Matt Krause

  • IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    Grassroots tell lawmakers to kill FAKE toll reform bill

    Call out Krause for undermining Governor’s Pledge for No More Toll Roads


    Austin, Texas – State Representative Matt Krause recently filed HB 1951 and dubbed it the “Toll Payer Protection Act.” Grassroots political leaders are calling it a FAKE toll reform bill.  While Krause claims it includes key toll road reforms, taxpayer watchdogs JoAnn Fleming, Executive Director of Grassroots America — We the People; Terri Hall, Founder/Director of Texas TURF and Texans for Toll-free Highways; and Julie McCarty, President of the NE Tarrant Tea Party, say they believe the bill undermines Governor Greg Abbott’s ‘No toll’ pledge and sets Texas taxpayers up to subsidize the road lobby and toll companies.

    Krause says HB 1951 does 4 things:
    - Requires voter approval for all new toll projects;
    - Brings major uniform toll bill reform;
    - Sets a timeline for taking tolls off a road after it has been paid off;
    - Allows the state to partner with the private sector, on a limited basis, and when it makes financial sense for the state and taxpayer.

    On the same day Krause filed his bill, Fleming, who also heads the Texas Conservative Grassroots Coalition, delivered a letter to the Governor, Lt. Governor, Speaker and both the House and Senate Transportation Committees, defining the Coalition’s transportation priorities for the session, asking them to support Governor Abbott’s pledge of ‘No more tolls.’

  • Lawmakers leave without giving drivers toll tax relief

    By Terri Hall
    May 28, 2019

    Sometimes a win isn’t gauged by what you pass, but by what you stopped. The results of the 86th legislative session are definitely the later. In short, the taxpayers got very little as far as toll tax relief. With 28 different toll systems and 55 toll projects in place today, without passing toll cessation Texas drivers will never see an end to paying toll taxes nor an end to toll agencies expanding their existing systems out further and further — forever. However, the grassroots opposition to five bad toll road bills that would have handed Texas’ public highways to private, foreign entities in 50-year sweetheart deals along with other giveaways to private toll companies, managed to kill all of them -- the worst being HB 1951 by Matt Krause, a member of the Freedom Caucus.

    The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) alone (not to mention the other 12 local toll agencies across the state) has put more than two million Texas drivers into collections for unpaid tolls. Just TxDOT has imposed over $1 billion in fines and fees in addition to the actual tolls owed. The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (Austin area) testified before the Senate Transportation Committee last August that of the $100 million its collected in tolls, $85 million was fines and fees. Toll fines and fees are out of control and making Texas drivers virtually an unlimited ATM machine to feed relentless unelected toll bureaucracies — in short, tolling has become a license to steal.

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