It is possible that Senator John Carona, and pretty much the entire North Texas legislative delegation, will have a new local-option transportation funding bill to tout as early victories during this session.
SB-855 would empower municipalities and/or counties to increase taxes, issue bonds, or create new fees and penalties in order to pay for local transportation projects. I've said before that I'm listening. It's an alternative plan to public-private-partnership toll schemes that line the pockets of Perry's pals and foreign-owned companies---projects that are now being funded with our federal stimulus dollars, and which amount to an inexcusable means of building transportation infrastructure.
The fact is that I don't know how the North Texas delegation will be able to sell this initiative to their constituents. I'd like to see if they truly come back to their districts and campaign for the Local-Option myself. The idea of raising taxes during an economic recession will go over like a lead balloon with voters-especially in Texas. The idea of additional penalties when renewing your registration or drivers license might be a back door legislators could slip through but I'm not convinced enough money to fund transportation projects would be generated without additional taxation and continued reliance on the P-3 concept. Bonds have been, and always will be, an option for transportation projects. The state has issued billions in bonds as of November of 2007 for transportation projects but continue to cut up the Trans-Texas Corridor into little construction pieces and selling the rights of managing that infrastructure to Spain.
Politicians are going to have to muster the political will to begin talking about ways to increase revenue to this state in general, but how about getting our own fiscal house in order before new tax burdens? We can't continue and do the politically popular thing that gets you elected and constantly talk about cutting taxes, only to create new tax burdens on small businesses and mainstream Texans to pay for the needs of our state. This Local-Option bill calls for the consideration of increasing sales taxes. At a time when cities in Northeast Tarrant County like Southlake are losing 22% in sales tax revenue, or Bedford which lost 4%? Sales taxes are a regressive tax on main street Texans. What about tending to our federal and state gas tax dollars first? We need the maximum amount per dollar generated spent in Texas on Texas transportation projects. In addition, how about transitioning the operating budget of TxDOT from the gas tax fund and to the general tax revenue budget, which would begin to maximize gas tax dollars for actual transportation projects? Lets clean up our fiscal house first before pursuing legislation that local voters aren't likely to support, and politicians probably aren't willing to sell back home in their districts.
Kuff alerted us to the Houston Chronicle article about the possibility of high-speed rail in Texas. After years of a lot of talk, we might be close to some action.
The idea of high-speed rail is being pushed again in a big way in Texas, and backers hope to have $12 billion to $18 billion high-speed trains running by 2020. This time, they say they have taken care to ensure the idea won’t fall flat the way a bullet-train push did some 15 years ago.
“In the past, high-speed rail was not completed in Texas primarily because it was a top-down model driven by lobbyists out of Austin,” former Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, chairman of the nonprofit Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corp., told lawmakers at a Wednesday transportation briefing.
This time, he said backers from the consortium — which includes elected leaders, cities, counties and two airlines among others — reached out to past opponents to try to solve their concerns. Among them: Southwest Airlines, which fought the last high-speed rail project as a potential competitor. Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said the airline is neutral on this proposal.
The high-speed trains — with an average speed of 200 mph — would run to airports, allowing rail to work in conjunction with airlines by ferrying in passengers catching longer flights.
...
The rail would run along the so-called “Texas T-Bone” — from Dallas-Fort Worth through Austin to San Antonio, and branching off in Temple to Houston. More than 70 percent of Texans live in the area that would be served.
State Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas) says he believes that high-speed rail is a "near-term reality" for Texas.
What do you think of the possibility of high-speed rail coming to Texas?
Last week I reported on collapsing condo complexes formerly managed by Republican Sen. John Carona's company Associa Principal Management Group. Apparently collecting maintenance fees and not doing any maintenance is not an isolated issue for Carona's company.
ABC KTRK 13 in Houston reported that Carona's Associa Principal Management Group was hired to oversea a homeowners association for Aldine Village. The results...
Piles of trash are starting to stink outside homes in a neighborhood in north Harris County. The homeowners association is in debt and can't afford to pick up the trash.
Homeowners say they've paid their dues and don't understand why the association still owes thousands of dollars.
...
In a letter from Principal Management Group - the company hired to oversee the homeowners association - residents were told their trash service would be discontinued on July 3, 2008. Other services paid for by the association, like street lights, would also be turned off if at least half of the $86,000 owed in back fees were not paid by the end of the month.
"I pay every year," insisted resident Maria Escamilla. "We pay everybody, so the problem is the company."
Escamilla, who's lived here 20 years, has proof. She showed us cancelled checks dating back to 2003. Yet she's still paying the consequences. Now a month of no trash service has turned into a health hazard. She tells us she sees big rats running up her trees at night.
Principal Management Group wouldn't go on camera, but said the association has been without a board for five years. Now the 300 or so homes are predominately rentals and getting the landlords to pay has been impossible.
Collapsing condos, trash, darkened street lights, and rats. Republicans like John Carona like to say that government should be run like a business. Let's hope he's not modeling it after his.
Texas Republican State Senator John Carona is falling down on the job, literally.
KHOU Houston is reporting that residents of Park Memorial Condominiums have been paying $15,000 in maintenance fees over the last 3 years, fees that are supposed to help the owner of the complex, you know, keep up with maintenance. They were a little surprised to find out that city inspectors say their condo is in danger of collapse.
Sen. John Carona happens to be the CEO of the company that managed that complex during most of the time those fees were collected and the structural integrity ignored.
For a long time the money went to a company called Prime Site which was later absorbed by Associa Principal Management Group. In April that company ended its management agreement and copied at the bottom of the letter the company's CEO, John Carona.
Carona is a state senator, but his day job is CEO of one of the largest property management companies in the nation. Until this summer his group managed the now-hazardous condominiums. He also wrote the Texas Residential Property Owners Protection Act.
"To think that someone in public office is running these companies and is perhaps making a lot of money. And the service of these companies is so terrible and the homeowner's hands are tied." said Dan Seluk.
Will GOP bloggers BlogHOUSTON and Lone Star Times make note of this as much as they did about Hubert Vo? We'll see.
