Committee chairman, a co-sponsor of moratorium on private road
contracts, says no vote likely on bill
By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/03/22/22tollroads.html
Thursday, March 22, 2007
The chairman of the
Senate's transportation panel, despite being one of more than 125
legislators co-sponsoring legislation to shelve private toll road
contracts for two years, said Wednesday he won't give the measure a
vote in his committee.
"I don't intend to move it," said
Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the
Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee.
Carona has repeatedly criticized Texas Department of Transportation
policy and officials in recent months and is among
25 Senate co-sponsors of
SB 1267, the
moratorium bill by state
Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville.
Carona is trying to work out a
large compromise transportation bill with
toll policy supporters and has struck a more conciliatory tone
in recent days. Carona aide Steven Polunsky said that although
Carona thinks that some sort of controls on private toll road
contracts are in order, a two-year freeze might remove the only
option available to get some badly needed road projects done.
Carona and his committee, which includes Nichols,
spent most of Wednesday afternoon listening to — and sometimes
debating with — local elected officials from the Dallas-Fort Worth
area concerned that a moratorium on such toll road arrangements
might delay by several years road work nearly ready to begin.
"To put a moratorium on these projects is like a
stake in the heart for many of us," said Tarrant County Commissioner
Gary Fickes. "We feel we're going to be very, very damaged."
Nichols,
a former Texas Transportation
Commission member,
says such contracts with private companies have the potential for
long-term financial damage, at least based on
language in the first two such arrangements between the state and
private companies. Pending contracts
for Texas 130 southeast of Austin and Texas 121 in Collin County set
out broad areas in which the state, over a
period of more than half a century, might have to pay the companies
if it builds competing roads.
Many senators are concerned that private
road contracts, because companies must make profits, would have
higher tolls than roads run by government agencies.
Carona's committee Wednesday considered seven
bills that in various ways would rollback some of the powers the
Legislature granted to the Texas Department of Transportation in
2003 and 2005. Carona said the committee probably will vote on some
of them today.
Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee, carried four of those bills, including one that would
outlaw private road contracts with the state and another that would
require that toll revenue be used only on the road where the tolls
are charged.
Ogden likens what has
happened to Texas transportation policy to a golf bag. The rules of
that game allow a golfer to carry 14 clubs. Over the past four
years, as the Legislature tried to find new ways to inject money
into an increasingly cash-starved transportation system, "We gave
TxDOT 21 tools in the golf bag when they really only need 14," Ogden
said. Allowing the state to grant long-term tollway leases to
private companies, Ogden said, is "the 21st club."
Carona, who is carrying a bill that would
use an inflation index to annually increase the state's long-frozen
20 cents a gallon gas tax, used his Wednesday hearing to step up the
pressure for such legislation. The tax, last increased in
1991, has lost about half its value to inflation and traffic
increases. He asked everyone who testified whether they would
support a gas tax inflation index. Overwhelmingly, the answer was
yes.
However, the answer in the House, where by law tax
increase bills must originate, remains no.
Rep. Jim Keffer, an Eastland Republican who is chairman
of the
House Ways and Means Committee, a few weeks ago heard Rep. Mike
Krusee's gas tax indexing bill in his committee, but he has left the
Williamson County Republican's bill pending. He said Tuesday that
his inclination is to let it die.
"If the
whole
committee came to me and said, 'Let's do it,' I'll have to give
it a lot of credence," Keffer said. "But they haven't done that."
Carona told his Senate committee about the
House position on the gas tax.
"They have 'tax fatigue,' whatever that is,"
Carona said. "That's all fine and well.
But there's not an ounce of statesmanship in
tax fatigue."
bwear@statesman.com; 445-3698
Has Senator Carona Been
Crushed
By TxDOT Special Interest Toll Pressure?
TxDOT and just about every agency and
organization that wants to build a toll road has pulled out all the
stops to pressure our legislators to stop the private toll
road moratorium.
CorridorWatch.org is shocked to
read in this morning's Austin American Statesman a
report that
Senate Transportation Chairman Carona doesn't plan to allow SB1267 a
vote before his committee.
"I don't intend to move it,"
Senator John Carona.
It would be nice if this were a
misquote, but we're afraid it isn't. At best we might find the
intent and effect of SB1267 incorporated into
SB1929, a much larger transportation bill. At worst we might
find that our protection from private toll monopolies were traded
away in a backroom political poker game.
Who's in charge?
It's not TxDOT, it's not Ric Williamson,
and it's not Senator Carona either.
It's the citizens, taxpayers, and voters of Texas.
It hasn't been more than a couple
weeks since Senator Carona admonished Chairman Williamson that he
didn't have just one person to keep happy [Governor Perry]. Carona
told Williamson that he worked for 181 legislators and the citizens
of Texas. Senator Carona, remember us, the citizens?
What the heck is going on?
You might have a plan Senator but right
now we feel pretty ripped off and sold out. We're all ears.
And we're not
alone - how about the other 129 legislators who stood up to
represented their districts by signed on in support of SB1267 and
HB2772?
Yes, we need roads. But . . .
We also need to know at what cost our
state is entering into 50 year contracts with for-profit toll road
operators. We need to know if we are making bad public-private deals
because toll road proponents have been blinded by big money. We need
to know that average Texans 30, 40 and 50 years from now will be
able to afford to travel on highways they should own. These are just
a few of the many serious questions that deserve serious
consideration, and anwswers.
We believe the citizens of Texas would
be best served by legislative review and a cautious approach to
long-term contracts that could rob our communities of future
transportation funds, limit future transportation alternatives, and
unnecessarily increase the cost of public mobility.
Put the public back in public decisions.
Somehow we have left the public out of
toll road decision making. Historically we have voted for highways
with our taxes. When you hit the limit of how much we are willing to
be taxed the expansion stops. We are effectively making a purchase
decision.
Unfortunately virtually all of these new
toll road decisions are being made without public approval.
Let's revisit the moratorium.
Once we start down this public-private
road and begin signing away the control over our highways the cost
of turning back may only be exceed by the cost of driving on those
highways.
Chairman Carona, we sent our Senators to
Austin to represent us and vote as we would if we were there. As
Chairman of the Transportation and Homeland Security Committee you
represent all Texans. Let our individual representatives do what we
sent them to Austin to do. Let our Senators vote. Please move SB1267
out of committee.
David & Linda Stall, Co-founders
CorridorWatch.org
More wrangling over toll roads
More wrangling over toll roads
By
Ben
Wear | Wednesday, March 21,
2007, 10:36 AM
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/legislature/entries/2007/03/21/more_wrangling_over_toll_roads.html
The Texas Department of
Transportation apparently made another enemy today: state Sen. Tommy
Williams.
The Senate Transportation and
Homeland Security Committee was hearing
SB 792, the Houston Republican’s bill to make sure that going
forward the Harris County Toll Road Authority gets first crack at
any toll roads in Greater Houston. Williams and staff members of the
state Transportation Department have spent a good deal of time
behind the scenes in recent weeks working on the bill.
The senators, after discussion on the
dais, called up Transportation Department staff and
Texas Transportation Commissioner Ted Houghton
to testify.
Executive director
(TxDOT) Mike Behrens, asked by
senators what he might not like about the bill,
was diplomatically vague and
allowed as how they’d like some more time to work on the bill.
Not so Houghton, an El Paso
businessman who has been a toll advocate and commission chairman Ric
Williamson’s wing man on the issue for the past couple of years.
The bill would force the Transportation Department to give
up right of way it purchased to the Harris County authority for
future roads.
The land, in Houghton’s view, is
worth what a private toll road company would pay given what they
could make building a toll road there. And that could run into the
billions of dollars over time. Houghton couldn’t resist pointing out
that the toll road authority has something like $800 million in the
bank.
“We need to extract as much capital
out of the ground as possible,” he said, referring to that real
estate in dispute.
Sen. Williams didn’t take this very
well.
“What we’re really talking
here is selling it to the highest bidder,” Williams said of the
Transportation Department’s approach. “We’re here to serve the
public, not to provide a profit for a private company.”
We did mention that Williams is a
Republican, right?
He went on later.
“I’m deeply offended that we’ve
worked with TxDOT for a month, and made changes to this bill, and
they come in here and they’re singing the same old song,” Williams
said.
The bill, for the time being, was
left pending. Steve Simmons, the Transportation Department’s deputy
executive director, a few minutes later approached Williams at the
back of the committee room to try and smooth things over. There were
people standing all around them. Williams cut him off.
“I feel like you guys pulled the rug
out from under me today. I am so mad, you can’t imagine,” Williams
said, before stalking away.
