TexDOT Elimination Urged

TexDOT Elimination Urged

Claims that agency is 'too corrupt' to be fixed

By Jim Forsyth
Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Toll road opponents today will ask the Sunset Advisory Committee of the Texas Legislature to abolish the Texas Department of Transportation, saying the agency has become too corrupt and too dysfunctional to fix, 1200 WOAI news reports.

"We want to see elected leadership at the helm of Tex-DOT," says long time toll road opponent Terri Hall, the founder of the citizen action group Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom.

"We are done with this unelected beaurocracy that is just an arm of private road building companies and the lackeys of this governor."

The idea of eliminating TexDOT and establishing a new agency to manage the state's highways is not beyond the realm of possibility. Some of the 15 members of the Sunset Commission have expressed support for replacing the current Texas Transportation Commission with a new agency, headed by one Commissioner appointed and accountable tot he Legislature.

Hall says she will show the committee 'secretly recorded video' which she says shows TexDOT commissioners hiring lobbyists and guiding lobbying campaigns to convince local officials to back the idea of building the Trans Texas Corridor and other toll roads. It is a clear violation of state law for a state government agency to hire registered lobbyists.

"We have a transportation commissioner admitting that they have hired registered lobbyists," Hall says. "They have hired at least five registered lobbyists, on the taxpayer dole, and up to $100,000 a month was what they were paying these lobbyists."

Hall and other toll road opponents say the lobbyists were hired not necessarily the public, but to sway local transportation planning agencies, called Metropolitan Planning Organizations, to support the construction of toll roads in their specific regions.

Hall said she will also claim that the plans for building toll lanes on U.S. 281 in north Bexar County is also a violation of toll road guidelines which specify that 'existing highways' should not be tolled. Hall says what the 281 North toll road plan would do is rebuild the highway and leave what are essentially the access roads non tolled. She says that flies in the face of promises made by elected officials and mandates issued by the legislature against tolling 'existing roadways,' because the main lanes of U.S. 281, which are now free lanes, would be tolled under the project given the okay last December.
http://radio.woai.com/cc-common/news/se ... le=3956127

As gas tax collections drop, we will see these vultures make more and more toll roads. We pay to build and maintain the roads, why should we have to pay to drive on them??