Rick Perry's Texas Department of Transportation -- known as "the most arrogant state agency in the history of the state of Texas" -- is in charge of the TxTag program. The toll roads they've set up in places like north Austin have come under scrutiny because, often times, a driver will be charged with driving somewhere they never went, or sent a fine that was never due to them in the first place.
Now, those and other drivers who owe money to TxDot could be facing exorbitant fees 40-times higher than what the IRS charges for late payments. From a KXAN-TV story last week, "Alarming fees for overdue tolls":
The state of Texas is charging motorists a 4000 percent administrative fee for each toll they don’t pay after 112 days. Some motorists – even those with the proper tags – are finding themselves with thousands in fees for just a few bucks in overdue tolls.
In Central Texas, there are 150,000 motorists who owe $3 million in tolls. With that fee, the state of Texas could collect nearly $60 million from them.
As a matter of comparison, there's federal legislation right now in Washington to crack down on unscrupulous credit card companies who charge interest and fees around 30 percent.
This morning when I opened the Houston Chronicle, one of the front page articles immediately grabbed my attention.
Texans Rip Budget Yet Add to Cost
The online edition reads:
Texas lawmakers rip budget, but seek millions
The Houston Chronicle does not single out Republicans, of course, because Texas Democrats added to the budget's costs as well. However, the Democrats are not bellowing and bellyaching about the stimulus budget while the Republicans continue to 24/7.
What hypocritical jackasses. Do Republican lawmakers actually believe they can continue to fool us with their double talk and embarrass us by their endless clown shows?
Yesterday I wrote about my daily drive down Highway 71, known by some as "the highway of death" or "blood alley." Today, on my way home from work, I saw three separate news vans (KVUE, KEYE and KXAN, respectively) parked along Highway 71 and wondered if perhaps they had started reading my blog to come up with their news stories.
As it turned out, today Texas Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) announced the plans for a new transportation safety fund to create improvements on Highway 71, including widening it to five lanes, adding shoulders as well as a middle turn lane. In the meantime, temporary barriers will be placed in the center of the road on the two-mile stretch from the Bee Creek Rd. light to the Haystack Cove intersection.
In light of the terrible events with the Minneapolis bridge collapse, now might be a good time to point out a couple things regarding the status of Texas bridges. In Minnesota, the bridge that collapsed was rated "structurally deficient" by the US Department of Transportation. In Texas, 193 bridges are rated as "structurally deficient", according to a 2006 audit by the inspector general of the US Department of Transportation.
Among problems with Texas bridges listed in the audit were complaints that maximum weight limits were not posted, bridge ratings were improved without supporting data, bridges were not inspected frequently enough, and load rating calculations were not clear. From the report (which you can read in full here):
Texas provides an example of the limitations of FHWA's compliance reviews. Texas has 48,492 bridges on the 2003 Bridge Inventory, by far the largest number of all states, but has only one FHWA bridge engineer and one assistant engineer.
Texas has a slightly larger percentage of "structurally deficient" bridges that Minnesota: 4% to Minnesota's 3%. This isn't the full extent of information on bridges in Texas, and it's not to say that efforts aren't being made to allay the concerns. Now just seems like a good time to take a look at Texas and ask some questions about the condition of our own bridges.
UPDATE: Reading the report, it looks like the 193 bridges listed as structurally deficient here are National Highway System bridges, which would explain the discrepancy in the percentages listed above. I would assume all the other bridges in Texas are maintained by state and local (as opposed to federal) officials. Anyone have any insight here?
By Faith Chatham crossposted on DailyKos and DFW Regional Concerned Citizens
Governor Rick Perry has used campaign contributions from his Texans for Rick Perry committee to fly to Istanbul, Turkey Friday to address the secret Bilderberg Conference, “a meeting of about 130 international leaders in business, media and politics.” Read more: Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, international leaders met at the Worthington Hotel in a NASCO conference hosted by TxDOT, Tarrant County, The City of Fort Worth and NASCO. Several leaders of the NCTCOG RTC are board members of NASCO.
Well, the results are in and the State Auditor's office is reporting(pdf) that the Texas Department of Transportation has overstated their funding gap by about $40 billion. Shocking, isn't it?
At least $8.6 billion was overstated because Austin transportation planners mistakenly added in $3.7 billion extra for freeway interchanges ... whoops ... and included $4.9 billion for road reconstruction and freight rail relocation that they shouldn't have.
Another $27.92 billion couldn't be verified because officials in Houston, El Paso, Lubbock, Corpus Christi and Hidalgo County didn't keep documents. Only San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth numbers checked out OK, with reported gaps of $8.4 billion and $21.8 billion.
Another $9 billion was a wild guess — TxDOT looked at costs for planned projects in the state's other 17 urban areas and figured twice as much might need to be done.
Nice. So that's at least $17.6 billion that was either overestimated or a "wild guess."
John Cornyn created the Trans-Texas Corridor. In a 7 page Attorney General's opinion, former Attorney General of Texas, John Cornyn created the rules that created the toll roads.
In his March 13, 2001 decision, Cornyn bends and ignores rule after rule in our state constitution. Cornyn, bent the rules to allow federal funds to be used for state toll roads.
TxDOT was allowed to use taxpayer funds to build toll roads with only one requirement-- eventually all money had to be paid back. There is no deadline. There is no payment plan. All the opinion says is, all money has to be paid back… eventually.
As we understand the background to your request, in considering the needs of the state for more highways, you have concluded that construction of additional toll roads would be of benefit. Such roads, you note, "are financed with revenue bonds and generally are supposed to be self-supporting from user fees (toll revenue). . . . However, given the high cost of projects, it is now difficult to find projects that would generate enough toll revenue to pay for themselves in a reasonable amount of time."' Accordingly, you seek a method to invest "state highway revenues in a toll road project without a requirement for repayment."
Cornyn highlights this a main reason for his decision, but also points that voters clearly said no to TxDOT and the Toll Road authority working together to build toll roads.
That proposed amendment "would [have] allow[ed] the state, acting through the State Department of Highways and Public Transportation [now TxDOT] to construct joint projects with the Texas Turnpike Authority and to contribute money from any available source to the Texas Turnpike Authority to pay costs of the authority `s turnpikes, toll roads, or toll bridges. "This amendment was defeated by the same voters who adopted section 52-a."
Why open the door to TxDOT building toll roads throughout Texas when voters have already said no? Why ignore the will of voters in the first place? Are corporate contracts to friends that important? Why can't we see the payment plan now that the roads are being built?
Cornyn's opinion created the possibility for toll roads, plain and simple. His ruling establishes the ability for Texans to get taxed twice, but that's okay as long as TxDOT eventually gets paid back.
This is great news. It is more momentum for the people of Texas, and proof that Krusee and Perry are loosing the war. Of concern, note the last line of the AP article below that shows at least one loophole that still stands: "The moratorium would not affect projects planned by regional mobility authorities."
N
ot noted in the story below: In this House version North Texas projects are largely unaffected. And remember, this is for toll roads with TxDOT CDA deals only, this doesn't stop freeway tolls or managed lanes (toll lanes) or CDA deals with RMA's. CDAs are are NO BID, Secret, Corporate Welfare contracts.
The Senate passed a defanged version days ago. So now we need final passage of the full version in the Senate. Momentum is momentum.
House proposal would put 2-year moratorium on private toll roads
04/11/2007
By APRIL CASTRO / Associated Press
A two-year moratorium on private toll roads that won preliminary approval in the House on Tuesday would put the brakes on the Trans-Texas Corridor, a superhighway that a private firm received a contract for earlier this year.
The moratorium also would halt seven near-term projects in the state, said Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, the Brenham Republican who added the proposal to a House bill.
"This is us tapping the brakes, looking before we leap ... into contracts that last 50-plus years," Kolkhorst said.
Her proposal would require the state to create a commission to study the effects of private equity toll roads and present findings to the state next year.
Rep. Mike Krussee, R-Round Rock, argued that without private toll roads, the state would need to raise the gas tax to pay for roads.
"However well-intentioned, the moratorium adopted by the House would eliminate an enormous pool of non-tax money to address traffic and transportation needs," said Joe Krier, chairman of Texans for Safe Reliable Transportation. "Fewer transportation dollars mean fewer transportation alternatives, and more traffic gridlock."
The state contracted with Spanish-American consortium Cintra-Zachry to develop and maintain the Trans-Texas Corridor, which is envisioned as a $184 billion 4,000-mile network of toll roads, rail lines and utilities.
The contract spans 50 years.
"This is an issue about how Texas will build roads in the future and about whether profits paid by Texans will stay here in Texas ... or whether profits will be siphoned off to Spain, Wall Street or other areas."
In total, planned private equity toll projects are expected to earn $300 billion in profits for the private firms, Kolkhorst said.
"You never sell a producing well and I think that's what we're doing," she said, adding that those profits could be used in Texas to build more highway capacity.
Gov. Rick Perry, who has long championed the Trans-Texas Corridor, has urged the state to reject a two-year toll road moratorium.
"There are no such things as freeways," he said in a statement last week. "There are taxways and tollways, and for 50 years we have tried taxways that have been underfunded by Austin and Washington and that have left local communities choking on pollution and brimming with congestion."
The moratorium would not affect projects planned by regional mobility authorities.
Gov. Rick Perry and his appointed TxDOT chair Ric Williamson claim Texas has run out of tax dollars to build any more free roads.
But, TxDOT, under the Perry and Williamson direction, is diverting billions of tax dollars, intended for free roads, into toll roads (where freeways should be). Then the toll road, that took the limited right of way for a public expressway, is sold off with back room deal called a Comprehensive Development Agreement (CDA). A freeway toll tax monopoly, like SH 121 in Dallas, is created in secret.
And, even though Gov. Perry promised the 4,000 mile Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) would cost the public zero tax dollars, a recent state auditors report reveals the TTC has already cost taxpayers $90 million, and not even one mile has been built.
When the railroad was first laid down in the United States, crafty businessmen could contribute to officials who would decide the exact path of the railroad. Businesses near the railroad would have a vast advantage over those who where not. Being able to transporting goods and services cheaper than your competitors can pumps up profits, and kill competitors.
A 1997 financial statement from Rick Perry, the last financial public statement before his investments would be locked into a trust, shows how Perry has interests in MKS Consulting, an oil and gas company that Ric Williamson and his wife run.
MKS Consulting will benefit from the TTC, which will include enormous underground pipes to transport oil, gas and other utilities. Those TTC pipelines will pass only miles away from Weatherford Texas, which is the home office of MKS Consulting and hometown of Ric Williamson.
Should a rogue Governor and his close pal benefit while taxpayers pay more for wildly unpopular policies?
Also of interest, Ric Williamson's hometown of Weatherford was also one of the very first cities to receive "pass through financing" from TxDOT, one of the very few no toll financing options to build free roads in Texas today.
Just days ago, TxDOT gave Weatherford Texas a grant (paid for with tax dollars, intended for freeways we can "no longer afford") which will pay for Weatherford's police overtime.
