Transportation leaders: Texas needs more money for its roads

The Dallas Morning News ^ | April 23, 2008 | Michael A. Lindenberger

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

AUSTIN — Maybe Texas’ transportation problems are a lot simpler to understand than recent fights over toll roads make it seem, North Texas leaders told state senators Wednesday.

“My first recommendation: You need to provide a lot more revenue for transportation,” Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, told the Texas Senate transportation committee.

That was hardly the only suggestion from Mr. Morris or the many others who spoke to the committee, which is seeking input as it readies an approach on toll roads, TxDOT and more for the next legislative session.

But it might offer Texas drivers the most meaningful window into what the fighting has been all about lately. No matter who is doing the talking about transportation in Austin, the conversation usually gets back to the billions of dollars Texas needs, but doesn’t have, to pay for its roads.

It is those money problems that have led to clashes over toll roads, privatization, or other hot-button issues. Tensions between the North Texas Tollway Authority, lawmakers and state transportation department leaders flared up most recently in North Texas when the State Highway 161 toll road negotiations broke down at the last minute.

“NTTA should not be expected to solve TxDOT’s financial crisis,” Mr. Morris said after the Wednesday hearing. “But if you aren’t going to give it the money it needs, you can’t blame TxDOT for taking the position that we better squeeze as many nickels as we can out of every … project.”

The state’s biggest urban regions all have big transportation needs, and increasingly their price tags read in the billions.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Trans-Texas Corridor PING!

Texas roads: Perry needs to take real responsibility

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[bcsco]

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[ravingnutter]

Total BS....if Governor 39% and crew would quit looting it, there would be plenty of money.

The Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation announced yesterday that the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) would hand over $20 million in gas tax funds to help build a 5.2 acre park near downtown Dallas. The $67 million park is intended to serve as a model public-private partnership with a restaurant, a children's playground and a dog park. It will have no roads.

TxDOT on several occasions has made the claim that the agency is "out of money" and therefore has no choice but to convert existing freeways into toll roads (view TxDOT plan). In February, the state's top two legislative leaders called for an audit of TxDOT's finances after the agency admitted that it had misstated its finances by more than $1 billion, helping to create the impression that it was out of money.

Costello pointed out that the foundation's board and steering committee include key employees of companies that stand to profit from the agency's toll road plans that are in need of public relations support. JP Morgan is part of the team that intends to build the Trans Texas Corridor toll road. Carter and Burgess, a Fort Worth-based engineering consultant is heavily involved in tolling projects in the state. Both companies have seats on the foundation steering committee.

Source

Tonight, Local 2 Investigates private planes paid for by your money. When public officials travel on small planes owned by the state, you're paying the expensive bills.

We discovered the total price tag for the program in just two years is more than $6 million. But is it necessary? Local 2 investigative reporter Robert Arnold shows you which state officials are taking the flights and why you're getting stuck with the bill.

Say you're heading to Austin for business or fun, would you pay $1,173 to fly roundtrip from Houston to get there? Get out your wallets. That's what you paid to fly a state official in a small private plane from Austin to Houston. Your tax money funds a fleet of small planes run by the Texas Department of Transportation in Austin.

A state audit in 2006 found the state planes were losing big money. The audit reported the total annual loss at $972,441 for fiscal year 2006.This year's budget for the state planes is $4.2 million.

Source

Several papers released by Bexar County Commissioner Lyle Larson, who opposes toll roads, reveal that the highway fund has lost $10 billion in the last 20 years. “More than half of the total money diverted from road construction, $5.4 billion, went to fund the operations of the Department of Public Safety,” he told a San Antonio radio audience in October. Another $115 million went into the state’s general fund, and millions more went for a computer system for the state comptroller’s office, and to the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, arts commissions, and various politicians’ pet projects.

Source

More than one-third of the money Texas motorists pay in driving taxes and fees is diverted into spending on projects that do not contribute to the upkeep and expansion of the road network. Texans pay $3.5 billion into the fund annually through the gas tax and various vehicle licensing fees that apply only to drivers. Of this amount, nearly $1.5 billion is spent on items more properly funded with general revenue, including $725 million on public education and $765 million on social welfare programs including tourism and medical care.

Agencies and Amounts Diverted:

Department of Public Safety$1,245,108,574
Texas Education Agency $100,000,000
Medical Trans-Medicaid Match $85,381,725
Salary Increase for Schedule C $22,291,710
Client Transportation Services $22,363,606
Health and Human Services Commission $20,000,000
Texas Workforce Commission $13,658,704
Gross Weight Axle Fees $10,800,000
State Office of Administrative Hearings $6,736,396
Attorney General: Mineral Rights Litigation $1,700,000
Commission on the Arts $1,340,000
Historical Commission $1,000,000
Regulation of Controlled Substances $804,972
Silver Alert for Missing Senior Citizens $224,990
Lufkin Tourist Information Center $150,000

Total $1,531,560,677

Source

Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, said he will call for an amendment to the Texas Constitution during the next session of the Legislature that will end lawmakers' practice, now routine, of diverting gas tax revenues to pay for expenses only tangentially related to construction and maintenance of roads and bridges.

Mr. Carona said in an interview that nearly $1 billion in gas tax revenue was diverted as part of the state's most recent budget. That money could have been leveraged with bond debt to pay for nearly $10 billion in road construction or maintenance, he said.

Source

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

As I understand it, the gas-tax-funded park is actually a sort of urban deck that will be placed on top of the Woodall Rogers freeway (Spur 366) in Dallas.

[VOA]

bump

[ravingnutter]

There is no excuse for using TXDot funding for that park...and I don’t care if it is smack dab in the center lane of a highway...while forcing us to accept toll roads. Governor 39% ought to go play in traffic, because he’s not getting elected again, he’s roadkill.

[Jedidah]

“The governor needs to be told by voters and lawmakers alike that his unwillingness to seek public solutions to public needs is the real abdication of responsibility.”

Except that — as evidenced by the massive public outcry, meetings, demonstrations, last year — Rick Perry doesn’t listen.

At all.

Which is why I’m so glad he’s running again. I can’t wait to help whup his sorry a**.

[floriduh voter]

All is well. The Mexican Consulate has an office in New Orleans. (sarcasm tag).

[gura]

"Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, said he will call for an amendment to the Texas Constitution during the next session of the Legislature that will end lawmakers' practice, now routine, of diverting gas tax revenues to pay for expenses only tangentially related to construction and maintenance of roads and bridges."

We passed a similar measure here in MO - great idea.

[ravingnutter]

Which is why I’m so glad he’s running again. I can’t wait to help whup his sorry a**.

Ain't that the truth, I am starting my campaign to oust him now, hence my remark in the post above that:

Governor 39% ought to go play in traffic, because he’s not getting elected again, he’s roadkill.

[wolfcreek]

from Statesman.com (guess they’re not *completely* broke)

Road spending plan approved

The Texas Transportation Commission on Thursday voted unanimously for a long-range spending plan that would provide about $12.4 billion for maintenance of roads and $4.5 billion for new road construction over the next 11 years. The commission vote reversed an earlier TxDOT staff decision to devote the entire $17.3 billion to maintenance.

TxDOT staff had said this level of road repairs would cause the highway system to degrade. Currently, about 87 percent of state roads are rated good or better; spending $12.4 billion through 2019 would reduce that to 80 percent, the staff said. However, several measures headed for the 2009 Legislature could raise several billion dollars more for highways

[ravingnutter]

IF you can keep their hand out of the cookie jar, which we haven't had much luck doing lately.

(Notice the big IF which of course means not very likely)