Posted on 01/12/2009 4:28:45 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Two years ago, lawmakers went to war with Gov. Rick Perry over his push to privatize Texas toll roads, but their efforts to stop the idea largely failed.
As they return Tuesday to launch the 2009 legislative session, lawmakers will be faced with a choice of either raising taxes – which both Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst have called a bad idea – or giving private companies a greater role in paying for, and operating, a fast-expanding network of toll roads.
The two-year moratorium on private road deals that passed in 2007 slowed but didn't kill Perry's plan to privatize toll roads. Construction on one project is set to begin soon in Austin, and private firms are readying bids in Dallas, Tarrant and other counties across Texas.
And while the state Department of Transportation has officially killed the Trans-Texas Corridor, it hasn't canceled two development contracts with private firms that continue to look for ways to develop hundreds of miles of toll roads.
Moratorium at issue
Lawmakers could stop the practice, or simply extend the partial moratorium, but it's unlikely that they will.
"I see no reason to extend the moratorium, so long as we have leadership at TxDOT we can trust," said Dewhurst, who is president of the Senate. "There is certainly a place for private financing."
TxDOT has pledged to back away from the toll-roads-or-no-roads approach it has favored in recent years, but it remains convinced that without significant private financing, Texas will never come close to building the hundreds of billions of dollars in roads it says the state needs by 2030.
(Excerpt) Read more at wfaa.com ...
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
A nation that cannot pay for its radical liberal runaway spending. So it has to either sell itself to some enemy, or tax itself out of existence.....take your pick.
Private toll-roads aren’t working out too well here in CA.
I think that they’re selling some of them back to the state (91 toll road?)
Hold on to your wallets, your local hero’s are back in Austin in the morning.
I always thought they hosed it up when they meet for 90 days every two years.
We would have been better off it was 2 days every 90 years.
Hold on to your wallets, your local hero’s are back in Austin in the morning.
How did the old timers put it?
Something like:
round up your livestock and keep the women and children inside the fence as the Texas Legislature is in session.
>> We would have been better off it was 2 days every 90 years.
ROFL! Ain’t that the truth.
These aren’t Texans. They’re sellouts.
We don’t have to do either. Just set a % across the board for each agency. Let them decide where they can cut. One suggestion would be to do away with the breakfast program and tell parents to feed their kids before sending them to school.
Just think if the Texas did not have the balanced budget. Its amazing they don’t think of cut spending first before raising taxes.
Nobody mentions the 25% of our gas taxes which are going into education. Given the high property taxes I’m paying, I’d say the fuel taxes can go 100% to the roadways.
A year ago, Missouri had a plebicite vote on our ballot that finally put a stop to road use tax money being transfered to other state agencies. Previously, $2 out of $5 was transferred.
>>>Nobody mentions the 25% of our gas taxes which are going into education.
Doesn’t all the monies from Texas’s share of fuel taxes go into the Texas general fund, and then are allocated out to roads and OTHER programs? And, previously (a decade ago?) this was not the situation.
I’ll bet that going back to the original idea of spending gas taxes on the roads would solve this problem.
BTTT
In Texas’ case, the *private* builder/operator meant foreign owned. Thus a major sticking point.
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