Kings of The Road
February 28th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Highways for sale or rent
Tolls set at whatever cents
Sixteen lanes and no exits
Can’t get off for cigarettes.
After a few months behind closed doors
TXDOT’s gonna let the billions pour
They’ll be men of means by all means
Kings of the road.
****
The folks over at TXDOT have got to be feeling like they’ve been “kicked in the asphalt,” as one lawmaker gingerly put it this week.
In hearing after hearing, they’ve been savaged by legislators who’ve been savaged by their own constituents for the toll roads being planned for the state.
Ric Williamson, the grizzled chairman of Transportation Commission and an ex-legislator himself, has taken the worst flogging. Right about now, Williamson should be popping handfuls of Rush Limbaugh pills. Instead, he resembles an old lion resting on the veld, digesting a belly full of fresh springbok. He’s courteous, cordial, and still coherent.
Williamson seems have resigned himself to the notion that these next few months are going to be a wild ride. But the real test of his self control will come tomorrow when the Legislature hosts its first public hearing ever on the Trans-Texas Corridor. Presiding over the hearing will be Dallas Republican John Carona, chair of the Senate’s Transportation and Homeland Security Committee.
Williamson acted like a coy schoolgirl a couple of weeks ago when Carona asked him if he would be willing to meet with him. The “artful dodging,” as Carona put it, led to an ugly confrontation. Williamson has apparently decided that bluntness is the best policy. On Tuesday, he delivered some startling information to the House Appropriations committee
Under rapid-fire questioning from Dan Gattis, a Republican from Georgetown, Williamson revealed that TXDOT’s paid roughly $30 million dollars in legal fees to the Nossaman Guthner Knox & Elliot law firm in Los Angeles.
“They’re a unique firm,” Williamson said.
“I’m sure they are, Ric,” responded Gattis. “What’s their hourly fee?”
“In excess of $500 an hour.”
That led to a collective gasp followed by speculation about what law schools the Nossaman lawyers attended.
TXDOT officials also admittted that the department has spent about $90 million dollars for environmental studies, preliminary engineering work and public hearings related to the TTC-35 and the TTC-69 corridors.
Those numbers will undoubtedly add fuel to tomorrow’s hearing. Lawmakers say the Trans-Texas Corridor was sold as a way to get highways built quickly without any tax dollars. But the $90 million only confirms their suspicions that plenty of public money is being used to underwrite the private ventures. (Don’t they remember the old saying about no free lunches?)
Lawmakers are also concerned about the non-compete clauses in the toll-road contracts. Those clauses could force the state to compensate a developer if a free road was constructed that pulled traffic off a tolled highway.
“Is there any way we could put this horse back in the barn?” one legislator asked plaintively.
Sounding more like a mobster than a king, Williamson snapped his fingers and said, “We can take those guys out just like that.”
April 30th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
[…] Kings of The RoadTexas Observer - Instead, he resembles an old lion resting on the veld, digesting a gut filled with fresh impala. He s courteous, cordial, and still coherent. Williamson seems have resigned himself to the notion that these next few months are going to be a wild ride […]