Saturday, March 26, 2005

Citizens Advisory Committee: "People willing to sit around and compose recommendations that may or may not be heeded."

Corridor committee a hot draw

Ben Wear
Austin American-Statesman
Copyright 2005

Here's the first bit of advice that the Trans -Texas Corridor Citizens Advisory Committee will probably give: We need a bigger conference room.

That board, according to the preliminary rules adopted by the Texas Transportation Commission, can have up to 24 members. Big, in other words. No way they'll come up with that many people willing to sit around and compose recommendations that may or may not be heeded, or even heard, right?

Wrong. Exactly 251 Texans put their names forward by the March 14 deadline. Guess people care when politicians start talking about building 4,000 miles of toll roads and railroads across the state. The commission has an item on its agenda Thursday to name the lucky two dozen (or perhaps fewer), but it reportedly has not made its selections and will defer a vote.

Those interested include about 50 Central Texans, including two dozen from Austin, and a surprising number of elected officials, such as county commissioners and city council members from Georgetown, Dallas, Lufkin and Plano.

No Austin or Travis County officeholders though. Guess they're waiting for something really important to come up.

Copyright (c) 2005 Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com

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