature were informed that if they criminalize the touching of travelers' genitals by TSA officers, Washington will likely declare a no-fly zone and disallow commercial air traffic in the Lone Star State."

He said the DOJ letter from Murphy was rife with inaccuracies, too.

"There is no federal law that exists or that is consistent with the Constitution that sanctions the touching of private parts without probable cause. To the contrary – the Fourth Amendment forbids them. Further, the Supremacy Clause only protects federal action that is otherwise constitutional. A search without probable cause is an unconstitutional violation of the 4th Amendment. The Supremacy Clause is thus on our side, not theirs, as Texas is seeking to uphold the Constitution while the TSA is insisting on violating it," he said.

In a commentary at the Tenth Amendment Center, by Connor Boyack with Brian Roberts and Michael Boldin, the organization said, "It was less than a month ago at the Dallas, Texas, airport where former Miss USA Susie Castillo tearfully produced a viral video describing the molestation she had just then endured at the hands of a TSA agent.

"I mean, she actually… touched my vagina," Castillo said through her tears. "They're making me… choose to either get molested… or go through this machine that's completely unhealthy and dangerous. I don't want to go through it, and here I am crying."

Continued the commentary, "Castillo isn't the only person who would be protected under this Texas legislation. All other innocent travelers would likewise be shielded. That includes the six year old girl who made the headlines last month for being groped by a TSA agent (an action which the TSA defended as being alright since it 'followed the current standard operating procedures'), as well as the eight-month-old infant subjected to a pat down while cradled in the arms of her mother.

"These are but a few of the myriad confrontations that occur daily where TSA agents detain, invasively search, and seize items from innocent individuals who are not suspected of any crime whatsoever. Texas' bill would correct this horrific perversion of the law within its state, but the federal government is clearly interested in justifying and maintaining its statist status quo," the organization said.

It also suggested that the Texas proposal might be just the tip of the iceberg that TSA is steaming toward.

"Already, four other states are considering similar 'travel freedom' legislation. And, sources close to the Tenth Amendment Center tell us to expect at least 10 others in 2012. Taken together, it becomes evident that many other states will soon be picking up the baton, together having the courage needed to put the federal government back in its rightful place – which isn't inside the waistline of innocent passengers.


Read more: Feds to Texas: We'll make you a 'no-fly' zone http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=303129#ixzz1O5FaCbTr

WikiLeaks docs prove plans for North American Union

Link to article here.

Public private partnerships (PPPs) and the sale of America's highways are part of this grand scheme, so is the Trans Texas Corridor, which is to facilitate the free flow of people & goods across our northern & southern borders.

American Disintegration for North American Integration Plan

Posted on Wednesday, May 18 @ 09:27:21 EDT
Topic: Americans for Legal Immigration PAC Americans for Legal Immigration PACAmerican Disintegration for North American Integration Plan

by William Gheen
President of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC)
www.alipac.us

May 18, 2011

Those of us who have studied the nation's crushing effects and causes of illegal immigration for sometime have become acutely aware of the driving forces facilitating the invasion of the United States of America.



Millions of illegal aliens have not landed in the United States via random acts or the chaotic consequences of market forces. This invasion of the American homeland and mockery of constitutional governance driven by American citizens is being funded, planned, assisted, and facilitated by well financed global power players.

Banks, global corporations, despotic billionaires like George Soros, cryptic organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and an army of their minions are pushing for the integration of North America and the disintegration of the United States!

The most recent information to come to light regarding these plans has come in the form of secret documents released by the notorious WikiLeaks organization.

WikiLeaks is an international nonprofit organization directed by the currently jailed Australian Internet activist Julian Assange. Many of you have heard of the group in the American press in regards to the issue of released documents related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

These new secret documents appear to confirm an incremental and covert plan within the highest levels of the American and Canadian governments to accomplish deeper "North American Integration," while keeping most average citizens in the dark and bypassing the constitutions of the existing three sovereign nations of America, Canada, and Mexico.

WikiLeaks released these documents on April 28, 2011, and news of these shocking findings is just now reaching the public via patriotic groups and the news media. This game changing document is a secret 2005 U.S. Embassy cable from Ottawa signed by then-Ambassador Paul Cellucci.

Paul Cellucci is a former Republican Governor of Massachusetts and a big supporter of illegal alien Amnesty proponent AZ Senator John McCain!

In the secret document, US Ambassador Paul Cellucci expounds upon a well researched and refined plan to mostly replace the existing borders of sovereign nations with some kind of privacy-invading biometric "security perimeter," where the borders of the nations will still stand, but information will be exchanged on all citizens in the nations, thus creating a super state law enforcement effort to manage security.

The document specifically states that Cellucci and his fellow conspirators fear the US could wake up and secure the borders against contagious diseases and terrorism. He points out that financial interests in Canada fear US attempts to protect citizens from terrorism or pandemics and could interfere with some financial interests in Canada.

"Even with zero tariffs, our land borders have strong commercial effects. Some of these effects are positive (such as law enforcement and data gathering), so our governments may always want to keep some kind of land border in place... The risk that business will be obstructed at the border by discretionary U.S. actions, such as measures to defend against terrorism or infectious disease, in addition to growing congestion, have become major risks to the economy, inhibiting investment in Canada," the document reads.

Here we have a man who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America and the people who pay his exorbitant salary and expenses with their hard earned taxes and who is taking the side of financial interests that cannot be bothered by dead Americans killed by Mexican Flu pandemics and other diseases, rampaging armies of illegal alien marauders, or the lethal terrorists among them.

The secret document also advocates that this North American Integration (NAI) will transform sovereign nations into a "single market" with some form of "monetary union."

Of course, by "single market" they mean single labor market, which means that all the labor they want from other nations can be brought into Canada, Mexico, and America without hindrance from existing laws, constitutions, or pesky existing American citizens who are being systematically conquered and vanquished piecemeal from their jobs and homes.

The document is very clear about moving slowly and incrementally and not attempting to arouse public suspicions by making a big move all at once.

This document is consistent with the North American Community plans we have documented that are coming out of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Dr. Robert Pastor of American University, as well as other proillegal alien amnesty and open borders groups.

Some Americans who are new to these issues may be asking what this has to do with the topic of illegal immigration?

The nonenforcement of America's existing constitution and federal immigration laws is facilitating this North American Integration, North American Community, North American Union plan.

Unlike the European Union, American citizens are not being asked if they want to lose their sovereignty and self governance; we are not being asked to vote on this or ratify this!

While the passage of unwise trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA have accelerated us down this path to national disintegration, for the most part the Congress is not being asked to ratify these nation-eroding agreements.

By not adequately enforcing America's existing immigration and border laws, and by assisting millions of illegal aliens with everything from credit cards to bilingual voice systems demanding we "press one for English," an invading economic army has been brought to Americans' doorsteps.

While we have documented that illegal aliens are already voting in mass numbers in probably every state, the populist political uprising of Americans, partially reflected in the Tea Party movement, was stalled west of the Mississippi in the 2010 elections where the largest illegal alien populations resided, yet no investigations or charges are being pursued.

If the plans to make illegal aliens new legal voters via the Dream Act or Comprehensive Amnesty become reality, then the North American Integration has been accomplished and any political resistance by American patriots will be overridden by the new illegal alien voting block.

The political voices of once free Americans will be silenced by the new illegal alien voting block of over 12 million invaders, who were promised our jobs and lands. and power over us and our descendants, in return for their services of overthrowing the American Republic. Their relatives and friends back in their home nations will soon be joining them in this endeavor.

Many of us who first warned America about these issues after US President Bush, Mexican President Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Martin announced the Security And Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in 2005 to create a "free flow of people, goods, and services" across our borders have been ridiculed by liberal media character assassins. We created the term North American Union to convey a lot of meaning to our fellow Americans quickly.

Even now, if you look at Wikipedia, you will see claims that such concerns about this kind of North American Initiative, Union, Integration, or whatever are the mad rantings of "conspiracy theorists."

Yet, here are leaked documents from a US ambassador advocating this very idea and speaking of it in a way which makes it clear he is not alone and that such plans were already well under way by 2005!

Their eventual goals are to have everyone in North America governed by a new continental government, which would completely supersede what is left of the existing American government.

A recent book called "The Right Balance" written by Canadian Senator Hugh Segal, who is the Canadian equivalent of a Republican, advocates openly for Canadians to understand and accept a "North American Community." This mouthpiece of the traitors says, "A continent-wide commitment to economic and social development, through which models such as Canada's equalization program could be applied elsewhere... The creation of a North American Assembly, similar to the European Parliament in its early days" is needed.

Hugh Segal reveals more of their plans which are afoot in Canada, where freedom of speech among regular citizens has been highly compromised by political correctness tribunals, of which I would have been fined or jailed a long time back. Segal calls for "the creation of a North American Assembly, similar to the European Parliament in its early days." This sounds exactly like the student government triumvirate mock assembly we caught the elites staging in Mexico a few years back, where one student was assigned to impersonate "William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration" during the exercise!

These nation-stealing, treasonous conspirators are quite aware that millions of Americans will not accept the news that the divinely inspired experiment in self governance earned by George Washington, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and many others has been stolen from us.

They are quite aware that in the final steps of this effort to enslave Americans, many Americans will try their best to use their 1st and 2nd Amendment rights to preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States of America; that is likely why all of these recent Homeland Security documents going out to police across America demonize American Patriot defenders as "violent extremists."

American citizens loyal to the US Constitution are not currently extremists, but those perpetrating this North American Integration plan are expecting Americans to become violent eventually in reaction to their plan. This would explain their preparations.

The most recent release from the White House was part of an agreement crafted in secret as well to create this so called "perimeter," and instead of identifying terrorists as Islamic extremists, invading illegal immigrants, or forces from outside of America or Canada who might attack, it reads, "We intend to cooperate to identify, prevent, and counter violent extremism in our two countries. By working cooperatively on research, sharing best practices, and emphasizing community-based and community-driven efforts, we will have a better understanding of this threat and an increased ability to address it effectively."

Those who conspire to move secretly and incrementally against us and our revered US Constitution are called enemies, and it is becoming clear that many of the enemies of the people of America now hold high level positions in the government that our life energy and taxes sustain.

Illegal immigration must be stopped and reversed using humane, peaceful, and political processes via the simple adequate enforcement of America's existing immigration and border laws.

These treasonous politicians, financial and business leaders, academics, and bureaucrats currently pushing for the disintegration of America and the reformation of a new United States of North America, must be identified, stopped, and thrown down from their positions of power or influence, and held accountable for the massive amount of death, loss, and suffering they are inflicting upon innocent American citizens with their elitist plans.

We must stop them because we are Americans. We are the only ones on the planet who have fought this kind of battle before and won. Please remember that America's founders did not just take on the English government. They took on a king, a church, and one of the world's first global corporations and with God's grace prevailed!

The hour is late and our chances look as daunting as when George Washington knelt on his knees in prayer upon the snow-covered ground at Valley Forge.

The new American political revolution that began in 2010 must grow and intensify and we Americans who are still loyal to the principles and the Constitution that once made America the greatest nation on earth must organize in greater numbers.

These secret documents found by WikiLeaks confirm that we have traitors among us that seek the disintegration of America for the creation of a new more regional and global governance. Let us work and pray together to overcome their politics of division and rally our countrymen and women to the American cause once again.

May God save the United States!

Higher gas prices about greed, not need

Link to article here.

Rising Oil Price Intensifies Speculation Debate

By Dunstan Prial

Published March 10, 2011 | FOXBusiness


It happens every time the rising price of crude oil pushes a gallon of gasoline toward $4 in the    U.S. -- the debate over the role of speculators in commodities markets grows louder and sharper.

Do speculators -- that is, traders who purchase futures contracts purely for profit and with no intention of taking delivery of the product -- play a necessary role in creating liquid markets for everything from oil to orange juice? Or do they manipulate prices for their own benefit often at the expense of consumers?

The answer, of course, is 'yes' to both questions. But there seems to be a heightened urgency to the debate this time around as global economies struggle to recover from the worst economic downturn in decades.

The concern is that by artificially pushing the price of oil higher, the speculators are threatening the already fragile global economic recovery, especially here in the U.S.

As everyone knows, the price of crude oil and the price consumers pay for a gallon of gasoline are inextricably linked. When crude rises, so does the price at the pump, and that takes money out of the pockets of U.S. consumers, whose spending comprises 70% of domestic economic activity. Since late January, when political turmoil began to spread across the Mideast, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has risen more than 40 cents to $3.52 from $3.10, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“The real loser becomes the domestic economy,” said Hamza Khan, an analyst with the Schork Report, an energy markets newsletter. “When consumers have to pay more at the pump they’re going to cut back elsewhere and that is going to hurt U.S. companies.”

While traders -- especially pure speculators -- thrive on market volatility, profiting on sudden surges and plunges, that same uncertainty wreaks havoc on small business owners trying to plan for their future.

Eventually that uncertainty will put a crimp in hiring, Khan warned. “Who’s going to hire if they might be going out of business in two weeks?” he asked.

The violence roiling the Middle East has raised genuine concerns that disruptions in the oil supply could create a shortage. Earlier this week a barrel of crude hit a two-year high of $105.

But the concerns so far are nothing more than that -- concerns. In Egypt, security along the well-traveled Suez Canal and the important Suez-Mediterranean pipeline was beefed up almost simultaneous to the outbreak of political unrest there. The situation in Libya, which controls the largest oil reserves in Africa, is murkier, but to date global production has not been markedly curtailed by the violence in that country. Besides, Libya only produces 2% of the global oil supply.

Meanwhile, stockpiles remain plentiful and, if anything, demand is expected to slow as China puts the brakes on its overheating economy.

Nevertheless, big speculators (primarily hedge funds) are pouring money into the oil market in the form of net-long positions, or bets that the price will continue to rise. According to data from the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, net-long positions rose by 30% in the days immediately following the outbreak of violence in Libya.

Khan said the disparity between what’s actually happening in the oil markets and the number of contracts betting on a rise in prices represents a “disconnect,” one that detracts from speculators’ important role of providing liquidity and transparency to markets.

By some estimates speculators have added $15 a barrel to the price of oil.

Kevin Kerr, president of commodities firm Kerr Trading International, pulled no punches, calling the current price levels “simply a money grab and fear trade.”

“Speculators in the energy markets right now have a lot of risks to consider but unfortunately it can get overdone and I hope that the various funds and large speculative entities will take a step back and really evaluate the true fundamental picture. We do have plenty of oil on the market right now and while some fear premium is certainly legitimate, in my opinion it is not a justification for over $100 right now,” he said.

Kerr said the escalating violence in Libya, as rebel forces attempt to oust long-time dictator Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, raises legitimate concerns for “real disruption,” but still does not justify the current prices.

Kerr also warned of the global impact resulting from artificially high oil prices: “Speculators and funds who are driving up the price of oil based on fear premium and the weak dollar will hopefully evaluate the implications for driving the price much higher than it really needs or deserves to go, at least at this stage,” he said.

Finally, Kerr recalled “the extreme liquidation” that followed the last precipitous rise in oil prices, when a barrel passed $147 in the summer of 2008 and then plunged below $40 in a matter of months.

“I would like to say that rampant speculators learned from what happened in 2008 but it seems fiduciary responsibility and true market fundamentals are still on the back burner,” Kerr concluded.

Transportation bills that threaten prosperity, freedom

Link to article here.

Note how the bills that raise your tax on driving to 75 cents a mile (private toll roads) are soaring through, but bills to dedicate existing taxes (vehicle sales taxes) to roads so your roads don't have to be tolled and bills to take tolls off roads when they're paid for got buried in Committee.

Slow legislative session for transportation nonetheless has a few bills worth following in final weeks

Ben Wear: Getting There
Austin American Statesman

Published: 7:12 p.m. Sunday, May 8, 2011

Back in 2007, when the Legislature was about to have its biennial 140-day talkanalia, I thought it probably would be a low-key session for my beat. After all, lawmakers had passed a huge transportation bill in 2003, and then a fairly large follow-up bill in 2005.

Not much was likely to happen. Boy, was I wrong.

The new Senate transportation chairman that January called for the Texas Transportation Commission chairman to step aside; Houston lawmakers turned on the Texas Department of Transportation for bigfooting them on some huge tollway projects; Dallas senators were mad at the agency about another toll road deal; and rural folks wanted to drive a stake into the heart of the Trans-Texas Corridor. Holy Hades — and big changes — ensued.

I had the same feeling this session, that transportation would take a back seat to the state's ailing budget and redistricting. I wasn't wrong this time. About the biggest thing to happen in transportation this time — $19.5 billion big, as I reported last week — is that TxDOT's budget may grow by 23 percent, while the rest of state government is checking vending machines for spare change.

With three weeks remaining in the 82nd Legislature, here are the transportation bills that are cooking and cooling.

TxDOT sunset and private tollway leases. Senate Bill 1420 is headed to a House-Senate conference committee laden with dozens of amendments tacked on in the House.

Most prominently, the bill would authorize private concession agreements for about 20 specific tollway projects across the state, including MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) managed lanes north of the river and U.S. 183 in East Austin.

Those long-term leases with private companies were part of the huge stir in 2007, when legislators banned most of them. They've had a change of heart, and this bill probably will go to Gov. Rick Perry with those roads still in it. What it won't have, after both chambers rejected the idea, is a single transportation commissioner to replace the existing five-member commission appointed by the governor.

Full speed ahead. House Bill 1353, which would allow TxDOT to set 75 mph speed limits on rural highways in about 150 counties where the maximum is now 70 mph and would do away with the lower speed limits at night and for trucks, probably will pass the Senate this week. I'm told the Senate probably will leave it unchanged from the House version, sending it to Perry.

As for the ballyhooed 85 mph speed limit bill, which in fact would apply only to the second phase of Texas 130 under construction southeast of Austin (and would remove the Trans-Texas Corridor from the statutes), it passed the House and is now pending in a Senate committee. Hard to say what its fate will be.

Big (borrowed) bucks. The Senate's version of House Bill 1, the 2012-13 state budget bill, has $3.2 billion more in it for TxDOT than what the House approved late last month. It appears that the Senate budget figure — the difference is made up almost entirely of money that would be borrowed and paid back from the state's general fund over 30 years — has a good chance of prevailing.

Capital Metro labor. Senate Bill 650, which among other elements would force Austin's transit agency to contract out all bus and rail service, or make all workers full-fledged agency employees, has passed the Senate and a House committee and is awaiting a spot on the House calendar for action. Either option, which would eliminate Capital Metro's subsidiary-faux-contractor StarTran, would save the agency millions of dollars a year, according to a recent agency report. The bill stands a good chance of passage, which would force a hard choice on the Capital Metro board that it has shied away from making on its own.

Buses on MoPac shoulders? Maybe not. Senate Bill 1102, which would allow transit buses to skirt traffic congestion by using highway shoulders on certain freeways in Travis and a few other counties, is awaiting action by the Senate as a whole. But it has fallen off the Senate's calendar for debate. With time short and a variety of legislative deadlines looming, the bill could be in trouble. Perry vetoed a similar bill two years ago, citing safety concerns, but supporters have added training and public awareness requirements this time to address his concerns.

Also in trouble. Idling on various lower rungs of the legislative ladder, and thus unlikely to become law, are bills that would: completely ban converting free lanes to toll lanes (it can be done with a public vote now); prohibit selling devices to jam police radar; divert various fees to a now-empty "rail relocation and improvement fund" (to move freight lines outside urban areas) that voters created several years ago; require that revenue from the 6.25 percent state sales tax on vehicle purchases, about $2.5 billion a year that now goes to the state's general fund, instead go to TxDOT for highway work; allow counties to have local elections to raise fees or taxes for local transportation projects; and require toll roads to become free roads once the bonds sold to pay for construction have been paid off.

Sign this Open Letter to Rick Perry and state leaders

Fellow Grassroots Texans -
 
If you are concerned about transportation policy in Texas, we encourage you to review the open letter below, and if you agree with the concerns expressed, please sign on.
_____
 
AN OPEN LETTER TO GOVERNOR RICK PERRY
 
(CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE OPEN LETTER)
May 2, 2011
 
Texas Governor Rick Perry
State Insurance Building
1100 San Jacinto
Austin, Texas 78701
 
Cc:     
Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst
Texas House Speaker Joe Straus
Senate Transportation Chair Tommy Williams
House Transportation Chair Larry Phillips
Honorable Members of the Texas Senate
Honorable Members of the Texas House

Governor Perry:
 
Given its rapid growth and favorable business climate, there is no doubt that Texas will have a need for additional highway construction in the coming years.  In recent years, total state outlays for new highway construction projects in Texas have been averaging approximately 4.5 billion dollars per year.[1]  Economic projections indicate that significant road construction will be needed in coming years.
 
In its taxpayer-funded, public lobbying campaigns, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) argues[2] that there is only one real option available to Texas for addressing the disparity between our current funding levels and those required for future highway construction--namely, the building of "toll roads."[3]  By "toll roads," TxDOT apparently means, in practice, a network of corporate toll roads funded with "innovative financing schemes," largely secured, financed and underwritten by taxpayers, but controlled by--and for the benefit of--private, for-profit corporations.[4]  Based on your own public statements,[5] it appears that you agree with the TxDOT Commissioners.[6]
 
We acknowledge, of course...
 

TxDOT budget would get 23 percent bump in Senate budget

Link to article here.

When the State is already $31 BILLION in debt for roads, it's unfathomable how the Senate can think we can afford to plunge additional $3 billion into more debt. These lawmakers have got to address our long-term structural shortfall in road funding. It is true that the priorities of this legislature are crystal clear. It's a special interests lovefest in Austin!

Budget woes mostly miss transportation

TxDOT would see 23 percent budget increase, and continued construction blitz, under Senate version of 2012-13 state budget.

By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Published: 8:38 p.m. Thursday, May 5, 2011

What budget problem?

In contrast to the steep cuts for most of the rest of state government, the Texas Department of Transportation would see a 23 percent increase in its 2012-13 spending under the budget bill approved Wednesday by the Texas Senate. Even the House version approved April 3 would give TxDOT a 2.2 percent increase for the two years beginning Sept. 1.

Senate leaders say they'll push for their $19.5 billion TxDOT budget, a $3.6 billion increase over 2010-11 and $3.3 billion more than the House version, as the two chambers negotiate a final budget in the legislative session's final weeks. And an interview with a key House member indicates senators may find a receptive audience.

"The $3 billion simply completes what the people of Texas recognized as a need to help their infrastructure, and I'm very supportive of that," said state Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, who chaired the subcommittee of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee that wrote the TxDOT section of the proposed budget, House Bill 1. Spending that added money on roads, Darby said, will spur economic development, save people time frittered away in traffic congestion, and take advantage of depressed construction prices.
TxDOT, under heavy political pressure for the past few years because of a sharp policy turn toward toll road building, may get added authority to give private companies long-term leases to build tollways. The TxDOT "sunset" bill approved by the House last week would authorize about 20 such projects.

While TxDOT's budget primarily comes from taxes and fees that state law dedicates to transportation, the bulk of the difference between the House and Senate budgets is $3 billion in bonds that TxDOT would sell to raise money for projects. And under an amendment to the Texas Constitution that voters approved in 2007, the debt payments for that borrowing — about $257 million over the next two years — would come primarily from the state's general fund. That's the same pot of money that fell an estimated $23 billion short this legislative session and is forcing spending cuts for social services, education and prisons, among other state needs.

Beyond that, the debt-service tab would rise to more than $600 million every two years once all $5 billion allowed under the Proposition 12 amendment four years ago is borrowed . The payments would last for three decades. Almost all of that money would come from the state's general fund.

"We're borrowing money for highways. We're not borrowing money for our kids," state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte , D-San Antonio, said during the debate this week over the budget. She and the rest of the Senate's Democrats voted against that budget plan, while every Senate Republican voted for it.

Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, said he has no problem with giving TxDOT the money it needs to build highways. But he said the way it is being handled is a symptom of a larger policy failure.

"We have a Legislature that in good faith is trying to met our needs," McCown said, "but has to do it through this Rube Goldberg budget that relies on debt, deception and diversion."

The Proposition 12 program is the last of three borrowing regimes that the Legislature, with voter approval, created over the past decade, including the Texas Mobility Fund and the Proposition 14 program. The $6 billion borrowed under the mobility fund is paid back from several long-established transportation fees, and the $4.5 billion borrowed so far under Proposition 14 is repaid using gasoline tax revenue.

TxDOT has already borrowed $1 billion under the Proposition 12 program, and the House version of the budget would allow a second $800 million in debt, leaving the remaining $3.2 billion for sometime after the 2013 fiscal year. The Senate version would allow TxDOT to move ahead with the full $5 billion.

In all, the three programs authorize about $17 billion in borrowing. The debt incurred so far, along with $2.2 billion from the 2009 federal stimulus program and a handful of private toll road leases, has allowed TxDOT to spend heavily on roads in recent years.

Officials had indicated over the past year that the 2012-13 biennium could be the beginning of a transportation funding crisis for the state, that there would be no money to authorize transportation projects not already funded. However, approval of the Senate's version of the budget, and that extra $3 billion in borrowing, would forestall that scenario.

The added spending would include $500 million for large bridge projects, $1.4 billion for road rehabilitation and safety projects, $200 million for "statewide connectivity" work largely in rural areas, $300 million for engineering and design and $600 million for primarily urban projects meant to decrease traffic congestion.

Deirdre Delisi, chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, said the agency had asked for the $800 million in additional Proposition 12 borrowing approved by the House.

"The Senate is giving us more," Delisi said. "Just like every other budget negotiation, somewhere in between we will land."

State Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, will push for a landing on or near the full $19.5 billion for TxDOT.

"We'll do our best to convince our House colleagues that we're correct," Ogden said. "I'm reasonably optimistic."

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; 445-3698

Transportation Department's growing budget

If the Senate's version of House Bill 1 passes, the Texas Department of Transportation's budget will have grown almost 90 percent in the past decade. The House version of TxDOT's 2012-13 budget would be 58 percent higher than what the agency was allotted for the 2002-03 biennium.

Budget years TxDOT two-year budget

2002-03 $10.3 billion

2004-05 $10.6 billion

2006-07 $15.2 billion

2008-09 $16.7 billion

2010-11 $15.9 billion

2012-13 Senate $19.5 billion

House $16.3 billion

Source: Legislative Budget Board

Taxpayers get shafted in bankrupt San Diego tollway

Link to article here.

Last year when we found out this PPP tollway went bankrupt, we predicted the taxpayers would NEVER get repaid for the federal TIFIA loan given to this private company, sadly, we were right. This is why we have got to STOP these public private partnerships....they socialize the losses and privatize the profits. The private banks got repaid, but taxpayers didn't. This is OUTRAGEOUS!

Trend in the Region

Tollway Exits Chapter 11

TIFIA Ends Up Taking a Haircut

Friday, May 6, 2011

By Randall Jensen
The Bond Buyer

Related Stories

California P3 Files Chapter 11 - March 30, 2010
New P3 Toll Road Opens - November 15, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO — At its inception the South Bay Expressway toll road was promoted as a model public-private partnership. It took ages to build, then quickly plunged into bankruptcy.

The 10-mile tollway in southern San Diego County exited from bankruptcy last week, leaving its ownership in the hands of senior creditors, one being the federal government, which took a 42% haircut.

South Bay Expressway LP filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March of last year in the Southern District of California, citing construction delays and costs, litigation with its contractors, and economic fallout from the housing and credit markets that cut into traffic.

The expressway cost $635 million to build, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

The South Bay Expressway was billed as a way of using government funds to attract private investment in an effort to off-load some of the risk. It was one of two P3 projects built under legislation California approved in 1989, when George Deukmejian was governor.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger renewed the push for P3s after taking office in 2003. The project farthest along is a reconstruction of t he Presidio Parkway Project in San Francisco.
The company that operates the South Bay Expressway saw its bankruptcy exit plan confirmed in federal court after getting support from secured creditors on April 29.

“It feels good to have emerged now,” said South Bay Expressway chief executive officer Greg Hulsizer. “The court was very good to us during the year that we were working our way through Chapter 11, in that we were able to continue our regular operations.”

The main settlement provides a group of 10 banks, including Spanish Bank Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria and Irish bank Depfa, that held $363 million of the expressway’s debt prior to bankruptcy, with $210 millionofn new senior loans and a 68% stake in the toll road.

The road’s initial financing structure also included one of the first loans from the U.S. Department of Transportation under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 1998.

The DOT, the second largest creditor with $172 million in TIFIA loans including interest, will get $93 million in new senior debt and $6 million in equity, according to a fact sheet posted on the FHA website. Itwill own 32% of the company, and share any surpluses with the other new owners, as well as any equity distributions.

The expressway borrowed $140 ­million through TIFIA in 2003, a figure that grew to $32 million because of capitalized interest. Interest payments on the 4.46% TIFIA loan had been scheduled to start in 2012 and principal payments in 2021.

“The department’s primary goals in arriving at an agreement were to ensure the good stewardship of taxpayer dollars by maximizing the potential recovery of the TIFIA loan and to maintain the road open for the traveling public,” DOT spokeswoman Nancy Singer said in an e-mail. “TIFIA continues to fill a vital role in advancing critical surface transportation projects.”

Demand for TIFIA loans has risen over the last couple of years amid falling Treasury rates and more expensive private-sector financing.

The toll road received 62 claims totaling more than $1 billion during the bankruptcy, many of which it claimed were invalid, according to court filings.

The South Bay Expressway was also able to settle several lawsuits before the confirmation hearings, including litigation with its primary contractors.

It also settled litigation with the California Department of Transportation and the San Diego Association of Governments. Caltrans had leased the right-of-way to the expressway when it was completed in 2007 and helped with upkeep of the toll road.

Caltrans gave the company a 35-year franchise agreement to recover investment by setting toll rates.

“The state of California is gratified that this matter was resolved amicably,” Caltrans director Cindy McKim said in an e-mailed statement. “This project resulted in a key 11-mile freeway connector being built, a project that was only completed because private funding was available.”

The next step for South Bay Expressway appears to be a sale.

The toll road has been in talks with the San Diego Association of Governments about a sale after the agency that represents 18 cities and governments in the region expressed interest in the deal, according to Hulsizer.

Hulsizer said other private entities have also expressed interest but added that he could not elaborate.

California awarded the franchise for the toll road in January 1991. But construction of the road, which extended State Route 125 to the Mexican border at Otay Mesa, was stalled for years as builders sought environmental permits.

The permits came in 2003, shortly after Australia’s Macquarie Infrastructure Group acquired a controlling interest in the concessionaire in 2002.

Macquarie wrote its investment in 50% of the expressway’s equity in the toll road down to zero in June 2009. The equity investors were wiped out in the bankruptcy.

The project included a $20 million environmental program that involved the purchase of 1,000 acres of land to be used as an open-space preserve.

One of the most significant features of the expressway is the Otay River Bridge, one of only two precast segmental bridges in the state, stretching three quarters of a mile and towering 18 stories high.

The highway did not open until November 2007 — just in time for the subprime mortgage market to unravel, taking a major toll on the suburban communities the expressway was built to serve.

Things are starting took look up, ­according to Hulsizer, in the form of year-over-year growth and a strong customer base.

“Now that our capital base is restructured, we are looking pretty solid going forward,” he said.

However, Hulsizer said the region must see a significant drop in its unemployment rate and a big rise in new housing and development before the toll road experiences strong growth.

The South Bay Expressway recorded $21 million in revenues by the end of fiscal 2009, resulting in $3 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

By the time it went bankrupt, the tollroad had $640 million in assets and $570 million in liabilities, according to court documents.

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Eminent Domain

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