While listening to the Chris Duel Show today on KTSA 550 AM in San Antonio, I heard of another very important public hearing on tolls, public-private partnerships, and the Trans Texas Corridor. From a chilling article in The Texas Observer:
On March 1, the Lege will hold its first public hearing ever on the Trans-Texas Corridor and the plethora of privately operated toll roads being planned for the state. TXDOT has spent millions of dollars on advertising and consultants trying to convince the public that the best solution for Texas’ massive traffic jams is allowing private investors to build toll roads. But its public relations campaign has backfired, managing to enrage not only large segments of the driving public, but also state legislators, congressmen, and scores of local officials who sit on city councils, county commissions, and transportation councils. The chickens, as Malcolm X once said, have come home to roost.
Nearly a dozen bills have been introduced to rein in TXDOT’s plans, and more are expected. Leading the effort is Republican John Carona, a Dallas businessman and chairman of the Senate’s Transportation and Homeland Security Committee. Carona said, “The Transportation Commission and the governor’s office are so focused on short-term cures that they have not studied the long-term ramifications of what they’re doing. And I think the long-term ramifications are disastrous for this state.”
Carona has filed several bills that would severely curtail the profits that toll-road operators can make on their pay-as-you-go highways.
If you get a chance, read the entire article, which goes on to talk about a confrontation between Ric Williamson (proponent of the TTC, chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, and friend of Rick Perry) and Senator Carona after Williamson’s “artful dodging” of a meeting with the Senator regarding transportation issues. The article also illustrates Carona, chair of The Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security, as a strong ally in the fight against corruption and deceitful dealing plaguing transportation policy in Texas.
URGENT URGENT URGENT
The TTC public hearing will take place on March 1 in Austin at the Capitol Annex Auditorium room E1.004 at 8:30 AM and will likely last all day.
Senator Carona’s office would like every person in the State of Texas who is against this version of tolling and the Trans Texas Corridor to GET ON THE RECORD for his hearing next week.
Click here for a Witness Registration Form and then transfer all the information from the form in an email and submit to Senator Carona at john.webb_sc@senate.state.tx.us. You can also fax the form. Please make sure the completed form (faxed or emailed) arrives prior to the March 1st hearing.
MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!
Additional and Sometimes Random Information:
San Antonio Toll Party is having a march and rally down Congress Ave to the steps of the Capitol starting at 2:00 pm on March 2.
The toll-road developers have claimed they will need a 12 percent return on their investment. Using that figure the tolls on the private roads will be 66 percent higher upon opening than what tolls on state-constructed roads would cost, and the private toll operators will be able to raise their rates to whatever the market will bear. *
The 2003 transportation bill arrived in the Senate two weeks before the session ended and was sold as a way to get roads built quickly without any public money. In reality, the toll roads that will be operated by private companies will still be subsidized by taxpayers through tax breaks, low-interest loans, tax-exempt bonds, outright grants and in some cases, the actual pavement itself. *
Watch the Public Hearing LIVE online here. (I’m not positive about that, but pretty sure it will be broadcast.)
Video Interview of Senator John Carona Part 1
Video Interview of Senator John Carona part 2
Confrontation of Carona and Williamson
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