Posted on 07/05/2009 7:52:02 AM PDT by stevie_d_64
Today, ordinary Texans brought Governor Rick Perry’s road privatization, toll road, and Trans Texas Corridor agenda to a screeching halt. The Legislature adjourned without re-authorizing private toll road contracts called Comprehensive Development Agreements (or CDAs). The grassroots scored another victory by KILLING the revolving fund in HB 1, preventing the $2 billion in bonds from being spent to build toll roads, convert freeways to toll roads, or subsidize private toll deals, as well as protecting public employee pension funds from risky toll roads schemes that are failing all over the world.
“It is a hard-fought victory for the grassroots. We killed Goliath, not just Perry’s controversial toll road policies, but we defeated a sold out Senate and the BIG MONEY, the lobbyists, who sank millions into pushing for the sale of Texas highways,” Hank Gilbert, Texas TURF Board member and President of Piney Woods Subregional Planning Commission.
“We applaud Rep. David Leibowitz, once again, for standing up for Texas taxpayers and leading the charge to fix the bill that created a revolving fund that would have raided teacher retirement and public employee pension funds for risky toll road schemes. He authored the bill to KILL the Trans Texas Corridor and another to prevent the conversion of freeways to tollways during the regular session. He’s a proven taxpayer hero and Texans owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude,” said TURF Founder, Terri Hall.
“However, no session is without a few villains. CDA proponents and senate leaders like John Carona and Steve Ogden need to be taken to the woodshed for promising to promote the MOST expensive method of road funding, CDAs, next session, and for wanting to continue to raid public pension funds over the LOUD objections of Texans.
(Excerpt) Read more at texasturf.org ...
Governor Perry - please don’t disappoint....can someone explain what has gone on here?
BAck in the 2007 Texas legislative session, the powers at be decided it might be a good idea to shelve the TTC (Trans Texas Corridor) because of the overwhelming negative support for it once the details got out about it...
Some of us knew it was going to come back either full bore, or covertly to continue work on it...
The funding mechanisms to do this were tabbed CDA’s (Comprehensive Development Agreements) and PPS’s (Public/Private Agreements)...Those mechanismas were embedded within the TxDOT’s (Texas Department of Transportation) funding for the next two years...
This special session was to pull the woll over folks who were not paying attention...So this group called TURF, and a few of us grassroots folks stepped up and burned up the phonelines, visited with our state elected officials before the special session and they then took it back to Austin...
They successfully neutered the TxDOT funding to take away the ability to continue work above or below radar on the TTC...
Which is basically what Texans want...
As much as I am about a 50/50 supporter of Gov. Perry...He can go pound sand on this issue...
I am also of the opinion that it is unlikely, although we are continuing to call his office and our state reps and senastors to call another special session to address another few issues like:
Voter ID
Employer Parking lot bill (A pro CHL bill)
and the Campus Carry bill (another pro-gun, pro CHL bill)
Gov. Perry may lete us stew on that since we cut the TTC off at the knees..
But we’ll have to see...
Why is Perry so hell-bent on getting this through? Grassroots movements appear to be our only chance of fighting these pompous, power-hungry politicians and getting our country and states back! God bless Texas!
The main problem with any government-privitization idea is that privitization ends up costing taxpayers more money...in the long run.
Whenever something is privitized, the company, business, or organization involved has to make money in order to stay in business. They have to bring in more revenue than a government entity would....thus when its government funds for privitization...taxpayers end up paying more in tax dollars.
If having private toll roads is such a good idea....then let those who want it done to do so without government funds. It never happens
Kudos to Texans for killing this taxpayer waste scheme.
The Nutty Globalists want taxpayers to fund their schemes...they do not want to put their own money behind it.
As much as people are praising Gov Perry for his recent “seperatist” stand...he still a Liberal Globalist....and thinks “world first” before thinking Texas or US first.
And, with this TTC being killed....it will make it easier for other states to kill such taxpayer-wasteful schemes
Also, the loss of soverignty from these schemes is something that should not be taken lightly
Just remember...Senator Corona vows to bring the TTC back in 2011...
Meanwhile, other states down the road (pardon the pun) are not going to move on their side of the deal till Texas gets rolled...
This thing is supposed to go through Oklahoma, Kansas and on up to Missouri, from what I can best recall...
Nobody from up that way seems to bent out of shape about it, yet...I hope we can keep the fight here in Texas...
They're not nutty at all if we're dumb enough to fall for it, but it's a lot worse than an economic problem. It's a military problem.
It was transportation corridors like these by which the English maintained their effort to cow the South African Dutch in the Boer Wars via their famous "scorched earth" policy. They merely starved 25,000 women and children. Don't think it can't happen here.
For those not from Texas, the idea of privately-funded toll roads sounds like a good idea on the surface. However, the plan for the “Trans Texas Corridor” was an enormous land grab. The plan involved handing eminent domain power to a Spanish corporation, and setting up a mile-wide right of way for the length of the state from Mexico to Oklahoma.
The other big failure in the plan was the plan to sell off existing, paid-for infrastructure to this same corporation.
I hope and pray that Governor Perry, a long-time RINO and former Dimocrat, will stay on the Conservative band-wagon that he has been riding since 0bama’s inauguration. He faces a challenge from the middle in Kay Bailey Hutchison, which will only serve to weaken the conservative movement in Texas.
Thanks for posting this sd64.
In San Antonio, the 75 cents a mile on some roads was not a happy prospect. Even when they floated forty cents a mile, I figured if I took I-10 and 1604 to Church on Sundays, it would’ve been almost 8 dollars each way.
Thanks for the added information.
Well toll roads are coming to my state, NC, it seems - but so far it has not been passed in our Legislature, thank God!
This is the entire point, which I see that you are hinting at: we have too many roads, there is no mechanism in place that determines the efficient allocation of roads. If the roads are privatized, then yes, we'll lose some, or at least they'll go back to gravel or something of the like. But it is just simply untrue that the government is somehow more efficient than a market system for distribution.
As for the third paragraph, why should anyone want to use a private road when the government is the competition and provides one for free? This same thing applies to low cost health care, no one provides it since the government underbids everyone else in order to have a "fair" rate. Here is a good allegory: http://theunbrokenwindow.com/2009/05/12/thank-goodness-for-the-government-shoe-agency/
Incorrect.
They decided that they would put a temporary moratorium on Comprehensive Developement Agreements(CDAs) excepting those that had already been made. Plus, they implemented a mechanism whereby NTTA would get right of refusal on some of those projects. The temporary moratorium would be in place until a commission would decide the issue.
So, the projects that NTTA took over all ran into problems. The commission appointed to look into the issue, recommended the state to use CDAs.
TURF can toot their own horn if they want to but the legislature didn't raise road taxes and it didn't index the road tax.
The federal infrastructure stimulus provided interim money which allowed the legislature to punt the decision into the 2011 session.
“They have to bring in more revenue than a government entity would....thus when its government funds for privitization...taxpayers end up paying more in tax dollars.”
Sorry, but I suggest you have a false premise of three in the above sentence.
1. Government has no reality check in the free market.
2. Goobers in gooberment agencies get vastly more benefits, retirement pay, and other goodies than do free market employees.
3. Gooberment agencies don’t reduce employees, remove regulations/rules, ad nauseam.
Private charity considers a 28% overhead super high, whereas gooberment help from a gooberment agency does well to get 28% to the “needy” they putatively serve.
“They have to bring in more revenue than a government entity would....thus when its government funds for privitization...taxpayers end up paying more in tax dollars.”
Sorry, but I suggest you have a false premise of three in the above sentence.
1. Government has no reality check in the free market.
2. Goobers in gooberment agencies get vastly more benefits, retirement pay, and other goodies than do free market employees.
3. Gooberment agencies don’t reduce employees, remove regulations/rules, ad nauseam.
Private charity considers a 28% overhead super high, whereas gooberment help from a gooberment agency does well to get 28% to the “needy” they putatively serve.
When you have to pay to go worship...
Thats when massive pitchforks brigades come in handy...
Whats good, our pitchforks have been slightly upgraded...
So “shelve” and “temporary moratorium” are not synonymous???
I’m almost afraid to ask you what you think “revolving funds” means...
But I am not afraid to ask you if you think the TTC was a good idea...
As far as I am concerned, the absolute, overwhelming negative support (from Texans) for the project, its funding, who gets to build, operate and profit from this project...
Nahhhh, I respect the opportunity to present an idea, it should be debated fully, given a chance to be voted on, and if it is shot down...Those who support it need tolete it go...Not do what they are doing to supplant, and or ignore public opinion...
If Corona, Perry (if he’s still around) and their ilk want to resurrect this in 2011 now...Fine...Thats your own political funeral as far as I am concerned...
One good observation on this is those who don't want the CDAs and toll roads will have raise taxes.
They will get cornered when they do. So let me put it to you like this:
If there was state referendum on raising the gas tax 12 cents and indexing the tax rate, do you think it would pass?
Of course it won't. Because, the reason for going to user fees in the first place was because raising taxes was not politically feasible.
It’s a plot....the W’s, Perry’s, Giuliani’s and probably our esteemed Senators are in it up to their necks but WHY??? Are there really those out there that want Mexico, the USA and Canada to be as one????? We’re screwed until this whole sorted state of affairs is exposed to all the voters in this country but alas, half of them don’t have an IQ above room temperature.
So “your” saying that if I do not want the TTC and the associated mechanisms to fund forward progress on that project, I and the others that oppose this want to raise taxes...
That limb you are on is pretty thin friend...That idea of yours is certainly a hoot...
I don’t know where you got the idea that the state fuel tax computed up to be 12 cents above what we have now, but that bill that was going to do it at a 125% increase sure was a bit higher than 12 cents...That math just doesn’t work for me...
How about we just do away with any future toll roads altogether??? I think that is a fabulous idea...Especially when many future tollroads and commerce corridors will hurt more Texans and benefit foriegn entities???
Seems a very easy decision to me...
If Texans want to build it, we should choose to do so, not put up the land, pay for it, and turn over the profit and operations for 50 years on it to some overseas groups...
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