Free Republic

Paul Burka’s blog has a nice update on the legislative efforts to de-rail Gov. Perry’s Trans Texas Corridor project. It hasn’t been stopped yet (reference to bills are bills to halt the TTC): So here’s where we are. HB 1892, the original bill, has been vetoed. SB 792, Carona’s bill, is in conference committee. The governor’s office, through former senator Ken Armbrister, is trying to round up enough votes in the Senate (11) to block an override of the veto. If he is successful, then the governor holds all the cards. He can veto 792 as well, with the calendar...

In many ways, Terri Hall was on a collision course with Texas toll road policies long before she and her family loaded up their van and drove from California to the Hill Country three years ago. A lifetime of volunteering, a hunger for staying on top of politics, and strong religious and moral convictions helped hone Hall's activist instincts. Her brains, drive, superb speaking skills, engaging personality and wholesome good looks — noted by friends and enemies alike — make Hall especially effective. They help explain why this 37-year-old mother of six is a leading force in a populist assault...

Senate rebuffs House changes to SB 792, pushing final action on the tollway overhaul into the session's last week. The Texas Senate declined to accept House changes in a key toll road bill Friday, thus requiring a House and Senate conference committee to craft a compromise version and triggering a gubernatorial veto of another bill. When the House decided to knock off work for the weekend early Friday afternoon, Senate Bill 792 was put on ice until Monday. That led Gov. Rick Perry to follow through on his pledge to veto the legislation that SB 792 is meant to replace,...

More projects exempted from private toll road moratorium in unanimous Senate vote. The Texas Senate, after hours of closed-door negotiations stamped out hot spots of dissent, unanimously passed revamped toll road legislation Monday that would supplant a bill languishing on Gov. Rick Perry's desk. Perry, who has made it clear he would veto the first bill, House Bill 1892, immediately signaled that he would allow Senate Bill 792 to become law if the House passes it in its current form. Lawmakers involved in the negotiations say they hope to get SB 792 to Perry late this week in time to...

Our colleagues at The Dallas Morning News offered this advice to lawmakers fighting to keep intact complex regional plans to deal with transportation issues in Dallas, Fort Worth and the surrounding counties: "Keep Up the Fight." Good advice. Both the Dallas paper and the Star-Telegram have felt some ownership of this issue since we combined on a joint editorial project in 2003, calling for a regionwide effort to link area cities by rail. But rail is only part of the solution to the serious problem of traffic congestion that is approaching gridlock during parts of the day. Officials in North...

Toll road compromise reached By Ben Wear | Monday, May 14, 2007, 08:10 AM Lawmakers, representatives from the Texas Department of Transportation and others have reached agreement on major toll road legislation that will be laid out this morning in a meeting of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee. But there could be a backlash. Many legislators had said this session that what they didn’t want was to be presented with a large “agreed-upon” transportation bill late in the session with little or no time to absorb it. That’s exactly what they’re getting, however. The bill, in this instance,...

AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry doesn't like a transportation bill Texas lawmakers sent him and threatened Wednesday to call them back to address the issue if no solution is reached before the legislative session ends May 28. "The good news is, there's still time to fix it .... if not, I have no other option as the leader of this state than to bring the Legislature back until we address these issues and we get Texas back to where it can have a vibrant transportation infrastructure," Perry said. Though a two-year moratorium on private toll road contracts is a major...

AUSTIN — The Texas Senate on Thursday approved a bill placing a two-year moratorium on private toll road contracts and creating a panel to review the terms of those agreements. Gov. Rick Perry had urged the Legislature not to act on the bill. He said the state's current transportation system, which involves public-private partnerships to build toll roads, needs to continue if Texas is to keep attracting big companies and jobs. Critics of Perry's proposed Trans-Texas Corridor and the state's contract with Spanish-American consortium Cintra-Zachry have made some lawmakers nervous about the project. Sen. Robert Nichols supported the corridor as...

WASHINGTON — Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) is an experienced investor in Riverside County's booming real estate market, so he's used to seeing prices change quickly. Last year, he and a partner paid $550,000 for a dusty four-acre parcel just south of March Air Reserve Base. Less than a year later, without even cutting the weeds or carting off old septic tank parts that littered the ground, they sold the land for almost $1 million. Even for a speculator like Calvert, it was an unusually good deal. During the time he owned the land, Calvert used the legislative process known as...

(AXcess News) Washington - Drivers who are sick of rush-hour gridlock may one day soon be able to buy their way out by paying to get into toll road lanes. That's the goal of some environmental and transportation groups, one of which made a sweeping call Tuesday for highway planners to consider tolls as an option for every new U.S. road. Led by the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, lobbyists said toll roads would help improve under-funded transportation projects by connecting them to private investors' capital. "There's a transportation funding crisis in this country," said Patrick D. Jones, the...

President Reagan often said it’s hard to recall that you came to drain the swamp when you’re up to your armpits in alligators. Republicans like Rep. Don Young of Alaska would rather use your tax dollars to build a scenic bridge to the swamp. Hard as it is to believe, Young is more in tune with the GOP that rules Congress today than the former president who restored the party to national power in 1980 when he won the White House and a Republican Senate. Their differences are nowhere more evident than on limiting government and reducing federal spending. Reagan...

At $286.4 billion, the highway bill just passed by Congress is the most expensive public works legislation in US history. In addition to funding the interstate highway system and other federal transportation programs, it sets a new record for pork-barrel spending, earmarking $24 billion for a staggering 6,376 pet projects, spread among virtually every congressional district in the land. The enormous bill -- 1,752 pages long -- wasn't made available for public inspection until just before it was brought to a vote, and so, as The New York Times noted, ''it is safe to bet that none of the lawmakers,...

Another TEA-21 extension seems inevitable without consensus on a multiyear succesor. After months of debate and delay, the next major transportation bill is slowly coming into focus on Capitol Hill. Squabbling between Congress and the White House over the size of the package makes the legislation’s final dimensions still far from clear. But the picture that’s emerging isn’t as big and bright as industry had hoped just months ago. Despite progress in the Senate, it was all but certain that Congress again will have to extend the current statute, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century. TEA-21 expired Sept....

RALEIGH - Elections for state office in North Carolina in recent years have revolved around issues such as taxes, spending, education and a proposed state lottery. This year, I think transportation will play a much larger role than it has in a long time. Partly, this is a result of the fading of the public schools as a central focus of the political class - not because education isn't still a higher priority for both candidates and voters, but because there is at least a perception of progress. Based on polling and voting behavior, I don't think North Carolinians see...