Strayhorn: "European, foreign-run toll roads will turn TxDOT into EuroDOT."

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Corridor rally draws crowd, politicans

Texas Comptroller Carole Strayhorn's fiery presentation Friday drew an enthusiastic response from the anti-corridor crowd.

By Mike Peck, Managing Editor
THE CAMERON HERALD Copyright 2005

She bills herself, as "one tough grandma" and state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, pulled no punches while voicing her disdain for the proposed TransTexas Corridor project.

Keeton-Strayhorn was keynote speaker for a Blackland Coalition rally opposing the proposed transportation system. The rally was held Friday night at the Seaton Star Hall near Temple and drew a crowd of nearly 1,000.

"It's great to be an American, it's great to be a Texan and it's great to be the first woman comptroller, but it'll never get better than being here this evening with the fine men and women who are speaking up and speaking out and saying 'no' to the largest land grab in Texas history," Strayhorn said to a roar of applause.

"Mickey (Burleson, another speaker) you had it right when you said to say 'no' to destroying irreplaceable high value natural resources, 'no' to destroying necessary crop land and necessary farm and food production, 'no' to replacing freeways with toll ways and 'no' to the governor's $184 billion boondoggle."

The TransTexas Corridor, or more specifically, TTC-35 is a proposed corridor of toll ways and rail and high-speed rail systems that roughly parallels Interstate 35 from Oklahoma to Mexico or the Texas Gulf Coast. The proposed toll way system would be a quarter mile wide and include six lanes for autos, four lanes for truck traffic, two passenger rail lines, two freight rail lines and a utility zone.

The proposed corridor is to be financed, built, operated and maintained by a company from Spain for an estimated period of 50-70 years.

"Governor Perry and his land-grabbing highway henchmen want to cram toll roads down Texans throats," Strayhorn said. "He calls it TransTexas Corridor, we call it TransTexas catastrophe and it ought to be blasted off of the bureaucratic books."

Strayhorn said a man who spoke at one of the Texas Department of Transportation meetings on the TransTexas corridor told members of her staff to 'tell the comptroller that we know TxDOT is going to whatever the hell they want to do.'

"I'm here to tell you that as long as there is a breath of air in Carole Keeton Strayhorns lungs, you will have a strong voice in Austin and TxDOT will not do whatever the hell they want to do."

"Texas property belongs to Texans, not foreign countries," Strayhorn said. "Texas farmers, ranchers and homeowners will not sit quietly by and let a European consortium take their birth right."

"European, foreign-run toll roads will turn TxDOT into Eurodot," Strayhorn added. "You cannot tell Texans to give up their land and then tell them to pay to drive their tractor across it."

"This is nothing more than Governor Perry's way to make you pay to play," she said. "Under Gov. Perry's toll scheme, you can get on his foreign-built toll road and you can pay the foreign-based company to travel from McAllen to McKinney, Belton to Brownsville, from Harlingen to Henrietta, Wichita Falls to Weslaco, from Sherman to South Padre for the next 50 years and you will pay $120 each day, each way. That's not democracy that's highway robbery."

Strayhorn on several occasions repeated "let the people vote," referring to the massive corridor proposal.

Other speakers during the evening included Holland businessman Ralph Snyder, who chairs the Blackland Coalition. Mickey Burleson, introduced as an activist, landowner and fellow neighbor and Mike Barron, an eminent domain attorney.

Snyder welcomed the crowd and offered his own evaluation of the proposed corridor.

"My job is to speak about the TransTexas corridor," Snyder said. "We've heard about the length, the width and about the close to 100,000 acres that our government's going to seize from us, but we haven't heard much about the Texans who are directly affected by the TransTexas nightmare."

"I guess our elected officials think we're just a bunch of dumb farmers, that we'll just take a few bucks and be on our way," Snyder said. The fact is we all went to the same schools they did, we're educated and we have means."

"The fact is Texans spent the last 100 years building the finest road system in the world," he said. "To chop it into pieces is gross intolerance. The fact is the 50,000 acres of blackland that this road will destroy produces $13 million a year in ag products. To take that money away from the economy of Texas is indefensible."

"The fact is, we Texans are enjoying one of the best economies in the world right now, in large part because of our agricultural production," Snyder continued. "The fact is the TransTexas nightmare is a direct assault on our economy."

"The fact is, Texans don't like toll roads. We live free, we pay at the pump, we drive free and toll roads are double taxation."

"The fact is, Texans don't like the idea of a foreign company occupying a part of our Texas," Snyder said. "We took care of that problem once and by God, we'll do it again."

"The fact is, we're Texans, and fighting for our home is nothing new to us," Snyder said. "We've done it many times. We're going to stand with each affected landowner and use every legal recourse to make it as hard as possible to take our land."

"If they do manage to build this toll road on our land, we're going to boycott it and bankrupt it just like the Camino-Columbia toll road in Laredo."

"He's one final TTC-35 fact, we know which of our elected officials are representing this foreign company instead of the people who elected them - and we will work to defeat them in the next election," Snyder concluded.

The Cameron Herald: www.cameronherald.com

79th Legislature Goes Whole-Hog for Toll Roads

Legislature: Toll-speed ahead

Public skepticism of toll roads fails to take hold as lawmakers reject increased gas taxes and provide more momentum for toll road push

June 04, 2005
By Ben Wear
Austin American-Statesman Copyright 2005

If a cartographer could somehow represent the state's toll road debate over the past two years on a Texas map, you would see a series of periodic bursts of flame.

There's the flare-up in Austin in late 2003 over an attempt to make U.S. 183 a toll road. Then a starburst on Texas 249 near Houston and explosions on Texas 6 near College Station and Texas 121 in the Metroplex over proposed toll conversions. A consistent slow burn from El Paso over pressure to create toll roads, and an ever-spreading series of rural brush fires near the invisible lines of the Trans-Texas Corridor. And then, of course, a bright flash from last July, when local officials approved seven more toll roads in Austin.

But if that same map and its time line extended through May 30 of this year, the area near 11th Street and Congress Avenue in Austin with that pink granite dome would be strangely dark. For while the Texas Department of Transportation's aggressive use since 2003 of its newfound power to create toll roads stirred up the public, the legislative session that just ended was mostly devoid of passion on the issue.

And the transportation law that emerged, despite some concessions to rural and urban concerns about tolls, by and large confirmed that the state's official policy for building major new or expanded highways is that they will almost always be toll roads. Lawmakers, whether they intended to or not, likewise buttressed that two-year-old policy by what they didn't do: pass a gasoline tax increase.

"The session went from being disastrous to being just fantastic," said state Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Williamson County, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee and a toll road supporter who sponsored HB 2702. That hefty catch-all transportation bill passed just minutes before a midnight May 29 death knell mandated by legislative rules.

"TxDOT is as happy as can be," Krusee said.

The Legislature addressed the highly emotional issue of taking free roads and making them toll roads. These so-called "conversions" would require a public vote, and the Transportation Department will no longer be able to take a road under construction as a free road (such as U.S. 183 in Northwest Austin) and at the last moment dub it a toll road. But the exceptions associated with the new law — if a project adds expressway lanes with tolls but also has a number of free frontage lanes equal to what existed before, it will not be a conversion — mean that none of the controversial proposed toll roads in Austin will come up for a public vote.

Beyond that, Gov. Rick Perry, who signed the 2003 law making conversions legal but would have to approve any in the future, has said he opposes them now. So does just about any politician or appointed transportation official you ask, now that angry crowds across the state have condemned the practice. No actual conversions have occurred.

So the changes approved may amount to putting a deadbolt on an already closed and locked barn door.

But the Legislature in other ways moved the ball well ahead on tolls. It raised from $800 million a year to $2 billion a year a ceiling on how much gas tax money the Transportation Department can spend on "toll equity," essentially the cash-on-hand downpayments that are combined with money borrowed on the bond market to pay for toll roads. Tolls then go to pay back the bond investors and maintain the turnpike, with excess money available for other projects.

Raising that toll equity cap, at least in theory, might leave little money for any "free" metro improvements. This year, the department had less than $2 billion to spend overall on new urban construction, including non-toll roads.

The news was better for rural opponents of the Trans-Texas Corridor, Gov. Rick Perry's proposed 4,000-mile, $180 billion network of intrastate turnpikes, rail lines and utility corridors. Krusee said that as HB 2702 hung in the balance, he heard from corridor opponents such as the Texas Farm Bureau and Fayette County-based CorridorWatch saying that they were rooting for its passage.

The legislation, after all, had elements they had requested. But the rural critics would have preferred for the Legislature to deep-six the corridor entirely, or at the very least require that the conglomerations of roads and rails be considerably narrower than the 1,200 feet that the Transportation Department has suggested in mock-ups of the corridor. Such a limit, 800 feet was a popular number early in the session, did not become law.

"The problem was that our people did not tell us to fix the corridor. Our policy was to oppose the corridor," said Steve Pringle, legislative director for the Texas Farm Bureau. "While we're not completely satisfied with what we got, the legislative process is always a compro- mise."

As you may have heard, however, compromise was not in the air this session when it came to taxes.

Lawmakers rejected two attempts to get more money for transportation the traditional way, by raising the state's 20-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax for the first time since 1991. Krusee carried a bill, HB 5, that would have tied the tax rate to inflation, which means it would gone up perhaps a half-cent-a-gallon per year. For the typical driver, that's less than $5 a year.

But even that modest increase, which would have raised just $50 million or so in the first year but more significant amounts over time, was too much for the tax-phobic House. After being passed by a committee, and getting House Speaker Tom Craddick's emphatic endorsement, support evaporated, and Krusee allowed it to die without a floor vote.

A second measure to create a local-option gas tax increase, subject to a public vote, was attached to a larger finance bill and cleared the House. But it died in the Senate.

So, at least for now, tolls seem to be the only significant new source of road and rail money that the Legislature will countenance.

"I just wish that 20 cents a gallon would get everything we need done," said state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, who pushed for limits on the Trans-Texas Corridor. "But it's not going to."

Kolkhorst says that perhaps we've seen only brushfires so far. That when the many toll roads discussed over the past two years start to become actual toll roads with actual charges to drivers, legislators may gain a new appreciation for other — and older — ways of paying for roads. Perhaps with that in mind, state Sen. Todd Staples, R-Palestine, Krusee's opposite number as head of the Senate's transportation panel, sponsored a successful bill to create a commission to study road financing.

That nine-member panel, if Perry signs the bill, would have four legislators on it, probably including Krusee and Staples. It would also be required to produce a report and recommendations before the 2007 session.

Given Staples' and Krusee's comments this week and in the past, however, no one should hold their breath waiting for a report that trashes tolls and extols taxes.

"Some people in the (House) believe that highways should be treated like utilities," Kolkhorst said. "The more you use, the more you pay. I'm not ready to go there. But I'm old-fashioned."

bwear@statesman.com; 445-3698

There oughta be a law

A summary of transportation bills that went the distance this session — and some that crashed. Gov. Rick Perry has signed only a handful of these bills, but has given no hint of coming vetoes.

Passed
Toll roads and railroads — House Bill 2702 limits toll-road conversions; allows $2 billion per year spending of tax money on toll roads; provides more protection for landowners and limits commercial development on Trans-Texas Corridor; allows the state to use comprehensive contracts with private companies to build and run railroads. Senate Bill 1713 will create a nine-member commission, including four legislators, to study and report back to Legislature on how we pay for roads.

Capital Metro trifecta — Various bills lengthened terms for board members of the Austin transit agency, allowed toll agencies to waive bus tolls, and allowed the transit agency to hold rail elections more than one every two years.

Scenic Texas 130? — HB 2702 was amended to ban billboards on the toll road under construction east of Austin.

One way to move a railroad — HB 1546 would create a fund to relocate freight rail lines from urban to rural areas, but only if voters approve a constitutional amendment in November. And the fund would have money only if a future legislature puts some there.

TxDOCKED — Texas Mobility Fund for toll roads lost $250 million in coming two years (to help general fund spending) and $106 million of gas tax money will go for school buses. But other measures latching on to transportation money failed.

Failed

Index this! HB 5, providing for automatic inflation increases in the state gas tax, had the House speaker's endorsement and committee approval, then died. Move to create a local-option gas tax passed House, expired in Senate.

Eyes in the sky. Several attempts failed to reverse the 2003 bill allowing cities to write tickets for moving violations caught by a camera, not a cop.

Off the road again. Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, dropped bid to name part of Texas 130 for Willie Nelson after some Republicans objected.

Bike clearance. Bill would have mandated 3 feet of clearance when passing a bicycle on the road.

Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com

Krusee: "TxDOT is as happy as can be!"

Roads of Texas' future will be paved with tolls

June 4, 2005
Ben Wear, Staff
Austin American-Statesman Copyright 2005

If a cartographer could somehow represent the state's toll road debate over the past two years on a Texas map, you would see a series of periodic bursts of flame.

There's the flare-up in Austin in late 2003 over an attempt to make U.S. 183 a toll road. Then a starburst on Texas 249 near Houston and explosions on Texas 6 near College Station and Texas 121 in the Metroplex over proposed toll conversions. A consistent slow burn from El Paso over pressure to create toll roads, and an ever-spreading series of rural brush fires near the invisible lines of the Trans -Texas Corridor . And then, of course, a bright flash from last July, when local officials approved seven more toll roads in Austin.

But if that same map and its time line extended through May 30 of this year, the area near 11th Street and Congress Avenue in Austin with that pink granite dome would be strangely dark. For while the Texas Department of Transportation's aggressive use since 2003 of its newfound power to create toll roads stirred up the public, the legislative session that just ended was mostly devoid of passion on the issue.

And the transportation law that emerged, despite some concessions to rural and urban concerns about tolls, by and large confirmed that the state's official policy for building major new or expanded highways is that they will almost always be toll roads. Lawmakers, whether they intended to or not, likewise buttressed that two-year-old policy by what they didn't do: pass a gasoline tax increase.

"The session went from being disastrous to being just fantastic," said state Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Williamson County, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee and a toll road supporter who sponsored HB 2702. That hefty catch-all transportation bill passed just minutes before a midnight May 29 death knell mandated by legislative rules.

"TxDOT is as happy as can be," Krusee said.

The Legislature addressed the highly emotional issue of taking free roads and making them toll roads. These so-called "conversions" would require a public vote, and the Transportation Department will no longer be able to take a road under construction as a free road (such as U.S. 183 in Northwest Austin) and at the last moment dub it a toll road. But the exceptions associated with the new law -- if a project adds expressway lanes with tolls but also has a number of free frontage lanes equal to what existed before, it will not be a conversion -- mean that none of the controversial proposed toll roads in Austin will come up for a public vote.

Beyond that, Gov. Rick Perry, who signed the 2003 law making conversions legal but would have to approve any in the future, has said he opposes them now. So does just about any politician or appointed transportation official you ask, now that angry crowds across the state have condemned the practice. No actual conversions have occurred.

So the changes approved may amount to putting a deadbolt on an already closed and locked barn door.

But the Legislature in other ways moved the ball well ahead on tolls. It raised from $800 million a year to $2 billion a year a ceiling on how much gas tax money the Transportation Department can spend on "toll equity," essentially the cash-on-hand downpayments that are combined with money borrowed on the bond market to pay for toll roads. Tolls then go to pay back the bond investors and maintain the turnpike, with excess money available for other projects.

Raising that toll equity cap, at least in theory, might leave little money for any "free" metro improvements. This year, the department had less than $2 billion to spend overall on new urban construction, including non-toll roads.

The news was better for rural opponents of the Trans -Texas Corridor , Gov. Rick Perry's proposed 4,000-mile, $180 billion network of intrastate turnpikes, rail lines and utility corridors . Krusee said that as HB 2702 hung in the balance, he heard from corridor opponents such as the Texas Farm Bureau and Fayette County-based CorridorWatch saying that they were rooting for its passage.

The legislation, after all, had elements they had requested. But the rural critics would have preferred for the Legislature to deep-six the corridor entirely, or at the very least require that the conglomerations of roads and rails be considerably narrower than the 1,200 feet that the Transportation Department has suggested in mock-ups of the corridor . Such a limit -- 800 feet was a popular number early in the session -- did not become law.

"The problem was that our people did not tell us to fix the corridor . Our policy was to oppose the corridor ," said Steve Pringle, legislative director for the Texas Farm Bureau. "While we're not completely satisfied with what we got, the legislative process is always a compro- mise."

As you may have heard, however, compromise was not in the air this session when it came to taxes.

Lawmakers rejected two attempts to get more money for transportation the traditional way, by raising the state's 20-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax for the first time since 1991. Krusee carried a bill, HB 5, that would have tied the tax rate to inflation, which means it would gone up perhaps a half-cent-a-gallon per year. For the typical driver, that's less than $5 a year.

But even that modest increase, which would have raised just $50 million or so in the first year but more significant amounts over time, was too much for the tax-phobic House. After being passed by a committee and getting House Speaker Tom Craddick's emphatic endorsement, support evaporated, and Krusee allowed it to die without a floor vote.

A second measure to create a local-option gas tax increase, subject to a public vote, was attached to a larger finance bill and cleared the House. But it died in the Senate.

So, at least for now, tolls seem to be the only significant new source of road and rail money that the Legislature will countenance.

"I just wish that 20 cents a gallon would get everything we need done," said state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, who pushed for limits on the Trans -Texas Corridor . "But it's not going to."

Kolkhorst says that perhaps we've seen only brushfires so far. That when the many toll roads discussed over the past two years start to become actual toll roads with actual charges to drivers, legislators may gain a new appreciation for other -- and older -- ways of paying for roads. Perhaps with that in mind, Todd Staples, R-Palestine, Krusee's opposite number as head of the Senate's transportation panel, sponsored a successful bill to create a commission to study road financing.

That nine-member panel, if Perry signs the bill, would have four legislators on it, probably including Krusee and Staples. It would also be required to produce a report and recommendations before the 2007 session.

Given Staples' and Krusee's comments this week and in the past, however, no one should hold their breath waiting for a report that trashes tolls and extols taxes.

"Some people in the (House) believe that highways should be treated like utilities," Kolkhorst said. "The more you use, the more you pay. I'm not ready to go there. But I'm old-fashioned."

bwear@statesman.com; 445-3698

(box)

There oughta be a law

A summary of transportation bills that went the distance this session — and some that crashed. Gov. Rick Perry has signed only a handful of these bills, but has given no hint of coming vetoes.

Passed

Toll roads and railroads — House Bill 2702 limits toll-road conversions; allows $2 billion per year spending of tax money on toll roads; provides more protection for landowners and limits commercial development on Trans -Texas Corridor ; allows the state to use comprehensive contracts with private companies to build and run railroads. Senate Bill 1713 will create a nine-member commission, including four legislators, to study and report back to Legislature on how we pay for roads.

Capital Metro trifecta — Various bills lengthened terms for board members of the Austin transit agency, allowed toll agencies to waive bus tolls, and allowed the transit agency to hold rail elections more than one every two years.

Scenic Texas 130? — HB 2702 was amended to ban billboards on the toll road under construction east of Austin.

One way to move a railroad — HB 1546 would create a fund to relocate freight rail lines from urban to rural areas, but only if voters approve a constitutional amendment in November. And the fund would have money only if a future legislature puts some there.

TxDOCKED — Texas Mobility Fund for toll roads lost $250 million in coming two years (to help general fund spending) and $106 million of gas tax money will go for school buses. But other measures latching on to transportation money failed.

Failed

Index this! HB 5, providing for automatic inflation increases in the state gas tax, had the House speaker's endorsement and committee approval, then died. Move to create a local-option gas tax passed House, expired in Senate.

Eyes in the sky. Several attempts failed to reverse the 2003 bill allowing cities to write tickets for moving violations caught by a camera, not a cop.

Off the road again. Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, dropped bid to name part of Texas 130 for Willie Nelson after some Republicans objected.

Bike clearance. Bill would have mandated 3 feet of clearance when passing a bicycle on the road.
Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com

Trans-Texas Corridor in Montgomery

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Part of Trans-Texas Corridor may be in Montgomery County, TxDOT officials say

06/01/2005
By: Howard Roden, Courier staff
THE COURIER Copyright 2005

The Texas Department of Transportation is in the process of identifying preliminary routes for its proposed Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor, some of which could be located in Montgomery County.

According to Gaby Garcia, spokeswoman for TxDOT's Turnpike Authority Division, TxDOT will conduct approximately 38 public meetings this summer, at which time the proposed routes would be unveiled. A public meeting is tentatively scheduled in Montgomery County in August, she said, although the date and time have not yet been determined.

The initial study areas of the I-69/TTC corridor, which is to extend from Mexico to northeast Texas, range from 20 to 100 miles in width. A number of preliminary routes, possibly in excess of 20, will be identified and each of those routes will be approximately four miles in width.
Original plans called for the corridor to closely follow the existing U.S. 59 roadway, but a required right-of-way of 1,200 feet to accommodate freeways, freight railway lines, high-speed commuter railways and infrastructure for utilities make such a route through Harris and eastern Montgomery counties physically and financially prohibitive.

"Definitely it has to go around, and not through, downtown Houston," Garcia said. "Because of the sheer development, I don't know where you could find any additional room for expansion without taking down existing businesses and entire neighborhoods. The sheer cost would be enormous."

That is why TxDOT has looked to the west for an alternative. The agency has expanded its study area to include Austin, Grimes, Houston, Montgomery, Waller, Walker, Washington, and Zepata counties.

Although it was believed the I-69/TTC corridor would skirt Montgomery County, city of Montgomery Mayor Edith Moore received a letter from TxDOT Executive Director Michael Behrens dated May 9 informing Moore that the western portion of the county is in the initial study area.

"I would not say we have not given it quite a bit of discussion," Moore said Tuesday. "We realize that it (the corridor) is going to be a long time off, but it is certainly something we'll be aware of and will watch.

"We will be very interested in what takes place at that meeting."

The meetings scheduled for this summer represent the second round of public meetings for the I-69/TTC project. Eleven were held in 2004, but none were conducted in Montgomery County.
Even if a preliminary route were selected within a year, a second environmental study lasting three to five years must be conducted before TxDOT could received the green light on construction, Garcia said.

"Because of the size of the project, it is much more efficient to narrow down the (environmental) study in two steps instead of one," she said.

By then, the increasing amount of residential development in western Montgomery County could make it more difficult to select a route through that area, said Precinct 1 Commissioner Mike Meador. His precinct includes significant portions of western and far northwest Montgomery County.

Meador is aware of several residential developers looking at property in far western Montgomery County, including a 650-acre tract between FM 1486 and the Grimes County line.
"Right now, in the next four to five years, you'll see a tremendous amount of development in the rural areas of this county we haven't seen before," he said. "If they (TxDOT) are seriously considering doing this thing around here, they need to quickly identify where the corridor is going to be, because all I'm seeing is more and more subdivisions popping up west of Montgomery."

County Judge Alan B. Sadler believes only a "small portion" of Montgomery County is involved inTxDOT's study area. Grimes and Waller counties were "relative wilderness" when compared to the economic growth of Montgomery County, he said.

"I'm not really concerned," he said. "The corridor would be much less costly in terms of right-of -way acquisition and eminent domain costs in those counties."
Garcia said TxDOT would make the final decision on the I-69/TTC corridor after receiving input from the public meetings, local government and civic officials, federal and state environmental agencies and TxDOT engineers. TxDOT's choice must then be presented to the Federal Highway Administration for final approval, she said.

Even with the corridor likely to be built west of Houston, Garcia said an "interstate spur" must be constructed to allow I-69/TTC traffic to flow in and out of the nation's fourth-largest city.
"There's going to be a connection between the corridor and the cities or it doesn't serve a purpose," she said. "It might involve existing suburban rail and other freeways, but the corridor cannot bypass the metropolitan area completely. The corridor is not designed to be a non-stop route from Mexico through Texas to other states. There has to be access to cities along the route."

Howard Roden can be reached at hroden@mail.hcnonline.net.

The Courier: online

"If you think NAFTA has been awful, wait'll you get a wafta of CAFTA."

CAFTA is worse than NAFTA

A corporate plan to trump our laws and the Constitution

June 2005

Edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer
Volume 7, Number 6
Hightower Lowdown
Copyright 2005

Breaking news: The Lowdown has learned from inside sources that the president will soon deliver a major address to We the People— and it will be a stunner.

In summary, Bush will call for congressional approval of a sweeping protection program for global corporate investors that will (1) give foreign corporations greater legal rights than we citizens have in our own country; (2) allow multinational corporations to override our laws (national, state, and local) whenever U.S. law conflicts with their profit expectations; and (3) usurp the Constitutional authority of U.S. courts by unilaterally transferring jurisdiction over these corporatestate conflicts out of our judicial system into superjudicial, supranational, corporate-friendly, global-trade tribunals which operate in secrecy and are even authorized to overrule U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

OK, I'm fibbing. Not about any of the substance of George's corporate protection scheme (it's all too real), but about his giving a speech about it.

If any president openly proposed such a direct assault on our democratic rights and national sovereignty, people would storm the White House with pitchforks and torches, demanding impeachment for treason. So instead, Bush's assault is buried in the arcane, corporate-written language of the latest "free trade" scam, called CAFTA—the Central America Free Trade Agreement.

If you think NAFTA has been awful, wait'll you get a wafta of CAFTA. Not only does it extend all of the job-busting, farm-killing, environment-exploiting provisions of NAFTA to six more countries (Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua), but it also expands the ability of foreign corporations to assert their profit interests over the people's interests, both in the U.S. and in the six Latino nations.

The Bushites have declared that CAFTA is their number-one trade priority, and their PR hucksters are spinning faster than a Maytag to try to convince the media and Congress that this deal is beyond good – it's superfabuloso!

Like hawking a Veg-a-Matic on latenight TV, they're promising that CAFTA can do it all: "You'll marvel at how fast it will increase U.S. exports, spreading gleaming manufacturing jobs to every nook and cranny in our country, and you'll also gasp in disbelief at how this wonder-deal will simultaneously cause prosperity and democracy to burst forth like spring flowers among our good neighbors to the south, thus putting a chicken in every pot and a Hummer in every Central American garage."

If this hypercharged sales job sounds vaguely familiar, it's because the Powers That Be were doing the exact same song and dance 11 years ago when they were hanging NAFTA around our necks.

As we've learned the hard way, they lied.

Far from generating a surging trade surplus and a flood of new jobs, as promised, that deal has eliminated more than two million US jobs and turned our $1.7 billion trade surplus with Mexico into a $45 billion deficit. Meanwhile, in Mexico, the availability of stable, full-time jobs has shrunk, and the pay and working conditions of most Mexican workers has deteriorated.

That other sucking sound

When Ross Perot opposed NAFTA in his '92 presidential run, he famously (and accurately) said that the coming job loss for U.S. workers would be so massive that it would create "a giant sucking sound."

CAFTA will add to that sound, for it contains the same NAFTA incentives that led U.S. manufacturers to rush to Northern Mexico's notorious maquiladora strip in the 1990s.

But, while most of the debate in Washington is over this issue of jobs, there is another much larger sucking sound that the mass media has ignored entirely and that Bush & Company hope you and Congress don't notice until it's too late. This is the sound of our people's sovereignty already being stealthily swallowed up by NAFTA—a vacuuming up that CAFTA would switch to high gear.

Corporate protectionism

Few Americans know that at the core of these scams are provisions establishing new, extraordinary rights for global corporate investors to establish properties (including intangible properties) in any of the member nations and to be "protected" from environmental, labor, health, or other regulations that We the People might choose to put on the way they operate. These provisions give "rights" to multinationals that people and independent businesses in our own country don't have.

Many Congress critters who voted for NAFTA now say that, gosh, they hadn't really read the bill, and, golly, no one told them about Chapter 11.

This is the section of NAFTA that gives foreign corporations radical power that never existed in law before, including empowering corporate owners to use a private enforcement mechanism to impose their profit interests over all other interests.

For example, if a Mexican or Canadian corporation doesn't like one of our environmental restrictions, it can file a Chapter 11 action demanding that either the restriction be eliminated or that our federal government make a huge cash payment as compensation. Such a case would go before a private NAFTA tribunal, which—incredible as it sounds—has the authority to overturn our public laws and regulations or to force payment of our tax dollars to the foreign complainant.

This is not a story of "it could happen," but a story that is happening.

Methanex, a Canadian company that makes a component of a gasoline additive that has been banned in California, has taken the California ban to a NAFTA tribunal. Methanex is demanding that it be awarded nearly a billion dollars for its loss of business due to the ban. Under NAFTA's rules, the State of California has no standing and cannot take any part in the case. It must rely on federal lawyers to defend the state regulation.

Even if Methanex doesn't end up collecting the full sum in this case, NAFTA has elevated this (and any) self-serving corporation to the level of a sovereign nation, on a par with the government of the United States of America. The corporation already has forced U.S. taxpayers to spend $3 million on this one case.

Likewise, various U.S. corporations are using NAFTA's Chapter 11 to sue the governments of Mexico and Canada. UPS, for example, is claiming that the delivery of parcels by Canada's postal service is an illegal public subsidy under the rules of NAFTA, undermining UPS's market share there. Thus, says UPS, Canada's taxpayers owe it $160 million. So far, 42 corporations have filed NAFTA cases against laws and regulations set by supposedly sovereign governments in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico—making demands that total more than $28 billion from taxpayers.

Now comes CAFTA, fully loaded with all of NAFTA's astonishing, antidemocratic, procorporate provisions. But CAFTA goes where even NAFTA did not dare tread. It would expand the scope of corporate protectionism through two provisions.

One declares that the corporate investments to be protected from public actions include not only real property, but also the owners' "assumption of risk" and their "expectation of gain or profit." Hello. This officially sanctions corporate socialism, making the taxpayers liable for corporate business risks and responsible for the profits its owners "expected" to make.

Second, a little technicality in Article 10.12 of CAFTA broadens the corporate reach dramatically. Under NAFTA, a U.S. corporation cannot file a case with these tribunals against our own national, state, or local laws. But CAFTA rips a multibillion-dollar loophole into that prohibition. It would allow the foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations to file such cases against national, state, or local government actions here at home. Unlike smaller businesses, global corporations have subsidiaries everywhere, so this gives them a right that our hometown companies don't have. Phillip Morris, for example, could use a Central American subsidiary to challenge U.S. tobacco laws in a CAFTA tribunal.

Assault on the states

It's incredible to me that the media continues to label the reign of the Bushites "conservative" when they've demonstrated again and again that they are Big Government extremists, constantly working to usurp state authority and centralize government power in the executive branch. Now, with CAFTA, they're using trade policy to bend our state governments not only to federal whim, but also to the agenda of global corporate power.

Their point of attack is the usually mundane procurement policies that each state sets to govern its purchases of such stuff and services as vehicles, office spaces, uniforms, legal advice, and computers.

In September 2003, Bush's trade representative quietly sent an official letter to every governor. Using innocuous-sounding bureaucratic language, the letter asked that the governors assist the United States of America "in our trade negotiations." It specifically requested their "voluntary commitment…to be covered under the government procurement provisions of new [trade] agreements." The letter assured the governors that this was no big deal, flatly stating, "Your agreement would not require [your state] to change its current government procurement practices."

Apparently, gullibility is a gubernatorial requirement in 28 states (now 27, New Hampshire rescinded its commitment May13), for that's how many governors signed on to this flimflam, blithely committing their states to conform their purchasing policies to international rules that, at the time, were not even written!

When the CAFTA text was released last year, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch sent a memo to state legislators and attorneys general— a group of officials that had not even been notified, much less consulted, either by Bush's trade office or by their own governors. The memo was a shocker, revealing that the White House had lied to the governors. Chapter 9, Article 9-2, does indeed require any state that signed on to make its purchasing policies conform to CAFTA rules. Forbidden policies include:

Buy America. Signatory states cannot give preference in their purchases to local companies or to Made-in-the-USA products, nor can they refuse to spend their tax dollars on companies that are moving a state's jobs offshore.

Green purchases. Specifications that products contain recycled content, that food be mercury-free, or that energy come from renewable sources are forbidden, as are requirements for certain environmental or consumer-safety labels.

Corporate record. Corporate suppliers cannot be disqualified from state purchasing contracts because of their human rights, labor, or environmental practices. Even the use of sweatshop and child labor must be overlooked.

Living wage/prevailing wage. States cannot require contractors to pay fair wages or to treat their workers and unions fairly.

Human Rights. States cannot refuse contracts with corporations from countries that suppress workers and citizens, even countries that are brutal dictatorships.

It's awful enough that Bush & Company are proposing to commit our federal government to such antidemocratic terms, but it is absurd that governors would so meekly go over the same cliff, surrendering their state's sovereignty and the very principle of federalism. And lest you think that a state can simply ignore the CAFTA rules after signing on the dotted line, any CAFTA nation can take a signatory state to a trade tribunal for failure to comply—and state officials are not allowed inside to defend their policies. It gets worse: If the state loses the case, our federal government is obligated by CAFTA to use all of its Constitutional powers (such as cutting off state funding) to force the state to comply with the tribunal's ruling.

Holy Thomas Paine! These governors are giving up their state's authority to decide how and with whom their tax dollars are spent, transferring these basic democratic decisions to an unelected, unapproachable foreign trade entity created by and for global corporations. This is the surrender of state sovereignty without a shot being fired, a bill being introduced, a hearing being held, an election being called, a public discussion being generated—nothing…except some gooberheaded governors mindlessly responding to a White House letter. That's embarrassing.

The good news is that nine of 28 governors who had signed on to CAFTA have now rescinded their agreement, either because they finally read the thing, or because legislative leaders and grassroots groups kicked their butts. In Maryland, when Governor Robert Ehrlich refused to withdraw his pledge to George, the legislature passed a bill revoking it for him, while also stating explicitly that binding the state to an agreement with foreign powers is a legislative function. Ehrlich vetoed the bill, but the legislature promptly overrode his veto.

Where's the media?

There are many more time bombs buried in the dense text of CAFTA, yet the media powers either are willfully ignorant of them or have chosen not to bother us citizens with the information. Perhaps they're too busy with their nonstop titillations about Michael Jackson's Neverland capers to pay attention to the slippage of democratic control here in the homeland.

If any of the inquiring minds of the media wanted to give you a heads up, not only would they dig into Articles 9 and 10, but also Article 11. This is a convoluted provision that appears at first glance to exempt local government services (such as education, energy, and health care) from privatization bids by foreign corporations—but, in fact, does the exact opposite.

It says that if a local government function in the U.S. or the other six nations is in competition with private firms that provide such service, then the government must allow all corporations—specifically including foreign corporations—to bid on privatizing that public service. You don't have to be Joseph Pulitzer to realize that this is a rather important story with huge ramifications for local governments and democratic sovereignty. But… silence from the incurious media.

Article 11.8 (2) is another explosion of democratic control, for it allows the secretive trade tribunals to render judgement on whether any particular government regulation in the service sector is "necessary." Requirements to protect the privacy of our personal information, for example, could be subject to challenge by foreign corporations under this proviso, allowing a CAFTA tribunal to decide if such a requirement is necessary, regardless of the fact that We the People had already decided through our legislative process that it is necessary.

There are also provisions that could empower foreign corporations (or the foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations) to challenge such democratically decided policies as our national law banning tobacco ads targeted to children, our state laws establishing renewable energy goals, or our local zoning laws to restrict the size and location of big-box stores. Excuse me for having expectations of journalism, but wouldn't this assault on democratic decision-making seem to be a worthy subject of inquiry?

We don't hafta

W and his corporate buddies are pushing with all their might to get Congress to rubberstamp CAFTA, with Bush even wrapping this antidemocratic scheme in the rhetoric of freedom. But it might not work this time, for people in our country and in Latin America are catching on to the ugly reality behind such high-sounding rhetoric."

"Free trade" is now a bitter epithet in Latino countries—a euphemism for corporate exploitation, expropriation, and domination, mostly by US-based corporations. CAFTA might be non-news here, but it has become a political flash point in the very nations that Bush points to. For example, while Bush recently stood with the president of Guatemala and talked glowingly about freedom, he said nothing about the thousands of Guatemalans who have poured into the streets in protest. Far from responding with expressions of democratic rights, the army opened fire, killing two and wounding nine.

In Honduras, when the congress rushed through the ratification of CAFTA, more than a thousand angry demonstrators surrounded the capitol building, causing the terrified legislators to flee. "We chased them out, and then we went into the chambers ourselves," said one of the protest leaders. "Then we constituted ourselves as the congress of true representatives of the Honduran people, and voted to scrap congress's ratification." Likewise, opposition in Costa Rica is so intense that the country's president now says that he won't even submit the pact for ratification until it's reviewed and approved by a citizens panel.

Meanwhile, back in our own capitol, George doesn't have the votes to ram CAFTA down our throats, or he would've already done it. He signed it in May 2004—a year ago— and can submit it to Congress whenever he chooses, but this deal is so stinky that members he can usually count on to haul corporate water are balking. Most of the corporateinclined Democrats are just saying no, and many of his own party's Congress critters—especially some from the South—are getting such local heat that they've backed away.

But the Bushites and the lobbyists are out in full force trying to bribe, cajole, and kneecap enough members to try to squeak out a corporate victory. The hope of a people's victory relies on—what else— the people. As Sam Adams put it at the founding: "If ever a time should come when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."

© 2005 Public Intelligence,Inc. : www.hightowerlowdown.org

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House Bill 2702 approved by House

Turnpike system changes headed into home stretch

May 30, 2005

Ben Wear,Staff
Austin American-Statesman Copyright 2004

The torturous path to passage of the session's main transportation effort appeared to be nearing an end Sunday as the Senate approved its 160-plus pages of toll road and Trans -Texas Corridor changes.

And just before midnight, the House approved the compromise version of House Bill 2702 May 30, 2005 , crafted by a House-Senate conference committee. By rule, the House had to make a decision by midnight.

The state's headlong rush to toll roads will see new limits in response to concerns raised over the past two years, but also new license.

The legislation ensures access from most significant crossroads to the proposed Trans -Texas Corridor system of intrastate turnpikes, limits commercial facilities in the corridor turnpikes to gas stations and convenience stories, and requires public elections before a free road can be converted to a toll road.

But it also dramatically raises the ceiling for how much gas tax money the state can use on toll roads, essentially allowing all of the allocation for metropolitan areas to go to turnpikes. For toll roads other than those in the Trans -Texas Corridor , it specifically allows the state to acquire private land and then build hotels, restaurants and other commercial facilities on that land.

HB 2702, requires private operators of state-owned toll roads to get approval of their "methodology" for setting toll rates. But it does not require the Texas Transportation Commission to approve the actual rates.

"In other states, having the commission come back every time there needs to be a change in toll rates has been problematic," said state Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Williamson County, the House sponsor of the legislation. "Because of that history, the bond market has been very wary of getting involved in a project where a political body has to set every rate."

The measure was resurrected Sunday after being declared dead Saturday evening.

Krusee, who chairs the House Transportation Committee, and his counterpart on the Senate's transportation panel, Sen. Todd Staples, R-Palestine, seemingly had reached an impasse on differences between versions of the legislation passed in the House and Senate.

Angry that the Senate seemed to be holding up the measure over what he considered picayune items, Krusee ordered a version printed late Saturday afternoon that had the approval of House conferees alone.

The plan, Staples said, "was on the dark side of the moon for more than four hours."

What emerged on the other side, according to Staples, "violated the principles that we had all agreed upon," including the absence of property rights protections for landowners along the Trans -Texas Corridor that had been approved in the House.

Staples and his staff worked into the night red-penciling the document, and Krusee agreed to the final version Sunday morning.

But then Krusee and Staples, because the final bill measure did not meet a Saturday midnight deadline, had to persuade two-thirds of their colleagues to override rules to allow the bill to come up for a final vote in each chamber.

bwear@statesman.com; 445-3698

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Toll road legislation

The version of House Bill 2702, the main transportation legislation of the session, that the Senate and House considered Sunday contained these provisions:

Toll roads

* Requires public elections for converting a free road to a toll road.

* Stipulates that conversion is required if a road was not designated a toll road at the time a construction contract was awarded and, post-construction, there will not be at least as many non-tolled lanes as before.

* Allows the state to invest as much as $2 billion a year in gas tax money on toll roads.

* Requires private toll road operators hired by the state to get the Texas Transportation Commission's OK on its 'methodology' for setting or raising tolls but does not require such approval for the actual toll rates.

* Allows states to acquire private land on toll road right of way for a 'gas station, garage, store, hotel, restaurant, or other commercial facility.'

* Prohibits the state from requiring a local community to build toll roads to receive money from the Texas Mobility Fund.

Trans -Texas Corridor

* Limits commercial facilities on corridor to gas stations and convenience stores in the median of the highway, at least 10 miles from exits or entrances.

* Allows compensation to rural land owners if a road project prevents 'reasonable access' to a portion of the owner's land. In other areas, such land would have to be inaccessible to trigger compensation.

* Prohibits pumping groundwater from corridor right of way to use outside the corridor land.

Miscellaneous

* Allows Capital Metro to hold a referendum on commuter rail expansion in May or August. Current law allows such elections only in November of even-numbered years.

* Prohibits billboards on Texas 130.

* Allows state to award contracts to private companies to design, build and operate railroad facilities.

* Transfers all regulatory authority over railroads from the Texas Railroad Commission to the Texas Department of Transportation.

Austin American-Statesman: www.statesman.com