Link to blog post here.

Eminent domain: The next big bail-out
By Tyler Durden
July 5, 2012
Zero Hedge.com

It seems that governmental efforts to save the underwater and ineligible homeowner from his own fate are reaching fever pitch. Not only do we hear today of the up to $300mm in Agriculture Department Rural Housing Service loans that may have financed ineligible projects or borrowers with a high potential inability to repay the loans; but yesterday's WSJ reports on the growing call for 'eminent-domain' powers to be used by local government officials in California to stop the "housing bust's public blight on their city". In yet another get-out-of-jail-free card, the officials (helped by a friendly local hedge-fund / mortgage-provider) want to use the government's ability to forcibly acquire property to remove underwater homes, restructure the mortgage (cut principal), and hand back the home to the previously unable to pay dilemma-ridden homeowner.

Following last week's bankruptcy in Stockton, it seems cities are increasingly desperate as they reel from the effects of the housing bust - willing instead to use government funds (provided by the working and mortgage-paying taxpayer) to bailout the underwater (and likely not paying anything at all) homeowner. As PIMCO's Scott Simon puts it: "I don't see how you could find it anything other than appalling", as this would crush property prices further and drive up borrowing costs. As we noted earlier, until these mal-investments are marked to market, there will be no useful growth in our credit-bound economy but transferring wealth to the 'mal'-investor seems like a terrible idea.

A project to build two express toll lanes on MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) got a little closer to a six-month, $130 million jump-start on Monday night when the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board agreed to allocate that money to the toll agency behind the project.

The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority will use the funding to build a toll lane on each side of MoPac from Lady Bird Lake to Parmer Lane. Earlier this year, officials estimated that the 11-mile project would cost about $200 million in construction expenses.

The funding agreement still needs to be approved by the Texas Transportation Commission to take effect.

Under the agreement approved Monday, CAMPO will allocate the mobility authority the $130 million for construction of the express lanes. In exchange, the mobility authority will repay the money by establishing a regional infrastructure fund, into which it will pay $230 million over 25 years. CAMPO would use that money for other area road projects.

Under traditional financing methods, officials estimated the total cost for the toll lanes would be $544 million.

The terms approved Monday differed from a previous proposal when the toll agency suggested paying the money back over 22 years at 3 percent interest.

Some CAMPO board members later suggested that the interest rate was too low and that the payoff too slow. At the time, Mike Heiligenstein, the mobility authority's executive director, said the agency welcomed discussion of changes.

CAMPO Executive Director Maureen McCoy said the basic terms of the agreement were negotiated in advance of Monday's meeting. CAMPO's website cited benefits from the agreement, including lowering the cost of development to allow for flexibility in toll rates and keeping project revenues local rather than making payments to out-of-state bondholders and lenders.

"This agreement we've negotiated keeps all funding local and allows the region to avoid $314 million in cost over the life of the project; those are savings that directly benefit Austin commuters," Austin Council Member Sheryl Cole said in a statement.

Board reneges on promise, votes to toll anyway

It's apparent that the fix was in before a single citizen ever walked into the Bexar County San Antonio Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) meeting Monday. The tumult and chaos surrounding transportation decision-makers in Bexar County has hit a feverish pitch and it’s getting plain ugly for taxpayers.

After several hours of debate, Bexar County Commissioner Kevin Wolff gave the board his blessing to adopt a plan that includes toll lanes along 36 miles of Loop 1604 and 7.8 miles of the US 281 corridor, parts of which were completely new and were never discussed, presented, or properly posted for the public prior to today's meeting.

Four elected officials, Commissioner Chico Rodriguez and Councilmen Cris Medina, Rey Saldana, and Carlton Soules, were notable no-shows for such a critical vote that allows the unelected Advanced Transportation District (ATD) Board (one in the same with the Via Transit Board) to control who will operate the toll lanes, who can use them for free (buses and ‘registered carpools’ only), and, hence, who will have the power to collect and spend the tolls.

They put specific conditions on the deal, making a very public swipe at the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority (ARMA) by requiring TxDOT, not ARMA to build the toll lanes. Why? The ATD Board telegraphed at its meeting Friday that it plans to use toll revenues to fund a myriad of mass transit projects. The war against cars is alive and well in San Antonio. This fight has always been about who gets the pot of ‘toll gold’ at the end of the rainbow. First TxDOT, then Spanish toll operator Cintra, then ARMA (which just got absorbed by Bexar County who also wants the pot of toll revenues), now the ATD Board.

Though Wolff negotiated and authored a resolution specifically to add new non-toll main lane capacity to US 281 from Loop 1604 to Stone Oak and Loop 1604W from Bandera to Wiseman, it's pretty clear that Wolff never intended to fix 281 non-toll nor to hold TxDOT accountable for what it's proposing (its vague, misleading diagram is a joke). They've never been made to explain, in plain English, where every existing lane is and what the corridor will look like with the proposed improvements, much less to explain why they can fix Loop 1604 for $25 million/mile compared to $37 million/mile on US 281.

If Wolff and the MPO had insisted this basic information be presented prior to any vote, then the Board would have seen without a shadow of a doubt that TxDOT's plan does not ADD a single new lane of added non-toll capacity and, in fact, converts an existing free main lane into a transit-toll lane. Stone Oak isn’t clamoring for bus lanes or toll lanes, it’s demanding the non-toll fix that’s been funded and promised to congestion-weary commuters since 2001.

Now you see it, now you don’t
TxDOT claims the free lanes will remain in place, when, in fact, they count the frontage roads as 'what's there now,' not the freeway main lanes. Therefore, the plan adopted today expressly defies the MPO’s March 26 resolution to add non-toll capacity to 281 -- and Wolff not only allowed it, he encouraged it, despite telling TxDOT just over a week ago (at a June 15 MPO special meeting), in rather heated tones, that he’s made it clear he wants added non-toll capacity -- all non-toll, no toll elements. He even threatened that he wouldn't take a vote on it until they changed the proposal to be consistent with the resolution.

My, what a difference 10 days makes.

Overwhelming public opposition
The public testimony emailed in to the board opposed the plan, 130-3, and the three in favor were area Chamber of Commerce organizations and industry shills. The fact that the elected officials for the US 281 corridor, Wolff and Senator Jeff Wentworth, voted to adopt a proposal steals $58 million in non-toll funds for US 281 to build a Via direct connect to a Park-N-Ride only three percent of the population will ever use (that amount of money would build roughly 6 overpasses on US 281), the fact that this plan will steal another $20 million in non-toll funds from US 281 and hand it to Loop 1604 for a free overpass and non-toll expansion over there, and the fact that the plan beyond Stone Oak would convert every existing free main lane into a toll lane (again trying to count frontage lanes as the free lanes), is beyond comprehension.

North of Stone Oak could be fixed non-toll using the remaining $88 million in Texas Mobility Funds (TMF) already allocated to US 281. Now, that's not possible since the plan adopted Monday steals nearly every penny of the remaining TMF money, and gives it to Via and Loop 1604.

The fact that the ONLY dissenting vote was by a Democrat, State Rep. Joe Farias, who cited DOUBLE TAXATION as his reason for voting against (and the fact that this was in no way properly posted under the Open Meetings Act), is an indictment of the establishment Republican Party today. The GOP is NOT for the public's right to know, for transparency, for accountability, for limited government, or for the taxpayer. It's of, by, and for the special interests.

We don’t buy it
Advocates of the plan say, but ‘we took $500 million in planned toll lanes and made them non-toll,’ when what they did in reality was renege on a promise made March 26 to add non-toll capacity only.

In truth, the toll plan for US 281 should never have been adopted by the MPO in July 2004 in the first place. The gas taxes to fix US 281 without tolls were already there and disappeared in 2008, well after the MPO vote to convert it to a tollway in July 2004. With the arrival of $246 million in new money ($146 million from TxDOT’s recent $2 billion windfall, $100 million in ATD), plenty to fix a measly 3 miles on US 281 without ANY tolls, it's inexcusable that NOT one new non-toll main lane will be added to 281 under this plan, yet a 10-mile stretch of four new non-toll lanes are being added to Loop 1604 with an 8-10 year delay in toll lanes being added. The excuse that we have to toll US 281 because 'we're out of money' or can't get clearance doesn’t hold muster anymore. Anyone with a pulse can see this whole scheme is fraud.

The elected officials who voted to toll US 281 & Loop 1604:
State Senator Jeff Wentworth (in a run-off against anti-toll Dr. Donna Campbell July 31)
Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson
Bexar County Commissioner Kevin Wolff
Leon Valley Mayor Chris Riley
Selma Councilman William Weeper
San Antonio City Councilman Ray Lopez
(plus 8 unelected appointees, including two votes from TxDOT and two votes from Via)

The commuters along US 281 and Loop 1604 won't ever forget who voted to do this to them, because they'll be forced to pay a DOUBLE TAX in PERPETUITY. However, none of this is yet set in stone until the MPO’s short and long-range plans are officially amended -- there is still time to redeem the March 26 resolution. What board members do after today's fiasco, will make all the difference....

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Plan with tolls on expanded 1604, 281 approved
By Vianna Davila
Monday, June 25, 2012

The region's transportation planning organization approved a proposal to expand Loop 1604 and U.S. 281 with a mix of nontoll and toll lanes Monday, but only after Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson threatened to approve just a part of the proposition and table the rest.

Texas Department of Transportation officials said such a move could have jeopardized millions in state dollars for the projects.

Adkisson, who is chairman of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, made a motion to approve using $146.8 million in state money to expand Loop 1604 with nontoll lanes, rather than vote on a $368.8 million plan that included the state money and local leveraging dollars, plus some toll lanes.

Officials now commonly refer to those as managed lanes: free for buses and carpools but not for drivers in single-occupancy vehicles.

Other MPO board members said they expected to vote on the entire plan Monday, and not just the state dollars for Loop 1604.

But after a tense two hours of discussion, including several volleys between Adkisson and TxDOT San Antonio District Engineer Mario Medina, the chairman eventually chose to support the broader plan, following an amendment to his original motion made by County Commissioner Kevin Wolff.

On March 26, the MPO passed a resolution to expand segments of 281 & 1604 WITHOUT TOLLS. Yet TxDOT came back with a financing proposal that still included tolls. TxDOT presented various versions of a proposed hybrid financing plan for 281 & 1604 to the board on June 4 and again on June 15.

Changes were made to this proposal between the June 4 & June 15 MPO meetings and its June 25 meeting. In fact, changes were made to the proposal over the weekend prior to its Monday, June 25 meeting (which was less than the 72 hours notice required by law) without notifying the board until they walked into the meeting June 25. The final proposal adopted June 25 takes an existing main lane on 281 and converts it into a bus-toll lane ('transit priority lane'). The dedicated bus lanes were never discussed prior to the meeting.

SAN ANTONIO DRAMA:

-- Bexar County Commissioner Kevin Wolff calls for a vote to include toll 'transit' lanes on 281, supports same plan Larson initially did

In the coming weeks, Congress is likely to be scrambling to meet another deadline: once again deciding how long to extend a law that funds the maintenance of our nation’s highways. When Congress does take up that bill, I hope that we decide to correct a flaw in the law that allows states to fleece federal taxpayers.

“With Congress unwilling to contemplate an increase in the federal gas tax, motorists are likely to be paying ever more tolls as the government searches for ways to repair and expand the nation’s congested highways,” the Associated Press reports.

Public private partnerships have become like crack cocaine for politicians. They're addicted to sticking it to commuters by selling-off our public roads to private toll operators who not only charge motorists outlandish toll rates, 75-80 cents a mile, they get control over surrounding free routes in a government-sanctioned monopoly. Unless voters hold these criminals, err politicians, accountable and fast, there won't be any 'public' infrastructure left to drive on.

Link to article here.

At least the Philippines is smart enough to figure out these PPPs are risky and put the taxpayers on the hook for the losses in tenuous market conditions. What's wrong with the U.S? Lawmakers seem bent on collapsing our economy and leading us down the path of the financial ruin currently striking all over Europe.