Don’t
Tag Texas
Posted:
Tuesday, January 30, 2007 10:30 AM CST
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One hundred and seventy-one
years after the signing of the Texas Declaration of
Independence, opponents of the Trans-Texas Corridor plan to
send a message to lawmakers: Don’t Tag Texas.
A massive rally is planned for March 2 in Austin,
with organizers hoping to see at least
100,000 - if not a half-million people - march up
Congress Avenue beginning at 2 p.m. to the Capitol steps to
stage a several-hour rally that will oppose not only Gov.
Rick Perry’s signature project but also a federal animal
identification program.
“Don’t Tag Texas covers both issues: toll tags and animal
tags,” said former land commissioner candidate Hank Gilbert
in an interview Monday evening. “We
picked March 2 to hold the rally because that’s Texas
Independence Day. I felt that was a fitting day to have the
rally since this is an issue that affects all Texans.
“It’s time for us to stand up
for our independence,” he said. “Whether you live in
downtown Houston or Waxahachie, Texas, you’re going to be
impacted by both of these programs. Anytime our major
roadways become tollways and anytime our producers have to
add more expense to their livestock operations, the cost of
goods goes up. Whether you’re in agriculture or a dentist,
you’re going to pay more for necessities.”
Gilbert said organizers plan a big, fun event.
“It’s going to be different, but it’s also going to leave a
lasting impression with a loud and positive message we want
heard: We want our state back,” said Gilbert, who expressed
a number of concerns with the Trans-Texas Corridor, the
first leg of a roadway that would stretch from Mexico across
Texas to link up with roadways connecting across the United
States to Canada.
Gilbert, who ran as the
Democratic nominee for land commissioner, said his campaign
had focused on both issues: the Trans-Texas Corridor and the
federal animal identification program.
“Those are two issues I know my opponent had supported
through legislation and voting, and prior to the election,
he flip-flopped and said he was against them,” Gilbert said.
“This whole thing is power-driven and both of these issues
are inner-linked together.”
Economically, the Trans-Texas Corridor would aid foreign
countries that could deliver their goods into Mexican ports
so as to bypass tariffs and import fees into the United
States, according to Gilbert.
“The TTC provides a gateway
from Mexico into our country and all the way to Canada. It
allows these major corporations that have begun shifting a
large part of their manufacturing and business to third
world countries to import back into Mexico,” he said. “Of
course, China is a big player in this because so much
manufacturing goes on in China and Taiwan. Those goods and
services can come in through Mexican ports - and those ports
are being upgraded by China now.”
The two issues of toll roads and animal identification tags
are being fought in Texas for one reason, Gilbert believes:
“It all has to start here. Whether you’re talking animal IDs
or the TTC, the powers that be in this country know that if
you can win in Texas, so goes the rest of the country.
“That’s why this rally is key and why we’re making appeals
across the country to help support this thing. If we can
stop it here, then we stop it for the rest of the country,”
he said, saying other states involved in toll road fights
include Indiana, Pennsylvania and Florida.
Gilbert’s background includes
being an East Texas cattle rancher and small businessman for
most of his life, along with serving as a high school
educator.
“I’m not a politician. I got into the (land commissioner’s)
race because somebody’s got to stand up for the people,” he
said. “Clearly, the people in Austin and Washington, D.C. -
on both sides of the aisle - aren’t doing that for us.
They’re not standing up for 98 percent of the people they
represent. They’re only standing up for the 2 percent that
has the money - that’s who they’re listening to.”
He believes people are “sick and tired” and that they will
show up in numbers in Austin on March 2.
“These are two issues the
Legislature needs to go back and visit,” he said. “They need
to repeal these and then come back to the people and say,
‘Help us work this out a better way.’ ”
At least 100,000 in attendance for the rally would bring
national attention, Gilbert said, saying, “We need national
attention to let the 47 contiguous states know we have the
same problems. We also hope to spur similar protests on the
steps of their capitols, culminating into one big protest at
the nation’s capitol.
“We need to let these legislators know we’re tired of this,”
he said. “We want to take our capitols back for the working
men and women in our country.”
With less disposable income
and the cost of goods and services on the rise, the working
class is being squeezed, “and then you start throwing tolls
on top of this … . You’re in the red until something
changes,” Gilbert said. “Our government in this country has
shown us for the last decade that they’re not interested in
changing for the working people. The benefits are going to
those in the higher level of income - but they’re not the
ones funding the economy. It’s the people making a lot less
than that.”
Gilbert points to both parents having to work now in the
middle class - and many of those have more than one job.
“Texas is leading the nation in foreclosures, we’re leading
the country in poverty and uninsured people, and there’s a
reason for that,” he said. “There’s not enough money to go
around, and the day of the stay-at-home mom or dad is gone.
You don’t have that anymore for middle class America.”
The Trans-Texas Corridor is
only part of what Gilbert describes as a potential 1
million-acre problem for Texas and its residents.
“Something else can be done without having to go into a
private contract with a private entity, and without having
to take 1 million acres of land in eight roadways for Texas.
That 4,000 miles of toll road is going to consume
approximately 1 million acres of rural Texas land,” Gilbert
said. “It will turn out to be the largest eminent domain
project in the history of this country.”
He said the eminent domain language in the bill creating the
Texas-Trans Corridor is unlike any he’s seen before.
Affected property owners are
given an appraisal price, which they then have the right to
appeal to a three-member committee. The committee then sets
a price, he said.
“In regular cases, if either party doesn’t agree, they can
appeal it to a court and jury and nothing is done until a
final determination,” Gilbert said. “In this instance, once
that committee arrives at a figure, the landowner can still
appeal to a court and jury, but TxDOT (the Texas Department
of Transportation) can take that figure and go to the county
clerk and file it and then send out a 60-day eviction
notice. And that’s the law. You have 60 days to leave, and
then they come in with a bulldozer, knock down your home and
barn and they can build the roadway before your case gets to
court.
“The likelihood of getting the decision turned over is slim
to none,” he said.
“It’s a nice way of saying,
‘We want your property. This is what we’re going to pay and
you’re going to take it.’ ”
TxDOT held 55 hearings in communities along the projected
path of the Trans-Texas Corridor, with Gilbert attending and
testifying at 21 of them.
He recalls hearing landowners’ stories about their
properties and how they had been passed down from generation
to generation - and how losing those properties would affect
them.
“There was always the
landowner, about the age of my parents, who would get up and
say, with tears in their eyes that ‘My property is in that
blue line and that land has been in our family for four
generations,’ or ‘five generations,’ ‘and now we may lose
it.’ And I also heard people say, ‘You come to take my land,
your gun better be bigger than mine,’” said Gilbert, saying
he also expressed the same sentiments to TxDOT. “We’re not
going to stand for it. This project, if allowed to go to
fruition, will cause a civil uprising in this state. One
thing in this state is true: Texans value their property and
their property rights. And you can tie sovereignty into
that.
“We’re going to give this roadway to a foreign investment
company for 50 years? There’s probably been more battles
waged in this state over land - physical altercations - from
the Alamo on over land in this state,” he said. “For our own
state to now say, ‘We’re going to take it from you and give
it to a Spanish company’ - I don’t think so.”
The impact of the Trans-Texas Corridor would be
far-reaching, from removing irreplaceable farmland from its
use to displacing farming families that would never be able
to get back into agriculture, Gilbert fears.
“It’s virtually impossible for
a person to decide, ‘I’m going into farming or ranching’
unless they have extremely good credit or a lot of money.
The people in agriculture today in Texas are only there
because that land has been passed down. You can’t pay
$3,000, $4,000 or $5,000 an acre for land and expect to make
it back in farming or ranching,” Gilbert said. “Most of your
big, viable agriculture producers do it in this state
because of family land - and when you take away that land
from a family, you’re displacing a part of agriculture that
will never come back. What’s more important? A big, wide,
unpopulated highway you pay to drive on or wondering what
you’re going to eat next or who you’re going to eat next? Or
where it’s going to come from?”
Gilbert and the rally’s other organizers are setting up a
Web site - www.dont-tagtexas.com - that is expected to go
online any day.
“Hopefully, we’ll have some material up on it (Tuesday) to
where people can start going to that site,” Gilbert said.
“We’re setting it up so people can subscribe and receive
automatic e-mails every time it updates. We’ll also have
contact information and have a place where people can e-mail
questions to me or one of the other event organizers.”
On the Internet:
www.dont-tagtexas.com
www.hankgilbert.com
