Free Republic

McALLEN -- State senators on Tuesday ordered transportation officials to assess Texas' highway system and prioritize which regions are most in need of new roads. "We're expecting a full report, not some two-page letter," said state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security. "You can't begin addressing the funding problems until you know when the roads are expected to come on line." The transportation committee, which met Tuesday morning at McAllen City Hall, has been at odds with the Texas Department of Transportation since earlier this year, when the agency announced the halt...

South Texas is not only going to get its first interstate - it is also going to get a second and a third. State transportation officials knew one of three southern highways - U.S. Highway 281 in Hidalgo County, U.S. Highway 77 in Cameron County or U.S. Highway 59 in Webb County - would eventually become part of an interstate stretching from the Texas-Mexico border to Texarkana, in the northeast part of the state. Only Webb County is currently served by an interstate. The state's Trans-Texas Corridor plan calls for an Interstate 69 extension linking South Texas to points north,...

McALLEN — In other parts of the state, transportation officials try to allay property owners' fears that a superhighway from Laredo north to Texarkana will result in a massive land grab. But in the lower Rio Grande Valley, the state's road builders spend more time assuring local leaders that they have a shot at being included. People in the fast-growing border area between Brownsville and McAllen have developed something of an inferiority complex about being the state's largest metropolitan area without an interstate highway. One after another, Valley leaders stepped to a microphone at public meetings last week and made...

ROBSTOWN, Tex. — Leon Little’s farm here near Corpus Christi would not be seized for Texas’s proposed $184-billion-plus superhighway project for 5 or 10 years, if ever. But Mr. Little was alarmed enough to show up Wednesday night with hundreds of his South Texas coastal neighbors to do what the Texas Department of Transportation has been urging: “Go ahead, don’t hold back.� Don’t worry. Texans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the...

WESLACO — Nearly 80 people filled a lecture hall here Thursday for a town hall forum with Texas Department of Transportation officials on a potential interstate highway designation in the region. The forum at South Texas College’s Mid-Valley Campus was the first of four planned public meetings in the Rio Grande Valley addressing the state’s Trans-Texas Corridor plan for an Interstate 69 extension linking South Texas to points north. TxDOT is developing plans for the first interstate in eastern Texas to connect Texarkana to one of three points in the south: U.S. Highway 281 in Hidalgo County, U.S. Highway 77...

Some Texans are afraid of losing their land to the Trans-Texas Corridor while others loathe the thought of a quarter-mile-wide swath of toll roads and railway lines transforming the countryside into a superhighway. People continue to turn out in droves at public meetings concerning the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor proposal, specifically the portion known as the TTC-69 proposed from Brownsville to Texarkana. A meeting Monday, Jan. 28, at the fairgrounds in Austin County was no exception, drawing more than 1,000 people. Opposition to the proposed corridor has come from people in all walks of life, said Chris Steinbach, chief of staff...

Hillary has a Texas border town bundler, Alonzo Cantu, who, according to the Washington Post, "...persuaded more than 300 people in Hidalgo County, where the median household income in 2006 was $28,660, to write checks ranging from $500 to $2,300 to the senator from New York."

During this year's legislative session, Texas had an "oh, wait, hold on, don't do that" moment on privately funded tollways. Fair enough, but now it's time to figure out what the state should do, including how to pay for what the state's highway czar calls a $100 billion shortfall in money needed for essential highway projects. Ric Williamson, the Weatherford businessman who is chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, says "the entire future of the state transportation system" depends on potential revenue from private toll road investors. Without it, staffers with the Texas Department of Transportation told commission members at...

WESLACO — It’s a horrific, perhaps all-too common scenario. Masked men armed with high-powered weapons storm a home and often gag and beat the homeowner — or anyone — in sight. Most perpetrators know exactly what they are looking for: sometimes large amounts of cash, sometimes bundles of drugs. Other times, in stranger-to-stranger invasions, perpetrators target homes in affluent neighborhoods that appear to hold valuables inside. Since last July, there have been eight reported cases of home invasions — seven of them violent. In half of the reported cases, there was some type of relationship between the victim and the...

Ideas for Trans-Texas Corridor-69 are slowly but surely rolling right along. The concept, which was known as Interstate Highway 69 until 2002, has been around for more than a decade, but Gaby Garcia, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Transportation's turnpike division, said it's getting closer to becoming a reality. "What we're looking at now is taking all the comments we've received and identifying a narrowed study area," Garcia said. "That's where we get a specific area where people can say, 'How would this affect my property?' " Right now, she said, the projected path for the corridor cuts a...

LA VILLA - The Hidalgo County Sheriff's Department is investigating the death a La Villa man after the man and his two sons - reportedly victims of a burglary at their home - wound up shooting at police Sunday night. Police fired back and killed the man, Ruben Perez Sr. The ordeal began about 11:10 p.m. when Alonzo Perez went to the La Villa Police Department and began banging violently on the door, said Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño. The one officer on duty heard the ruckus and went to see what was going on. Alonzo Perez was demanding that...

Hidalgo County Democratic Party chair says many Hispanic choices will emerge for 2006. A top Rio Grande Valley Democrat has warned state party leaders not to try to impose 2006 statewide candidates on grassroots activists. Hidalgo County Democratic Party Chair Juan Maldonado made his comments after reading newspaper reports that the departure of six Texas Democrats from Congress had created a pool of candidates for statewide races in 2006. All six ex-congressmen are Anglos. Maldonado said there were excellent minority candidates too. The rest of the story, subscribers only

AUSTIN — Former Hidalgo County election judges filed a petition on Friday with the Texas secretary of state asking for poll inspectors to visit Weslaco precincts on Nov. 2, saying inexperienced judges could compromise the election. "I feel the integrity of this race might be at risk," said Marcos Hernandez, former election judge for voting Precinct 112 in central Weslaco, who filed the petition. Election inspectors from the secretary of state’s office were already planning to be in Hidalgo County and other Rio Grande Valley counties on Election Day because of previous petitions filed by other groups, said Bill Kenyon,...

EDINBURG — Texas Secretary of State Geoffrey Connor wants an investigation into the ballot-tampering claims made by four Hidalgo County voters earlier this week. Connor requested the assistance of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to look into complaints filed by four county residents that at least four mail ballots were tampered with. "We’re drafting a letter to the attorney general’s office that will be sent today," said Jennifer Waisath, director of communication for the secretary of state. "The matter in Hidalgo County over the mail ballot issue is now in the hands of the A.G.’s office for a full investigation."...

Guerra says typographical and other mistakes on first print run may cost party or state an extra $15,000 Hidalgo County Democratic Party has had to destroy 60,000 early voting ballots that were to have been used in the March primary after learning that they contained numerous typographical and other mistakes. The ballots included the name of Fern Penna for president, even though the little known candidate from New York pulled out of the race before the filing deadline. Other mistakes included leaving out the middle initials of presidential candidates John Kerry and Dennis Kucinich. Hidalgo County Democratic Party Chairman Bobby...