The Texas Observer

The State Auditor’s Office has found some huge holes in TXDOT’s grandiose plan to pave the state with a network of superhighways collectively known as the Trans-Texas Corridor.

TTC-35, the first leg of the network, will stretch from Oklahoma to the Mexican border. State auditors claim that stretch of pavement alone will cost $105 billion. Using that figure, the grassroots organization, Corridor Watch, calculates the entire network will cost a staggering $745 billion.

State auditors sampled 32 invoices connected with TTC-35 and found errors totaling $4.3 million on 21 of those invoices. The errors dealt mainly dealt with the misallocation of costs. But with the project still in its infancy, that’s not a comforting piece of news.

Although the TTC is being hawked to the public and lawmakers as a risk-free, entirely private venture, Texas taxpayers have already shelled out millions for environmental and engineering studies and could be on the hook for millions more.

The report also lays out some of the troubling aspects of the contract between TXDOT and its private partner, Cintra-Zachry. In addition to the much-discussed non-compete clause, TXDOT’s apparently going to have to foot the bill for the collection and enforcement of tolls. What’s more, it’s also going to have to reimburse Cintra-Zachry for all those toll revenues associated with “non-paying riders.”

After reading this report, lawmakers should be asking themselves who’s really getting the free ride.

Not TXDOT, Ric Williamson, the chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, assured lawmakers this morning.

The pugnacious Williamson made another appearance before the House Transportation Committee to discuss the state’s toll-road-building binge. Accompanying him was Geoffrey S. Yarema, a soft-spoken attorney from LA who was recently dubbed a “Super Lawyer” by a California magazine and has become the go-to man for state agencies wanting to jump into the toll-road biz. (We put in a call to Yarema’s office to get his hourly billing rate and were informed he’d buzz us back just as soon as his plane touched down in LA.)
Yarema gave the lawmakers a dense, highly technical tutorial on the benefits of contracts known as comprehensive development agreements. Texas legislators are infuriated over several provisions in those contracts, including non-compete clauses which would discourage the state from building free roads that would compete with a tolled highway.

They’re also deeply concerned about the length of the contracts themselves, which currently are 50 to 70 years in length. TXDOT wants to make the contracts even longer, a concept that Yarema embraced. He yammered on about how the longterm contracts free up a lot of new money for developers in the form of “tax benefits.” Naturally, these tax bennies will be shared with the motorists who’ll be paying taxes and tolls.
TXDOT, which has an annual budget of $6 billion or so, has been accused of forcing toll roads down the throat of every local government agency in the state. But Williamson said that just ain’t so. The behemoth agency is more than willing to work with locals, he said. “This ain’t your Big Daddy TXDOT.”

Well, responded Nathan Macias, who represents District 73, where toll roads are extremely contentious, “Big Daddy’s not listening.”

The Texas Department of Transportation has hit another rough patch in the road. In a memo to state Sen. Royce West, a Dallas Democrat, the Legislative Budget Board says TXDOT violated state law by failing to report that it awarded a contract for more than $1 million to the Rodman Group, a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm. (The Rodman Group also received almost $500,000 more that was to be split among four subcontractors, including Garry Mauro, a Democrat and former Texas Land Commissioner, ViaNovo, Chad Bradley & Associates and the Federalist Group.) West and other senators questioned TXDOT officials extensively about the expenditures at a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing. Coby Chase, director of TXDOT’s government and business enterprises division, said the department hired the lobbyists because of the strong negative reaction it is receiving on its Trans-Texas Corridor project, a network of super-highways which will contain multiple lanes for trucks, cars, trains, and a swath of land for cable, pipelines and underground utilities. (With all that infrastructure, critics complain the TTC will make a heck of a target for terrorists, not to mention a fiery collision). Chase said the TTC, which will be one of the largest construction projects on the planet, has also required one of the world’s “largest public hearing processes.” He seemed genuinely puzzled by the overwhelmingly negative response to the department’s plan, which reveals a lot about the parallel universe in which TXDOT apparently lives. “It left a lot of scars,” confessed Chase. Well, sniffed one senator, “if you’re outreach leaves a lot of scars, then it hasn’t been efficient.”

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst shared the stage with Gov. Rick Perry at a “Pastor’s Policy Briefing” of the Texas Restoration Project on the night before they were inaugurated. Modeled after similar organizations that have sprung up in Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Florida and Minnesota, the Texas Restoration Project is designed to get pastors and congregations on the religious right involved in the political process. If Dewhurst runs for governor, he’ll be depending on organizations like this to help put him in the Governor’s Mansion.

About 1,500 pastors from around the state were scheduled to attend the briefing, but only about 700 showed up because of bad weather. The project picked up the bill for hotel, dinner and breakfast, a hefty tab that could run into thousands of dollars. The organizers of the Texas Restoration Project have consistently refused to say who the project’s
funders are.

In his speech, Dewhurst heaped praise upon the pastors, saying that without their support Texas would have been unable to pass laws aimed at curbing abortion and keeping prayer in the schools. But no mercy should be extended to child molesters, he said. “And God forbid, if these monsters molest a child a second time, prosecutors can seek the death penalty. Two strikes and you’re out forever.” The transcript from the speech follows.

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Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst were guest speakers at a Texas Restoration Project gathering held on Monday night at the Renaissance Austin Hotel. The Texas Restoration Project, modeled after the Ohio Restoration Project, is an organization that encourages pastors and their flock to be engaged in the political process. The funders are unknown and organizers refused to let an Observer reporter into the event. (See our upcoming issue for more on the story.) Nevertheless, Ted Royer, one of Perry’s spokesmen, e-mailed us a copy of the governor’s speech today. The following is the transcript:

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Is there no end to what those pesky multinationals want? They’ve already been given taxpayer-supported loans, grants and roads. Now they want to get the Tax Code amended so they won’t have to pay any income tax on the booty they’ll be hauling back to Spain, Australia, or Sweden. At last month’s Texas Department of Transportation commission meeting, Coby Chase, the director of the department’s Government and Business Enterprise Division, said, TxDot would be working to get tax laws changed. “We’ll be working with Congress …to amend the Tax Code to exempt partnership distributions or corporate dividends related to the ownership of toll roads from income taxation.”