"Our governor holds meaningless signing ceremonies, and declares himself to be a property rights supporter... his words and actions do not line up."

Eminent domain reform 60-day plan outlined

12/8/09

Southwest Farm Press
Copyright 2009

Kay Bailey Hutchison greeted members of the state’s largest farm organization with a pledge to fix a broken eminent domain system within 60 days of when she takes office as the new Texas governor.

“As governor, I will make reforming our state’s eminent domain laws a priority, and I will designate that issue an emergency item during the 82nd legislative session,” Hutchison told the more than 1,200 farmers and ranchers gathered at the Fort Worth Convention Center Monday for the 76th annual Texas Farm Bureau state convention.

“You will never have to worry about government ever again taking your property for a less than public reason once I’m in the governor’s office,” she said. “We will fix eminent domain.”

Lawmakers must better define “public use” and “economic development,” she said. “I will also see to it that landowners or their heirs can repurchase condemned property for the original purchase price whenever a planned project is canceled or extensively delayed.”

Hutchison also vowed to include consideration of diminished access to property when calculating a fair level of compensation, something current Gov. Rick Perry shunned in past attempts to remedy eminent domain laws in the state.

“Protection of private property interests is critical,” Hutchison said. “Our current governor says he believes this, too. He holds meaningless signing ceremonies at the Alamo, and declares himself to be a property rights supporter. Unfortunately, this is another area where his words and his actions do not line up.”

Texas Farm Bureau has made eminent domain reform a priority in the last two legislative sessions in Austin. In 2007, the organization fought relentlessly for HB 2006, which would have overhauled the state’s eminent domain policies. After winning the Senate and the House, the legislation died at the hand of Perry’s veto pen.

When similar legislation bogged down earlier this year in the 81st session, Perry failed to show the leadership necessary to get the bill passed, nor did he bother adding the issue to the agenda of his special called session, said Kenneth Dierschke, president of Texas Farm Bureau and TFB’s Friends of Agriculture Fund Inc. (AGFUND), the organization’s political action arm.

“AGFUND’s support of Kay Bailey Hutchison as the next governor of Texas is a matter of trust,” Dierschke said. “We’ve always been able to take Sen. Hutchison at her word, and she will do more of the same as governor of Texas at a time that is of critical importance to farmers, ranchers and property owners in our state.”

In addition to defining her eminent domain policies, Hutchison railed against Perry’s management of the Texas Department of Transportation and its supposed twice killed Trans-Texas Corridor, known by many in the Farm Bureau as the biggest land grab in state history.

© 2009 Southwest Farm Press: www.southwestfarmpress.com

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To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

"It's folly to think there will be enough money from the taxpayers to pay all this debt back."

Tone-deaf politicians vote for WHOPPING 57 toll projects!

12/8/09

Terri Hall
Examiner.com
Copyright 2009

Despite the overwhelming outcry against toll roads in our community, the San Antonio Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization (or MPO) voted to put 57 toll projects into its long-range plan yesterday.

There will be no escaping the reaches of this new tax on driving in Bexar County.

Removing controversial private toll contracts that hand our public roads over to private, usually foreign, corporations for a half century from the MPO's plan is a HUGE victory, but seems of little consolation when the Board voted for a plan that will amount to the largest tax increase in the history of Bexar County.

Today's Express-News article makes it appear as though tolls were just kept as an "option," however, the Federal Highway Administration has stated if a project is designated in an MPO plan as tolled, they will only approve what's consistent with the MPO's plan. So non-toll options are NOT on the table for these projects.

Sampling of the toll projects just approved:

-Hwy 90 (from 410 to 211)
- I-10 (from 410 to county line)
- ALL of Loop 1604 (not just the north half)
- 281 (from Loop 1604 to Comal County line)
- I-37 (from 410 S to the Atascosa County line)
- Bandera Rd (from 410 to 1604 still appears despite amendment to remove it)
- interchange at I-10 & 1604
- interchange at 281 & 1604 (northbound ramps)
- interchange at 1604 & 151
- interchange at 1604 & 90
- interchange at 1604 & 1-35
- interchange at I-35 & 410
- Kelly Pkwy/Spur 371 (US 90 to SH 16)
- ALL of I-35 (from Atascosa to Comal County line), and more!

Two elected officials on the board were no shows, Senator Jeff Wentworth and Bexar County Commissioner Chico Rodriguez (Councilwoman Jennifer Ramos attended but left the meeting prior to the vote on the 57 toll projects), so yesterday's decisions were largely made by appointees who don't even answer to the taxpayers, including two votes by TxDOT employees that cast votes for their own projects in a colossal conflict of interest.

TxDOT, despite its total lack of credibility having presided over a $1.1 billion "accounting error," two botched environmental studies for the US 281 toll road, and the abuse of taxpayer money to hire registered lobbyists and implement a PR campaign to lobby for toll roads and the Trans Texas Corridor, has convinced most MPO Board members that the sky will fall and all projects marked "toll" will fall out of the plan if they don't continue to do Rick Perry's bidding and designate virtually all new capacity to our roadways for tolling. This same chicanery is being played out in all the urban MPOs.

There are other solutions, like changing the financial assumptions to include the most fiscally conservative way to fund highways, a modest gas tax increase, instead of reliance on tolling, but TxDOT persistently manipulates the numbers to make any gas tax solution appear to fall short of the "need." A study done by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M stated that an 8 cent gas tax increase indexed to inflation would preclude the need for a single toll road in the state of Texas, yet TxDOT sticks to its talking points that it would take $1.00 or more gas tax increase to fix our "unfunded" roads.

What's truly amazing is that anyone would fall for such nonsense coming from an agency that's lost the trust of lawmakers and taxpayers alike. The Sunset Commission issued a scathing review of TxDOT two years ago and it's clear this agency is broken, but how to fix it is what's gnawing at many lawmakers. We say, elect a new governor and fumigate the TxDOT Greer building in Austin for a total house cleaning for starters.

Locals to pick-up the tab for STATE highways

Though there are conflicting reports about when this language showed-up, the MPO just adopted a plan that requires ALL available funds to be "leveraged" and requires the locals to come-up with the cost of maintaining any new capacity to STATE highways. TxDOT District Engineer, Mario Medina, told the MPO Board in no uncertain terms that "if you want to build new roads, you're going to have to find a way to pay for the maintenance of them."

This is yet another unfunded mandate coming from an unelected, out of control state agency in Austin that's making local taxpayers pay for what's the State's job - to build and maintain STATE highways. Last I checked, TxDOT has its own budget for road maintenance and many lawmakers have complained about TxDOT dumping more and more of its money into maintenance and diverting it away from new construction in order to push tolling.

Requiring ALL available funds to be leveraged means an increase in local taxes or tolling. Leveraging also means DEBT, heaps of it. So this means we won't be able to take gas tax money and build an overpass or expand a road, now the local MPO will have to leverage ALL its monies by borrowing against it or matching it with local tax money in order to get access to the money we already pay the state for state roads.

Representative David Leibowitz tried to strip these unfunded mandates from the plan, but the same culprits who voted to keep 281 and 1604 toll roads after 5 1/2 hours of public testimony AGAINST the toll roads on October 26 at Alzafar Shrine, voted to keep these requirements in the MPO plan.

MPO members who voted to increase debt, taxes, and the likelihood of massive tolling:

Commissioner Kevin Wolff
Councilman John Clamp
Councilman Ray Lopez
Selma Councilman Bill Weeper
Two TxDOT votes
Two Via votes
One county employee
Two city employees

The only board members voting for the taxpayers were:

State Representative David Leibowitz
Commissioner Tommy Adkisson
Mayor of Leon Valley Chris Riley
Councilman Reed Williams

The board also unanimously voted to find the money to do an independent study of non-toll options for 281 north (advanced by Com. Kevin Wolff) and the west side of 1604 (from Bandera Rd to Hwy 90, advanced by Rep. David Leibowitz). Leibowitz noted that such a side-by-side comparison of toll versus non-toll proposals should have been studied years ago prior to the board turning these projects into toll roads. Exactly! In fact, for US 281, TxDOT already has a valid non-toll plan that it refuses to acknowledge or sponsor that is less than half the cost to build as the RMA's toll road (one-tenth the cost when you factor in the toll road debt). It's truly an egregious waste of $500,000 of taxpayer money to hire outside consultants to do what our highway department run by Rick Perry refuses to do.

TURF Statement to MPO Board prior to vote

(Edited for clarity) Having 57 toll projects in your long range plan will reap severe economic impacts on this community, impacts that have not been properly studied nor considered before entering into such a plan. A very conservative estimate of the debt required to get these projects off the ground is $20 billion dollars! The level of discretionary income in this community cannot sustain this level of debt much less the level of new taxation required to pay it all back. TxDOT's current two-year budget shows that anticipated toll revenues ($1 billion) do not even cover half the debt service payments ($2.5 billion in payments for just the next two years, we're $12 billion in debt TOTAL) we already require as a state. It's folly to think there will be enough money from the taxpayers to pay all this debt back. In fact, much of our current gas tax is going to cover debt service for toll roads. This is, in part, why the money to fix our roads without tolls is disappearing.

The overwhelming public feedback at the MPO's visioning sessions that began several years ago was not only opposed to tolling, but especially handing our public roads to private, usually foreign, corporations using CDAs. Your draft long range plan even states this in the public involvement section. Given this information, what is the point of federally mandated public involvement if this board submits a plan to the feds that does the exact opposite of what the public feedback asks you to do?

We believe the way this plan was drafted has serious problems.

The RMA revised the project list, including changes in the scope and costs of its projects, and submitted it as late as December 3, just 4 days before scheduled adoption today, December 7. For instance, the RMA lists the cost for the northbound ramps to the 281/1604 interchange as $59 million, yet it's bloated the cost for the southbound ramps to $140 million (we found out during the MPO meeting that $20 million of that is going to the RMA to "manage the project"). We believe the higher cost is to eat-up the stimulus money on fixing anything but 281 north.

Originally the RMA promised to fix 281 north non-toll "if a pot of money dropped out of the sky from somewhere." In came the stimulus money...but documents submitted to a legislative committee showed it submitted the 281 project as a toll road, though it would have been paid for with stimulus money. Then, the RMA dropped 281 altogether and promised to build the WHOLE 281/1604 interchange non-toll with stimulus money, then they cut the project in half and never revised the cost downward. The RMA wants to toll the northbound ramps to connect to a future toll road on 281, so since it's tied to the 281 toll project, the feds told them they couldn't build the northbound ramps until the new environmental study for 281 is complete. So now we're paying for the cost of a WHOLE interchange and only getting half of it simply because the tolling authority, the RMA, wants to toll those northbound ramps!

The latest road project list removes some of the toll language (I believe from the unfunded list), yet the projects are still anticipated for tolling and this smacks of chicanery meant to hide information and deceive the public as to what the MPO is really putting in its plans. In fact, the initial presentation of the MTP draft to this policy board was Sept 28 and the MPO staff completely re-wrote parts of it and distributed a totally different draft just 3 days later at its October 1 Open House, including a totally new set of financial assumptions and the inclusion of CDAs. Again, this wreaks of trying to hide the truth. Also, parts of the draft given to the public on October 1 weren't even filled in and had key financial figures filled in with merely "XXX."

Having the project list and parts of the MTP revised multiple times since the ONE public hearing held October 1 (which was to fulfill the requirement in the MPO bylaws Policy 5 for public involvement to have at least one public hearing for any major updates to the MTP. There's also a requirement that the MPO follow its two-step plan for MTP/TIP updates and allow a 30 day public comment period), there should be a new public hearing held in order to brief the public on the new proposed changes to the MTP (like the project list, number of toll projects, CDAs, and a review of projects costs, etc.) and a subsequent 30 day review for public comment (basically start the 30 day review over again since the MTP draft has changed multiple times without notifying the public and starting the 30 day process over again). Neither the MPO's two-step process nor the public hearing requirements were properly fulfilled in how this plan was put together, especially considering the cost and scope of several projects were changed at the last minute.

We'd like a parliamentary ruling on whether or not it's permissible to take a vote on this plan today.

© 2009 Examiner.com: www.examiner.com

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To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

"Thirty seven toll projects, 18 of them slated to come under foreign control using controversial private toll contracts called CDA's"

MPO rams 37 toll projects down San Antonians’ throats

Eye-popping 37 toll projects appear in MPO’s new plan, 18 to come under foreign control

Taxpayers’ revolt ahead of Monday vote

12/3/09

Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom
Copyright 2009

(San Antonio, TX ) While San Antonians were enjoying turkey and counting their blessings this Thanksgiving, their politicians were scurrying to load-up the Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (MPO) long-range plan with no less than 37 toll projects, 18 of them slated to come under foreign control using controversial private toll contracts called Comprehensive Development Agreements (or CDAs).

The grassroots defeated CDAs during a special called session of the Texas legislature in July, yet the MPO plugged these now illegal contracts into its plan anyway, apparently following TxDOT’s playbook of using it as a means to get CDAs re-authorized over the LOUD OPPOSITION of Texans in the next legislative session in 2011.

TURF has alerted the grassroots to urge the MPO to:

1) REMOVE toll roads and CDAs from its plans.

2) Use traditional gas tax funding NOT privatizing and tolling Texas roads as its source of funding for these projects.

3) NOT VOTE for ANY plan with toll projects and CDAs in it.

“We’ve been warning San Antonians for years that Rick Perry has made his toll tax policy so expansive, they won’t be able to escape it. The MPO’s list of 37 toll projects shows how out of touch our politicians are with the economic realities of their constituents. It’s clear this about more than getting projects built, it’s an all-out assault on our freedom to travel by making it unaffordable to drive. I haven’t met a single Texan outside the Capitol that thinks it’s a good idea to cede control of our Texas roads to foreign companies,” observes Terri Hall, Founder/Director of TURF.

As an example of just what a taxpayer disaster it is to hand control of our public roads to private, foreign toll operators using CDAs, drivers on a road operated by Spain-based Cintra (who has won three Texas contracts already) in Canada receive their first bill totaling thousands of dollars in fines years after they supposedly took the tollway. The government has no power to step-in and protect motorists from runaway taxation nor disputed toll fines.

A recent article in the Toronto Star chronicles the nightmare:

“’We, as a government, have no control over that, as a result of the (Mike) Harris government’s deal,’ to lease the toll road to a private consortium for 99 years and include a provision in the contract forcing the transportation ministry to deny new plates to anyone who doesn’t pay the 407 whatever it demands, said Bradley.

“The 407 ‘negotiated a deal that was very favourable to them and they covered all the aspects of the deal that they would want,’ said Bradley.

“Many readers said they think the 407 deliberately holds back invoices on unpaid balances to allow interest charges to grow, but Bradley noted that it “is responsible for establishing its own business practices, and under its deal … it has the right to set and collect tolls and administration fees and interest.”

Here’s what some of these CDA deals involve:

• In Texas, they can last up to 52 years

• Charge oppressively high toll rates, like 75 cents PER MILE (like the deals in DFW) which on average will mean $3,000 a year in new taxes on driving

• Grant foreign companies the right to levy taxes, the power to take away drivers licenses or car/license plate registration

• Removes rights of due process for toll violations and fines

• Non-compete agreements that guarantee congestion on the free routes

• Guaranteed annual profits (so they can raise the toll rates to whatever price needed so they always get their guaranteed level of profit)

• Massive taxpayer subsidies (so it’s a double and even triple tax scenario) yet all the profits leave Texas

• Toll companies write off the depreciation of the “asset” on their taxes (then spin it off to another subsidiary company and start the depreciation all over again)

• Exemption from alternative minimum taxes and often special use of tax-exempt public bonds

• Little to no actual risk transfer

• Slower speed limits on free routes and higher speed limits on the tollways to drive more traffic to the toll roads (financial incentive given to TxDOT for driving more traffic to the tollways)

A sample list of toll projects on the docket:

-Hwy 90 (from 410 to 211)
- I-10 (from 410 to county line)
- Loop 1604 (just about the entire loop, not just the north half)
- 281 (from 1604 to Comal County line)
- I-37 (from 410 south to Atascosa County line)
- Bandera Rd (from 410 to 1604 still appears despite amendment to remove it)
- interchange at I-10 & 1604
- interchange at 281 & 1604 (northbound ramps)
- interchange at 1604 & 151
- interchange at 1604 & 90
- interchange at 1604 & 1-35
- interchange at I-35 & 410
- Kelly Pkwy/Spur 371 (US 90 to SH 16)
- ALL of I-35 (from Atascosa to Comal County line)

© 2009 TURF: www.texasturf.org

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To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

Cintra's North Tarrant Express toll taxes are expected to be "well above those charged by ordinary toll roads.”

Texas At It Again With Tollway P3

12/1/09

By Richard Williamson
The Bond Buyer
Copyright 2009

DALLAS — A team of developers will receive the proceeds of $400 million of private-activity bonds this month to finance one of the most ambitious public-private toll operations in Texas: a $2 billion project known as the North Tarrant Express.

The tax-exempt PABs will be issued by the Texas Private Activity Bond Surface Transportation Corp. The PABs were approved by the U.S. Department of Transportation last year as part of a $15 billion authorization under the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: a Legacy for Users. In early November, SAFETEA-LU was extended by Congress through Dec. 18.

“When we get the proceeds, they’re going to be loaned to the developer, and the only pledge coming back to repay that is going to be the payments from the developer that will be generated from the toll revenues,” said James Bass, chief financial officer of the Texas Department of Transportation. The creation of the nonprofit issuer allowed the bonds to be tax-exempt while separating the debt from any backing by the state.

“Even though it’s clear in all the documents, we just wanted to separate and not confuse the market or other people that the [Texas Transportation Commission] or the state of Texas was in any way responsible for this debt,” Bass said. “So we set up a separate corporation, separate name to hopefully make that even more clear than the documents themselves make that.”

Financing of the North Tarrant Express is designed to transfer risk to the private partnership, and that risk is reflected in bond ratings slightly above investment grade. Fitch Ratings pegs the NTE bonds at BBB-minus, while Moody’s Investors Service rates them at Baa2. Ratings from Standard & Poor’s have not been released.

Construction of the NTE by a consortium known as North Tarrant Express Mobility Partners is expected to begin early next year. NTE Mobility Partners will hold a 52-year concession from TxDOT to design, build, finance, operate, and maintain the first two segments of the NTE. Cintra holds a 57% ownership stake in the partnership, with 33% indirectly owned by Meridiam Infrastructure Finance, and 10% owned by the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System.

“Primary risks for the transaction include the limited amount of meaningful history for this type of asset class and uncertainty associated with toll rates given the highly demand-driven nature of toll rates,” Fitch analysts wrote. “The presence of free alternative competing GPLs [general purpose lanes] directly next to the managed lanes, along with uncertainty relating to the current economic recession could materially impact the congestion on the general purpose lanes.”
The NTE is one of more than $12 billion worth of P3 projects planned in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to Carlos Ugarte, head of U.S. business development for Cintra.

“In the next three to five years, the Dallas-Fort Worth area is going to see $12 billion of construction, with only $1 billion of public money,” Ugarte said. “I think in 2011 [state leaders] will see this remarkable success, and I see a very great future for P3 finance in Texas.” Cintra and its private partners will contribute about $420 million to the NTE, with $570 million coming from TxDOT.

Bass said about $288 million of private-activity bonds will also be used for the redevelopment of Interstate 635, a loop around Dallas that is also known as Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway.

The combination of public and private financing has allowed the Texas Department of Transportation to apply its resources to other projects in the state. But local leaders in North Texas have also complained that their region is getting short shrift in terms of tax funding for construction.

At last month’s meeting of the Texas Transportation Commission, North Texas leaders complained about the region receiving only $126 million in bond proceeds for road projects while most of the $2 billion that was allocated went to other state projects, primarily the widening of Interstate 35 south of Dallas and Fort Worth.

TTC commissioners said they are only following the state Legislature’s guidance in spending the so-called Proposition 12 bond funds, approved by voters statewide in 2007. Lawmakers directed that the Prop. 12 bonds be used on non-toll projects.

The region’s heavy reliance on P3 projects is designed to accelerate construction in the rapidly growing “Metroplex” as Texas continues to struggle with funding formulas for its highways amid declining fuel-tax revenue.

“The financing for the project is really using all available tools,” Bass said. “This is a project that the region has been looking at for 20-plus years. Looking at it through the traditional gas-tax allocation process, it would likely be another 20 years that the region would continue to look at it.”

In addition to the PABs, federal transportation officials have also approved a $650 million Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan.

The rating agencies also rated the TIFIA loan, with Moody’s setting a lower Baa3 and Fitch rating the loan at BBB-minus, the same as the bonds.

The project includes 13 miles of managed toll lanes in the median of the existing untolled Interstate Highway 820 and State Highway 183, running east-west from the intersection with of IH 820 Interstate 35 north of Forth Worth. The toll lanes will carry traffic towards Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Engineers expect the project to ease save time for drivers on the heavily travelled route.
The concessionaire will be allowed to set tolls, subject only to the requirement that traffic continue to flow freely, and it expects to vary toll rates throughout the day depending on traffic conditions in order to maximize revenues. The project will have a fully electronic open-road tolling system allowing traffic to enter and exit the managed lanes without passing through any toll booths.

Mandatory debt service coverage is projected to rise rapidly, from 1.2 times in the first year of operations to 3.5 times by the fourth year as traffic reaches full volume.

“Lenders will benefit from strong structural protections, including cash-funded debt service and major maintenance reserves,” Fitch analysts noted. “This helps to mitigate the high degree of uncertainty surrounding the willingness of users to pay the rates upon which the sponsors’ forecasts are based — which are well above those charged by ordinary toll roads.”

© 2009 The Bond Buyer: www.bondbuyer.com

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Rick Perry's 'pay-to-play' sponsors include toll-road consulting giant HNTB

Perry pulling in big bucks from Austin political interests

11/30/09

By Wayne Slater
Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2009

While Rick Perry is bashing rival Kay Bailey Hutchison for palling around with special interests in Washington, he’s doing just fine collecting big bucks from special interests back here at home.

It’ll be a couple of months before Perry and Hutchison file their next campaign reports covering the second half of 2009. But here’s a sneak preview, based on some early filings by political action committees that suggest Perry has been replenishing his campaign account with the help of various interests representing everything from real estate and toll roads to liquor and horse racing. Most are groups that have business before the state - and some have endorsed the incumbent Perry for reelection.

For example, Perry got $50,000 in September from the Texas Realtors political action committee. He got $35,000 from the state homebuilders PAC and $25,000 from the politically well-connected Hillco lobby shop, whose big giver is Houston homebuilder Bob Perry.

Other big-dollar checks Rick Perry has received since July: $25,000 from the Texas Apartment Association, $10,000 from the nursing home industry, $25,000 from Houston horse and dog racing executive Charles Hurwitz’s PAC, $25,000 from the optometrists and $25,000 from the BG Distribution wine and beer wholesalers. Although highway administrators have declared Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor project dead, the governor continues to collect from toll-road interests — $25,000 from the political action committee for Houston construction executive James Dannenbaum and $22,000 from toll consulting giant HNTB Holdings.

As for Hutchison, only a handful of political action committee contributions since July have shown up so far in filings with the Texas Ethics Commission. They include $50,000 from the AT&T PAC, $20,000 from the state architects committee and $30,000 from Valero Energy.

The candidates will file their full reports in January covering all contributions — both from individuals and special-interest PACs raised from July through December 31.

© 2009 Dallas Morning News: www.dallasnews.com

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The new 'Bilk America Bonds' : Investment banks get taxpayer subsidies for BABs, then charge even higher fees to Govt. Agencies issuing the debt.

'Build America Bond' Issuers Pay $100 Million Extra in Bank Fees

Related links:

• NTTA Sets $1.7B of Debt, With Big Chunk of Build America Bonds

• TxDOT Sets $1.1 Billion Build America Bonds Sale

11/27/09

By Jeremy R. Cooke
Bloomberg
Copyright 2009

States and municipalities paid an average 37 percent more to investment banks for underwriting Build America Bonds than for handling tax-exempt sales since offerings of the subsidized taxable debt began in April.

Municipal issuers compensated underwriters at an average $7.39 per $1,000 for sales involving Build America Bonds and $5.40 for tax-exempt deals, based on data compiled by Bloomberg from a sampling of $40 billion of each type. Across the $55 billion in so-called BABs sold so far, the difference translates to more than $100 million in added costs. Both fee rates exceed this year’s $4.91 corporate average.

Local government officials accepted higher fees from banks marketing the new product, which provides a 35 percent federal interest subsidy under President Barack Obama administration’s stimulus initiative. Issuers obtained lower net borrowing costs than from traditional tax-exempt financing, and the program’s advent helped reduce yields in the broader municipal market.

“The large subsidy gives them leeway to charge more because the issuer probably cares less about the underwriting fee,” said Matt Fabian, managing director and senior analyst at Concord, Massachusetts-based independent research firm Municipal Market Advisors. “They shouldn’t care because federal taxpayers will cover the difference. As a federal taxpayer, I’m highly concerned.”

Nine Football Fields

The $100 million in added fees would be enough to build about 500,000 square feet (46,451 square meters) of high school space, based on average construction costs for New York City cited by Reed Construction Data in September. The area equals almost nine football fields.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, enacted in February, allows state and local governments to raise money for infrastructure projects that would otherwise be deemed tax- exempt by selling an unlimited amount of federally subsidized, taxable bonds through 2010. Refinancing existing long-term, tax- exempt bonds with Build America deals isn’t allowed.

This year’s record flows of cash into tax-exempt bond mutual funds at a time when public agencies have an incentive to instead sell taxable debt helped drive down yields on benchmark 20-year general obligation securities to 4.33 percent on Nov. 24 from 4.92 percent April 9, a Bond Buyer index shows.

The price of tax-exempt state and local government bonds rose more than their higher-yielding taxable counterparts from May 1 through Nov. 24, pushing the BofA Merrill Lynch Municipal Master Index to a 6.2 percent return, while the firm’s Build America Bond Index gained 6.04 percent in the same period.

Corporate Comparison

Build America Bond yields averaged almost 20 basis points, or 0.2 percentage point, more than similarly rated corporate debt, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts said in a research note Nov. 25.
To sell the new type of taxable bonds, governments and banks sought out investors who typically hold corporate debt, including pension funds and overseas buyers, and who may need to be educated about credit profiles of municipalities.

“The way they’ve defended it to us is there’s a huge amount of international travel because the marketing is heavily toward international investors that drives up the price,” Fabian said. “Our argument has been it doesn’t matter even if the banker is making less on the bond, net-net, it’s still a higher fee to the issuer.”

Michael DuVally, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., declined to comment. Brian Marchiony of JPMorgan, Kerrie McHugh from Bank of America Corp. and Jeanette Volpi of Citigroup Inc. also didn’t comment. Bank of America, which bought Merrill Lynch & Co., is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The rest are based in New York.
Municipal Taxables

Before this year, municipal issuers didn’t sell taxable obligations unless the law dictated it for the intended use, usually a project benefiting private interests. Sales of fixed- rate taxable municipal bonds rose more than fivefold this year through Nov. 20 to $70.3 billion compared with the comparable 2008 period, Bloomberg data show.

Bond dealers have made arrangements to handle the increased flow of taxable munis, which are typically quoted based on the spread, or amount of yield, above Treasuries, unlike tax- exempts.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, operator of the toll- road system that stretches across the sixth most-populous U.S. state, sold tax-exempt debt and Build America Bonds this year.
‘Significant Benefit’

“The 35 percent subsidy is the primary thing that we’re looking at versus financing with traditional tax-exempts,” said Nikolaus Grieshaber, chief financial officer of the commission. “That’s a significant benefit.”

The commission’s all-in borrowing cost for the $275 million, 30-year Build America Bond sale in June was less than 4 percent, after accounting for the interest rebate from the U.S. Treasury, Grieshaber said.

Tax-exempt transportation revenue bonds with similar maturities and ratings were yielding 5.12 percent at the time, according to a Bloomberg Fair Value index. The advantage is less than the gap indicates because the turnpike’s Build America Bonds can’t be called at par, or bought back at face value, in 10 years as issuers can on most municipal debt with longer maturities.

Fees on the tax-exempt issues were $6 per $1,000 of bonds backed by a senior lien on turnpike revenue sold in July and $6.24 on an October issue of subordinate-lien debt. In deals including Build America Bonds, the turnpike agency paid $8.30 for a June issue under the senior revenue credit and $7.78 in October for securities backed by wholesale gasoline taxes.

“We would’ve done BABs even with higher underwriting fees,” Grieshaber said. “To the extent the program remains out there through 2010, we would look to do some more.”

Underwriters’ Discounts

Underwriters’ discounts, which are disclosed in the official statements that outline details of each bond sale, equal the initial prices offered to the investing public minus what the underwriters pay to the issuer for the bonds. In some cases when Build America and tax-exempt bonds are sold at the same time, there is only one overall discount listed.

The median tax-exempt bond sale in those surveyed by Bloomberg News was $313.7 million, and the median Build America deal was $298.2 million.

Municipal issuers selling both types of debt have been paying more to underwriting firms on average than U.S. companies did this year. The average fee on $1.23 trillion of corporate issues was 0.491 percent, or $4.91 per $1,000 of bonds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sales of fixed-rate municipal bonds totaled $342 billion through Nov. 20, Bloomberg figures show.

“Any time you have a niche industry, people are going to pay more,” Fabian said.

U.S. bond markets will close early today at 2 p.m. New York time, according to recommendations from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy R. Cooke in New York at jcooke8@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: November 27, 2009 00:00 EST

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Campaign donors, taxpayers foot the bill for Perry's family road trips

Gov. Rick Perry’s trip to Vegas includes bachelor party for his son

11/26/09

By CHRISTY HOPPE
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2009

AUSTIN – They say that what happens in Las Vegas stays there, but for Rick Perry, not all of it has.

The governor’s Oct. 24 political trip to Las Vegas to meet with Brian Sandoval, a Republican candidate for Nevada governor, included a bachelor party for Perry’s son, Griffin, spokesman Mark Miner conceded Thursday.

He initially declined to call it a bachelor’s party, saying he would describe it more as a dinner. He confirmed, though, that it was a celebration of Griffin Perry’s upcoming nuptials joined by a number of his male friends.

Miner said he didn’t know how many people attended the dinner and couldn’t provide details about any other festivity, saying he wasn’t there.

The governor used a combination of money from his political donors and the Republican Governors Association to pay for his Vegas trip. It’s illegal to use campaign funds for personal travel, but Perry has a history of combining business with pleasure trips so that political entities will pick up the tab.

He did it in February 2004 when he and his wife were joined by a handful of campaign supporters and anti-tax advocates on a trip to the Bahamas to discuss public school finance. That summer, he also went on a trade mission to Italy joined by his wife and daughter.

This year, he and his wife went to Israel to talk trade.

Taxpayers do not pay for such travel by the governor or his family, but his security detail is funded by the state. Department of Public Safety officials would not say Wednesday how much that cost.

The Las Vegas meeting with Sandoval might not have been that pressing, as it turned out. The former U.S. district judge and Nevada attorney general came to Austin a little more than three weeks later to attend a Republican Governors Association meeting hosted by Perry.

Perry has been a leader of the RGA, which raises millions of dollars to boost the campaigns of Republican governor candidates.

On the Saturday of the Vegas trip, Perry stayed at the ritzy Palazzo casino and resort where the cheapest rooms go for $239.

He flew to New York the next day to tour Wall Street with Texas business leaders.

© 2009 Dallas Morning News: www.dallasnews.com

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Governor Rick Perry's Thanksgiving Day Twitter

TxDOT uses legal "loophole" to push more private toll roads in North Texas

TxDOT has new plan to fund toll roads

11/23/09

By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2009

AUSTIN – Lawmakers might have left the Capitol earlier this year without getting much done when it comes to transportation. But they were clear on one point: They wanted the Texas Department of Transportation out of the business of building privately financed toll roads.

The Texas Legislature beat back attempts to extend the authority for so-called comprehensive development agreements – 50-year contracts with private companies that agree to build roads in return for toll revenue – and the department's ability to enter into the contracts expired Aug. 31.

But less than six months later, state highway bosses may have found a loophole. And the Dallas area, already home to more toll roads than anywhere in Texas, probably is the place where they will try it first.

Last week in Austin, Texas Transportation Commission members told staff to submit plans by January for how to fast-track a roughly $4 billion expansion of Interstate 35E between Dallas and Denton. Officials say the project is a prime candidate for a new kind of financing that they concede looks a lot like the private toll deals ruled out by the Legislature.

"We've got to use all of these innovative ways of building highways or we won't be building," said commission member Ted Houghton of El Paso in an interview Friday. "It's a fact of life. If you want us to build roads, then we are going to move forward using these kinds of tools."

The tool in question is called pass-through toll financing, and is different, though not very, from the private toll deals lawmakers have put on ice.

Here's how it works: A private company, usually backed by a group of banks and other investors, agrees to use its own money to build a state road, usually with the help of at least some tax dollars. In return for the new road, Texas promises to make payments to the firm based on the level of traffic it attracts. The more vehicles that "pass through," the bigger the payment the private company will receive.

Officials say such deals involving big toll roads could last 30 years or more. So far, though, pass-through financing has only been a way for Texas to pay for a handful of smaller free roads. The per-vehicle payments simply pay back the investment by the private company, or in some cases a local government, and are not passed on to drivers in the form of tolls.

But that's set to change, as highway officials eye using pass-through financing to deliver big toll projects in North Texas and elsewhere. Doing so will require some changes in the department's rules, but is entirely within the department's authority, said John Barton, assistant executive director of the Department of Transportation.

First up? Most likely the expansion of I-35E into a mixed road with both tolled lanes and free lanes, much like the LBJ Freeway will be once the Spanish firm Cintra rebuilds it over the next five or six years.

Option to delay

The department had planned to rebuild I-35E as a privately financed toll road using a comprehensive development agreement until the Legislature failed to extend the law that made that possible. Now it sees its choices as either delaying the work for a decade or more, or using the pass-through financing to get construction started in as soon as two to three years.

Though the deals are structured differently – in a pass-through deal, private firms take on less risk, and state payments are subject to a cap set by contract – they will come across as very similar to drivers, and to many others who opposed the deals known as comprehensive development agreements, or CDAs.

"These deals look very much like a CDA, and I want to make sure you understand that," executive director Amadeo Saenz of the Transportation Department told a Senate hearing in El Paso this month. "We're getting a lot of push from Denton and Dallas County [to complete more projects there]. I want to be forthright and maybe say, 'Be careful what you are asking for.' If you look at a private pass-through model project, it is very similar to a CDA. You are using a private firm to bring equity to the project."

Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, took that in stride, conceding that the agency had been woefully underfunded by the Legislature in recent years, and had to explore all of its options. But he lashed out at Houghton when he said the department also would be willing to shop a major Tarrant County toll project to private investors, if only the North Texas Tollway Authority first would relinquish its rights to the road.

"The community is not at all excited about you coming in and building toll roads," Carona said. "NTTA builds our toll roads. ... We don't want you running toll operations in North Texas. The Legislature has been very clear."

Houghton said Friday, "That's fine. That's a choice they can make." The trouble, he said, is that NTTA doesn't have the money to build the $1.8 billion toll project, known as the Southwest Parkway/Chisholm Trail project.

NTTA has confirmed it could need $1 billion in tax dollars or other help to keep its promise to build that road.

If that's the case, Houghton said, why not let the state take it on, and see what kind of deal it could strike with a private firm that would compete for the opportunity?

Competition

"Competition does amazing things," Houghton said. "It really causes the people across the table to sharpen their pencils."

Instead, Carona wants TxDOT to guarantee NTTA's loans to help it lower its costs, something the department has already offered to do on another area toll road, State Highway 161.

"I get the impression that you don't want to work with NTTA," Carona told Houghton in El Paso.

Houghton replied that his agency wants NTTA to flourish, but that guaranteeing both loans could cost the state as much as $40 million a year for many years to come.

On Friday, he said the department will not backstop the loans on both projects.

"NTTA has some decisions to make," he said. If it wants the credit enhancement on Southwest Parkway, then it can't have it on State Highway 161, he said. In the end, if NTTA can't afford to do Southwest Parkway, then it should let it go, he said.

Transportation Commissioner Bill Meadows of Fort Worth, a powerful advocate for the Southwest Parkway project, said Friday that negotiations over how to structure the credit enhancement have resumed in earnest, and could be headed for a breakthrough.

If the negotiations fall through and NTTA can't build the Southwest Parkway, then TxDOT will consider using pass-through financing to find a private partner who can, but only with NTTA's permission, he said. "We'll have to put every option on the table. This isn't easy. It's a billion-dollar hole they are trying to fill."

No matter what happens with the long-running talks with NTTA, Saenz said his agency is determined to seek new solutions for Interstate 35E. And he is meeting with lawmakers to give advance warning that the department is proceeding with a new way of building privately financed toll roads

"I brought this up in El Paso and said it last month in Fort Worth. I don't want to get beat up on this, but I am getting a lot of pressure ... to move this project forward," Saenz said. "I am a problem solver, and we do have a way to get these projects done."

© 2009 The Dallas Morning News: www.dallasnews.com

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Greedspeak: Bailout banksters seek euphemisms for record bonuses

The disappearing Wall St "bonus," but in name only

11/23/09

By Karey Wutkowski and Steve Eder - Analysis
Reuters
Copyright 2009

WASHINGTON - "Bonus" has become a dirty word on Wall Street, prompting image consultants to advise the biggest financial firms to use euphemisms that carry less stigma as the season of lavish payouts approaches.

A look at Goldman Sachs' (GS.N) quarterly filings with regulators reveals that the term "discretionary bonuses" has been replaced with "discretionary compensation" in the past nine months.

In fact, the most recent quarterly filing had no references to "bonus" at all, despite the fact that the Wall Street giant is on pace to pay out more than $20 billion in year-end bonuses and other compensation, a record level.

Alan Johnson, a compensation consultant with his own New York-based firm, said the change in language is no coincidence. He has been advising his clients, which include the largest investment and commercial banks, to banish the word "bonus" and use "incentives" instead.

"We try to avoid the term wherever we can because it is a flash point," Johnson said. "We're going back to using what it really is, it's an incentive."

Johnson said for the top earners on Wall Street, their bonuses can be anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of their annual compensation, and is a built-in part of compensation, not an extra.

He said that can be hard for the general public to understand or relate to.

The financial crisis has been littered with flare-ups over bonuses, perhaps most notably in March, when lawmakers balked at $165 million in bonuses being paid to employees at the AIG unit largely responsible for the firm getting just over $180 billion in government pledges of assistance.

The issue sparked calls for the resignation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and prompted left-leaning groups to organize bus tours to visit the homes of AIG employees.

The financial industry is now approaching another land mine as they gear up to disclose in the coming weeks the amount of year-end bonuses.

The disclosures will likely reveal bonus boosts of up to 50 percent over last year, as Wall Street earnings have come back strong, even though unemployment is at a 26-1/2-year high.

"I think everybody's holding their breath," Johnson said about potential fallout from the disclosures.

A Goldman Sachs spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

WINDOW DRESSING

Jesse Derris, a crisis communications consultant with Sunshine, Sachs & Associates, said it will take an industrywide push and public relations initiative to reduce the use of the term "bonus" and replace it with another term, or at least make it better explained.

"You are at a point now where the visual that people get is awful," said Derris, who represents Wall Street executives including former Merrill Lynch Chief Executive John Thain.

The public anger over pay and concerns that excessive pay helped fuel the financial crisis has led to a government-driven attempt to better police compensation.

The Obama administration appointed a "pay czar" in June to dictate pay at seven firms that received "exceptional" taxpayer bailouts, including Bank of America (BAC.N), Citigroup (C.N) and AIG (AIG.N).

The Federal Reserve has embarked on a deeper review of pay at the biggest financial firms, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is trying to empower shareholders with more control over executive compensation.

The goal is to encourage compensation structures that align the pay of Wall Street workers with the long-term success of the company instead of rewarding short-term gains.

In the meantime, financial giants are trying to quiet some of the furor through cosmetic means.

Brad Hintz, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein in New York and a former Wall Street executive, said he is hearing plenty of talk that firms are trying to use language like "total compensation" and "annual earnings" instead of "bonuses."

But some skeptics say any efforts to change the use of the word "bonuses" would come across as window-dressing on the real problem of excessive pay.

"Call it what you want -- right now it is somewhat broken," said Todd Gershkowitz, a compensation consultant with Farient Advisors in New York. "The real issue is how much do you actually make."


© 2009 Reuters: www.reuters.com

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“Texans have risen up by the tens of thousands saying no to the sale of roads to private foreign toll operators...Perry continues to be tone deaf ."

New Push for Toll Roads in Texas?

Critics see it in recent comments made by the Governor.



11/19/09

Bill O'Neal
KTRH
Copyright 2009

There’s no two ways about it—Governor Rick Perry sees trouble ahead.

“One of the problems is we do not have the dollars that we need to build all the transportation infrastructure needs that we have” the Governor said in a recent stop at a school in Dallas, adding “Hopefully, when we come back in 2011, both the citizens and their elected officials will come to a stronger realization that we’re going to have to expand our ability to raise some dollars…”

Perry never used the word “toll” but critics will tell you they can hear it loud and clear.

“Under his watch, it has been these sweetheart deals—50-year deals—that will cost commuters 75-cents a mile to drive Texas highways” said Terri Hall with Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, a group that has stood strongly against toll roads in recent years.

“Texans have risen up by the tens of thousands to tell him (Perry) no both to the Trans-Texas Corridor and to the sale of our Texas roads to these private foreign toll operators—and yet he continues to be tone deaf to what the Texas people have told him they want” Hall added. She said a properly applied gas tax increase would be a much more effective method of raising the needed cash.

© 2009 KTRH: www.ktrh.com

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"The fate of Interstate 35W expansion in north Fort Worth is now in the hands of a private developer. "

Fort Worth, Dallas fail to bring home highway bacon

11/19/09

Gordon Dickson
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Copyright 2009

The Texas Transportation Commission declined Thursday to spend part of a $2 billion highway bond fund on the Interstate 35W/Loop 820 interchange in north Fort Worth, despite complaints from North Texas officials that they are being punished for building toll roads.

The five commissioners said they were following the wishes of the state Legislature in spending this batch of Proposition 12 bond funds, approved by voters statewide in 2007, on nontoll projects.

The interchange is one of several projects with toll lanes being planned in Dallas-Fort Worth. Of the $2 billion in Proposition 12 funds authorized, only $126 million is set aside for North Texas — home to about a third of the state’s population and economy. But many other worthwhile projects missed out on funding, too, commissioner Bill Meadows of Fort Worth said, noting that the state received a whopping $9 billion in requests.

Meadows “This exercise is perhaps the most impactful yet on the extreme lack of resources we have available to meet our needs in Texas,” said Meadows, who was unable to persuade other commissioners to spend more of the money in the Metroplex. “We have got to find a way to bring more resources to the table. We will fail in Texas if we don’t do so.”

The Proposition 12 package was approved unanimously, after Meadows was promised that a detailed briefing of how to pay for expansion of the I-35W/Loop 820 interchange in Fort Worth, I-35E in Dallas and U.S. 77 in south Texas would be presented to the commission by January. Last week, Regional Transportation Council officials said the area was being shortchanged for aggressively pursuing toll projects in recent years to make up for a lack of state funds.

“There is a perception of punishment among some elected leaders in Dallas-Fort Worth,” Collin County Commissioner Joe Jaynes told the commission during a meeting in Austin.

But North Texas officials who traveled to Austin Thursday were outnumbered by members of Congress, the Legislature and other public offices who rose one by one to praise the transportation commission for the way it chose projects to be paid for by Proposition 12. The money will be used on expansion of I-35 in the Belton, Hillsboro and Waco areas, and other projects in the Houston and San Antonio metro areas. Some of the funding was awarded to projects that served as statewide connectors, while others were rehabilitation projects. But the biggest chunk of funding went to congestion relief projects in metro areas.

After Thursday’s action, the fate of Interstate 35W expansion in north Fort Worth is now in the hands of a private developer. The I-35W/Loop 820 interchange is part of a massive project the transportation department has dubbed North Tarrant Express. A private consortium led by the U.S. arm of Spain-based Cintra is working on a $2 billion plan to rebuild freeway lanes and add managed toll lanes.

That project includes Loop 820 in Haltom City and North Richland Hills, and Texas 121/183 in Bedford, Euless and Hurst. Negotiations are in high gear with the Cintra-led development group, known as NTE Mobility Partners, to get the I-35W/Loop 820 interchange expanded within just a few years, said John Barton, transportation department assistant executive director. Results will be announced in January. That would be a change from the original timeline by NTE Mobility Partners, which planned to rebuild the $300 million interchange no sooner than 2017.

GORDON DICKSON, 817-390-7796

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"There is a perception among Dallas-Fort Worth leaders that we are being punished for our support of toll roads."

Dallas, Fort Worth get short straw in highway spending plan OKd by state

11/19/09

By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2009

AUSTIN -- Texas transportation officials approved a $1.85 billion plan today to build or improve highways throughout Texas, rejecting protests from Dallas and Fort Worth that nearly all of the money will be spent in Houston and along Interstate 35 near Waco.

Quickly brushing aside those complaints, the Texas Transportation Commission voted 5-0 to accept the spending plan that just one week ago had touched off a firestorm among members of the Regional Transportation Council in Arlington.

The plan steers state money toward widening long stretches of Interstate 35 near Waco -- a project that transportation commissioners and many of the dozens of officials and business leaders present for the commission meeting likened to refurbishing "Main Street Texas."

The plan also calls for spending about $575 million on projects to ease congestion in big cities, but will be concentrated on three projects in Houston and San Antonio.

All the Dallas and Fort Worth districts will get is about $126 million in maintenance work.

That apparent slighting of the greater Dallas area enraged local officials, but their presence was hardly felt today in Austin. Of the dozen or so lawmakers, including three members of Congress from the Houston area, who spoke about the spending plan, none were from North Texas.

Representing the Regional Transportation Council, Fort Worth City Council member Jungus Jordan thanked the commission for its hard work, and rebuked it only mildly for bypassing the region. Afterward, he said in an interview that local officials haven't changed their opinion since last week.

"We're still red-hot," Jordan said. "But we've opted for a strategic repositioning."

He said the region wants to work with the Texas Department of Transportation to make sure critical highway projects are funded through other sources in the future -- something commissioners said they remained committed to doing. The commission instructed staff members to report by January on new funding strategies for developing two major road projects strongly urged by North Texas leaders: a massive expansion of Interstate 35E in Denton County and the interchange between Interstate 35E and Loop 820 near Fort Worth.

Only Collin County Commissioner Joe Jaynes spoke out directly against the commission's decision -- while conceding that his was a "minority report," given the large number of powerful Texas players on hand to support it.

"There is a perception among Dallas-Fort Worth leaders that we are being punished for our support of toll roads," he told the commissioners. Echoing arguments made last week in Arlington by regional transportation director Michael Morris, who was not at today's meeting, Jaynes urged commissioners to award future bond proceeds by the same formula that state law provides for distribution of most of gasoline-tax revenues collected in Texas.

State law forbids the transportation department from reducing the amount of road money a region gets because it has embraced tolling. Some North Texas officials said Dallas was snubbed this time only because the region's coffers are still full of money paid by North Texas Tollway Authority for the right to build State Highway 121.

But top TxDOT officials testified that that simply was not the case.

In any case, it was clear almost immediately that the anger expressed last week had failed to turn into an effective campaign to change the funding decision.

Even the one member of the Transportation Commission who is from North Texas, former Fort Worth City Council member Bill Meadows, strongly defended the plan as proposed by transportation staff members.

"I absolutely favor the staff recommendation," he told a packed room at the Art Deco-inspired Greer Building across the street from the Texas Capitol, where the 12,000-employee Texas Department of Transportation is headquartered.

He said Dallas and Fort Worth have received big shares of previous allocations, including larger-than-average awards from the federal stimulus package, and is certain to receive its fair share in the future.

He said complaints raised in North Texas last week that the commission was violating the law by not awarding the funds by formula were wholly without merit.

"That was something I asked myself immediately," he said. "But I am not a lawyer. So I asked, and I got a very specific answer on that question and am fully convinced that the commission is free to use its discretion to award these ... funds. We're violating neither the spirit nor the letter of the law."

Still, Morris was not alone in arguing that the department should award more of its funds -- whether derived from taxes or borrowing -- by a formula that shifts to local planning agencies like the Regional Transportation Council the discretion to decide which projects get built. Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has vowed to renew legislative efforts in 2011 to would strip TxDOT of much of its discretionary role.

Several lawmakers present today, however, said they'd fight hard to keep the transportation department strong, arguing that Texas needs an entity charged with creating a statewide approach to setting priorities.

Commissioner Ted Houghton of El Paso noted that it would take decades to find the funds to widen Interstate 35 if all of the funds made available by the Legislature were awarded by existing formulas.

© 2009 The Dallas Morning News: www.dallasnews.com

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"The public isn’t likely to fall for this charade."

Goldman’s $500 Million Is Day Late, Dollar Short

11/18/09

Mark Gilbert
Bloomberg
Copyright 2009

So now we know the value Goldman Sachs Group Inc. places on salving its conscience for screwing up what Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein called “God’s work.” It seems that $500 million is all it takes to compensate the world for Goldman’s role in creating the credit crunch.

Goldman said yesterday it’s setting up a “10,000 Small Businesses Initiative.” It will shell out $200 million to educational institutions to help guide business owners, with a further $300 million invested for lending and philanthropy aimed at community development groups. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is the largest Goldman shareholder, is joining the initiative.

Here’s another way of looking at this sudden burst of supposed generosity. Goldman has $16.7 billion stashed in its bonus pot from the record profit earned in the first nine months of the year, which works out at $527,192 per staffer.

That means those 10,000 small businesses the securities firm says it wants to help are worth the equivalent of about 1,000 Goldman employees. Alternatively, a Goldmanite’s average contribution to society is pitched at the equivalent of 10 small enterprises, based on that bonus-versus-charity calculation.

False Gods

Even at the Stakhanovite work rates the firm legendarily squeezes out of its staff, that’s quite a stretch. The idea that one banker is worth 10 businesses is the kind of math that got us into this mess, with finance falsely elevated until it became an end in itself, rather than a means to providing services to the real economy.

The public isn’t likely to fall for this charade. The financial community has already spent too many years parading its charitable contributions to help divert attention from its risk-taking adventures.

Tax-deductible gestures are no longer sufficient to comfort those who have seen their pension pots devastated by the credit crisis; even with this year’s rallies, the total value of the major global stock exchanges is still a bit less than $45 trillion, down from a peak of almost $62 trillion at the end of 2007, before the subprime meltdown wrecked the global economy.

Potentially more valuable than the charity fig-leaf is the apology Blankfein made yesterday. “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” Blankfein, 55, said at a conference in New York hosted by a magazine called Directorship. It would be nice to think that banking chiefs truly -- albeit very belatedly -- recognize that their reckless propagation of alchemical securities must never be repeated.

Fawning Adoration

Blankfein’s apology might ring truer, however, if he hadn’t been named CEO of the year by the magazine whose conference he was gracing with his presence. The fawning adoration for the multimillionaires who run the banking industry has only been diminished, not destroyed, by the damage their actions wrought.

If he worked for anyone other than Goldman Sachs, Blankfein would probably be out of a job by now. His remark earlier this month to the Sunday Times magazine that bankers are “doing God’s work” is the kind of indiscretion that loses you the key to the executive bathroom at most public companies.

No matter how many charitable donations it makes, Goldman will struggle to shake off the moniker bestowed on it by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone magazine earlier this year. Taibbi described the firm as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Goldman and its peers need to practice humility and contriteness for an extended period, rather than seeking image-buffing headlines with token gestures.

(Mark Gilbert is the London bureau chief and a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

© 2009 Bloomberg: www.bloomberg.com

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Perry flies high in jet of Corridor Contractor

Perry rings up pricey 2009 travel bill

Governor takes on role of 'world traveler'

11/16/09

The Associated Press
Copyright 2009

AUSTIN - Republican Gov. Rick Perry, seeking re-election with a down-home Texas message, took on the role of world traveler this year, making a dozen cross-country or international trips and ringing up tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer-funded security costs.

Perry's travels — a meeting with film executives in Los Angeles, a gathering with GOP leaders in Aspen, Colo., a visit to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan — were outlined in interviews with his aides and in documents examined by The Associated Press. But a detailed financial accounting of each trip is not easily accessible, and is in some cases off limits.
Out-of-state travel is part of Perry's job, his aides said.

"As governor and CEO of a state that's the 12th-largest economy in the world, it's important that he continue to promote Texas as the best place for business, both nationally and internationally," said Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle.

Perry visited Iraq on U.S. Defense Department trips in January and July. In August, he went to Israel on a trip organized and partially paid for by one of his campaign donors and by the investment firm Doheny Global Group. He also visited California, New York, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, Colorado, Florida and Mississippi in 2009.

Perry isn't alone among big-state governors in his far-flung travel. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger frequently jet around the country and the world. And, Perry has traveled plenty before this year, having taken assorted national and international trips since becoming governor in December 2000. Former Texas governors George W. Bush and Ann Richards also earned their share of frequent flier miles.

But an open government advocate questions whether there's enough information available about the Texas governor's trips.
"Are we getting the full story?" said Keith Elkins, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. "Any time you have the head of government, especially the governor ... taxpayers and voters are interested in that."
Texans should be able to easily find out what business the governor is doing and whom he's doing it with, Elkins said. He cited a recent KTVT television report he said revealed new details about Perry's Israel trip: documents showing the Perry family members and friends who went along as well as the state officials who oversee energy policy who went, plus the information that Perry's security officers stayed at the swanky King David Hotel at a cost of $17,000 to the state. Perry's travel is typically paid by a patchwork of sources including his campaign, private donors and the economic development non-profit group TexasOne. Much of his 2009 travel cannot yet be viewed on state disclosure reports.
State-paid Department of Public Safety officers travel with Perry to provide security, but specifics of those costs are closed to the public, thanks to a bill passed in this year's legislative session. Only summaries of the security costs can be obtained. A summary by DPS showed that security for the Israel trip cost $58,775 for the officers' air fare, lodging, meals and other expenses and $15,609 for overtime pay.
The Doheny group organized and paid for Perry's stay in Israel and for First Lady Anita Perry's commercial flight to the country, the governor's office said.
Perry flew to Israel aboard the private plane of Texas campaign donor Doug Pitcock, head of Williams Brothers Construction, a round-trip charter flight donated to TexasOne and valued at $180,000, Castle said. Anita Perry joined him for the trip home.

Doheny Global Group managing director Irwin G. Katsof, describing himself as a rabbi and a concerned Jew, said in an e-mail to the AP that he has been taking American political leaders of both major political parties to Israel for more than 15 years. He did not respond to a question about the cost of the trip.

"I care deeply about Israel and believe these trips help foster a better understanding of the cultural, economic and social bonds that our countries share," Katsof wrote.
Perry's most recent out-of-state trips were to New York City, where he visited NASDAQ and held four private meetings with campaign donors, and to Las Vegas, where he met with Nevada Republican governor candidate Brian Sandoval.

Meanwhile, Perry's Republican rival, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, frequently travels between Texas and Washington, D.C. Her only government or campaign trip this year outside of those two places was to Iraq with a Defense Department delegation, her aides said.

Perry's campaign said Hutchison's trips around Texas should be scrutinized. Perry spokesman Mark Miner suggested that Hutchison slips in campaign stops while in Texas on government-funded travel. He also said she should fly commercial, instead of the charter flights she sometimes takes that can cost $5,000 or more.

"Southwest (Airlines) flies almost everywhere in the state," Miner said. "In this economy when tax dollars are tight, is it really necessary for a U.S. senator to be flying around the state on charter airplanes that are paid for by the taxpayers?"

Hutchison spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said sometimes charters are the only way Hutchison can get to the events where she needs to be. The campaign is diligent about making sure campaign events are paid with campaign money, not federal funds, Baker said, disputing Miner's contention that campaign stops are mixed into her itinerary.

Baker said Perry is the one with the transparency problem. "If the governor is traveling in his official capacity as governor, which he was elected to do by the people, by the citizens of Texas, then they deserve to know who is paying for the trips and what he's doing on the trips," she said.

© 2009 Associated Press: www.ap.org

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"The 20-cent-a-gallon state gasoline tax hasn't been raised since 1991."

Raise gas tax 10 cents a gallon? It's on table

But Dallas senator’s idea for road projects isn't on Perry's agenda

11/13/09

By PEGGY FIKAC
Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
Copyright 2008

AUSTIN — The Senate Transportation and Homeland Security chairman Friday suggested a 10-cent-a-gallon increase in Texas' gasoline tax for a system that's soon to run short of money for new roads.

The proposal touted by Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, got a cold reception from GOP Gov. Rick Perry at a conference by the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association.

“I'm not real fond of raising taxes when there's a recession going on. We ought to be looking at ways to cut taxes, not raise them,” Perry told reporters when asked about Carona's proposal.

Carona said there's no way around the need for new funding to relieve congestion and meet the transportation requirements of the state's growing population.

No cash by 2012

As he did during this year's legislative session, Carona noted that the highway fund at the Texas Department of Transportation will be out of money for new construction contracts in 2012.

During the session, Carona pushed unsuccessfully for local-option funding options after, he said, “current leadership made clear that there would not be support for a statewide increase at this time.”

The problem must be faced head-on in the 2011 legislative session, he said.

“By 2012, there will be no money left at TxDOT to build new roads. We'll only have enough money to maintain what we presently have. That is mismanagement on the part of the Legislature, and a situation that has to be corrected before we adjourn the next legislative session,” Carona said.

“The problem could be addressed in a responsible fashion if we raised the tax by 10 cents a gallon and then provided some sort of modest future indexing for inflation,” he said.

Any other options?

Carona said he's willing to listen to any other ideas, but added, “At this point, there's just no other solution to it.”

In order for such an idea to pass, however, Carona said it would need the support of the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker — noting tax increases must originate in the House.

Perry — who has talked often of the need for more transportation funding and pushed what proved to be an unpopular plan that included a strong component of private investment in toll roads — sounded anything but supportive.

“Going to Lubbock, Texas, and telling ‘em ‘Hey we're gonna raise your gas tax out here a dime so they can build some more roads in East Texas' is generally not a real good political sell,” Perry said.

“So it's there, and it's talked about, and it'll probably have about the same result as it has had in the last four or five years, and that's not a very ... warm welcome in the Legislature.”

The 20-cent-a-gallon state gasoline tax hasn't been raised since 1991.

Democratic candidate for governor Hank Gilbert has called for an 8-cent-a-gallon increase with automatic annual increases.

Budget pressures

The need to raise money for transportation is just one of the budget pressures facing lawmakers when they next write a two-year state budget.

The current $182 billion budget includes $12 billion in federal stimulus money that's not expected to be available next time.

In addition, a school funding measure has left the state picking up a bigger share of public education spending than it did years ago.

State revenues also are being dampened by the recession.

Sales and natural gas tax collections together fell more than $1 billion short of projections in the 2009 fiscal year, which ended Aug. 31.

State Comptroller Susan Combs said Friday that despite the slide, she doesn't expect that she'll need to change the revenue estimate for the current budget — at least not at this point.

Combs said spending also was down in fiscal year 2009, offsetting the lower tax collections. Combs said she wants to see what happens with holiday shopping and revisit the figures in February or March.

pfikac@express-news.net

© 2009 Houston Chronicle: www.chron.com

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"Why would the feds want to promote the sale of our public roads to private corporations?"

End the grip of BIG MONEY on Transportation Policy

11/12/09

Terri Hall
San Antonio Transportation Policy Examiner
Examiner.com

We applaud the Greasing the Wheels report released today by TX PIRG because it affirms what we already knew...that the road lobby is driving transportation decisions and policy not the taxpayers.

In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to oust his own transportation board appointee for objecting to the Governor's proposal to sell a CA freeway to private investors. His appointee called the deal "too risky for taxpayers." In Idaho, the Governor had the Director of their DOT fired in a "political powerplay to help Governor Butch Otter and his big campaign donors." Her crime? Saving the taxpayers money by steering money away from high-paid outside consultants back to the highway department who can do the work far cheaper.

Even worse, federal transportation agencies are using OUR taxpayer money to both lobby to and waive provisions in the law to handover our public highways to the private sector. Most of these changes were authorized by the Bush Administration, but the Obama Administration has allowed this controversial policy to stay in place, which is public private partnerships (PPPs, also called CDAs in Texas). PPPs are the most expensive way to fund roads.

A recent article in the Bond Buyer exposed that: "...there are a number of tolling and P3-related programs administered by the Federal Highway Administration. One is the Special Experimental Project Number 15, or SEP-15, which gives the transportation secretary the ability to waive certain rules of the current transportation law on a case-by-case basis. The program allows the FHWA 'to experiment in four major areas of project delivery' including project finance, and one of its goals is to promote P3s, according to the FHWA."

Why would the feds want to promote the sale of our public roads to private corporations? To enrich the highway lobby who's been greasing the wheel.

Perry's behavior in Texas has been equally deplorable: stacking his commission with goons who rabidly promote the sale of TX infrastructure to his cronies, payments of up to $3.6 million to losing bidders on CDAs, withholding highway funding from local communities until they capitulate to tolling existing freeways, illegally hiring registered lobbyists with taxpayer money to lobby to relax and even remove prohibitions on tolling, the revolving door between his office and Cintra lobbyist Dan Shelley, the list goes on and on.

When our elected representatives are bought and paid for by road building interests, how can the citizens stand a chance? It's no wonder why our politicians are so tone-deaf to the public outcry against enormously expensive, unwanted toll roads and privatization schemes that will break the backs of the middle class. It's time to clean-up Texas politics, By exposing the link between the BIG MONEY and the types of road projects that get priority, the taxpayers can then hold their politicians accountable in the ONE way they can...at the ballot box.

We also think it's time to consider TX PIRG's recommendation of publicly-funded elections. It may be the only way to shatter the vice grip special interests' wield over our politicians and public policy.

Transparency is the first step toward accountability. May this report and our efforts to shine the light on the today be the first step toward citizen-driven transportation policy in the great State of Texas!

© 2009 Examiner.com: www.examiner.com

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"The public is chafing at rising tolls and the spread of toll roads across the region."

Oversight for NTTA

11/11/09

Editorial
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2009

State lawmakers have an obligation to make sure the business practices of the North Texas Tollway Authority do right by the public.

The NTTA began in 1997 with a narrow focus: Take over operation of one toll road and plan a second. Its business practices paralleled that limited scope. The agency started with a small in-house professional staff and contracted out nearly all of the costly engineering and legal work to outside firms.

Today's NTTA has a breadth of activity that includes projects in operation, under expansion, under construction or on the drawing boards across all four counties of its service area.

Yet NTTA's business model has changed little from when it took over from a successor agency in 1997. Outside contractors and consultants now cost tens of millions of dollars more a year than if the agency had the professional work done in house, as reported by Dallas Morning News transportation writer Michael Lindenberger.

With the public chafing at rising tolls and the spread of toll roads across the region, state and local transportation leaders must demonstrate a stewardship of transportation dollars that is beyond reproach. To their credit, the NTTA's top leaders acknowledge that change has been overdue, and they have begun bringing on more staff and curtailing payments of marked-up services to outside contractors.

But like all public agencies, the NTTA would benefit from greater outside analysis of its operation.

This year, state lawmakers filed measures that would have put the agency under review in Austin. The provisions passed the House but died later. Lawmakers ought to take up the matter again in the 2011 legislative session.

The NTTA is a state agency, but since its budget relies on toll revenue – and not state appropriations – the agency is not subject to review by the state auditor.

Still, the NTTA typically uses significant amounts of state fuel-tax dollars and public right of way to build its toll projects. That gives the taxpayer a legitimate stake in the matter.

Legislation requiring the State Auditor's Office to review the NTTA's business practices is one option for added scrutiny. Another is a review by the Texas Sunset Commission, a process that subjects most state agencies to a thorough going-over every few years – even to the point of addressing whether the agency needs to exist.

The sunset process could be dicey, since the NTTA performs a vital function and has ongoing obligations to bondholders for billions of dollars. But the sunset process still could yield solid recommendations on how to improve efficiency.

Members of NTTA's nine-member board are appointed by county commissioners courts in the agency's service area. But they are not legally answerable to commissioners or voters.

Elected state lawmakers should step into the picture and ensure the taxpayer's interests are properly represented.

© 2009 The Dallas Morning News: www.dallasnews.com

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"New Texas law is one of a long series of eminent domain reforms that fall short of actually forbidding the kinds of abuses they supposedly target."

Texas’ Amendment 11: Another Post-Kelo Eminent Domain Reform that Falls Short

11/10/09

Ilya Somin
The Volokh Conspiracy
Copyright 2009

It hasn’t gotten much media attention, but last week, Texas voters overwhelmingly approved Amendment 11, an eminent domain reform measure that purports to ban “economic development” takings of the kind the Supreme Court upheld in Kelo v. City of New London.

Texas badly needs stronger protection for property rights, since it has a long history of eminent domain abuse, including recent examples documented by the Institute for Justice (the libertarian public interest firm that represented the property owners in Kelo) in this report.

Unfortunately, the new Texas law is one of a long series of eminent domain reforms that fall short of actually forbidding the kinds of abuses they supposedly target.

The amendment does forbid the taking of property for “the primary purpose of economic development or enhancement of tax revenues.” , But it continues to permit condemnations in areas with “urban blight.”

And, as I document in this article (pg. 2124), Texas is one of many states where the definition of “blight” is so broad as to include virtually any property that the government might want to condemn. Indeed, Texas’ definition counts as “blighted” any area that, due to a wide range of possible causes, creates an “economic or social liability to the municipality” where it is located.

This includes any area that creates an “economic . . . liability” because of insufficient development. Furthermore, the new Amendment still allows the power of eminent domain to be wielded by private organizations if they are “granted the power of eminent domain under [state] law.”

Amendment 11 is a small improvement over Texas’ previous almost completely toothless post-Kelo reform law (which I discussed in this article, pp. 2124, 2135–37).

The major is that “blight” now has to be shown on a property by property basis. Previously, local governments could simply declare an entire area blighted and then condemn any property within it, even if there was nothing wrong with that particular tract.

However, the impact of this improvement is likely to be minor, at best, given the ease of proving the existence of proving “blight” under Texas’ definition of the term. Amendment 11 also closes the previous law’s loophole allowing takings for “community development.” However, the broad blight exemption undercuts this improvement as well. “Community development” takings can easily be couched as “blight” takings.

Why did Amendment 11 turn out to be so ineffective? One possible explanation is that, under the Texas Constitution, a proposed amendment has to get the approval of two thirds of the state legislature before being submitted to a popular referendum. In my recent article on post–Kelo reform, I found that eminent domain laws that go through the state legislature are far less likely to impose meaningful constraints on condemnation than those that are enacted by an initiative process in which citizen groups can place propositions on the ballot directly.

State legislators have strong incentives to water down eminent domain reforms so that takings that benefit influential interest groups can continue. And widespread political ignorance makes it difficult for voters to tell the difference between laws that actually ban economic development takings and those that merely pretend to do so, while allowing them to continue under a different name.

© 2009 The Volokh Conspiracy: www.volokh.com

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"I seriously feel like all of our cooperative efforts ... are now resulting in a stab in the back."

DFW Leaders Fuming Over Lack Of I-35 TxDOT Funding

11/11/09

Jack Fink
CBS 11 News (Dallas /Fort Worth)
Copyright 2009

LEWISVILLE-- There are some things that are just out of your control. We all pay a tax every time we fill up our gas tanks. Part of that tax is supposed to help improve existing North Texas roads and build new ones.

Perhaps no road in North Texas could use more help than Interstate-35 -- particularly in Tarrant and Denton counties.

While the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has earmarked an impressive chunk of change for an I-35 widening project, there's one small problem – the section of I-35 is in Waco. The North Texas sections of the interstate aren't getting a dime for expansion.

Every morning, April Perez can plan on sitting in traffic on I-35E in Lewisville for at least 20 minutes. "It's horrible," she said. "It's the only way to get to work. It'd be nice if we had some relief."

Under a new plan by TxDOT, there's no relief in sight for Perez or the hundreds of thousands of other commuters along I-35E in Denton County or I-35W in Tarrant County.

TxDOT is proposing to spend $1 billion to build new lanes on I-35 in the Waco area. The new construction would run from Hillsboro to the Killeen area. "We could use that here in the DFW area," said Perez.

The Dallas/Fort Worth area is only getting one-tenth of the amount the Waco area is from the state's general fund. The fund consists mostly of sales taxes. The money earmarked for North Texas isn't for new expansion, but mostly for repairs.

The Waco widening project has some DFW leaders fuming. "As a region, we're being punished. We're being punished because we went along with TxDOT's recommendations and plans and what they told us to do," explained Senator Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth.

The TxDOT plan called for more toll roads. Just about every new or newly expanded highway in our area is either a toll road or will have some toll lanes built next to free ones.

In return for agreeing with the plan, the state promised to give priority to future North Texas roads.

Now area leaders accuse TxDOT of going back on its word. "I seriously feel like all of our cooperative efforts and innovative thinking is now resulting in a stab in the back," Denton County Judge Mary Horn said with frustration. "And I'm not very happy about it."

TxDOT is spending most of its general fund money in Waco even though the area has much less traffic than North Texas. The average daily traffic on I-35E from Denton down to Lewisville is 126,000 vehicles. On I-35W from Fort Worth down to Burleson, the average daily traffic is 120,000 vehicles.

Comparatively, on I-35 in Hillsboro to Waco the average daily traffic is about 60,000 – less than half of either section in North Texas.

TxDOT officials say they have to look at the interests of the entire state. "We have to move goods and people from here to there in lots of cases and we can't neglect that area," TxDOT spokesman Mark Pettit said, speaking of the Waco area.

That logic doesn't sit well with April Perez. "They need to get out with the other working people at 8 a.m. and sit in traffic with the rest of us and see what needs to be done."

TxDOT says the legislature developed the criteria to decide which projects would be eligible for the general fund revenues. And TXDOT says I-35E in Denton County wouldn't be eligible because the expansion plans for that part of the highway include some toll lanes. TxDOT says projects with toll lanes aren't eligible.

There is no money at all to expand I-35W in Fort Worth.

The Texas Transportation Commission, appointed by Governor Rick Perry, will be voting on TxDOT's controversial plan next week.


© 2009 CBS TV: www.cbs11tv.com

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"This shows the folly of redevelopment projects that use massive taxpayer subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare and abuse eminent domain."

Pfizer abandons site of infamous Kelo eminent domain taking

11/9/09

Timothy P. Carney
Washington Examiner
Copyright 2009

The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.

But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes' seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.

To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of "public use."

The Hartford Courant reports:

Pfizer Inc. will shut down its massive New London research and development headquarters and transfer most of the 1,400 people working there to Groton, the pharmaceutical giant said Monday....

Pfizer is now deciding what to do with its giant New London offices, and will consider selling it, leasing it and other options, a company spokeswoman said.

Scott Bullock, Kelo's co-counsel in the case, told me: "This shows the folly of these redevelopment projects that use massive taxpayer subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare and abuse eminent domain."

© 2009 Washington Examiner: www.washingtonexaminer.com

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Cintra en Canada: Death, toll taxes, ghost riders and "mafia shakedowns."

Anger over Hwy. 407 bills

Star readers tell of huge bills sent years after supposed trips

More than 200 readers responded with angry emails after The Fixer asked about billing problems with the 407 Express Toll Road. Some simply gave up fighting and paid the bills.

Read more about 407 ETR Toronto's privatized Spanish toll road [HERE]

11/9/09

By Jack Lakey The Fixer
Toronto Star
Copyright 2009

Invoices for thousands of dollars – mostly interest fees – have been received by hundreds of drivers years after charges were incurred for using the 407 Express Toll Road.

Some got invoices intended for long-dead spouses or parents, in one case billed to a plate that's been mounted on a garage wall since it was cancelled nearly five years ago.

Others said they were far away from Ontario when they were supposedly driving on the toll road.

More than 200 readers responded with angry emails after we asked about 407 billing problems.

Many drivers who tried to fight unfair bills gave up and paid, rather than risk being denied a licence plate renewal – an unparalleled power included in the 99-year lease granted to the private consortium that runs the 407. (In other words: Pay what we say or you don't drive your vehicle.)

One email compared 407 billing to a "mafia shakedown."

Lisa Thompson got a 407 invoice in September billed to a licence plate that belonged to her father, who's been dead for two years and last held an active plate in 2004. The trip allegedly occurred Aug. 9.

The bill said they couldn't record "either the entry or the exit point" for the mystery trip, but still demanded payment of $6.58, Thompson said. She was also asked to fax a copy of a death certificate as proof of his demise.

"If the 407 could not record the entry or exit point," she wonders, "how could they send a bill to a deceased man with expired plates?"

Robert Kelly said he got a bill last February for $4,297.25, including $194.97 in fees and $2,813.99 in interest, on $1,288.87 in toll charges.

"I have not even owned a car since 2002 or 2003, and even then I was only on (the road) once when it was free," Kelly said.

"I am in a nursing home now on a fixed income and my inquiries have been ignored. I don't know what to do."

The 407 says there is nothing wrong with its billing methods, insisting customer service is a priority topped only by safety.

"It is not an indication of a billing problem," 407 spokesman Steve Spencer said of the complaints we received, adding he could not discuss individual cases.

"Your article did ask for people to tell you their bad stories," he noted.

Customers have made more than 500 million trips on the 407 in the past five years, said Spencer, and "the great, great majority of those drivers are happy with our service.

"We're not saying we are perfect. ... But then if the customer does have an issue, we want them to give us a call and we'll try to sort it out."

Of the complaints we received, which were forwarded to the 407, only a few readers said the company's dispute resolution process cut them a break. Others got nowhere, even after appealing to the 407 ombudsman.

Gary Stracina says his overdue 407 bill was sent to collection more than 10 years ago. He had paid it, "but the money was never applied to my account," he writes, "and now, with interest on a dead account, I owe $1,200.

"Numerous trips to their offices on Steeles with a copy of the cashed cheque and promises to resolve the situation have led nowhere. They did, however, mail me a file one-inch thick with invoices they claimed I received."

The most common complaint, like Stracina's, is that a bill arrived out of the blue, demanding an eye-popping amount from drivers certain they owed no money, with no supporting documentation on the invoice.

The 407 charges annual interest of 26.82 per cent on unpaid balances, as well as collection fees and other charges that can swell the total enormously.

Some readers suggested the 407 is in no hurry to collect on outstanding balances, since the clock is ticking on huge interest rates and the company can simply bill later with the potent threat of licence plate denial.

"The 407 billing system sucks," said Shirley Poon. "It sounds like it will suppress the billing and randomly send out the bill after X number of years so they can claim a ridiculous amount of interest."

"My blood comes to a slow boil every time I try to deal with the arrogance at 407 ETR," said Darko Mesich, who recently received bills from early 2005 that grew from $79 to $246, "with no activities besides interest charges and one enforcement fee of $18."

Like many others, including people who have lived at the same address since before the 407 existed, Mesich said he didn't get any bills until the recent invoice, while the 407 maintained he was repeatedly billed but didn't pay.

Erin Lumley said she got a $216.34 invoice last January for an unpaid charge of $5.97 from 2000, adding that she had reported her changes of address in between to the provincial transportation ministry, "but never had an invoice sent to my correct address."

She was told to pay $55 and that an investigation would be done on her account. "In September I received a notice saying the ministry has been instructed not to issue me new plates and my account was being sent to collection."

Spencer says the 407 sends out an unpaid bill for at least a few months and eventually stops mailing them if it isn't paid, but didn't explain why it often stops billing for several years, then manages to find the customer and send a new bill.

"We really do try to get a hold of them as best we can," he said. "When we're getting no response from an invoice, so it's gone out and there's an amount owing still, we actually go to the MTO and we check every month to see if there's been a change in the address."

It may come as a surprise to users that the 407 considers anyone who has used the road even once to have entered into an "implied contract" requiring drivers to promptly notify it of all future changes of address, licence plate or vehicle.

"A new account is opened each time a new licence plate travels on 407 ETR," said Spencer, who then referred to a standard notice on all invoices: "New plate? New address? New car? Remember, we don't receive automatic updates from the Ministry of Transportation, so keeping us up to date will ensure you receive your 407 ETR bill promptly and avoid interest or collection activity."

© 2009 The Toronto Star: www.thestar.com

Death, taxes and now, 407 bills

Woman incredulous after highway bills her late husband for trips taken after his death

Diane Tobin says the 407 took money from her bank account to pay for bills supposedly accumulated recently by her late husband, who died in 2004.

11/9/09

By Jack Lakey The Fixer
The Toronto Star
Copyright 2009

Diane Tobin's husband died in 2004, but he's taken up driving on the 407 this year, according to bills sent to her by the toll road.

His licence plate was cancelled in early 2006 and has since been tacked to the wall of their son's garage in Oshawa, but bills from the 407 say he got on several times at Brock Rd. in June and July and cruised over to Airport Rd.

"I'm pretty sure he's dead," said the 64-year-old Tobin, laughing. "He was cremated and we buried his ashes, but he had a real sense of humour. Maybe he's having some fun with me."

When she didn't pay, the 407 twice went into her bank account and withdrew $40 to cover the ghostly trips, even though she thought his automatic-billing arrangement with the 407 was cancelled when she returned his transponder by registered mail soon after he died.

Frank Tobin was battling cancer in 2004 and had to drive from their Port Perry home to Sunnybrook hospital. The 407 was the quickest route, so he got a transponder and arranged automatic withdrawals from their joint bank account.

She thought Frank's business with the 407 had ended with his death, until an invoice billed to his cancelled plate arrived last summer for $13.61.

Incredulous, she got on the phone to the 407. "The guy said, `Don't worry, we'll take care of it,' but later on I got my bank book updated and saw that they'd taken it out of my account."

A second bill for $26.77 showed up in September, she said, which claimed Frank had twice driven from Brock to Airport Rd.

"My son went out to his garage to check, but the plate had been there all along." After the 407 went into her bank account a second time, Tobin hired a lawyer and complained to the Bank of Montreal, which managed to retrieve the cash. Even after the money was recovered, she says, 407 tried to go back into her account and take it again, which was blocked by the bank. Only after the lawyer intervened did the 407 concede it had erred and had no right to take money from her account, she said.

"They offered me the $40 back and another $150 for my trouble, as long as I signed a waiver saying I wouldn't come after them legally and wouldn't talk to anyone about it." She didn't take them up on the offer.

ROAD RANTS

When I first moved into my apartment, July/03, I received mail from for 407 ETR for (a deceased former tenant) and I returned it to them stating the person had died. I am still getting mail for this person from them.
– Alma Anderson

They said I had a bill for $20 from years ago, which they say I didn't pay. Now, with interest, it was $68. In fact, I don't take the 407. Ever. Never did. I tried to argue with them, so they assessed me more late-payment charges, bring the total to over $80.
– Zev Berkovich

One day they sent me a mystery bill for $5 and change. ... I sent them a cheque for the $6. A few weeks later they sent me a cheque back for the same amount (with no explanation).
– Julius P.

We returned our transponder some years ago and, at the time, there was a credit balance of $3 or so on our account. For five years following return of the transponder, we received an invoice EVERY month saying we had a credit balance of $3.
– Gaynor Reader

I finally after years of being a 407 customer sent back my transponder last year and paid my bill. Suddenly last month, I got a bill for, get this, 34 cents!
– Doug Benavidez

I received a mystery 407 bill this summer dating back 5 years for $200! I called and according to their records the unpaid bills stem from months when I wasn't even in the country: I was in Germany on exchange for a full year.
– Karen Brusso

We bought a new house and inherited the 407 bills of the previous owner. That person used the 407 daily, accumulating bills of many thousands of dollars. In the meantime, those bills all kept coming to us – every month. This went on for over three years ... The only way I was finally able to resolve the issue was to contact the ombudsman.
– Anita Thomas

I received numerous bills for a plate number that was sitting on a shelf in my garage. After numerous calls they sent me photos of the vehicle in question. It was a BMW. Never had one. I took the plates to the MTO. The person had modified his plate with blue paint.
– Paul Mackie

© 2009 The Toronto Star: www.thestar.com

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Contract engineering firms and lawyers benefit from NTTA's creeping toll tax bureacracy and ballooning debt

Outside contract work taking bigger toll on North Texas Tollway Authority

11/8/09

By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2009

The North Texas Tollway Authority spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year to design, build and repair its roads, to market itself, and to solve its legal problems.

But only a fraction of the hundreds of professionals who perform those tasks actually work for the toll authority, whose impact on North Texas drivers has soared in the past few years as it has increased its debt to about $7 billion to vastly expand its network of toll roads.

Instead, NTTA relies on a handful of gold-plated firms that for decades have given that work to their own employees, routinely charging NTTA three to four times what a staff member might earn to do it.

Hundreds of firms are paid to do work for NTTA each year, including some small outfits and some that are national engineering powerhouses.

But five legacy firms, each of them among the nation's best at what they do, have held key roles for NTTA since long before it was created in 1997 out of the old Texas Turnpike Authority.

Three of those firms have worked for the toll authority and its predecessor since the 1950s, and one since 1962. NTTA's financial adviser, RBC Capital Markets, a subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada, is the newcomer, working for the authority since 1983.

National toll road behemoth HNTB has been the agency's general engineering consultant since the authority's creation in 1953 and occupies an office building owned by NTTA across the parking lot from the authority's sprawling Plano headquarters. It billed NTTA $30 million last year.

And for more than 50 years, when NTTA has needed a lawyer, it has called one of the most prestigious, and most expensive, law firms in Texas, Locke Lord Bissel & Liddell. One of the founders wrote the statute to create the turnpike authority in 1953 to build the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike, which is now part of Interstate 30. The business has stayed with the firm ever since.

The long tenure is more than just institutional. Senior partner Frank Stevenson has worked on NTTA legal matters for 29 years and been its outside general counsel since 1995.

"There is an incredible amount of personal loyalty to NTTA here," Stevenson said. Beyond that, his firm has developed exceptional expertise, he said. "We're the best there is at this. We just are. We're really, really good at this."

Excellence at a price

Those long-standing relationships provide NTTA with unquestioned expertise, flexibility to ramp up during an emergency and to cut staff loose during a slow time, as well as guaranteeing deep familiarity with its work.

But they come at a steep price.

That's become especially so during the last couple of years, as elected officials in North Texas have increasingly turned to tolling as a way to pay for new highways, instead of relying on gas taxes and the state Department of Transportation. As NTTA's portfolio of projects has grown, it has hired relatively few employees and instead has increased its spending on outside firms.

Last year, for instance, Locke Lord billed NTTA nearly $7.7 million in legal fees, three times more than it billed in 2006. About $3 million paid for NTTA's aggressive pursuit of right of way, a program that has seen it go after 200 parcels of property for its planned expansions. As NTTA's borrowing soared, payments to McCall Parkhurst, its bond counsel since 1955, jumped to $3.4 million, up from $233,148 just two years before.

But NTTA also paid millions for other legal chores, many of which could have been done far more cheaply by smaller firms or by a lawyer on the NTTA payroll.

Until last month, NTTA had no attorney on staff. It hired a new general counsel last month at a salary of $215,000, and both NTTA officials and Stevenson said legal bills should be much smaller next year as a result.

On the engineering side, NTTA, like all heavily leveraged toll entities, is required by agreements with its creditors to employ a general engineering consultant, usually a top-notch design and construction management firm that oversees much of its road work. But after nearly 60 years of working for NTTA, HNTB's job duties have grown far beyond than what is required by the agreements.

Currently, HNTB provides senior engineers, including managers, who direct nearly all aspects of some of NTTA's top projects.

It also keeps scores of other employees on call, many of whom fulfill routine roles. For instance, it has the equivalent of five full-time employees to augment NTTA's communications staff.

That's a form of mission creep that NTTA executive director Allen Clemson said the authority is reviewing. Some of its largest contracts have grown to include work that smaller, less expensive firms could probably do easily – a fact that Clemson and his bosses on the board of directors have acknowledged.

"Here's how it works," said Clemson, who five months ago became the agency's fifth top boss in as many years. "Somebody here needs something done, and they get on the phone [to HNTB]. Maybe they need a map or a glossy presentation, and need something produced quickly. Well, pretty soon some of the brightest, most creative people in the business come across the street and start working on it. That happens too much."

It's not the companies' fault that NTTA had grown too lazy in its use of them, NTTA Chairman Paul Wageman said.

"It's our fault," he said. "We needed to find a competent, experienced public administrator to the run the agency the way it ought to be run. I think we've done that. We're maturing as an agency. Candidly, it may not have been happening as quickly as it should have. But it now commands the full attention of our board and our staff."

Adding it up

How expensive are consultants? In NTTA's case, very.

By Clemson's estimate, much of the work NTTA pays to have done by someone else costs about three times more than if NTTA did it.

It adds up in ways both big and small.

In August, for instance, two HNTB communications staffers assembled routine packets that board members receive before each meeting – booklets that sometimes are hundreds of pages long and explain each item on a board meeting's agenda.

One HNTB employee, whose salary is about $38 an hour, spent 21/2 hours putting the packets together, and another, paid about $20 an hour, spent nine hours, including some time being "on call for packet assembly."

Together, they were paid $273 to assemble the packets, but when the bill got to NTTA, adjustments for profit and overhead – standard multipliers common in most consulting contracts – meant that the bill totaled $757.

At the other end of the scale, NTTA pays engineering firms such as HNTB and others to provide top-paid professionals to build, manage and maintain its roads. The most senior engineers earn up to $150,000 a year or more, but when NTTA pays their employers for their time, the bill for each can reach nearly a half-million dollars per year.

In all, NTTA relies on the full-time equivalent of about 150 professional engineers to manage its workload, though that number can jump or drop, sometimes with little notice.

It has eight engineers on staff.

Longtime NTTA executive Rick Herrington, who recently left to rejoin his old firm, HNTB, to help lead its toll road operations nationwide, defended NTTA's approach to contractors.

He said that when the new agency was formed out of the old turnpike authority in 1997, its mission was smaller, and the officials who created it wanted to avoid creating a big, costly agency. "They didn't want to create a miniature TxDOT," he said.

Instead, the NTTA followed a model used in dozens of other toll authorities across the country. It kept the professional staff small and brought in outside firms capable of quickly adding – or shedding – workers and expertise as required.

"We could ramp up our staff, and then bring it down," Herrington said. And until the State Highway 121 deal, NTTA had little need for a large, permanent engineering staff. After all, its responsibilities included maintaining the aging Dallas North Tollway, still its largest cash generator, and building the Bush Turnpike.

It's mostly been ramping up since 2007, when NTTA agreed to borrow about $5 billion to build the Highway 121 toll road, a deal that also required it to pay Texas some $3.2 billion in cash for the right to collect tolls on the road forever.

It also promised local elected officials that it will aggressively build a growing roster of other costly toll roads.

When Clemson arrived earlier this year, he was surprised to see how few engineers NTTA employed, and how big its payments to contractors were each month.

With encouragement from the newly expanded nine-member board of directors, he began to wonder whether NTTA could get by with hiring more employees who could perform the routine tasks it pays some of the most expensive firms in the industry to do.

"The numbers are big, very big," he said. "Sometimes you need an all-pro professional, and sometimes we just need a good solid professional."

Changes ahead

Some changes already are being made. By 2010, NTTA plans to hire about 25 positions, including 10 information technology staffers, a few engineers and a landscape architect.

After paying those new salaries, it expects to save nearly $4 million in fees to contractors.

"There is a palpable effort being made to see that the NTTA has the staffing in place to perform what are seen as areas of core competence," said Stevenson, the Locke Lord lawyer who said the new general counsel will reduce payments to his firm significantly.

"In the cases where NTTA can look at what its contractors are doing and say, 'We're always going to need this guy doing this job,' then it makes sense [to bring it in house]. I applaud that, and it's something I've told them they ought to be doing."

But the savings aren't likely to be seen by drivers who are just getting used to higher toll rates. Next year, NTTA expects its revenue to be $410 million, including $377 million from tolls.

Its biggest expense – some $158 million – will be to service its fast-growing debt load. It will spend about $102 million on operations and maintenance, and an additional $128 million for capital improvement projects, maintenance reserve and other items.

By 2013, NTTA expects to spend about $400 million a year to service its debt.

Contracts up for grabs

Clemson said he has not yet completed a review of how NTTA spends its money. He said some additional staff members may be brought in house in the future.

But the biggest opportunity for change arrives next year, when each of the five firms must compete for new five-year contracts.

When they bid, they will bring enormous advantages to the table. Making a change to that roster would be difficult, and at least one attempt by NTTA board members to do so has failed in the past.

But Clemson said he wants NTTA to approach the new contracts with a new focus on efficiency. That will include unbundling some of the biggest contracts to make sure that the top-priced firms are only used for the sophisticated, highly specialized work that requires top dollar.

Even some of the professional work, such as more routine legal and engineering help, could be broken off into smaller contracts. That could have the bonus, board members said, of helping NTTA improve the diversity among the firms that it pays to do its work, including adding firms owned by minorities or women and companies in Tarrant County.

"I am new at this organization," Clemson said. "I don't have a single relationship with anybody in the law firms or the engineering firms. So we are going to make sure that our request for proposals are properly structured, and cover the body of work that we need to have, and don't have a bunch of tricks in them. I want to encourage, and hope to get, good firms to compete. We will evaluate them in very open and transparent way and see what happens.

"I would think that of all the times these contracts have been in place, that this is a very likely time for changes to happen."

© 2009 The Dallas Morning News: www.dallasnews.com

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"NTTA has always relied on a small number of legal and consulting firms."

NTTA'S LEGACY FIRMS

11/8/09

The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2009

NTTA has always relied on a small number of legal and consulting firms to provide manpower for its projects.

HNTB

Founded in 1914, and the developer of the first modern turnpike, HNTB is a giant engineering and architecture firm that serves as general engineering consultant for dozens of toll authorities across the U.S. It has $800 million a year in sales, employs 3,700 workers and has more than 60 offices. It has worked for NTTA since 1953.

RBC Capital Markets

RBC Capital Markets has been NTTA's financial adviser since 1983. It is a subsidiary of Canada's largest company by market share, Royal Bank of Canada.

Wilbur Smith Associates

Since 1962, Wilbur Smith Associates has been NTTA's traffic and revenue engineer, studying population, traffic and economic trends to forecast likely traffic and toll revenue for each NTTA project. NTTA relies on those projections to borrow billions of dollars to build its roads.

Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell

Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell and its predecessor firms have been NTTA's outside general counsel since the agency's founding in 1953. Charles Purnell, a partner in one of the predecessor firms in Dallas, is credited with writing the statute in 1953 that formed the Texas Turnpike Authority, which became the NTTA in 1997.

McCall Parkhurst & Horton

McCall Parkhurst & Horton has been NTTA's bond counsel since 1955. Founded in 1919, the firm has three Texas offices and focuses exclusively on public finance law. It was the first Texas firm to issue an approving opinion for a bond issue in Texas that was accepted by the national financial markets.

© 2009 The Dallas Morning News: www.dallasnews.com

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Perry appointee Houghton pushes for a private developer to build and toll Texas 161

Official says tollway authority should bow out of Southwest Parkway

11/5/09

By GORDON DICKSON
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Copyright 2009

A Texas Transportation Commission member wants the North Texas Tollway Authority to withdraw as the lead partner in the Southwest Parkway project and let the state seek a private developer to build the toll road from Fort Worth to Cleburne.

Commissioner Ted Houghton of El Paso discussed his recommendation about Southwest Parkway in an interview a day after the tollway authority said that the toll road is expected to cost $2 billion but that only $1 billion is available. The tollway authority said it would needs state aid to start construction next year.

Houghton wrote in an e-mail to Commissioner Bill Meadows of Fort Worth this week that his "recommendation on the project on the western end of the Metroplex is that NTTA turn that project back to us and we utilize the private pass-through tool that would bring in private equity."

A third party would pay for Southwest Parkway upfront and be repaid over time with tolls from the road.

Pass-through financing has built smaller city- or county-funded projects in other cities and would not be covered by the Legislature’s ban on comprehensive development agreements between the Texas Department of Transportation and private developers, Houghton said.

Concession fee

Houghton, one of five state transportation commissioners, also said that the Plano-based tollway authority had requested a $200 million discount on another Dallas-Fort Worth toll project: Texas 161, which is under construction in Irving and Grand Prairie and is a gateway to Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

Last year, after months of intense negotiations, the state Transportation Department and the tollway authority agreed that the market value of the Texas 161 toll road from Texas 183 to Interstate 20 was $458 million. That would be the "concession fee" the authority would have to pay the state to take over the project.

The authority hasn’t decided whether to take over Texas 161.

But Houghton and other state officials have balked at the authority’s requests for financial aid, including a request for the state to use its gas-tax-supported Fund 6 as a guarantee against certain authority debts, and a loan of $300 million to $500 million from the state infrastructure bank.

State law gives the authority primacy, or first dibs, on toll projects in Dallas-Fort Worth, and the Transportation Department can’t pursue private development of a toll project unless the authority declines it.

The first portion of Southwest Parkway, an eight-mile stretch from Interstate 30 in west Fort Worth to Dirks Road in an undeveloped part of the city’s southwest side, was expected to be under construction in 2010.

'I’m all ears’

Tollway Authority Vice Chairman Victor Vandergriff of Arlington said Thursday that he was unaware that a pass-through tolling arrangement with a private developer could even be done.

"I’m all ears," he said. "I would be pleased to understand that, and be supportive of that, if it will get the project done."

But Vandergriff reiterated that the authority wants to build Southwest Parkway.

Negotiations between the authority and Transportation Department are reaching a crucial phase, and Vandergriff said he doesn’t want to "point a finger" of blame for the Southwest Parkway funding gap.

But he did say that part of the problem is that the Transportation Department withdrew about $211 million in gas-tax-supported funds from the project to make ends meet on other Tarrant County projects, including the proposed expansion of Northeast Loop 820 and Airport Freeway.

That funding loss is part of the reason the authority is seeking a state loan, Vandergriff said.

Earlier this year, Johnson County officials, who refer to the project as Chisholm Trail, warned that moving gas tax funding out of the project could delay it.

"We’ve got a very tough finance market and very financially challenged agency" in the Transportation Department, Vandergriff said. "It really doesn’t do any good for one side or the other to point fingers unduly. I think it’s premature to say the parties can’t work together to get it done."

GORDON DICKSON, 817-390-7796

© 2009 Fort Worth Star=Telegram: www.star-telegram.com

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Wall Street swine are among the first to get H1N1 Flu vaccine

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup got swine flu vaccine


"REALLY!?!" SNL rips Goldman

11/5/09

By KAREN MATTHEWS
Associated Press
Copyright 2009

NEW YORK — Some of New York's biggest companies, including Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, received doses of swine flu vaccine for at-risk employees, drawing criticism that the hard-to-find vaccine is going first to the privileged.

Hospitals, universities and the Federal Reserve Bank also got doses of the vaccine for employees who need it the most, such as pregnant women or chronically ill workers, according to the city's health department.

In order to receive the vaccine, companies had to have their own medical staff. Distributing large doses of the vaccine to such businesses is "a great avenue for vaccinating people at risk," said Jessica Scaperotti, spokeswoman for the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

But critics said Wall Street firms should not have access to the vaccine before less wealthy Americans.

"Vaccines should go to people who need them most, not people who happen to work on Wall Street," Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut said Thursday.

"Wall Street banks have already taken so much from us. They've taken trillions of our tax dollars. They've taken away people's homes who are struggling to pay the bills," union official John VanDeventer wrote on the Web site of the 2 million-member Service Employees International Union. "But they should not be allowed to take away our health and well-being."

Meanwhile, the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent a letter Thursday to state and local health departments asking them to review their distribution plans and make sure the vaccine is getting to high-risk groups.

Dr. Thomas Frieden said any decisions that appear to send vaccine beyond high-priority groups "have the potential to undermine the credibility of the program."

Swine flu vaccine has been in short supply nationwide because of manufacturing delays, resulting in long lines at clinics and patients being turned away at doctor's offices. The vaccine started trickling out in early October, and there are now nearly 36 million doses available.

© 2009 The Associated Press: www.ap.org

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"Never underestimate the stupidity of the Texas electorate."

Hypocricy Thy Name Is Rick Perry

11/4/09

by Jeff Prince
Forth Worth Weekly
Copyright 2009

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram article on the 11 propositions passed by voters yesterday contained a quote that would be funny ha-ha if it weren’t so funny weird/tragic.

The story describes how Texans stood tall in favor of property rights by voting a whopping 81 percent in favor of Proposition 11, which restricts government entities that want to nab your private property at a pittance by using eminent domain, and then turning it over to private developers who make a fortune at your expense.

Texans began clamoring for the added protections after the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial decision in 2005 to allow using eminent domain for private development purposes.

The Star-T article quotes Gov. Rick Perry saying the voters “sent a clear message: Don’t mess with private property rights.”

What the article failed to mention was that Perry vetoed a similar proposition in 2007 even though it was passed overwhelmingly in the state House and Senate.

At the time, Perry was touting the Trans-Texas Corridor.

In other words, he wanted to allow a foreign-owned company to rely on eminent domain powers to take private property from farmers, landowners, and homeowners, and then turn that land into a toll road that most Texans didn’t even want.

So he vetoed a proposition that had been handily passed by your elected representatives. That was the first insult. Now, he’s using the old “don’t mess with property rights” blah-blah-blah while basking over the passage of a proposition that could have been established two years ago if not for him.

But Perry’s got good hair… and he’s so handsome that even a hottie like Sarah Palin (okay, a mentally disturbed hottie) looks awed by his visage. So voters will probably re-elect him again.

© 2009 Fort Worth Weekly: www.fwweekly.com

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"The State can still condemn Texans' land against their will and hand it over to private developers for toll roads using public private partnerships."

Texans vote for eminent domain reform, Prop 11 falls short of giving it to them

11/4/09

Terri Hall, San Antonio Transportation Policy Examiner
Examiner.com
Copyrigtht 2009

Texans overwhelmingly voted for Proposition 11 in hopes that it sends a strong message that Texans want eminent domain reform. However, Prop 11 didn't get the job done.

The Texas Legislature needs to continue the push for further reforms and to prevent abuses. TURF didn't support Prop 11 because it still allows a governmental entity to take Texans' private property for "urban blight" and "certain economic development or enhancement of tax revenue purposes," nor did it include:

• Strong definition of public use limiting eminent domain for ANY economic development and tax enhancement purposes

• Good faith negotiations (prevent entities from low-balling landowners and forcing them to hire expensive lawyers to get fair market value)

• Compensation for diminished access to a landowner's property
  

• Limit the granting of eminent domain to any further entities without a vote of the people

• Relocation assistance for displaced landowners

• Ability to buy land back at original cost after 10 years if the State doesn't use it

Bottom line, the State can still condemn Texans' land against their will and hand it over to private developers for toll roads using public private partnerships called Comprehensive Development Agreements.

The Trans Texas Corridor, originally slated to gobble-up massive swaths of private property (4 football fields wide, biggest land grab in Texas history) through rural Texas, along with dozens of toll projects in urban areas are precisely why Texans have yet to get a strong eminent domain reform bill.

When foreign corporations get controlling interest in public highways in such sweetheart deals with guaranteed 12-19% annual profits, non-compete agreements that guarantee congestion on the free routes, etc., they become defacto taxing entities and charge Texans hefty tolls to access their own public roads.

It's private profits in the name of public use.

© 2009 Examiner.com: www.examiner.com

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"Taxpayers are still left with the struggle to get elected MPO representation undiluted by appointees who don't answer directly to the voters."

Non-toll plan still makes the most sense

11/3/09

By Tommy Adkisson - Guest Commentary
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 2009

The recent Oct. 26 meeting of the San Antonio Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) was lobby politics over sound public policy.

The MPO policy board specifically asked its Technical Advisory Committee to do a side-by-side comparison of TxDOT's 2001, $100 million non-toll freeway plan to fix 281 with the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority's $475 million (or $1.3 billion with interest) toll road plan.

It failed to do so, I submit, largely because of a lack of cooperation by TxDOT and the push for toll roads by the special interests in the road building industry.

When duly elected representatives that are tasked with allocating state and federal transportation dollars, and making transportation decisions for our region, cannot get open public records, straight answers, or cooperation from our state highway department, we have a problem.

I've made no secret about my position against tolling our existing freeways. Our highway department, in my opinion, is not the final word in the question for or against tolling.

It is failing to cooperate with those on the policy board who want to see non-toll options implemented to keep our freeways toll-free.

The MPO, set-up by federal law, is an equal player in transportation decisions and so is the Federal Highway Administration that administers the National Environmental Policy Act.

When the current Texas governor's re-election (and hence TxDOT's continued pro-toll policy) is anything but reassured, the Sunset process awaits TxDOT in the next Legislative Session.

John Carona (the Chairman of the state Senate's Transportation Committee) also says we can do without tolls by proper reliance and stewardship of our gas tax, then one has to wonder about the dogmatic pro-toll direction of TxDOT.

An obvious obstacle in moving forward is the composition of the MPO policy board itself. Its un-elected 9 appointees from various agencies nearly equal its 10 elected officials.

Last Monday's vote was a close 6-5 vote in favor of tolls if you isolate elected officials, versus a distant 13-5, when you add-in the non-elected appointees.

One non-elected member abstained. Despite attempts to remedy this in the courts and in the Legislature, the taxpayers are still left with the struggle to get elected MPO representation undiluted by appointees who don't answer directly to the voters.

The National Environmental and Policy Act which requires consideration of social, economic and environmental effects of roadways, requires an environmental impact study that is underway but is estimated to take three years.

I submit that non-toll is less intrusive (10 versus as many as 20 lanes into our Hill Country), less expensive ($200 million ballpark versus $475 million), least threatening to the nation's most vulnerable aquifer and our nearly sole source of drinking water.

And because of its scale, a non-toll plan is more likely to be able to be built quickly. A comparative study, as we had requested before, would likely reveal the same conclusion.


Tommy Adkisson, Bexar County Commissioner for Precinct 4, can be reached at 100 Dolores, suite 1.2, San Antonio 78205, by e-mail at tadkisson@bexar.org or by calling 335-2614.
.

© 2009 San Antonio Express-News: www.mysanantonio.com

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The 'Macquarie Model': A ripping success for the Banksters. Not so much for the investors (think pension funds).

Dismantling the MIG machine

10/31/09

STUART WASHINGTON
The Age (Astralia)
Copyright 2009

IT WAS once the flagship of Macquarie Group’s satellites, a toll-road fund that embodied the bank’s ambitions to become a globally dominant listed infrastructure funds manager.

In a flurry of transactions, Macquarie’s super-smooth bankers ranged the globe to create what Macquarie extolled as a new model, the Macquarie model, of listing infrastructure.

Yesterday, historically,Macquarie Infrastructure Group reached the end of the road at Sydney’s Westin Hotel.

Brought down by an astonishing $35 billion in debt over its road assets in North America, Europe and Australia, directors in Sydney, Britain and Bermuda agreed late on Thursday night to split MIG into separate ‘‘mature’’ and ‘‘active’’ funds.

Given that ‘‘mature’’ MIG has a debt level of 31 per cent and ‘‘active’’ MIG has a debt level of 86 per cent, the descriptions ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad’’ could also be used.

Pivotally, Macquarie is being kicked out as manager of good MIG, ending the Macquarie-sourced deal-making, refinancings, revaluations and fee-ripping since MIG was renamed in 2000.

While Macquarie is leaving ‘‘Good MIG’’ with a $50 million kiss-off, plus a 1 per cent advisory fee likely to be in the realm of $20 million, the exit fee pales in comparison to the hefty $345 million it stripped from Macquarie Airports on its way out.

Macquarie also remains as manager of ‘‘Bad MIG’’, with elevated base fees paid to the mothership because of the need for extra work on problem assets that include some with a 100 per cent level of debt— South Bay Expressway in the US and Warnow Tunnel in Britain.

Macquarie Bank chief executive Nicholas Moore protested yesterday that its model had been a success.

And indeed it had, for the bankers at least. For investors, however, the evidence from the past two years shows many of its major funds underperformed the S&P/ASX 200 Index (see graphic).

‘‘On the issue of the performance of the listed funds, I believe (they) will have to be judged as successful to date,’’Moore said at the bank’s interim results.

‘‘The performance of the funds— not all of them—but if you go through them one by one it has been a question of outperformance rather than underperformance.’’ But there is no doubt Macquarie is edging towards the door.

‘‘It was fun while it lasted,’’ Brett Le Mesurier, an analyst with Axiome Equities, said yesterday. It was Macquarie Infrastructure Group that made Macquarie what it is today.

No doubt, Macquarie’s stranglehold over once-public assets, with fees regularly ratcheting up on various formulas, have got up the nose of some users.

A Macquarie executive lost his job in 2003 when he crowed to investors about Britain’s M6 toll road: ‘‘We can put up the tolls by whatever we like and, almost as importantly, we can start the tolls on day one by whatever we like.’’

But the same boast helped make the toll-roads operation an investor darling, and Macquarie’s listed infrastructure fund model took off and spawned a host of imitators, including Macquarie Airports, Macquarie Media Group,Macquarie Capital Alliance Group and Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group.

And with Macquarie Airports paying its parent $941 million since its birth in 2002, it’s little wonder Macquarie enjoyed the fees it dragged from the funds.

In late 2008, then JPMorgan banking analyst Brian Johnson found fees earned by Macquarie from its satellite business had grown from $376 million in 2002-03 to nearly $1.4 billion last financial year.

Among MIG’s heady early promises were predictability of cash flow, natural hedges against inflation from the pricing power in toll roads and the opportunity to refinance assets at more favourable rates as they entered revenue-earning phases of their development.

And the big sell for investors was a steady flow of distributions as MIG’s financial structuring of ‘‘greenfields’’ developments ‘‘brought forward’’ their distributions.

But the model carried the seeds of its own demise right from the start.

MIG’s toll-road operations never paid for itself: it was always a fiction of smart bankers being able to revalue assets, borrow more money and pay that money to investors.

Effectively, the bankers had come up with a formula for ‘‘bringing forward the cash flow’’ from infrastructure assets—and then dropping it straight into their top executives’ $30 million-plus salaries.

Anthony Kahn, a former chief executive of MIG, told BRW in 2002 that distributions to shareholders would move from payments out of capital to payments out of operations.

They never did. Not one distribution from MIG has been completely backed by operating cash flows.

Fast forward to yesterday’s annual meeting and MIG’s chairman,Mark Johnson, was promising distributions would be aligned with operating cash flows.

In practice, MIG became a spinning door that bought 33 toll roads and flogged 22 off on the way through.

Then a credit crisis made borrowing difficult, and a resulting asset deflation made revaluations for refinancing impossible.

Macquarie’s interim report revealed that since April 2007 it had made $592 million in write-downs to its listed managed funds. Its unlisted funds have fared little better, with a $410 million write-down over the same period. Now investors have had enough.

At MIG’s annual meeting yesterday chairman Mark Johnson noted the deal on good MIG removed the ‘‘external management hurdle which has existed for many institutional investors who no longer prefer that model’’.

The split of MIG puts its remaining nine roads into two separate funds: the Australian M7 Westlink and Toronto’s 407 ETR make up good MIG. The other seven—the M6, the Chicago Skyway, the Indiana Toll Road, the Dulles Greenway, APRR,Warnow Tunnel and South Bay Expressway—are bad MIG.

Johnson, a former deputy chair of Macquarie Group, provided the rationale for not only paying Macquarie, but paying it more as a percentage of assets to manage bad MIG.

‘‘Macquarie is one of the preeminent global organisations with regard to the management of infrastructure assets,’’ Johnson said.

‘‘Consequently it was a logical decision for the board that Macquarie be enlisted to help generate value for security holders.’’

(Note to board: the problems for MIG’s security holders have occurred under the watchful eye of these selfsame managers.)

MIG is the latest in a series of transactions as it substantially exits or re-structures its funds: Macquarie Capital Alliance Group via privatisation, Macquarie Leisure removing Macquarie as manager, the sale of Macquarie Communications Group, Macquarie Countrywide’s sale of US assets and Macquarie Airports punting Macquarie as manager.

On the way out, Macquarie has come under scrutiny for its exit strategy, with further related-party transactions and hefty exit fees as the funds’ boards confront costly poison pills. Macquarie sold MCAG to a related fund, collecting fees along the way.

Macquarie Countrywide sold assets, paying fees to Macquarie. Macquarie Group collected a separate fee from the buyers of Macquarie Communications Group for its management rights.

Macquarie also found itself in a storm of investor discontent when Macquarie Airports revealed it would pay a $345 million exit fee to the mothership as an exit fee.

The underperforming Macquarie Media Group also this week revealed plans to internalise its management agreement, cutting ties with the mother ship at a cost of $45 million, plus a $2.8 million advisory fee and the chance of another $11 million in management fees until the deal is finalised.

Even though a shareholder vote was all that was required, had Macquarie been removed as manager, a poison pill would have been activated in the form of a similar 1.5 per cent base fee plus a performance fee.

Yesterday MIG’s lead independent director, Paul McClintock, said the MIG transaction had been a different transaction from MAP’s exit.

He refused to comment on whether negotiations on the $50 million fee had included a demand from Macquarie to be compensated for its loss of management rights for the good MIG assets.

Johnson said that two agreements over ‘‘active’’ MIG assets would not need to be triggered because Macquarie retained management of active MIG.

Now eyes are turned towards Macquarie Group to find out how Moore intends to replace its lost revenue streams.

As noted, the stop-gap measure has been to put the squeeze on its listed funds.

Tim Buckley, head of research at Shaw Stockbroking, said Macquarie booked $414 million in fees from listed fund initiatives, including internalisation, sales and recapitalisations at Macquarie Communications Infrastructure, Macquarie Leisure and Macquarie Airports.

‘‘Clearly they’re booking significant profits at the expense of the listed vehicles that they’ve run for a long time,’’ Buckley said yesterday.

‘‘(They are) forgoing a long-term earnings stream but the reality is that it’s now history.’’ And that new reality may have some implications for shareholders in funds that, to the present time, have had Macquarie as one of their largest shareholders.

Johnson and McClintock said yesterday the MIG deal did not include any arrangement about Macquarie’s 17 per cent stake.

Buckley said Macquarie could be expected to eventually exit its stakes over time.

‘‘They’ve got $500 million in capital tied up in the vehicle . . . they recycle capital pretty aggressively,’’ Buckley said.

When those sell-downs occur, it’s vale the Macquarie Model.

© 2009 The Age: www.smh.com.au.com

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"Hank Gilbert has the only transportation plan out there among challengers to Rick Perry from either party."

Will voters buy a tax increase for roads?

10/30/09

Rodger Jones/Editorial Writer
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2009

And maybe put a guy like Hank Gilbert in the governor's office?

The rancher Democrat announced his transportation plan yesterday in Fort Worth, including an 8-cent gas-tax hike and permanent indexing of the tax to cost of construction.

It came on the same day as doomsday scenarios laid out elsewhere in Fort Worth, before the Texas Transportation Commission. Money for roads continues to slide by the billions as cars use less fuel.

Coincidentally, regional transportation guru Michael Morris suggested to commissioners that traffic and roads might get so bad that voters could end up supporting raising taxes for roads.

Enter Gilbert. Does he have a chance with voters with his tax plan, as Morris might suggest? One trade-off Gilbert offering is to make it very tough to get more toll roads built. He has strong backing of anti-tollers across the state.

Gilbert said his gas tax plan would cost the average commuter between $1.20 and $1.60 a fillup. Say that's $10 a month for a lot of people. It could sound like a bargain for those who pay as much in tolls as they do to the electric company each month. A Frisco resident who commutes downtown on the tollway pays more than $8 a day if they have a TollTag.

Other things to like about Gilbert from the standpoint of local transportation officials: He is bullish on mass transit. (Aside: That could win him points with this newspaper's editorial board, considering our years-long push for expanding regional rail transit.)

The Gilbert plan says:

Improving and further integrating additional transit models into Texas' transportation infrastructure makes both financial and environmental sense. Hank proposes making more state funds available to cities to improve existing transit systems in the state's major metropolitan areas.

Hank also proposes funding more "ring line" transit routes and commuter/light rail systems to allow commuters to travel around a city's center without going through it, and connecting these ring lines to existing transportation infrastructure to make public transportation more efficient and consumer-friendly. ...

Hank proposes expanded high speed commuter rail lines. Hank proposes funding to allow cities with large suburban populations to create (or expand) commuter rail to help commuters get in and out of major metro areas faster and more efficiently.

Like it or not, Gilbert has the only transportation plan out there among challengers to Rick Perry from either party.

© 2009 Dallas Morning News: www.dallasnews.com

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“I think the city is talking out of both sides of its mouth. The city wants to use the defense they won't allow citizens to use.”

City's defense for not paying up sounds familiar

Explanation for toll-road fines is the same one Houston rejects when motorists contest red-light violations

10/30/09

By JAMES PINKERTON
Houston Chronicle
Copyright 2009

The city has avoided paying county toll road fines using a defense it does not want motorists to use when contesting red-light camera violations.

Earlier this week, city officials again asked Harris County Commissioners Court to help them collect millions by blocking the registration of vehicles involved in red-light camera violations in which the fines have not been paid. Meanwhile, Harris County Toll Road Authority lawyers were continuing a fruitless effort to make the city pay tolls racked up by more than a hundred non-emergency city vehicles.

A city finance official claimed the toll fines are owed by the individual employees rather than the city, which owns the vehicles.

But the city's efforts to block registrations are aimed at the owners of vehicles involved in red-light camera violations.

“I think the city is talking out of both sides of its mouth. The city wants to use the defense they won't allow citizens to use,” Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack said.

“They need to be better neighbors,” said Precinct 2 Commissioner Sylvia Garcia, adding that the only exemptions from the toll fees are for firetrucks, ambulances, law enforcement and military vehicles. “The city of Houston should make good on this and find a way to pay these dollars that are owed on any of their vehicles.”

A resolution appeared to be in the works Thursday, although how much is owed may be in dispute.

Frank Michel, a spokesman for Mayor Bill White, said the city will pay the toll road authority fines and is taking action to improve its internal monitoring of citations issued to non-emergency vehicles.

“It is our position the city is responsible to make sure these fines are taken care of,“ Michel said. “Our internal policy is to hold the driver responsible or accountable, and we haven't done a good job of doing that and we're going to work on it.”

He added: “Whatever is owed outstanding, we are working with the county to get it resolved .”
How much is owed?

Toll Road Authority spokesman Eric Hanson said there are 552 violations involving unpaid tolls for 122 different vehicles owned by the city. To date, the city owes $13,851 in unpaid tolls, fines and collection fees, he said.

Michel said the city's tally showed 81 vehicles totaling about $1,000 in tolls, along with fines and penalties of about $11,000.

Last Friday, four days before city officials went to Commissioners Court seeking approval of a contract to block the registration of vehicles of red-light camera scofflaws, a city finance employee sent an e-mail to the county attorney's office.

“Harris Co. have (sic) been sending individual tickets without pictures (no proof) and expecting someone to pay,” finance department employee Al Owens wrote. “That someone would be the driver and not the City of Houston. The City of Houston is not responsible for tickets incurred by employees with city vehicles.”

He also wrote that it would be impossible to determine who was driving the city vehicles at the time of violations.

The e-mail was in response to a demand earlier that day by Assistant County Attorney Clarissa Bauer, who informed Owens the Texas Transportation Code requires the Toll Road Authority to send the delinquent notice to the registered owner of the vehicle, not the driver.

“HCTRA has hundreds of photographs of City vehicles using the Toll Road system without paying,“ Bauer wrote, adding, “For years, HCTRA has been sending violations notices to the City of Houston but the City has failed to pay.“ Bauer said some fines have been sent to a law firm for collection.

james.pinkerton@chron.com

© 2009 Houston Chronicle: www.chron.com

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"An extremely ambitious experiment."

Feds to Convince DC Area Taxpayers to Embrace $4.8 Billion Mileage Tax

Washington, DC regional officials seek federal gas tax money to study political implication of $4.8 billion mileage tax on motorists.

10/28/09

TheNewspaper.com
Copyright 2009

Officials are looking to convince residents in the Washington, DC metropolitan region that converting local streets into toll roads would be good for them.

The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board last Wednesday voted to seek federal gas tax funds to bankroll a $400,000 study on how best to sell the public on a controversial per-mile tax proposal that would raise up to $4.8 billion in new revenue.

"A comprehensive road-use pricing initiative in the Washington metropolitan area would be an extremely ambitious experiment," Brookings Institution authors Benjamin K. Orr and Alice M. Rivlin explained in a policy paper designed to garner the interest of regional authorities.

"Leadership and upfront investment from the federal government would also be essential to get the experiment off the ground and ensure comprehensive implementation. Some recent indications of interest at the federal level suggest that this might be possible. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has recently stated that, due to the failure of the Manhattan congestion pricing initiative, the US Department of Transportation still has funds available for pilot congestion pricing programs."

Brookings, a left-wing think tank, will complete the study entitled, "Public Acceptability of Regional Road Pricing: Can it be Designed to Garner Public Support?" by December 2010, presuming the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) approves the request. The funds will pay for a series of telephone surveys and focus groups with residents and special interest groups with an eye to determining how best to package ideas that have generated significant public opposition when proposed in other areas around the world.

In the UK, for example, 1.8 million residents signed an official Downing Street petition urging the prime minister to scrap plans to implement a GPS-based mileage tax. In Manchester, 79 percent voted against congestion charging in a referendum last year as 74 percent of voters did in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2005. The proposed Washington toll system raises many of the privacy concerns identified by UK opponents of congestion charging.

"Vehicles would be fitted with a GPS transponder device similar to an E-ZPass, perhaps as part of the registration process," Orr and Rivlin explained. "This device would record the type of vehicle, the distance traveled, and the time and location of travel."

Despite the privacy issues, DC officials insist that tolling is necessary for making up for the shortfall in gasoline tax revenues. The proposed mileage tax would solve this problem by increasing motorist taxation levels by a factor of ten. The additional revenue would be diverted to spending on buses and rail service.

"State gas taxes raise approximately $420 million in the Washington urbanized area every year," Orr and Rivlin wrote. "Revenues from the road-use pricing scheme described above would be between $2.96 billion and $4.79 billion, depending on the average fee... Net revenues could be split between improving mass transit (particularly buses), a need-based refund or discount, and roadway maintenance."

The federal and state excise tax is only one component of money raised from motorists in the DC and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Other taxes imposed on motorists include Virginia's personal property tax on automobiles, vehicle licensing and registration fees, a tax on car insurance, special taxes on commercial vehicles, as well as parking and speeding tickets. The total of all motorist-related taxes in Virginia exceeds the amount spent on road building and maintenance in the state, according to TheNewspaper's analysis.

Copies of the tolling resolution and Brookings report are available in a 600k PDF file at the source link below.

Source: Approval of Submission of a Value Pricing Grant Proposal (Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, 10/21/2009)

© 2009 TheNewspaper.com: www.thenewspaper.com

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"There is a viable non-tolled option."

Viewpoint:

Reasons non-toll option is best bet for MPO

10/28/09

By Tommy Adkisson - Guest Commentary
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 2009

Here are just some of the reasons why I believe the non-tolled option in our Metropolitan Planning Organization short- and long-range plans is so important:

• The only way to have a non-tolled option considered is to have our plan reflect that.

• Seemingly endless court battles over economic and environmental issues that must be addressed under the National Environmental Policy Act.

• There is a viable non-tolled option. Using the 2005 Zachary proposal and actual cost of the three-mile plan used by Clay Smith on Oct. 9 at the TAC meeting yields a $26 million per mile cost and, when multiplied by this project's length of 7.8 miles, equals a total project cost of $202.8 million.

• In contrast, the Regional Mobility Authority has yet to justify its much larger projected cost of $475 million, $70 million of which accrues to acquisition of right of way. Because the RMA is taking over a portion of the state highway system, it is obligated to pay the right of way costs. By contrast, the MPO does not have to pay right-of-way costs for a non-tolled scenario because TxDOT has its own separate fund for right of way.

• On Oct. 19, the RMA testified that they plan to enter into risky multi-leveraged debt financing of the Texas Mobility Fund money in order to finance the toll road. This is the sort of multi-leveraging (second, third and fourth mortgages) that created the financial crisis we have experienced of late nationally.

• Just for the total interest on the $330 million in toll revenue bonds alone, the RMA said it needs $864 million over 40 years!

• The minimum toll project cost is $1.3 billion.

• The U.S. 281 market valuation says the toll plan requires 200,000 cars per day in the out years in contrast with an existing 86,000 cars per day, on average. As if these assumptions requisite for this toll plan's solvency were not risky enough, the requisite level of traffic guarantees ongoing legal battles over environmental impacts to our aquifer.

I am asking for your support for the non-tolled option. I look forward to working with you to move our community forward.

Tommy Adkisson, Bexar County Commissioner for Precinct 4, can be reached at 100 Dolores, suite 1.2, San Antonio 78205, by e-mail at tadkisson@bexar.org or by calling 335-2614.

© 2009 San Antonio Express-News: www.mysanantonio.com

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"We understood that TxDOT and ARMA were so stuck on their insistent toll planning that they could not consider other options."

Toll road plan survives MPO vote

10/29/09

By Amber Whittaker - Staff Writer/North Central News
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 2009

The San Antonio-Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization's transportation policy board defeated an amendment to nix tolls from plans to widen U.S. 281 on Monday despite heavy opposition from an audience that was largely anti-toll.

The amendment was proposed by Bexar County Commissioner and board Chairman Tommy Adkisson and supported by anti-toll groups Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom and the San Antonio Toll Party.

Adkisson said his plan would have reduced the cost from $475 million to $200 million for a non-tolled 281. The final vote was 13-5 against the amendment. District 8 City Councilman Reed Williams was one of the few amendment boosters. The board also unanimously voted to kill tolling plans for Bandera Road.

The meeting at Alzafar Shrine Temple drew a rowdy crowd of more than 500, though that number dwindled to about 100 when votes were cast around 11:30 p.m.

Opposition was intense throughout the meeting. Residents held signs that read “Pink Slip, vote for toll roads and you're fired” and booed officials who advocated toll roads.

Adkisson had a strong anti-toll road ally in State Rep. David Leibowitz, who grilled Alamo Regional Mobility Authority Executive Director Terry Brechtel on costs and the exclusion of overpasses in ARMA's toll road plan.

When Leibowitz asked Brechtel if toll booths would be taken down when road construction funds were paid, her answer caught some of the night's loudest jeers.

“First of all, the Alamo RMA has never represented that there will be toll booths because it will be all electronic,” Brechtel said.

Many commenters supported overpasses to relieve traffic congestion on 281 north from Loop 1604 to the Comal County line as an alternative to a toll road.

County Commissioner Kevin Wolff asked that the creation of a non-tolled engineering study be added as an agenda item in the MPO's next meeting.

He said he still felt “very wanting” for a side by side comparison of a tolled and non-tolled plan.

TURF Director Terri Hall said the MPO had previously asked ARMA and the Texas Department of Transportation to provide a non-tolled study for a side-by-side comparison.

“They failed to do it,” she said, “so that Commissioner Adkisson would come here today asking for your vote empty-handed.”

Some residents living near 281 north of 1604 criticized a toll road plan, citing prohibitive costs for motorists, safety concerns for residents and business profit losses.

“If 281 is tolled, I won't be able to make a move without reaching for my purse. I'm retired. I live on a fixed income. I don't want to be triple taxed for getting into my car,” Timberwood Park resident Marilyn Knapp Litt said.

Elvis Ruiz, Encino Park Homeowner's Association president, suggested that an overpass or underpass be built from 281 to Encino Rio for ease of access and safety reasons.

He said the toll road that TxDoT and ARMA representatives described to Encino Park residents would be dangerous for them.

Motorists leaving Encino Park would need to merge across three lanes of high-speed traffic to reach a turn-around exit at Evans Road to travel south.

Ruiz said he was told that TxDoT would monitor the intersection but not build a better connecting road until the “number of accidents warranted it.”

“After that meeting, we understood that TxDoT and ARMA were so stuck on their insistent toll planning that they could not consider other options,” Ruiz added.

Hollywood Park City Councilman Bob Sartor said his constituents were concerned a toll road would increase cut-through traffic, costs of living and harm local businesses.

While most board members who would later vote against Adkisson's amendment were mum throughout the meeting, State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, who was openly derided for opposing a non-toll option, defended his stance.

“I'm not a toll road advocate. What I am is an advocate against congestion,” he said.

“If we adopt this half-baked (non-toll) plan, it will delay reducing congestion in a corridor, which is completely in my senate district. I am committed to reducing congestion and increasing mobility,” Wentworth added, incurring many boos.

As the final vote happened more than five hours after the meeting's start, attendees listened in silence before trudging out of the room.

“This was a waste of time. They don't care. I don't know why they are up there,” said Timberwood Park area resident Anna Gonzalez. She vowed not to take a future toll road.

“I'll avoid it just because I'm not paying that toll,” she added.

Shirlene Harris, who travels 281 frequently, said she was displeased but not surprised.

“They are flouting the will of the people,” she said.

“Only seven people testified in favor of tolls, and they were the Greater (San Antonio) Chamber of Commerce, the North (San Antonio) Chamber of Commerce and those who work for the highway lobby,” Hall wrote on the TURF Web site Tuesday.

“It was over 90 percent against tolls. This should sound the alarm quite clearly that our elected officials no longer represent us. It's taxation without representation.”

State and local officials are working to flesh out plans on two other projects to help alleviate traffic congestion in North Central San Antonio: a partial interchange at 1604 and 281 and a superstreet along 281 north.


© 2009 San Antonio Express-News: www.mysanantonio.com

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"Fraud and an unconstitutional taking, deceptive trade and a consumer law violation."

Texas Drivers Challenge Tollway Fee

10/28/09

By DAVID LEE
Corthouse News Service
Copyright 2009

DALLAS (CN) - A class of motorists says the Texas Department of Transportation has no right to charge a $1 invoice fee for drivers who use the state's ZipCash video toll system. The class claims the state gave drivers no notice of the fee and has no statutory authority to charge it.

Lead plaintiff Mary Kemp says she drove the State Highway 121 toll road in September 2007 and did not have change to pay the toll upon exit, nor did she have a toll tag in her car, which is tied to a pre-established account. She decided to use the remaining payment option, the video toll lanes that result in a bill being sent to her home.

Kemp says that based on the signs on the tollway exit, she believed she would be billed 60 cents. But the state added the undisclosed $1 invoice fee.

She calls that fraud and an unconstitutional taking, deceptive trade and a consumer law violation.

She also sued the TexasTollways, the Texas Turnpike Authority and the State of Texas. She seeks refunds, an injunction and costs. She is represented in Federal Court by Thomas Corea.


© 2009 Courthouse News: www.courthousenews.com

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By shamelessly pretending that in is out and up is down, [the current Republican leadership] have spun themselves into Wonderland.

Commentary

Texas a fiscal wonderland? Now that's pure fantasy



10/27/09

Jim Dunnam, Texas House of Representatives
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2009

Up is down. Left is right. Black is white.

It applies to Alice once she fell down that hole and walked through the looking glass.

It applies equally to our Republican leadership in Texas.

Watching Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst accept and spend President Barack Obama's stimulus money like drunken sailors then attempt to hide/rationalize/deny/avoid that fact, is getting more and more surreal and humorous — and more and more sad.

First, Perry slammed the stimulus and all its works in the Washington Times last February. However, he neglected to state that he had written a letter to Obama asking for the money just a day after Obama signed the bill. The ink wasn't even dry, and Perry had his hand out.

(Read the letter Perry wrote Obama on Perry's Web site: http://www.rickperry.org/perry-letter-to-obama.)

Next Perry told The Wall Street Journal that Texas wanted nothing to do with Washington and said our balanced budget is proof we can do it without outside help. He omitted the awkward fact that the stimulus money Perry got from Obama is what Texas used to balance its budget.

Perry then went on the tea party circuit with Mark Sanford, bragging about turning down $550 million to help unemployed Texans. (Our unemployment rate just hit 8.2 percent, incidentally, with more than 44,000 more Texans out of work last month).

But Perry once again mysteriously forgot to tell The Journal and those tea partiers that he had personally requested — and Texas will receive — some $16 billion in Obama's stimulus money.

Now Dewhurst also appears unable to stay off the Wonderland bandwagon. Dewhurst wrote a column about "How Texas lives within its means" (Oct. 21) and points out that we have a balanced budget!

Of course, we all learn in sixth grade that Texas has a constitutional provision requiring a balanced budget, so we can't fault Dewhurst for knowing that one. And the balanced budget mandate is a good thing.

But then he falls into the same rabbit hole Perry fell in. Dewhurst brags that he "led the effort to save $7 billion to balance the revenue shortfall we anticipated this year."

That's interesting because Texas spent $12.6 billion more this session than last session. How you spend $12.6 billion more while cutting $7 billion is a real feat.

Incredibly, Dewhurst adds: "It's simply political fiction that stimulus dollars were necessary to balance our budget." Now that, folks, is what we in Texas politely call total bull.

Don't believe me. I'm just the chair of the House Committee on Federal Economic Stabilization Funding — in charge of monitoring Texas spending of stimulus dollars. I'm a Democrat, too, so maybe you should hear from a Republican.

How about what the Republican chair of the Senate Finance Committee told the Fort Worth Business Press last week?

"In order to balance the budget this biennium, which is $182 billion, we used $14 billion in federal stimulus money to balance it," said State Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan. "We're not expecting a similar amount of similar money to be available in the next two years, because the federal government just doesn't have it. So, assuming that's true, you go into the next session with a $14 billion hole."

Does that sound like responsible budgeting or what? We spent all the stimulus money in such a way that we will "go into the next session with a $14 billion hole."

The problem with much of the current Republican Party leadership is not that they disagree with Democrats. The real problem is that they disagree with reality.

By shamelessly pretending that in is out and up is down, they have spun themselves into Wonderland.

Whether you like the stimulus or not, this misinformation is getting out of hand.

Dunnam, D-Waco, is chairman of the House Select Committee on Federal Economic Stabilization Funding and also a House Democratic leader.

© 2009 Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com

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“It's never going to be over till we get our nontolled plan.”

Adkisson shifts focus after losing toll vote

10/27/09

By Josh Baugh
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 2009

Terri Hall knows no defeat.

Monday night's toll road vote by the Metropolitan Planning Organization, she said, wasn't a loss in her crusade against toll plans in Bexar County.

That the proposal to strip toll plans from segments of U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 was shot down by a 13-5 vote wasn't a surprise to Hall. The MPO board held a “roll call” vote, Hall said, and now there's an official record of how each MPO member — 11 of whom are elected officials — stands on toll roads.

Alongside Hall, MPO Chairman Tommy Adkisson, a Bexar County commissioner, had pushed the plan to strip tolls. But shortly after its resounding defeat — and for perhaps the first time since rolling out the proposal several weeks ago — he didn't appear to be on the same page as the activist.

It's time to “turn the page and get on with other governance items,” Adkisson said. He pointed to Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Department of Transportation as major obstacles to removing toll plans. “I think that unless we get a new governor, the toll road issue is on hold.”

A mass transit proponent, Adkisson — who's up for re-election next year — said he would shift his focus to that issue.

The 19-member MPO board spent nearly five hours Monday listening to public comment. Of the more than 500 people who attended the meeting, about 100 registered to speak. Only seven spoke in support of keeping tolls in transportation plans for the county. But the opposition to tolls wasn't enough to sway the opinions of the policymakers.

“That says that our elected officials need to be thrown out on their ears,” Hall said. “It's never going to be over till we get our nontolled plan.”

She warned that the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority — the agency that would expand the highways, and possibly toll them — and others would face a third round of litigation unless they kill tolls outright. In 2005 and 2008, Hall's organization, Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, and environmental groups filed lawsuits to block toll roads in North Bexar County.

Adkisson questioned whether the results of environmental impact statements on U.S. 281 and Loop 1604, which aren't expected to be completed until 2012 at the earliest, would pass legal muster.

“I would think that others who weigh in on this — and there are many others besides myself — will have something to say about it,” he said. “That's really more their fight than mine.”

With tolls still on the table for U.S. 281 and Loop 1604, only time will tell whether they come to fruition. A plan will emerge for the gridlocked highways after the environmental studies are completed in three to five years.

Until then, the mobility authority has other projects to keep itself busy. It's slated to begin work on a “super street” on U.S. 281 early next year. It's also studying the feasibility of another super street to help congestion on Loop 1604.

Super streets help reduce congestion by removing signals at some intersections. Motorists who want to cross the highway or turn left, for example, instead go right and then make a turnaround.

The agency also is working on an environmental study that would clear the way for an interchange on the south side of U.S. 281, connecting to Loop 1604.

At the MPO, work will continue on Mobility 2035, a comprehensive, long-range transportation plan. And it's possible that the MPO will move forward on a proposal from County Commissioner Kevin Wolff to conduct a study that would allow the organization to do an “apples-to-apples” comparison of tolled and nontolled plans.

Adkisson's two-year chairmanship, which began in July, has been turbulent. Tolls have been the focal point of every meeting he's presided over. During his first as chairman, he promised to move “heaven and earth” to find a solution to gridlock on the North Side.

The move to strip tolls from transportation plans has put him at odds with the majority of the MPO board, and his role as chairman has come under fire from some of his colleagues. Wolff said Adkisson's management of the MPO “is severely lacking.”

The organization, he added, has the task of determining the region's best transportation projects — from highways to rail lines — and can't only focus on the toll issue.

“If he doesn't start figuring out that this job is much larger than the narrow, myopic place he's taken it to, I think you'll find a board that says, ‘You know what, we've got to make a change,'” Wolff said.

City Councilman Reed Williams, a recent addition to the MPO board who voted for the nontoll plan Monday, said Adkisson's leadership was fine. He said he's eager to move forward with a proposal made by Wolff to conduct a study on a potential nontoll plan.

“I'm going to work on this estimate. I'm going to try to figure out a nontoll road that makes economic sense,” Williams said. “I'm going to go to work.”

© 2009 San Antonio Express-News: www.mysanantonio.com

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“Vote for toll roads and you're fired!”

U.S. 281, Loop 1604 toll plans survive vote

10/27/09

By Josh Baugh - Express-News
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 2009

Near midnight Monday, the Metropolitan Planning Organization shrugged off the pleas of scores of toll road opponents and voted to keep tolls in the mix for U.S. 281 and Loop 1604.

In a striking defeat for MPO Chairman Tommy Adkisson, the panel voted 13-5 to keep tolls in the short- and long-range plans for the two highways. But it also voted unanimously to kill toll road plans for Bandera Road.

The series of votes was the climax of a night in which hundreds of toll opponents packed the Alzafar Shrine Temple on the far North Side to demand that plans for toll roads be stripped from Bexar County's transportation future.

Their message was unequivocal: They vehemently opposed tolling U.S. 281 and Loop 1604. They implored the MPO's 19-member policy board to fix the gridlocked highways — quickly, and without tolling. Throughout the night, speakers reminded the 11 elected officials on the board that they would be up for re-election, and their decision on tolls wouldn't be forgotten in the voting booth.

“It's been loud. It's been clear,” Paula Stoner said. “The majority of the people in this room do not want (tolls).”

They were fighting for Adkisson's proposal to take toll roads off the table in Bexar County.

Several others, including Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce President Richard Perez — a former MPO chairman — and Terrell McCombs, asked the board to vote against Adkisson's plans, which they said would only add to congestion in the future.

More than 100 people signed up to address the board, the vast majority of whom said they opposed current plans to toll highways in San Antonio.

Normally, the MPO would have held such a meeting during the day, making in inaccessible to most residents. But Adkisson, a county commissioner, and toll critic Terri Hall wanted a big turnout to bolster board support for the plan. And they got it — or at least they got the big turnout.

State Rep. David Leibowitz, an MPO board member, and Adkisson were heralded as champions for the taxpayers while others on the board were chastised for their opinions that ran contrary to Adkisson's plan.

State Sen. Jeff Wentworth was singled out and attacked for his support of leaving tolls in the MPO's short- and long-range plans. Critics said he wasn't representing his constituents. But Wentworth fired back, saying there are only three options for North Side highways, including doing nothing or increasing the statewide gas tax.

Not addressing the problem is “off the table,” he said, and as long as Gov. Rick Perry is in office, a gas-tax increase isn't politically viable.

“The third option is tolling,” he said to a boisterous round of boos. “Whether you like it or not, I'm speaking the truth. ... What I'm trying to do is reduce congestion. I'm not a toll road advocate. What I am is an advocate against congestion. If we adopt this half-baked plan, it will delay reducing congestion in my district.”

The hundreds-strong crowd responded by holding pink signs high in the air that read: “Vote for toll roads and you're fired!”

Hall, founder of toll-opposing Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, received by far the strongest support of anyone at Monday's meeting. One resident suggested that the first overpass on U.S. 281 should be named “Terri Hall Way.”

After speaking for nine minutes about the need to spike toll plans, Hall received a standing ovation and a series of hugs from supporters.

Hall demanded that the MPO board listen to the public about U.S. 281 and Loop 1604.

“We want both of them fixed, and we want it done with the tax money we've already given you,” she said.


© 2009 San Antonio Express-News: www.mysanantonio.com

To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

“It seems like TTC-35 has more lives than a cat.”

Concerns remain over Trans-Texas Corridor

10/26/09

By Fannin County Farm Bureau
North Texas e-News
Copyright 2009

Bonham – The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has declared the Trans-Texas Corridor I-35 “dead” once again, but Gov. Perry’s massive transportation project can still be resurrected as long as statutes authorizing its construction are on the books, said Fannin County Farm Bureau President Jerry Magness.

“It seems like TTC-35 has more lives than a cat,” Magness said. “The concern of farmers and ranchers in Fannin County is if the same problem will pop up under a new name.”

TxDOT officials announced the no action alternative in response to citizens’ comments received during the environmental review of TTC-35. TxDOT officials said the recommendation will effectively end efforts to develop TTC-35 through the Trans-Texas Corridor concept.
“The announcement said nothing about TTC-69 and other projects,” Magness said.

Magness said rural Texans remain upset over the Governor’s transportation plan that would have gobbled up and paved over some of the richest farmland in Central Texas. Their response was overwhelmingly negative on a series of public meetings on the environmental review for both TTC-35 and TTC-69.

© 2009 North Texas e-News: www.ntxe-news.com

To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

"The RMA can't show how it will finance its toll road other than to use the word 'leveraging' a bunch of times and basically say 'trust us.' "

Board must vote down NEW taxes to drive on existing freeways

10/25/09

Terri Hall
San Antonio Transportation Policy Examiner
Examiner.com

What began as a taxpayer revolt like the Boston Tea Party over four years ago known as the San Antonio Toll Party (later going statewide as Texas TURF), will culminate in a decisive meeting of the Metropolitan Planning Organization (or MPO, local board set-up by federal law that allocates highway dollars to local projects) tomorrow night at the Alzafar Shrine Auditorium at 6:00 PM.

After petition drives, packing public hearings, grassroots organizing, working for change at the MPO and in the Texas Legislature, and even a recall campaign, angry taxpayers who oppose imposing tolls on our existing freeways (already built and paid for with gas taxes) will have a shot at reversing course tomorrow night.

In July of 2004, the MPO voted to convert 281 (north of 1604) and the entire northern loop of 1604 (from 151 on the west side to I-10 on the east side) into toll roads. Since then, parts of I-35, I-10, Bandera Rd., and Wurzbach Pkwy were added to the toll plans.

The voters have NEVER had a say about whether or not they approve of this new tax for driving on northside freeways, the lifeblood of daily living. We still aren't getting a vote, but many of the elected officials on the MPO represent residents who live and work near 281 and 1604, and they need to HEAR FROM YOU and SEE YOU at tomorrow's meeting at Alzafar Shrine.

The Express-News calls a non-toll plan for 281 and segments of 1604 the "Adkisson-Hall" plan, but the non-toll plan to fix 281 is TxDOT's plan promised in public hearings in 2001 ( see www.281overpassesnow.com for proof). TxDOT recently disavowed its own plan that had $100 million in gas taxes to fix the freeway (the gas taxes inexplicably disappeared last year), and said it was "old" based on an engineering study from 1984 that it now "can't find."

Converting freeways to tollways -- a DOUBLE TAX

Schematics for the lanes planned by the tolling authority (the RMA) for 281 and parts of 1604 clearly demonstrate that access roads, not conventional highway lanes, will be the only non-toll lanes if these freeways are converted to tollways.

Tolled lanes are clearly overlaid onto the existing free lanes on 281, which under the RMA's plans will no longer be free. This violates Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's federal law that prohibits imposing tolls on existing highway lanes, a practice that wrought the term DOUBLE TAXATION. Commuters should NEVER have to pay NEW taxes to drive on a freeway their tax dollars have already built and paid for (at a cost of $2,000-$3,000 a year on average)!

Today's Express-News story explains how the MPO specifically asked for a side-by-side comparison of TxDOT's original non-toll plan for US 281 and the RMA's current toll plan, and after three meetings, none was provided. However, TxDOT's Clay Smith made the case that a 2005 proposal by Zachry, for what was to be the first phase of the toll road on 281, was a valid plan and testified that the Zachry bid of $78 million for the first 3 miles (which went to contract) is the REAL cost of improving 281.

Rick Perry's TxDOT in total rebellion, refuses to do non-toll fix on 281

After a complete failure by the MPO Committee tasked with providing the board vital detailed information about toll and non-toll options, Good Guy Commissioner Tommy Adkisson, Chair of the MPO, asked TxDOT to sponsor a non-toll option for 281 using the 2005 Zachry proposal (changing the highway lanes to free lanes versus all-tolled) for the Board's consideration at tomorrow's big meeting. TxDOT REFUSED to do that, too!

If this doesn't demonstrate the complete obstinance of this out of control agency, I don't know what does. All the while they and the RMA, who are conducting what's required to be a new unbiased environmental study of both tolled and non-tolled options, claim to be studying a non-toll option for both 281 and 1604. Yeah right!

It's high time the MPO shows these un-elected agencies who's boss, and insist a non-toll plan be implemented NOW! Exacerbating the long-standing problems with the San Antonio-Bexar County MPO, nearly half, 9 of its 19 members, are also UN-ELECTED, unlike MPOs around the state that average 2 unelected members. These rogue agencies have the pecking order reversed...it's the MPO who directs TxDOT and the RMA what to do, not the other way around.

Claims of insufficient info is a ruse

Members of the MPO Board cannot claim they do not have data for a non-toll option on 281 upon which to base a decision tomorrow when TxDOT just testified October 9 that the 2005 Zachry plan and cost are valid.

This plan was previously vetted by the MPO and actually went to contract. The total cost to fix 281 from 1604 to the Bexar County line (7.8 miles total) using Zachry's hard numbers to get a cost per mile ($26 million per mile) comes to $202.8 million, nowhere near the tolling authority's $475 million toll road cost. Just for the interest on PART of the toll road debt comes to a whopping $864 million over 40 years. That makes the minimum toll project cost $1.3 billion. RMA documents also affirm the toll tax will NEVER come off the road when the debt is repaid, so it's a permanent new tax on driving!

On Monday, October 19, 2009, the RMA testified that they plan to enter into risky multi-leveraged debt financing of the Texas Mobility Fund money in order to finance the toll road. This is the sort of multi-leveraging (like taking out second, third and fourth mortgages on our highway system) that created the current global financial meltdown, and which the Texas Legislature rightly rejected during the special session in order to prevent TxDOT from doing so. Will the MPO allow such reckless financial schemes by the Bexar County RMA that racks-up unsustainable debt?

The 281 market value study shows that the toll plan requires 200,000 cars per day in the out years just to stay financially solvent (versus today's 86,000 cars per day, on average). This level of traffic guarantees ongoing legal battles over environmental impacts to our aquifer.

Some also claim all options must remain on the table, however, the ONLY option currently on the table in the MPO plans are toll roads. So a vote for the status quo is a vote for toll roads. If you care to see who's using YOUR taxpayer money to lobby for a new tax on driving on the northside, read about the partially tax-funded San Antonio Mobility Coalition, the chief lobbyists for toll roads and its list of road contractors and financiers who have a vested interest in raiding your wallet on risky toll road schemes here.

Skittish MPO board members seem to be holding 281 and 1604 to a different standard and different level of scrutiny than when these plans were adopted as toll plans. For instance, when the project cost for 281 went from a $100 million freeway plan in 2004 dollars to a $475 million toll road by 2006, no one questioned it. Now when the taxpayers seek accountability for the "lost" $100 million in gas taxes that were promised to fix 281 and insist the non-toll fix be restored, board members shudder at a cost reduction and want more "data"?

RMA's risky toll road financing scheme a house of cards

None of the RMA's toll road plans on 281 and 1604 are toll viable, meaning they already know not enough people can afford to take the toll roads to even cover the cost of construction, so it needs to SUBSIDIZE them with MASSIVE amounts of public money. The RMA couldn't even secure all the subsidies it needed for 281 last year before the environmental clearance got yanked, and at one point was considering an additional loan, this one for $95 million that would have required $700 million in interest!

It also sought $135 million in stimulus funds to subsidize the 281 toll road before the public outcry ensued over such TRIPLE TAXATION: gas taxes already paid for existing lanes, they planned to use more tax money (stimulus money) to turn existing lanes into toll lanes, and then charge a third tax, toll tax to drive on it.

Bottom line: the RMA can't show how it will finance its toll road other than to use the word "leveraging" a bunch of times and basically say "trust us."

Can they name investors who will finance a start-up toll entity with a BBB rating (one step above junk bond status) using extremely risky multi-leveraging scenarios (using borrowed money to leverage another loan to get more borrowed money to use as down payments to "secure" yet more borrowed money and so on multiple times over) with this tight credit market where ratings agencies have gone sour on toll roads that are going into default all over the country? This is the rock solid "data" the RMA has provided to finance it's $1.3 billion toll road that some MPO members argue they're more comfortable keeping in place than a $202 million non-toll fix? What's wrong with this picture? Politics and BIG MONEY!

Accept NO EXCUSES and insist our elected officials stop playing politics with people's lives, end the controversy and legal wrangling, and get our community moving forward again by voting against these ill-conceived plans to turn our freeways into tollways. Those being held hostage in congestion EVERY DAY because of TxDOT's mismanagement of funds and two environmental studies (one inadequate, the other fraudulent) that caused the clearance to be pulled on 281 twice (then later affecting 1604), deserve better.

Contact MPO Board members here: www.FixGridlock.com.

Be at Alzafar Shrine Auditorium Monday, October 26, at 6 PM and make your voices heard or be tolled!

© 2009 Examiner.com: www.examiner.com

To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

“There’s a viable nontoll option on the table. They can stop bellyaching and give us our nontoll road.”

Vote to bar tolls set for Monday

10/25/09

By Josh Baugh
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 2009

When Tommy Adkisson calls for a vote Monday to strip toll roads from Bexar County’s future, he’ll have support from hundreds of area residents expected to pack the Metropolitan Planning Organization meeting.

But it appears that he won’t enjoy the same level of backing from his 19-member MPO board. Adkisson, the chairman, has a handful of allies on the board, but he has faced a full-court press from his opponents, who he says have spread a “sky is falling” fear among the decision-makers.

“I have never allowed myself to become a hostage for the highway lobby,” said Adkisson, a Bexar County commissioner. “Right now, they’re going for the gold, and I’m going for what I think is right.”

Adkisson is charging ahead with the meeting, which will be held — uncharacteristically — in the evening and on the far North Side, ground zero for the toll road debate. Normally, MPO meetings are held the fourth Monday of each month at 1:30 p.m. near downtown, the audience mostly composed of lobbyists and representatives of construction and engineering companies.

Terri Hall, founder of anti-toll Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, has said the goal of the venue change was to shift the power to the voters.

The changes worry those who don’t want to see the current plan changed.

State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, an MPO member, said he’s seen politicians waver under pressure.

“If we counted votes right this minute, in the peace and calm of this room, we don’t think she has the votes,” the San Antonio Republican said, referring to Hall, who’s known as the architect behind the proposal. “But I’ve been in office for nearly 30 years as commissioner, as a state rep, as a state senator, and I’ve been to these public meetings.

“Although I’m a scrawny little guy, I’ve got apparently a lot stronger backbone than a lot of my colleagues had. And you put them in a room with a whole bunch of really pissed-off constituents who are voters, and they’ll switch their votes.”

Adkisson and Hall’s proposal calls for removing tolls from U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 and drastically reducing the cost of construction to relieve congestion — from $475 million to $200 million on U.S. 281, and from $243 million to $200 million on Loop 1604.

Opponents of the plan say it would cause gridlock for generations because it only addresses U.S. 281 and a much smaller segment of Loop 1604.

MPO board members have asked for a side-by-side comparison of the toll and nontoll plans, but nobody has been able to provide one — in part because the proposal didn’t come from a sponsoring agency or with engineering reports and other vital information needed to evaluate it.

Hall and Adkisson would present a nontoll version of a 2005 plan that was halted by a lawsuit but could have been the area’s first toll road. That project, which had been contracted out, would have cost $78 million for 3 miles, making the cost per mile $26 million. Taking the project 7.8 miles to the county line, Hall said, would cost roughly $202 million.

“There’s a viable nontoll option on the table,” she said. “They can stop bellyaching and give us our nontoll road.”

At first, Adkisson and Hall balked when pressed for details on their proposal, saying they only offered a starting point for discussion and a policy shift. At an October MPO technical advisory committee meeting, Hall said she didn’t have a panel of engineers and was just a “housewife” being set up to be a scapegoat. Adkisson said his job as MPO chairman is to set a policy and see that it’s implemented.

But they’ve since strengthened their proposal by suggesting using the 2005 plan.

It’s unclear whether the MPO board will accept that plan as enough evidence that a nontoll plan is viable.

“Right now, I’m leaning towards not voting for the Terri Hall-Tommy Adkisson plan, simply because I’ve got nobody showing me any numbers as to whether their plan is real,” MPO member and County Commissioner Kevin Wolff said.

On the other hand, City Councilman Reed Williams, new to the MPO, said he’ll vote for the nontoll plan.

“I started looking at numbers — think about spending $440 million for 7 miles (on U.S. 281) — that’s a lot of money,” he said. “I think we have to come up with a lower-cost option there and something that’s not quite so grand.”

Janice Brown, the Texas administrator for the Federal Highway Administration, wrote in a letter to Adkisson that a full environmental impact statement must be conducted on the U.S. 281 corridor before additional capacity is added. Hall, whose group successfully sought a full EIS in a 2008 lawsuit, has argued that, based on her reading of the National Environmental Protection Act, that level of study — a three- to five-year process — isn’t necessary with a less-invasive, nontoll project.

Brown’s letter says otherwise.

“Any transportation improvement, tolled or nontolled, that addresses the long-term capacity needs of this corridor is likely to have potential impacts that warrant full environmental study in an EIS,” Brown wrote.

But Hall said she doesn’t see the letter as a loss in her fight. The letter contained two attachments that speak generally about when to apply each level of environmental scrutiny, and Hall says those prove she’s right.

“However, the original Jan Brown letter is basically saying they’re gun-shy about doing an (environmental assessment) because they’ve been sued twice on the project,” Hall said. “So we understand that. That’s not a problem.”

Regardless, the environmental review “is going to go more quickly and smoothly and not be contested in court” if a scaled-back nontoll version moves forward, Hall said.

Toll opponents have framed Monday’s meeting as a vote for or against tolls. Their counterparts — including some MPO board members, the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority and other local leaders — say it is about making a responsible vote based on sound data.

“We believe that the plan being promoted by Terri Hall and Tommy Adkisson makes no sense. It’s not thought out,” said Richard Perez, president of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and a former MPO chairman, during a recent San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board meeting. “What Tommy wants to do is not right.”

But Adkisson said he stands by his plan, contending that it’s for the “band of middle-class warriors with no special interest” who are looking to their government for help.


© 2009 San Antonio Express-News: www.mysanantonio.com

To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

"This is where a government entity can take a piece of property and hand it over to a private developer for development, to enhance tax revenues."

Press Conference

Rick Perry defends the use of eminent domain for privatized toll roads.



Related Link: Perry Dodges TTC Question

10/22/09

Question: "Would Proposition 11 prevent future Trans-Texas corridors from seizing private land?"

Perry: "This is where a government entity can take a piece of property and hand it over to a private developer for development, to enhance tax revenues. When we're building highways in the state of Texas, that still stays the sovriegn land of the state of Texas. So when the next road that's built in the state of Texas and there's eminent domain [unclear word] that goes into place..."


To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

“This proposition is Rick Perry's get-out-of-jail- free card for the election year. He wants a political win and wants us to accept crumbs to get it.”

Perry lauds eminent-domain proposition in San Antonio stop

Related article: No Guarantees Proposition 11 Will Prevent Kelo-style Takings

10/22/09

By Gilbert Garcia
San Antonio Express-News
Copyrigh 2009

Proposition 11 has sparked a fundamental, statewide debate. It's between those who hate eminent domain and those who hate it even more.

These two factions are divided on the proposed constitutional amendment — which comes before Texas voters on Nov. 3 — that would restrict the ability of state and local governments to seize private property and hand it to developers purely for the enhancement of tax revenues.

Gov. Rick Perry is largely distrusted by both groups because he actively supported the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor project and vetoed a 2007 eminent-domain reform bill favored by property-rights activists.

But Perry, who's expected to face a tough challenge from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in next March's GOP gubernatorial primary, put his fence-mending skills on display Thursday afternoon at a 15-minute press conference in front of the San Antonio Board of Realtors.

Touting Texas as a state “built by people who understand the importance of private property rights,” Perry lauded Proposition 11 as part of a “firewall” necessary to protect property owners from unwarranted seizure by developers.

He was joined Thursday by State Rep. Frank Corte, R-San Antonio, one of the legislature's most persistent advocates for eminent-domain reform. He authored the proposition.“Right now, we have no protection in the [state] constitution,” Corte said. “This will send a strong message to the legislature to do more next time.”

Eminent domain became a national hot-button issue in 2005 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Conn., could take property away from homeowners for a private development because it could increase tax revenues. The decision, which expanded the legal interpretation of “public use,” incited a backlash from those who worried that eminent domain could be used to trample the rights of landowners.

In response to that decision, the Texas Legislature passed a bill in 2005 that limited the state's eminent-domain powers to public projects — such as construction of roads and public buildings. Proposition 11 essentially would write the provisions of that law into the state's constitution, while also insisting that property seized because of urban blight must be taken one parcel at a time.

Corte argues that Proposition 11 is not redundant because it cements the 2005 law. “Legislation can be overturned, but it's much harder to do that with a constitutional amendment.”

Governments traditionally have used eminent domain to take private property for public projects, with officials providing displaced landowners with fair-market value for their homes.

Gene Hall, spokesman for the Texas Farm Bureau, describes Proposition 11 as a modest but important step to protect property owners.

“What we're asking for is a more level playing field,” Hall said. “Proposition 11 deals with one narrow part of our eminent-domain problem. That's reason enough to do it. But it won't take care of our entire problem.”

While the Texas Municipal League and Texas Association of Counties have been wary of eminent-domain reform legislation in the past, neither group has taken an official stand on Proposition 11.

Terri Hall, founder of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, strongly opposes Proposition 11. She argues that the proposition's language — which limits eminent domain to actions “for the ownership, use, and enjoyment of the property” by state and local governments, and bans seizures for “certain economic development” — simply creates more confusion, and the possibility of more wiggle room for developers.

“You can do this incrementally and never get a real fix — or kill everything until you get the bill you want,” she said. “This proposition is Rick Perry's get-out-of-jail-free card for the election year. He wants a political win and wants us to accept crumbs to get it.”

On Thursday, Perry dismissed such criticisms by saying, “There are always people on the periphery who think that something doesn't go far enough.”

© 2009 San Antonio Express-News: www.mysanantonio.com

To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

MIG: "Debt of A$30 billion across a portfolio including highly leveraged and poorly performing road assets concentrated in Europe and North America."

Macquarie Infrastructure Stake Sold

10/22/09

By BILL LINDSAY and DAVID ROGERS
Wall Street Journal
Copyright 2009

SYDNEY -- The second-largest investor in Macquarie Infrastructure Group has sold its stake, traders said Friday, ahead of the global toll-road operator's expected move to sever its relationship with investment banking parent Macquarie Group Ltd.

According to a number of traders who didn't want to be named, the 244.7 million securities in MIG representing 10.8% of its issued capital were sold by Canada's Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board.

Canada's largest private pension fund with over C$87 billion (US$90.48 billion) in assets at December 2008, held an 11.7% stake in MIG at June 30, behind only Macquarie's 17.3% stake on the register.

The stake is being offered to institutional investors at a price of 1.40 Australian dollars (US$1.29) a security through an institutional bookbuild handled by J.P. Morgan, according to the traders.

A spokeswoman for MIG had no comment on the transaction, while spokesmen for JPMorgan and OTPP weren't available for comment.

The likely sale by OTPP comes as MIG mulls a split of its toll roads into two separate listed entities with different leverage and growth profiles and also considers severing its management agreement with Macquarie in an effort to make the group more palatable to investors and boost security holder value.

The proposed split, which many market watchers expect to be revealed at MIG's annual meeting Oct. 30, follows a review that has stretched over a number of months as the group grappled with debt of around A$30 billion across a portfolio including some highly leveraged and poorly performing road assets concentrated in Europe and North America.

© 2009 Wall Street Journal: www.online.wsj.com

To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

"It'll happen again...over and over until we learn from experience."

The Warning

The hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Watch the full program online: HERE

10/20/09

FRONTLINE
PBS
Copyright 2009

"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"

In The Warning, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.

"I didn't know Brooksley Born," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. "I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable." Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group -- former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was "clearly a mistake."

Born's battle behind closed doors was epic, Kirk finds. The members of the President's Working Group vehemently opposed regulation -- especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.

"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"

Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation of derivatives. "Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation at a time when the stock market was booming," Kirk says. "Alan Greenspan was the maestro, and both parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take care of themselves."

Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, The Warning reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one.

"It'll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps," Born warns. "There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience."

© 2009 FRONTLINE: www.pbs.org

To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

"If the measure passes strongly it will signal a continued public demand for protection of private property."

Proposition 11 Merits Solid Support

Texas' constitutional amendment will provide another important step towards protecting private property rights

October 20, 2009

Corridorwatch.org
Copyright 2009

Proposition 11 strikes back against the Supreme Court's 2005 Kelo v. City of New London ruling that private property can be taken by the government for the private benefit of another for economic development purposes or increasing tax revenue.

If passed, Proposition 11 would specifically prohibit the use of eminent domain power, "for the primary purpose of economic development or enhancement of tax revenue."

This was a very serious threat in the original Trans Texas Corridor plan. When that plan became law in 2003 it included the power to take land for ancillary facilities for the express purpose of generating revenue. Since then the legislature removed that sweeping authority. Proposition 11 would ensure that such power is never restored.

Incremental protection.

Additionally, Proposition 11 would restrict the expansion of eminent domain authority to more public or private entities; and, would limit excessive use of eminent domain to eliminate urban blight.

Constitutional Amendments vs. Statute.

Constitutional amendment are (and should be) drawn in broad strokes. Details should be left to legislation and case law.

Are more protections needed?

Absolutely.

Even if Proposition 11 passes, additional protections will be required to fully protect our private property rights. In 2007 the legislature overwhelmingly passed law (HB-2006) that would have provided much needed protection. Unfortunately, our Governor objected to granting those protections and vetoed that law.

What message will you send the Legislature?

The votes cast FOR or AGAINST Proposition 11 will serve as an indicator of public interest in protecting private property rights.

If the measure passes strongly it will signal a continued public demand for protection of private property. If the measure fails, it will signal a loss of public concern over private property rights.

Those of us who still want to see strong protections (like HB-2006) adopted into statute need Proposition 11 to pass by a large margin.

© 2009 CorridorWatch.org: www.corridorwatch.org

To search TTC News Archives click HERE

To view the Trans-Texas Corridor Blog click HERE

"State lawmakers let Perry and politics get in the way of protecting YOUR property rights, and as usual, settled for scraps from the master's table."

Vote NO on Prop 11...it's counterfeit eminent domain reform!

10/17/09

Terri Hall
San Antonio Transportation Policy Examiner
Examiner.com
Copyright 2009

We've been down this road before...lawmakers write a convoluted amendment to the Texas Constitution that comes back to haunt us when we find out what politicians will do with it once we leave the polls.

Proposition 11 is one of those amendments. We witnessed Governor Rick Perry weaken this legislation all through the 81st Legislature to reduce the amendment to a virtually meaningless attempt at eminent domain reform.

You have to ask yourself, if Rick Perry vetoed REAL eminent domain reform in 2007 (HB 2006), why would Perry stage a photo-op ceremonial signing of this constitutional amendment in front of the Alamo in 2009 when it didn't even need his signature? Because it's not genuine eminent domain reform. His show-boating is because he's running for re-election, and he knows that veto of HB 2006 cost him the Farm Bureau's endorsement.

Why did Perry veto the bill? Because it would interfere with his Trans Texas Corridor that is slated to gobble-up massive swaths of private property (4 football fields wide, biggest land grab in Texas history) and give it to foreign corporations in sweetheart deals with guaranteed 12-19% annual profits by charging Texans hefty tolls to use what should be a public road!

The logical course of action by the Texas Legislature would have been to dust off HB 2006, introduce the same bill again, and pass it early in the session so the Legislature could override the expected gubernatorial veto. But that's not what the Legislature did.

They allowed Perry and his cronies to use eminent domain reform as a bargaining chip all session long (to re-authorize the controversial contracts called CDAs that sell our Texas highways to foreign companies). Meanwhile, he and the special interests chipped away at the strength of the private property protections originally found in HB 2006.

So Prop 11 is Perry's fabricated version of eminent domain reform to serve as penance for his veto. But once one examines the language, it's clear it doesn't remotely resemble genuine property rights protection as he claims it does.

So many flaws, so little time

What are the flaws of Prop 11? Economic development isn't defined. Public use isn't clearly defined nor limited. Good faith negotiations for offers of "adequate compensation" (the current constitutional language) aren't required. Urban blight isn't defined, and even though the legislative committees writing the bill couldn't accurately discern the voluminous entities that currently have eminent domain powers, Prop 11 continues to allow the Legislature the power to grant yet more undefined "entities" the power of eminent domain for "public use," which Perry ensured still included privatizing Texas roads to benefit foreign entities.

Proposition 11 says:

"The constitutional amendment to prohibit the taking, damaging, or destroying of private property for public use unless the action is for the ownership, use, and enjoyment of the property by the State, a political subdivision of the State, the public at large, or entities granted the power of eminent domain under law or for the elimination of urban blight on a particular parcel of property, but not for certain economic development or enhancement of tax revenue purposes, and to limit the legislature's authority to grant the power of eminent domain to an entity."

It states property cannot be taken using eminent domain UNLESS it's for public use for "entities" granted the power of eminent domain OR for the elimination of urban blight, but not for "certain economic development or enhancement of tax revenue purposes."

The loopholes in that language are so wide you could drive a truck through them!

Any true eminent domain reform that would protect us from the Supreme Court Kelo case would include:

• Strong definition of public use limiting eminent domain for ANY economic development and tax enhancement purposes

• Good faith negotiations (prevent entities from low-balling landowners and forcing them to hire expensive lawyers to get fair market value)

• Compensation for diminished access to a landowner's property

• Limit the granting of eminent domain to any further entities without a vote of the people

• Relocation assistance for displaced landowners

• Ability to buy land back at original cost after 10 years if the State doesn't use it

State lawmakers could have hit a home run and FINALLY delivered TRUE eminent domain reform. But they let Perry and politics get in the way of protecting YOUR property rights, and as usual, settled for scraps from the master's table.

The authors of the bill even admitted upon final passage that this amendment falls short, and that there's still a long way to go on eminent domain reform. They expect us to choke down a milquetoast amendment that's little more than window dressing so that they can claim some level of victory? Thanks, but no thanks!

If Texans vote for this amendment, it's likely no further private property rights reform will EVER happen, especially if Rick Perry remains the Governor. We must demand protection from the eminent domain abuse that the Kelo case wrought. We've been waiting for 3 years, and would have had it in 2007 had Perry not wielded his veto pen. When over half the states have passed laws or changed their constitutions to protect landowners from the eminent domain abuses of Kelo, our politicians have left Texans vulnerable.

Insist on authentic private property protection and vote NO on Prop 11. It's hazardous to your freedom!


© 2009 Examiner.com: www.examiner.com

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“Texas Farm Bureau has fought for years to enact meaningful reforms of our eminent domain laws, but for years political games have stood in the way.”

Let your voice be heard on Proposition 11



10/15/09

Texas Farm Bureau
Copyright 2009

(WACO) – Want to stop government from taking your property and transferring it to someone else? Texans have a chance to do that on Nov. 3 with a yes vote on Proposition 11, according to the president of the state’s largest farm organization.

The U.S. Supreme Court in the Kelo v. New London (Conn.) case in 2005 authorized eminent domain for economic development, but left the door open for states to make their own law preventing these kinds of takings. Proposition 11 is Texas’ response.

“For too long our eminent domain laws have favored the condemners and left those impacted most—our state’s private property owners—with few legal options,” said Texas Farm Bureau President Kenneth Dierschke said. “Prop. 11 is a good step toward bringing the eminent domain reform Texans need and deserve.”

Proposition 11, the final constitutional amendment proposed on the Nov. 3 ballot, stops the government from taking someone’s land to benefit another’s economic gain or boost tax revenue.

In addition to banning eminent domain for economic development reasons, Proposition 11 will require new entities seeking condemning power in Texas to first obtain approval by at least two-thirds of the Texas Legislature, as well as force condemning entities to address each individual property involved in an urban blight condemnation, rather than simply rub out entire neighborhoods.

Although much of the proposal is already in Texas law, adding it to the Texas Constitution gives it teeth, Dierschke said.

“When it comes to safeguards protecting private property, Texas laws have been lacking,” he said. “Texas Farm Bureau has fought for years to enact meaningful reforms of our eminent domain laws, but for years political games have stood in the way.”

Bills reforming Texas' eminent domain law—including clauses demanding good faith offers from condemners, fair market value for property taken and reasonable compensation for items such as lost access to one’s property—were introduced in the last two legislative sessions.

The first, approved overwhelming in both houses of the Legislature, met with a veto by Gov. Perry. The second, approved by everyone in the Texas Senate, died with many other pieces of legislation as part of the political wrangling that ensued on the House floor. Gov. Perry refused to add the issue to the special called session.

“We can send a resounding message to all of our elected officials on Nov. 3,” Dierschke said. “The days of toying with people’s private property in Texas are finished. Our property is far too precious for political pandering, and our chance for change starts Nov. 3 with your support of Prop. 11.”


© 2009 Texas Farm Bureau: www.txfb.org

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"The governor’s office has installed a crony as chairman who will urge the board to invest retirement system funds in toll roads..."

Cronyism and the Corridor

10/12/09

Paul Burka
Texas Monthly
Copyright 2009

This is a scary story. The Statesman reported yesterday that Governor Perry is removing Linus Wright, a former Dallas school superintendent, as chair of the board that oversees the $88 billion Teacher Retirement System and will replace him with a current board member who is also a member of Perry’s campaign finance team, Dallas real estate investor R. David Kelly. (Wright succeeded Jim Lee, who was one of three co-chairs of the Perry fundraising apparatus; Lee had resigned in the wake of news reports that he had run up six-figure gambling debts in Las Vegas.)

The removal of Wright occurred just a few days after Perry had announced the death of the Trans-Texas Corridor. The juxtaposition of events reminds me of the old Mark Twain line: “Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated.”

The concern is that the governor’s office has installed a crony as chairman who will urge the board to invest retirement system funds in toll roads as a means to pump money into funding-starved TxDOT. Perry appointees who don’t go along–as we have learned in the case of board of regents and the Forensic Science Commission–are likely to find themselves replaced.

I’m not just being an alarmist here. Remember, in the summer of 2008, Perry, Dewhurst, and Craddick signed a letter agreeing to work together to find a way to pay for new roads. An earlier Statesman story about the agreement said:

One prong of the plan would create a Transportation Finance Corporation to allow state investment funds — including the state employee and teacher retirement systems, among others — to directly invest in state transportation projects. Combined, the two state systems manage $135 billion in assets.

But TRS and ERS officials “took a cautious view of investing in state projects in testimony this year before the Senate Finance Committee, saying a mandate to invest in Texas infrastructure could conflict with their duty to find the best return on investment for retirees.”

Toll roads are highly questionable investments. Their success depends entirely on the accuracy of traffic forecasts, which can be influenced by consultants who tell roadbuilders (and pension funds) what they want to hear. The industry newsletter TOLLROADS NEWS reported on October 9 that a major toll road in South Carolina is insolvent and about to default:

US Bank, trustees for the bondholders of Connector 2000 Association, the owner of the Southern Connector tollroad in Greenville South Carolina have issued an official notice that they expect a default Jan 1, 2010 with insufficient funds being available from the pike to make debt service that’s due.

Here’s another story of a toll road that failed to make projections, also from TOLLROADS NEWS. This one is in Jackson, MS. It never even got to the starting gate:

Mississippi DOT (MsDOT) have announced “suspension” of the procurement process for a private sector concession to build the state’s first tollroad in the modern era – Jackson Airport Parkway. The concession financing depended on federal TIFIA loan support which is only provided if the rating agencies provide an investment grade rating to senior debt.

Three shortlisted potential concessionaires told MsDOT they couldn’t get the needed investment grade ratings for their loan financing, an official told us, so they were not able to make proposals which were formally due next week – Sept 15.

A statement from MsDOT quotes Executive Director Larry L (Butch) Brown as “disappointed” but saying that the parkway “project, like many other greenfield toll road projects, is suffering from general economic weakness and tight credit markets which limit the amount of credit and capital available for new transportation projects.”

Brown is quoted further: “The private sector needs to demonstrate that it can deliver meaningful savings versus a traditional MDOT financing and delivery plan. For example, unless private sector bidders can genuinely deliver construction cost savings, operational savings, or financing savings, the numbers just don’t work. In this economy, revenue projections are under pressure and investment grade ratings for the project’s senior debt are difficult to obtain.“

Trust funds should be invested conservatively — or, at the very least, in ventures that are medium-risk, not in toll roads and startups related to the governor’s Emerging Technology Fund, which, along with the Texas Enterprise Fund, suffered a $200M decrease in funding as punishment for Perry’s questionable wheeling and dealing. It will be very tempting for the governor to get Kelly to back his pet projects from the Emerging Technology Fund. These startups are likewise high-risk.

I don’t believe for a moment that Perry or TxDOT have given up on the Corridor. This paragraph from a 2008 article in the Star-Telegram is all you need to know:

Speaking on a conference call from Iraq, where he is visiting troops with other governors, Perry said highways that would run parallel to north-south I-35 are still needed. The state’s commitment to building roads is what attracts many companies and jobs to the state, he said.

* * * *

The thing I find most interesting is that Perry removed Wright and replaced him with a crony in the middle of a governor’s race. What does that tell us? I think it says that he is supremely confident and he is going to do whatever he feels like doing and doesn’t care what the media (much less bloggers) are going to say about it. He had to know what people were going to say about his replacement of Wright, especially coming on the heels of his evisceration of the Forensics Commission, and he did not care. Rick Perry is one tough guy. Don’t think I don’t admire that.

© 2009 Texas Monthly: www.texasmonthly.com

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NCTOG says the reaction to TTC-35 was "irrational and emotional" and calls for a "cooling off period."

With the Trans-Texas Corridor kaput, what now?

10/12/09

By DARLA MILES
WFAA-TV
Copyright 2009

The project is dead, but the problem still exists.

The Trans-Texas Corridor was supposed to be the roadway of the future, easing overcrowded North Texas highways. It was the key to ending congestion on Interstate 35 east and west.

Now that the project is dead, the North Central Texas Council of Governments will continue to focus on making minor improvements to I-35 and has stepped up its push for a high-speed rail.

Since emotions over the building of the TTC were so high, NCTOG said there needs to be a cooling off period. In the meantime, drivers will remain stuck in traffic longer.

Many drivers, like Paul Goggins, avoid I-35W in Fort Worth as much as possible.

"Thirty-five has been this way for 10 years, at least," Goggins said.

The planned 600-mile Trans Texas Corridor was supposed to relieve the bottlenecks on I-35W and I-35.

[Note: TxDOT's own projections showed TTC-35 would not relieve congestion on I-35: LINK.]

"There was an irrational, emotional initiative with regard to the Trans-Texas Corridor, largely because it was a surprise, typical reaction when things are talked about top down,” said Michael Morris, the director of NCTOG.

The Loop 9 project around the metro Dallas area is still moving forward, so is the Highway 360 extension in Ellis and Johnson counties

But, in Fort Worth, there is a desperate need for an outer loop and more lanes on I-35W. Neither project has gotten off the ground.

"As we go forward, we need to go to the state and the feds to get money so we can widen I-35,” said Sal Espino, Fort Worth City council member for District 2.

The I-35W bottleneck runs through Espino's district.

“Ideally, I would like to see it widened from the I-30 interchange all the way up to the Speedway,” he said.

The Texas Transportation Commission says there are four other options on the table:

- Double decking I-35 from San Antonio to Dallas

- Building a bypass loops around urban communities

- Widening the current right of way

- Or building a parallel corridor, like the failed Trans-Texas Corridor project

There are a lot of options, but commuters still aren’t optimistic about a real solution.

"They need to get off their butts and do something and make a decision and correct the problem,” Goggins said. “I mean, these two-lane highways are not going to cut it."

The I-35 Corridor Advisory Committee is going to start public involvement all over again. They will submit a plan for a new series of public hearings to TxDOT by the end of the month.

E-mail dmiles@wfaa.com


© 2009 WFAA-TV: www.wfaa.com

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"It's a concern to us that the governor is developing a pattern...It's a put-down to teachers."

TEACHER RETIREMENT

Perry to replace teacher retirement board chairman after less than a year

10/11/09

By Kate Alexander
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2009

Gov. Rick Perry plans to reshuffle the board leadership of the state's $88 billion teacher retirement system, an unexpected move that has reignited concerns among the members that Perry is meddling with their pension fund.

Linus Wright, a retired school superintendent who was appointed in January to lead the Board of Trustees of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, said he has been notified by the governor's office that he will soon be replaced as chairman. Wright said he was given no reason for the change.

He will be succeeded by Dallas real estate investor R. David Kelly, a board trustee since 2007, Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said.

Kelly is also a member of the finance team for Perry's re-election campaign, according to a June news release.

In the past, Perry has looked to the teachers' fund as a potential source of investment dollars for state transportation infrastructure and the Emerging Technology Fund, which invests in startup companies in fields such as biotechnology. The board, which sets the investment strategy for one of the country's largest public pension funds, has not yet backed an investment policy to do so.

Wright's predecessor, Jim Lee, was a forceful leader who muscled through decisions about hiring and investment strategy that created a rift on the board and prompted questions by some board members and teachers' groups about Perry's intentions for the fund.

The fund is undergoing a long-term shift in investment strategy to put more assets into alternatives to stocks and bonds, such as real estate and private equity, with the aim of increasing returns.

Wright has been a "very calming influence," which was needed after the contentious Lee era, said outgoing Trustee Mark Henry, the superintendent of the Galena Park school district.

He was "the perfect combination" of leader who had the trust of both educators and business people alike, Henry said.

The change is being made now because a transition is under way, with three new trustees soon joining the board, Castle said. The terms of Henry and two of the board's financial professionals, Dory Wiley of Dallas and John Graham Jr. of Fredericksburg, expired in August. The names of the new appointees have not been made public.

But the change comes on the heels of Perry's veto in June of a bill that would have added another retiree voice to the nine-member board. The governor appoints all of the members of the board, which is made up of five financial professionals and four retired or active Teacher Retirement System members who are nominated by the membership.

Together, these moves have retirees worried that politics is the real motivation, said Tim Lee of the Texas Retired Teachers Association.

"It's a concern to us that the governor is developing a pattern that really is minimizing the voice of retirees in their own pension fund," Lee said.

Castle said the change will not affect the balance of the board because Wright, who has been on the board for 10 years, will continue to serve until his term expires in 2011.

But Wright said he shared Tim Lee's concerns that educators are being overlooked to lead their own retirement system, which serves 1.2 million active and retired public school employees. The last time an educator led the Board of Trustees, before Wright's short tenure, was 15 years ago, he said.

"It's a put-down to teachers," Wright said.

Critics of the governor's decision to change the board's leadership are quick to add that Kelly is smart and talented and they have no issue with him. He could not be reached Saturday for comment.

Kelly, 45, is a partner at Carleton Residential Properties, a Dallas company that develops and manages multifamily properties. Before joining the retirement system board, Kelly served as chairman of the Texas Public Finance Authority, which provides financing for the construction and purchasing of state buildings.

The Legislature will hold confirmation hearings on Kelly when it convenes in 2011.

Perry tapped Wright when then-Chairman Jim Lee suddenly resigned shortly before the legislative session began in January. A pioneer of the day-trading industry and a Houston investor, Lee is now one of Perry's statewide campaign finance chairmen.

Jim Lee said he was stepping down to launch a new business. But Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, said at the time that a lawsuit claiming that Lee owed a $110,000 "gaming debt" to the Bellagio casino and hotel in Las Vegas would have been an issue at his confirmation hearings.

Wright was the "most reputable and dependable" trustee to help smooth over troubles within the board and with the Legislature during a contentious period, said Tim Lee, who is not related to Jim Lee.

"He got them through the legislative session, and now it just seems that we're abandoning the retiree to look for someone else," Tim Lee said.

kalexander@statesman.com; 445-3618

© 2009 Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com

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