Truth Be Tolled

TxDOT's plan to toll existing highways

By Polly Ross Hughes

From the Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN — The Texas Department of Transportation is pushing Congress to pass a federal law allowing the state to "buy back" parts of existing interstate highways and turn them into toll roads.

The 24-page plan, outlined in a "Forward Momentum" report that escaped widespread attention when published in February, drew prompt objections Thursday from state lawmakers and activists fighting the spread of privately run toll roads.

"I think it's a dreadful recommendation on the part of the transportation commissioners here in Texas," said Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee Chairman John Carona, R-Dallas.

"I feel confident that legislators in Austin would overwhelmingly be opposed to such an idea," he said. "The simple fact is that taxpayers have already paid for those roadways. To ask taxpayers to pay for them twice is untenable."

$86 million shortfall

The agency's attempt to influence Congress comes on the heels of its multimillion-dollar advertising campaign touting the lightning-rod Trans-Texas Corridor plan and other toll roads.
With an estimated price tag of $7 million to $9 million, the "Keep Texas Moving" campaign comes even as transportation officials warn of an $86 billion shortfall for needed highway construction.

"It's less than 50 cents a Texan," Transportation Department spokesman Chris Lippincott said in defense of the ad campaign. "We could sit down and buy them a cup of coffee for that kind of money."

The report not only advocates turning stretches of interstate highways into toll roads, but it also suggests tax breaks for private company "investment" in such enterprises.

It seeks changes in federal law to allow the use of equity capital as a source of transportation funding. Along with that, it calls for altering the tax code to "exempt partnership distributions or corporate dividends related to ownership of (a) toll road from income taxation."

State law prevention

Lippincott said he's surprised by the surprised reactions, noting the agency discussed the issue at four public meetings and sent a link to the draft report last December to all members of the Texas Legislature.
Besides, he said, state law would prevent the conversion of interstate highways into toll roads unless such a plan gained votes of county commissioners and taxpayers in a referendum.

Anti-toll road activist Sal Castello, the Austin-based founder of the TexasTollParty.com, said he's frustrated by the "schemers and the scammers" who "never stop" divisive toll road proposals despite widespread opposition and fretted that a required referendum could be creatively worded to disguise the conversions.

Perry spokesman Robert Black said the report in no way contradicts Perry's repeated promise on highways that "if it's free today, it will be free tomorrow."

That holds true, he said, unless local voters say otherwise.

Meanwhile, "Texas will work to educate Congress of the importance of including reasonable and efficient funding solutions, such as tolling, in the next (highway funding) reauthorization bill," the department's report promises.

Next week Democratic state Reps. Joe Farias and David Leibowitz of San Antonio will join Rep. Nathan Macias, R-Bulverde, at a condemned gas station in San Antonio to air objections to the Transportation Department's toll ideas and ad campaign.

____________________________________

Read Sal Costello's blog post about the Forward Momentum report, which includes a link to the document.

Help wanted: sound transportation policy

By William Lutz

From the Lone Star Report

(linked courtesy of texasturf.org )

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) says it needs to spend $9 million in taxpayer money to sell its vision of transportation policy to the public.

Maybe if TxDOT pursued rational transportation policies, the public support would follow, and it could spend that $9 million building and maintaining roads.

Listening to the state's transportation officials, including Gov. Rick Perry and Commissioner of Transportation Ric Williamson, talk is like reading a cheap imitation of a George Orwell novel.

Borrowing money and deficit spending are called "innovative financing techniques." The term "public-private partnerships" is used to describe mortgaging public property. Tax hikes are called "market-based" or "value-based" tolling or "market valuations." Government-sanctioned monopolies are referred to as "introducing competition to transportation financing."

Here's why Texans ought to be concerned.

Borrowing carries a price tag. The Texas Constitution has traditionally eschewed deficit spending and required existing revenue to pay for existing spending. Now, the state wants to build most of its roads by borrowing, either publicly or by getting a private firm to agree to borrow money, build a road, and collect tolls.

There's no such thing as free money, and often bond lawyers request concessions in exchange for the money fronted to the state. Many of these private financing arrangements prohibit the state from building free roads near a toll road, or require it to pay a stiff penalty if it builds a competing free road or wants out of the deal.

Secrecy. A 2005 transportation bill exempts draft copies of many road deals from public disclosure - even in the face of criminal subpoenas.

Prior to 2007, the terms of these deals weren't even public until after the contracts were signed, and the terms set in stone. In 2007, the Legislature provided some additional transparency, but more sunshine is still needed to ensure informed consent from the public.

No checks and balances. The ability of TxDOT to rent state highways to private vendors without a legislative appropriation basically gives TxDOT a license to print money, without going though the usual appropriations process. The Constitution wisely gives the Legislature the power of the purse, and state assets should be pledged only in response to a public legislative appropriation.

The state also takes some highway spending "off-budget" by allowing the creation of regional mobility authorities to build state highways. Even the state auditor cannot precisely calculate how much the state spends on roads.

No fiscal restraint. TxDOT officials often claim that it would require a $1.20 increase in the gasoline tax to build needed infrastructure without tolling. This figure is a cost estimate of every project that a region might want to build in the next few years. Both the Governor's Business Council and the State Auditor have taken issue with TxDOT's calculations.

It also shows a lack of priorities at the agency. Most Americans would love a longer vacation, a fancier home, and a nicer car. But their wallets get in the way. Every day, Texans take their limited resources and differentiate between wants and needs. The government should do so also.

Tax hikes. Remember when Bill Clinton referred to taxes paid by the well-to-do as "contributions," as if payment of taxes were somehow voluntary? Remember how much fun Republicans had lampooning all the rhetorical games Clinton played to avoid referring to his "deficit reduction" plan as a tax hike?

Well, it's happening again. In the 2007 transportation compromise, Perry insisted on "market-based tolling," whereby the tolls for new highways are set above the cost to build and maintain the road. Perhaps one could call a toll a "user fee" if the amount of the toll reflected the cost of building and maintaining the road (though even that's debatable). But when money is taken from a government-sanctioned toll road monopoly and used to build other free roads, that's a tax.

Simply stated, Perry is raising taxes.

These bad transportation policies are being promoted not only here but also by the U.S. Department of Transportation and in other states like Indiana, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. But just because George W. Bush likes something doesn't make it right or conservative.

There is a better alternative. It starts with the recognition that building roads is a legitimate function for government, as recognized by the U.S. and Texas constitutions.

Further, user-based fees such as gasoline taxes and auto registration fees are appropriate ways to fund that service, provided that all revenue from those fees goes to roads.

Then, the state should do for transportation what it is already doing in health, education, and welfare policies - look at costs. Why has the cost of building roads increased so quickly? Is this legitimate? Are there ways to reduce these increases?

Registration fees should be adjusted so that overweight trucks pay their fair share. The relationship between damage to a road and weight is exponential, and the registration fees and taxes should reflect that. The gas tax should be adjusted to acknowledge that, on a per-car basis, the gas tax has declined due to improved fuel economy in cars and trucks.

Once the state has gone though that process, then and only then should discussion of tolling begin.

It's time to stop pushing public policies that primarily benefit a select few highway contractors and investment bankers at the expense of the motoring public.

Instead, let's put a spirit of public service back into TxDOT and enact transportation policies that provide accountability and frugality. Those policies wouldn't take a $9 million PR campaign to sell to Texas voters.

Bad idea--conspiracy or not

A Houston Chronicle editorial

The implications are chilling. Whether it's the shadowy Bilderberg financial conference that took place in Turkey, or the triad of U.S., Canadian and Mexican chief executives convening this week in Quebec, the secretive master plan that is surely being implemented bodes ill — for Canada.

That's the fear of conspiracy theorists up north, who are convinced that Gov. Rick Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor plan, among other developments, is swirling into a tornado that one day will sweep away their national borders, fuse the governments of Mexico, Canada and the United States, and ultimately force everyone to buy groceries with fresh-minted "Ameros."

The Canadians can hardly be faulted for worrying about melding with the chaotic nation just to the south. If the Canadian conspiracists are anxious, their more numerous counterparts in the United States are in a complete froth. As Chronicle reporter R.G. Ratcliffe wrote in the Saturday Chronicle, conspiracy chatter here also has fixated on the Trans-Texas Corridor. A Google search featuring "Rick Perry" and "Trans-Texas Corridor" produces 13,400 Web page results. That's in addition to the escalating rhetoric on radio and the urgent warnings by groups such as the John Birch Society and Texas Eagle Forum.

"There is absolutely a connection with all of it" — the corridor plan, the Bilderberg meeting that Perry attended and the summit of North American leaders — Eagle President Cathie Adams told Ratcliffe. Not for her any chance that three friendly governments might plausibly discuss mutual interests such as security or economic growth.

Like a throbbing artery, the Trans-Texas Corridor has become the crucial connection between these theories in recent years. But anxieties about foreign infiltration and loss of national sovereignty have periodically flared in American culture for centuries. Current talk of a looming "North American Union" began in 1992- 92, when first a Republican and then a Democratic administration implemented the North American Free Trade Agreement. The tragedy of our Iraq adventure and the overheated campaign rhetoric about immigration — plus completely rational concerns about shrinking manufacturing here and lower wages for U.S. workers — are setting the NAU fears on boil.

Yet the Trans-Corridor Conspiracy crowd in Texas is looking too far abroad. There's no reason to try to smoke out secret international cabals in this deal. Spanish company CINTRA has already proudly prevailed in the 50-year, multibillion-dollar deal. Though foreign investment brings Texas needed economic juice, 50 years is too long a time to cede control and revenue from the very heart of the state.

Nor are Mexico and Canada the first beneficiaries of Perry's plan. Those would be the contractors — including three of Perry's top campaign donors.

Poorly thought-out trade deals at the federal level certainly can hurt us. But there's little chance that easing the drive from Laredo to Kansas will by itself spawn one-continent government.

All too real, on the other hand, are the effects the corridor itself will have on Texas. Bisected communities, carved-up farmland and devastated wildlife habitats are some of the provable results the corridor will leave in its wake. These threats are considerably more real than the possibility of continental government, and it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to worry about them.

Like the WMD thing

"If you've been in politics as long as I have, you get used to that kind of technique where you lay out a conspiracy and then force people to try to prove it doesn't exist."

--President Bush, quoted by Alan Freeman in the Globe and Mail denying critics who say the recent Montebello SPP meeting has nothing to do with plans for a North American Union

Freeman quotes Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as remarking that the "non-existent" NAFTA superhighway from Mexico to his country is “perhaps inter-planetary
as well.”

TxDOT spends millions to push TTC

By Peggy Fikac

From the Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN — The Texas Department of Transportation, which complains about chronic underfunding, has launched a multimillion-dollar campaign that promotes the divisive
Trans-Texas Corridor plan and toll roads.

The campaign is anticipated to cost $7 million to $9 million, according to a memo titled "Keep Texas Moving: Tolling and Trans-Texas Corridor Outreach" sent to transportation officials by Coby Chase, director of the agency's government and public affairs division.

Such use of state highway-fund dollars is drawing questions, but the department says it's an important effort to educate and engage Texans.

"It's a waste of money," said Rep. Warren Chisum, chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee, "and they have no business out there trying to get public opinion to be in their favor."

The money would be better spent fixing roads, said Chisum, R-Pampa.

But Rep. Mike Krusee, House Transportation Committee chairman, said the campaign addresses lawmakers' concerns by explaining new financing methods.

"The Legislature has been beating TxDOT over the head for two years, telling them they need to explain what the Trans-Texas Corridor is and why it is necessary to the public. They've been telling TxDOT they are moving too fast — they are moving before the public and the Legislature has the chance to understand what they are doing and why," said Krusee, R-Round Rock.

If the outreach is effective, Krusee said, it could save money in the long run.

"Texas is losing money for roads by the hundreds of millions of dollars every year simply due to delay because the Legislature and the public don't understand the need to move to a new finance method. And so an expenditure of a few million dollars could literally save hundreds of millions of dollars per year," Krusee said.

The agency's budget is more than $7 billion for fiscal year 2007 and more than $8 billion for fiscal year 2008.

The Trans-Texas Corridor and toll roads have been championed by GOP Gov. Rick Perry and others as necessary in the face of congestion and gas-tax revenues that can't keep up with huge transportation needs.

But the initiative has drawn widespread criticism over the potential route and state proposals to partner with private companies to run toll roads. Lawmakers this year sought to rein in new private toll projects.

The new campaign, as outlined in the memo obtained by the Houston Chronicle, started June 1 with TV, radio, print, billboard and Internet advertising meant to push people to the Keep Texas Moving site (www.keeptexasmoving.com).

Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, who fought for a moratorium on privately run toll roads, said the initiative needs a hard look.

"TxDOT is consistently telling us we have no money to build highways, yet they seem to be spending a lot of money on internal audits and also ad campaigns. That's something that the Legislature needs to look at," she said. "I don't know that we would approve any other agency to do a $7 (million) to $9 million campaign on an initiative as controversial as the Trans-Texas Corridor and tolled roads."

She added that the cost "is a lot of money, and I would hope since it's taxpayer dollars they would approach it with a balanced approach to tell the pros and the cons of toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor."

TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott defended the campaign. "The clearest and most-often repeated criticism of the department during the legislative session was that we needed to do a better job of engaging the public," he said. "We heard that message loud and clear, and we're acting on it."

Tolling freeways will not rescue infrastructure

By Terri Hall

From the San Antonio Express-News

Let's face it: We live in a quick-fix world. Rather than thinking long term and genuinely planning for the nation's present and future, politicians have become an extension of the 24/7 sound-bite media and short-term gain addicts on Wall Street.

Those against the push to privatize and toll our freeways as a quick fix for America's aging infrastructure see the Minnesota bridge tragedy as a transportation wake-up call.

It's criminal for politicians in Congress to have passed a highway bill in 2005 that funded a $223 million "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska instead of retrofitting that Minneapolis-St. Paul bridge, located on heavily traveled Interstate 35. We have seriously misplaced priorities in this country, pointing to politicians who are derelict in their duties.

The 2005 federal highway bill had 6,000 earmarks for frivolous congressional pet projects pilfered from dedicated gas tax revenues at a time when the Bush administration was pushing the privatization and tolling of our highways, saying new toll taxes were necessary to address congestion and the aging infrastructure because of a shortfall in revenues.

By design, they want to double-tax us by tolling the traveling public to plug their own leaky boat.

Politicians are now blaming taxpayers for not giving them enough of our money to pay for infrastructure when, in fact, they have pilfered and diverted billions from both federal and state gas tax funds, creating an artificial revenue shortfall and causing our infrastructure to fall into disrepair.

In Texas, 25 percent of otherwise dedicated state fuel tax revenue is diverted to nonroad uses, such as public schools, while another 10 percent goes to other budgetary items that don't relate to highways. The Legislature has diverted more than $10 billion from the highway fund since 1986 for items like the arts, the Historical Commission and mineral rights litigation.

It also has deceived taxpayers into thinking the only way out of our infrastructure woes is to toll citizens who drive on what their taxes have already built and to sell our highway system to the highest foreign bidder while still failing to keep bridges and highways safe.

With a $14 billion surplus in Texas (Minnesota had a $2.1 billion surplus), it is clear America doesn't have a revenue shortfall problem, but a profound case of fiscal irresponsibility on both the state and national levels.

Heads need to roll rather than politicians in Austin and Washington double-taxing drivers and consumers by irresponsibly spending our dedicated gas tax revenues and then adding insult to injury by tolling our roads.

Terri Hall of Truth Be Tolled is founder/director of Texans United for Reform and Freedom.

'The Nation' focuses on Texas

"When completed, the highway will run from Mexico City to Toronto, slicing through the heartland like a dagger sunk into a heifer at the loins and pulled clean to the throat. It will be four football fields wide, an expansive gully of concrete, noise and exhaust, swelled with cars, trucks, trains and pipelines carrying water, wires and God knows what else. Through towns large and small it will run, plowing under family farms, subdevelopments, acres of wilderness. Equipped with high-tech electronic customs monitors, freight from China, offloaded into nonunionized Mexican ports, will travel north, crossing the border with nary a speed bump, bound for Kansas City, where the cheap goods manufactured in booming Far East factories will embark on the final leg of their journey into the nation's Wal-Marts."

--Christopher Hayes, describing the NAFTA superhighway (which "doesn't exist"),
in The Nation

"I think Texas is the first link in the highway to run from South America to Canada. One nation under God. We see bits and pieces of it. We don't see it all. It makes us cringe and sick to our stomachs."

--David M. Leibowitz of Truth Be Tolled, quoted by Hayes

"We have so little control over our own government. We are really the last beacon of freedom in the world--the land of the free and home of the brave--and we're letting it slip away from under our noses."

--Terri Hall of Truth Be Tolled, quoted by Hayes

Chasing the paper tiger

Mexico to build more toll roads to pay for ones that failed

From Land Line Magazine

Goldman Sachs Infrastructure Partners is part of a team that bid $4.1 billion to finance the construction of 340 miles of toll roads in Mexico, the Mexican government reported.

Mexico’s communications and transportation ministry has rolled out the welcome mat to private investors as part of a campaign to build new roads and pay off debts on existing failed toll roads.

Goldman Sachs and Mexican construction company Empresas ICA bid $4.1 billion U.S. for the right to build and operate four toll roads totaling 548 kilometers – about 340 miles – in central Mexico. The consortium agreed to maintain the roads for 30 years, at which time they will be returned to the government.

The government will use part of the proceeds for paying off debts and liabilities on failed toll road projects from the 1990s, Transportation Minister Luis Tellez said during a press conference this week. Funds will also go toward completion of a government-built highway from Mazatlan to Durango.

Goldman Sachs and Empresas ICA will pay the Mexican government in October when the contract takes effect. The contract was the first privatization deal awarded under President Felipe Calderon.

Losing bids came from Mexican construction company IDEAL, Spanish toll operator Abertis, Spanish bank Caja Madrid and Spanish builder Obrascon Huarte Lain.

The government promised more announcements related to privatization, including a toll road proposal to be announced by the end of 2007.

Brooklyn Bridge should be fixed with gas tax

A New York Times editorial

In its last state inspection, the Brooklyn Bridge rated 2.9 on a scale of 7, an unabashed poor rating, barely passing. It was not bad enough to close it or further limit traffic and city officials pronounce the bridge safe, but New Yorkers should be excused if they begin looking at the 124-year-old landmark in a different way.

Those who live in its magnificent shadow are in the same uneasy place as the millions of other Americans who traverse bridges daily. Many, in inspections prompted by the Minneapolis disaster, have been found to have structural, design or maintenance problems.

Crossings used to take place without much thought, thanks to necessity, and the public’s trust in government to take care of public structures. But that suspended disbelief should be shaken in anyone who heard President Bush on Thursday as he cavalierly dismissed the idea of raising the federal gas tax — set at 18.4 cents since 1993 — to pay for bridge repairs.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes part of the Brooklyn Bridge, points out that the White House has so shortchanged repair work on roads and bridges, by some $90 billion, that it might make a list of structures it considers worth saving, and another list for what would have to be closed and abandoned for lack of money. The suggestion was offered tongue in cheek, but it’s not far off the mark. Draconian choices could be avoided with just an increase of a nickel in the gas tax.

Assuming the money is there, the Brooklyn Bridge is to undergo a federally financed overhaul in two years. City officials, trying to shore up public confidence until then, say the structure’s problems are certain components, including ramps that lead to the span. The not-so-sterling report card is unlikely to deter the 130,000 people who drive, walk or bike over the Brooklyn Bridge every day. But it should give everyone pause that the original bridge to a new century has become a fixer-upper.

How about that trillion dollar war?

"The way it seems to have worked is that each member on that [Transportation] committee gets to set his or her own priorities first. That's not the right way to prioritize the people's money. Before we raise taxes, which could affect economic growth, I would strongly urge the Congress to examine how they set priorities."

--President Bush, commenting today on why he is dismissing House Transportation Committee Jim Oberstar's recommendation to raise the federal gas tax, which has not been raised since 1993, to help defray this country's bridge repair costs