Posted on 01/25/2008 6:00:26 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Leaders with the Texas Department of Transportation sought to allay fears about the Trans-Texas Corridor Thursday night in Rosenberg with a “town hall” meeting. The meeting proceeded fairly smoothly, but hardly seemed to put a dent in the large crowd's seemingly uniform opposition to the proposal of a massive transportation corridor.
Hank Gilbert, a regular speaker at TTC events and leader of an anti-TTC non-profit group, drew cheers for suggesting TxDOT officials have failed to make the case for a large, privately owned transportation cluster.
“No good argument has been made for the TTC that would allow farmers to be willing to give up their land,” he said.
About 500 people filled the main hall of the Rosenberg Civic and Convention Center, many wearing anti-TTC stickers and buttons distributed that night. Not one member of the public expressed any support for the corridor, which has been heavily pushed by Gov. Rick Perry.
An artist's rendering of the corridor, displayed widely by TxDOT in 2005, showed dedicated car and truck lanes running side-by-side with rail tracks and utility lines, in what transportation planners said could be a 1,200-foot wide corridor. Steve Simmons, deputy executive director of TxDOT, said Thursday night that image was misleading, and said displaying it was a mistake.
Simmons said rather than the TTC being a “megahighway,” it is really a “delivery method” for resources to fund the various modes of transportation that could be implemented along the corridor's route.
The TTC proposal centers around the idea that private companies would fund and build transportation corridors at their own cost, rather than through taxpayer money. Those companies, in turn, would recoup their investment through tolls and other charges related to the corridor.
Ned Holmes, a member of TxDOT's commission, said he would prefer to see the road owned by the state through traditional funding means, but argued the state does not have the money.
Simmons said federal funding for highways is being cut drastically, TxDOT cannot take out bonds for large-scale transportation upgrades and has no ability to fund rail expansion, so the TTC is a “tool” for getting the infrastructure built.
“We can only work with the tools the Legislature gives us, and they gave us the tools to look at these public/private partnerships,” said Simmons.
Motives questioned
Speakers, some of whom were travelling the state to attend the town hall meetings, several times questioned TxDOT on the motivation behind TTC, arguing it stems purely from international trade agreements like NAFTA.
Simmons said Texas now has 24 million residents, and currently experiences the most growth of any state in the U.S.
“We're going to have to start looking at how we're going to address it,” he said.
As for freight, Simmons said 80 percent of Mexico's exported goods enter the U.S. through Texas, and an upcoming expansion of the Panama Canal along with the growth of several Texas ports creates a need for greater transportation infrastructure.
“The first port of call after the Panama Canal is Texas, and the studies are showing that the population is growing at a rate of 1,000 new people every day,” he said.
These town hall meetings are being held in response to wide-spread criticism of the TTC, conceded TxDOT officials. A round of formal public hearings is set to take place next month, with one in Rosenberg on Feb. 25, but transportation officials by law will not be allowed to answer questions or respond to comments at those meetings.
Fort Bend County is most likely to be affected by what is being called the TTC/69 route, which is a merger of the proposed I-69 route with the TTC concept. Study maps indicate that could run about 650 miles from the Mexican border to Louisiana and Arkansas, mostly replacing U.S. 59. TxDOT plans to include a path from the main route of the corridor to Houston area ports, and that could run through the southern half of Fort Bend County, according to TxDOT maps.
The public hearing on Feb. 25 will consist of an open house session from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., followed by a chance to speak about the TTC/69 proposal from 6:30 p.m. That meeting will also take place at the Rosenberg Civic and Convention Center.
By Ben Wear | Friday, January 25, 2008, 10:35 AM
Texas Transportation Commissioner Ted Houghton, at least according to anti-toll activist Terri Hall of Comal County, basically got up in front of hundreds of people in Hempstead on Tuesday and admitted that TxDOT is breaking the law.
What Houghton said at a town hall meeting on the Trans-Texas Corridor proposed tollway TTC-69, according to clips on YouTube, concerned lobbyists in Washington. Here’s what he said:
“We hire lobbyists up there to represent the interests of the State of Texas,” Houghton said, going on to talk about how the state has been successful in what eventually ended up in the last big transportation reauthorization bill, passed by Congress in 2005. The state’s allocations of federal transportation dollars increased somewhat in that law, and there were regulatory changes that TxDOT had sought to streamline the approval process for roads. “That’s why we employ the lobbyists in D.C.”
Now, was the “we” in those sentences TxDOT, or the Texas Office of State-Federal Relations in D.C.? The state office, according to its Web site, has someone named Cady North on its staff who is assigned to the Texas Department of Transportation. A state employee would not fall under the prohibition below, found in the Texas Government Code:
Sec. 556.005. EMPLOYMENT OF LOBBYIST (a) A state agency may not use appropriated money to employ, as a regular full-time or part-time or contract employee, a person who is required by Chapter 305 to register as a lobbyist. Except for an institution of higher education as defined by Section 61.003, Education Code, a state agency may not use any money under its control to employ or contract with an individual who is required by Chapter 305 to register as a lobbyist.
Houghton certainly seemed to be talking about TxDOT. And Hall, who has formed groups to oppose Bexar County toll roads and sue TxDOT over its spending on public relations, cited records of private lobbyists hired by TxDOT.
I asked TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott about Hall’s allegations. He sent this back by e-mail Thursday:
“The January 23, 2008 press release from TURF attempts to interpret documents received through the discovery process for their ongoing litigation against TxDOT,” Lippincott said in the e-mail. “As we have said, it is our responsibility to engage Texans in a meaningful dialogue about transportation. It is not possible to meet our state’s transportation goals without public awareness and public involvement. In light of the ongoing litigation, it is not appropriate to comment to the media on every document the plaintiffs receive through the normal course of discovery.”
I replied that, actually, I was asking not about any documents turned up in discovery for Hall’s lawsuit, but rather Houghton’s statements and the seeming prohibition in the government code against TxDOT hiring lobbyists. Lippincott said Thursday he would get back to me on that. I’ll let you know when he does.
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
If they’re citing the +1000 new residents per day in Texas as a reason for the TTC, it makes perfect sense to lower that number by building the DAMN FENCE between Mexico and Texas. That’ll cut that number down substantially.
And the feds are making the fence an issue to landowners because of the way they want to build it. Why on earth do they have to split up people’s property to do this? You build it right damn along the actual border, pay the people a good amount for whatever space 20-25 ft wide in between the two fences and that’s that. They shouldn’t own any land on the other side ofthe border since Americans can’t own land in Mexico. So build it smack on the border and nobody’s land has to get cut in half. But the feds want to get landowners against it so they propose putting the fence not on the actual border but running through people’s properties. Nutjobs.
We hate this thing but why would that stop them from doing it?
This is one of the reasons I voted against RINO Rick Perry the last election,
Will public objections actually make any difference, do you all think? I think this is a done deal, and these meetings are window dressing to make it look good.
You got it right. These meetings are just window dressing to make it looks like they give a damn what the people of the state think. They'll have the meetings, and the public will almost universally oppose it, then they'll go ahead and let the crony capitalism highway roll on.
Perry’s just about single-handedly destroyed the Republicans in Texas. I don’t think he really cares, though. He used to be a Democrat, and if he can get this pushed through he’ll pocket enough money to buy a small country and become king.
You’ve been added.
BTTT
They need more trees.
The Chinese like to travel in the shade.
This will require the conversion of Padre Island to the site of a deep water ship channel.
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