Friends,

The all-day public hearing before the Senate Transportation Committee in Austin concluded today about 5 p.m. Chairman Carona asked testifiers to address tolls, the Trans Texas Corridor and / or public-private partnerships. Here are points I made in my 3-minute presentation:

* The legislature should stop bleeding our two highway building funds for other purposes: the State Highway Fund that is filled by our gas taxes and the Texas Mobility fund is filled with money raised by bond sales. Both funds are supposed to be used to build and maintain Texas roads, but have been siphoned-off to pay for state employee pay raises, Medicaid ambulances, etc.

* The Texas legislature's HB 3588 passed in 2005 allows for the sale of our infrastructure, but the sale is NOT a good investment for taxpayers who currently own that infrastructure.

* Texas' tradition is to pay-as-you-go and build what we can afford. No one has made a good case for the sale of Texas' taxpayer-owned infrastructure, ie Collin County's State Highway 121 that was just sold this week into a public-private partnership committing tolls collected for the next 50 years to the private investor.

* A State Audit revealed that the Texas Transportation Commission has done a terrible job presenting financial information about the Trans Texas Corridor.

* Allowing an appointed politician, the Transportation Commissioner, to negotiate toll rates with a private company, which is given the right to collect tolls is NOT a good idea. Two models of a public-private partnership of infrastructure in Indiana and Illinois reveal runaway toll escalation. It is too easy for the private investors to raise tolls in order to enhance their investment at YOUR expense.

* I encouraged the committee members to heed the Texas Dept. of Transportation's logo: Don't Mess With Texas. I reminded them that taxpayers will be happier if legislators reclaim our infrastructure assets, rather than sell those assets to the highest bidder who can then bilk us to drive on Texas roads.

Cathie Adams

BILL WOULD MAKE IT ILLEGAL TO BE ILLEGAL
Texas Senator Dan Patrick (R-Houston) introduced Senate Bill 773, which would make it illegal to be illegal in Texas. The bill would give police officers one more tool to detain and arrest persons who are suspected to be in violation of other laws. Upon passage, the penal code would be amended to define being illegal in Texas as criminal trespass, a Class B misdemeanor. The new classification could not be used as a primary offense, but it would be used to enhance an officer’s “reasonable suspicion to believe the person has committed or is committing a violation of another law of this state or federal law.”

Senator Patrick reports, “I patrolled the Valley with border sheriff deputies. I was outraged to learn law enforcement did not have the tools to detain a person for being in our state illegally even when the officer had reason to believe the person had committed another offense.” In addition to the enhancement opportunities made available through this bill, arresting authorities are required to fingerprint persons who are in violation of this act. Additionally, law enforcement is allowed to transfer, at the agency’s discretion, violators to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for processing.

Bills Filed to Kill the Trans-Texas Corridor
Two bills have been filed by Rep. Lois W. Kolkhorst (R-Brenham), which would terminate the state's controversial Trans-Texas Corridor highway proposal. If passed, House Bill 1881 will repeal the Trans-Texas Corridor from the transportation code, effectively killing the proposal by removing the enabling legislation which would have served as the foundation for any future corridor project. "Plenty of people share my concerns about these private toll roads and how they'll threaten communities, violate our property rights, and create an unregulated transportation monopoly,” said Rep. Kolkhorst. “My bill allows Texas to scrap the Trans-Texas Corridor plan and start over."

Additionally, Kolkhorst filed House Bill 1880, which prohibits any public pension fund from investing in a private toll road project, such as the Trans-Texas Corridor. The bill cuts off billions of dollars of funding that private toll road vendors, both foreign and domestic, would attempt to use in order to raise equity.