Posted on 09/12/2007 7:09:24 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
With all the madness in the world, I meditated Tuesday on two matters of great gratitude.
One is that through vigilance and good fortune we have, so far, gone six years without another major attack on U.S. soil.
The other is that I wasn't one of the Texas officials who was forced to attend a workshop in Austin in which PR flacks would try (under a $20,000 contract) to teach me techniques for selling Gov. Perry's massive toll road boondoggle.
It was a small part of a $7 million to $9 million campaign that will include feel-good ads pushing Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor.
Magic word didn't work
Given the growing uprising in both the Legislature and the public, that may not be enough.
It would have been much wiser for Perry just to consult Harris County officials on how to do toll roads right.
It looks like Perry was caught by surprise by the hostility to his plan. He seems to have thought that by invoking the magic word "privatization" he could lull Texans into thinking we were getting something for nothing.
Under Perry's plan, private corporations, including at least one from Europe, will build the roads at little or no cost to Texas taxpayers.
It's a politically powerful idea, playing on the popular notion that the private sector is always more efficient than the public sector.
Harris County's better way
That's such a tantalizing tenet of current political theology that Harris County last year paid for a set of studies that looked at whether it should sell its toll roads.
Based on the results of the studies, commissioners voted unanimously not to sell.
The two Democrats and three Republicans agreed that privatization isn't always better. And this is one of those cases.
The Houston approach is superior to Perry's in at least three ways:
• Despite recent hikes in tolls, drivers will pay considerably less per mile than they would on a privatized road. The reason is simple. The private sector can't build or maintain the roads appreciably more cheaply, and their operating costs are higher.
For one thing, corporations must pay federal taxes. For another, they must pay their shareholders.
What's more, their job is to maximize their profits. Unlike the Harris Toll Road Authority, they will make substantial political contributions and hire the best lobbyists to persuade state officials to let them charge whatever the traffic will bear.
TxDOT's Web site promoting the governor's plan offers this as reassurance: "If it is too expensive, motorists will not use the road."
• Private sector profits go to shareholders and highly paid executives. Harris County toll road profits are used to pay for nontoll streets and roads. Currently, $40 million a year in tolls go to non-toll road projects. In effect, those who are able and willing to pay for the speed and convenience of toll roads are subsidizing the "free" streets.
I'd much rather have part of my toll go to other streets I will drive than to wealthy Spaniards, or to wealthy Texans, for that matter.
• Before they will invest hundreds of millions in building roads, private companies want and get noncompete provisions. You would, too. By contrast, Harris County has consistently built free access roads parallel to its toll roads.
If you don't have an EZ Tag to get on the Westpark Tollway, you can do pretty well traveling Westpark Drive.
"That's the way we've made toll roads politically acceptable here," said Art Storey, Harris County infrastructure director.
Elected officials have to worry about such things.
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
Some really good points on why privitization is not good for every Govt service.
an excellent summary.
compared to some of these articles that ramble on and on and say less.
I don’t know if you recall, but when these toll road stories first started getting posted, I was a supporter, in principle, of new toll roads. Ric Williamson and his puppet Rick Perry have managed to change my mind.
If the two of them keep working hard enough on the project, they may be able to deliver the governor’s office to the democrats.
Houston PING
Hasn’t Harris County been refinancing (borrowing more money) against the toll roads? They will never be paid off and the guy in charge of it now has given many contradictory answers as to “why” it won’t happen (including that he wasn’t there when they originally said IT WOULD be opened to the public free at a future date).
Houston’s shell game is nothing to celebrate.
From what I’ve read there is nothing any where that says these tolls roads would ever be free one day.
Houston leaders for the past several administrations are crooks, liars and thieves.
I am glad to read that Texas towns are working together against the TransTexasCorridor. I hope Texas stops this huge “corridor” connecting Mexico and Canada.
Oh, I forgot it is supposed to be an internet rumor! Canamex probably isn’t supposed to be real either, but it’s being built! Hopefully other states will oppose the corridors planned for them.
I definitely remember that one of the selling points to the public at the time the beltway toll road was constructed was that in a certain period of time (20 years?) the tolls would stop and the beltway would be free.
I didn’t believe it, and my natural cynicism about government proved valid.
I few months ago, there was a story on one of the local news stations, in which the reporter confronted the guy in charge (county judge or commissioner?) and pointed out that the time had come, according to the original promise, to remove the tolls from the beltway. The official said that the tolls were now being used to finance other highways in the Houston area, and if they stopped the tolls the government would have to raise taxes some other way to finance the other roads.
Any time you grant a revenue stream to government, it is almost impossible to turn it off, no matter what promises are made. It’s easier to keep getting the revenue the same way and not rock the boat. Besides, the politicians think to themselves, “I wasn’t in power when those promises were made. I am not bound by them.”
Wouldn’t it be great if, any time a politician makes a promise to the public in order to win support for some law or tax, that a personal penalty would be attached (permanently) to those who make the promise and to those who are elected later and are expected to keep the promise? If the promise is broken, they all get punished. It would discourage them from making promises that are not likely to be kept, and from breaking promises once they are made.
Then, why do we need government?
Government should be strictly limited. But... Good "free" roads are one thing best done by government. Private commercial roads cannot be controlled by competition like other enterprises. Should two roads between two destinations be built, they would compete to the lowest dollar until one goes bankrupt and is bought out by the other, and any thus competition ends.
Roads are the best economic stimulant you can have. If governments want tax money, *any* tax money, not just gas taxes, then they have to build roads.
To ensure that the roads are maintained well, the recourse is to elect politicians that will do it. You can't vote the CEO of a private toll company out of his job, and as described above toll roads are natural monopolies that competition cannot control. Government roads are the only answer. The current fiasco in Texas is pretty obviously corruption of public officials that want to get rid of the responsibility of maintaining roads, while getting the tax money and political support from corporations wishing to buy themselves into the public infrastructure business.
Texas politicians are trying to get short term gain at the price of long term pain for Texas drivers.
BTTT
Everyone I have talked to regrets voting for Perry. Any anti-toll road candidate would have been better.
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