By Ken Allard - San Antonio Express-News - 10/17/2007
Forgive me, fellow Texans, but I'm just a newcomer who looks ridiculous in a cowboy hat and doesn't even own an SUV. Quickly recognizing Eastern transplants, tourist shops try to sell me bumper stickers: "Wasn't born in Texas, but I got here just as soon as I could."So can you help me connect these dots while we wait for the daily Boerne-Loop 410-airport-Seguin-San Marcos traffic jam to clear up?
News item No. 1: Pleading a funding shortage, the Texas Department of Transportation announced it will cut $1.8 billion in road construction, including at least $57 million (apparently earmarked in a weak moment) to widen clogged San Antonio highways.
News item No. 2: Today, Travis County District Judge Orlinda Naranjo will decide if TxDOT officials acted illegally in spending taxpayer funds to drum up political support for toll roads (TxDOT's preferred solution to the state's transportation crisis).
News item No. 3: A private contractor received more than $750,000 from TxDOT to send road condition surveys to 150,000 presumably startled motorists whose license plates were "randomly recorded" by TxDOT surveillance cameras hidden in orange barrels on Interstate 35 from Laredo to Dallas.
As a one-time regular on his MSNBC simulcast, I would often hear radio shock jock Don Imus exclaim, "You just can't make this stuff up!" Indeed you can't when it comes to TxDOT, which gives an entirely new meaning to the phrase "out of control."
Has no one in the Lone Star State ever heard of "checks and balances"? (Hint to local high schoolers about to endure new rounds of standardized testing: This term does not refer to financial matters!)
Had TxDOT somehow been cast as a character on "The Sopranos," the only question would be: How long before Paulie Walnuts takes 'em out to get whacked?
While the arrogance of government agencies and personalities is the hardiest of all perennials, there is always the inevitable downside.
A powerful congressman such as Wilbur Mills winds up cavorting with stripper Fanne Fox in the Tidal Basin. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is eventually revealed to have had a fondness for basic black, apparently accessorized with really nice pumps and pearls.
So just how far can TxDOT push its luck before somebody wakes up and gives the agency its long overdue comeuppance?
Had anything like the trifecta of excesses outlined above occurred in Washington rather than Austin, the offending agency director would have been instantly summoned to appear before investigating committees, with the usual tiers of media mavens and photographers-in-waiting. With cameras scrutinizing every flinch, the tough questions for the TxDOT director would begin.
Who decides which road improvements are funded by your agency — and with whose concurrence? What public input is solicited, and why should the public believe TxDOT when you say you're running out of money?
What gives you the idea that a taxpayer-funded public agency has any business using those tax dollars to lobby for its own interests? And why waste almost a million dollars on a "Big Brother" survey about road conditions that your department should have understood to begin with?
Until such questions are asked and answered, simply think of TxDOT as a state agency being gradually auctioned off to a hot-bidding coalition of builders, developers, heavy equipment contractors and construction magnates.
One thing is certain: We are quickly losing much of San Antonio's special character to chaos — unbridled expansion, high-density housing and utterly unplanned growth. Despite growing questions about its transparency and competence, TxDOT acts as an obliging accomplice while fields, forests and the last remnants of an irreplaceable frontier culture are bulldozed into 24 lanes of privatized, toll-bearing concrete, complete with access roads.
Know what San Antonio will look like if these guys win? Houston!
Know what we are if we let that happen? Stupid!
Reasons enough to demand that our political leaders bring TxDOT's antics to a screeching halt before it starts putting up toll booths at the end of your driveway.
(Got here just as soon as I could to warn you.)
Showing posts with label misappropriation of funds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label misappropriation of funds. Show all posts
Friday, October 19, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
Non-toll Solutions - A&M Study says no need to raise gas tax or impose tolls
A&M expert: Don’t need to raise gas tax at all
SAN ANTONIO TOLL PARTY
See the Texas Monthly blog entry by reporter Paul Burka here.
See Burka’s His Way or the Highway article blasting privatizing our public highways and the non-competes in these CDA contracts here
Also, to view the video of David Ellis, of the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M, giving this testimony before the Study Commission on Transportation Financing. The Commission’s co-presiding officers are Senator Carona and Representative Krusee. The entire hearing can be viewed here. Ellis flat out says we don’t need to raise the gas tax nor do we need this shift to toll financing, view condensed testimony here.
Link to TTI report for the Governor’s Business Council directly here.
NOT NECESSARY TO TOLL, A&M EXPERT SAYS
By Paul Burka - Texas Monthly blog - TUESDAY, DECEMBER 05, 2006
Few things are duller than a committee meeting in the interim between legislative sessions. Witnesses drone on about policy choices involving arcane issues. Some of the committees exist only for a short duration and will vanish once the legislative session begins in January. The media almost never shows up for these meetings, which explains why the November 28 meeting of the Study Commission on Transportation Financing received virtually no attention. But a few minutes into the hearing, David Ellis, a co-author of a report by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) at Texas A&M, dropped a bombshell on the commission. He said that Texas could finance its highway needs without toll roads. The headline for this post is based on Ellis’s testimony. I have not come across any mainstream media reports of Ellis’s remarks.
Ellis provided the committee with some background on transportation policy. The demand for new and expanded roads in the state’s eight largest metro areas is increasing much faster than TxDot can build them. Over the next 25 years, the population of these areas is projected to increase by 2.8% per year, employment by by 2.3%, vehicles by 2.7%, and daily miles drive by 3%. Over the same period, the number of lane miles that can be built with currently available funding will increase by just .25% per year. Tx-Dot estimates that the state will need an additional $68 billion over the next 25 years to improve mobility. The TTI’s estimate is slightly lower, $66.2 billion. Two-thirds of the needed new construction will be in the state road system, or some $44+ billion; the remainder represents improvements to local roads.
The money for highway construction comes from three sources: vehicle registration fees, the state gasoline (more properly, motor fuels) tax, and reimbursements from the federal gasoline tax, of which Texas sends more revenue to Washington than it gets back. Of these sources, the one that matters the most is the motor fuels tax. But the tax has been losing ground to inflation in recent years.
Now, here is the crucial part of Ellis’s testimony: There are scenarios under which roads can be financed:
1. Raise the motor fuels tax, currently 20 cents per gallon, to 51 cents. Interestingly, a Tx-Dot engineer had previously told the committee that the motor fuels tax would have to be raised to $1.40 per gallon to pay for the needed new construction. Needless to say, the Legislature is not going to raise the tax by 31 cents, much less a buck twenty.
2. Raise the motor fuels tax by 8 cents and index it to inflation, using not the consumer price index, but a special highway construction index. The rate of inflation has been 1/2% to 1 1/2 percent per year.
3. Don’t raise the gasoline tax at all. Instead, index it and put the incremental revenue in the mobility fund, where it can be used to pay off bonds. And here’s the bombshell: “Under this scenario,” Ellis said, ” it wouldn’t be necessary to toll as a means of financing, although that’s certainly an option.”
The cat is out of the bag now. Tolls aren’t the only way to pay for new roads. Will the Legislature allow Tx-Dot to go forward with its mammoth toll road plan, or will lawmakers devise a solution that will allow revenue to be used to build free roads?
SAN ANTONIO TOLL PARTY
See the Texas Monthly blog entry by reporter Paul Burka here.
See Burka’s His Way or the Highway article blasting privatizing our public highways and the non-competes in these CDA contracts here
Also, to view the video of David Ellis, of the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M, giving this testimony before the Study Commission on Transportation Financing. The Commission’s co-presiding officers are Senator Carona and Representative Krusee. The entire hearing can be viewed here. Ellis flat out says we don’t need to raise the gas tax nor do we need this shift to toll financing, view condensed testimony here.
Link to TTI report for the Governor’s Business Council directly here.
NOT NECESSARY TO TOLL, A&M EXPERT SAYS
By Paul Burka - Texas Monthly blog - TUESDAY, DECEMBER 05, 2006
Few things are duller than a committee meeting in the interim between legislative sessions. Witnesses drone on about policy choices involving arcane issues. Some of the committees exist only for a short duration and will vanish once the legislative session begins in January. The media almost never shows up for these meetings, which explains why the November 28 meeting of the Study Commission on Transportation Financing received virtually no attention. But a few minutes into the hearing, David Ellis, a co-author of a report by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) at Texas A&M, dropped a bombshell on the commission. He said that Texas could finance its highway needs without toll roads. The headline for this post is based on Ellis’s testimony. I have not come across any mainstream media reports of Ellis’s remarks.
Ellis provided the committee with some background on transportation policy. The demand for new and expanded roads in the state’s eight largest metro areas is increasing much faster than TxDot can build them. Over the next 25 years, the population of these areas is projected to increase by 2.8% per year, employment by by 2.3%, vehicles by 2.7%, and daily miles drive by 3%. Over the same period, the number of lane miles that can be built with currently available funding will increase by just .25% per year. Tx-Dot estimates that the state will need an additional $68 billion over the next 25 years to improve mobility. The TTI’s estimate is slightly lower, $66.2 billion. Two-thirds of the needed new construction will be in the state road system, or some $44+ billion; the remainder represents improvements to local roads.
The money for highway construction comes from three sources: vehicle registration fees, the state gasoline (more properly, motor fuels) tax, and reimbursements from the federal gasoline tax, of which Texas sends more revenue to Washington than it gets back. Of these sources, the one that matters the most is the motor fuels tax. But the tax has been losing ground to inflation in recent years.
Now, here is the crucial part of Ellis’s testimony: There are scenarios under which roads can be financed:
1. Raise the motor fuels tax, currently 20 cents per gallon, to 51 cents. Interestingly, a Tx-Dot engineer had previously told the committee that the motor fuels tax would have to be raised to $1.40 per gallon to pay for the needed new construction. Needless to say, the Legislature is not going to raise the tax by 31 cents, much less a buck twenty.
2. Raise the motor fuels tax by 8 cents and index it to inflation, using not the consumer price index, but a special highway construction index. The rate of inflation has been 1/2% to 1 1/2 percent per year.
3. Don’t raise the gasoline tax at all. Instead, index it and put the incremental revenue in the mobility fund, where it can be used to pay off bonds. And here’s the bombshell: “Under this scenario,” Ellis said, ” it wouldn’t be necessary to toll as a means of financing, although that’s certainly an option.”
The cat is out of the bag now. Tolls aren’t the only way to pay for new roads. Will the Legislature allow Tx-Dot to go forward with its mammoth toll road plan, or will lawmakers devise a solution that will allow revenue to be used to build free roads?
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