You know the old saying? Things may be bad, but they could always be worse. Well, that appears to be the Texas GOP’s campaign slogan this year. Here’s the line the GOP in Texas has been hiding behind [PDF] for a while now, “The Texas seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remained at 8.2 percent in July, unchanged from June, and continued to trend well below the U.S. seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 9.5 percent.” (Emphasis added).
What Gov. Rick Perry appointee, and former Texas GOP chair Tom Pauken is trying to say, is that we should all feel grateful because things aren’t as bad as they are for others. The unemployment rate in Texas has moved little in the last 14 months, hovering between 7.9% and 8.3% since July of 2009. In a rational state, where incumbents are held accountable, that would mean bad news for the Republicans running for reelection in Texas, but I digress. Has anyone heard any ideas for lowering that number from the Governor, Lt. Gov., Speaker or Workforce Commissioner? Me either.
Another line Texas GOP has been been trumpeting is that our budget problems have not been as bad as other states. That is, if you exclude the $16 billion in federal money that was used to balance the budget in 2009. But Texas’ “lesser” budget problems are more about a system that was already punishing the weak, at the behest of the powerful, Texan Tall Tales.
What is true is that the Texas budget is in relatively good shape. That’s because recessions don’t do as much fiscal damage if you have a weak safety net, so expenses don’t rise much as people are plunged into poverty (because they don’t get any help), and a regressive tax system, so that revenues don’t fall much when incomes collapse.
What is clear is that in the upcoming legislative session we’re facing a budget freight train that’s about to go off the rails. The HChron had a piece last week that took the usual, left/right, D/R, perspective on the budget “debate” that has prevailed so far this election cycle, White, Perry not specific about budget - One talks tough on spending, the other of bipartisan compromise. Kuff details what’s likely to be cut, Them that has, gets, and it’s not the Texas Enterprise Fund. Here’s the short list:
Some of Texas’ most vulnerable residents – the very poor, the mentally ill, those suffering from birth defects, and children from troubled families – would lose state support and services under several new budget-cutting proposals.
Bill White, for his part, has only said that he would accept a local option tax bill. (A local option tax bill would allow local elections to raise taxes in that locality to pay for transportation projects). It’s also likely, in the event the likely GOP controlled legislature was to send a state budget with a tax increase to him, he would allow it to become law. With Perry that probably would not be likely. That doesn’t mean that taxpayers will get a break if Perry’s reelected, they’ll just be called fee increases, instead of tax increases. Both candidates will talk of scrubbing the budget, cutting waste, etc.. But the reality is, and everyone knows it, that if Texas wants to keep it’s current level of spending, including assistance to the weak and needy, then those with higher incomes in Texas will have to pay more taxes [PDF].
Since taking office in 2001 Gov. Perry has saddled Texans with $11.8 billion in transportation debt, where there was none when he took office. In Texas the Republicans are in charge and have been for the last 7 years. The education system, public and higher, is facing all sorts of trouble – quality down, cost up. Unemployment is roughly twice what it was when they took over. While our situation may not be as bad as other states, we must ask ourselves why are things so much worse since the GOP started running this state? It’s also likely going to get much worse, for those of us who aren’t on the high end of the wage scale, as long as they’re in charge.
These issues are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s no wonder Perry and his GOP cohorts are running scared from Democrats and the media.
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Instead of raising the gas tax, and paying for roads the way we used to, Sen. Ogden wants to pass a constitutional amendment that will allow voters to vote on whether or on they want to raise the gas tax to pay off the debt for roads we’ve already built. Via Peggy Fikac at the San Antonio Express-News, Proposal gives voters a say on gas-tax increase.
The Bryan Republican (Sen. Ogden) isn’t proposing a straight-ahead state gas-tax increase. Instead, he plans to offer an amendment to the Texas Constitution to say lawmakers can raise the gas tax a few cents a gallon to pay off debt service for road bonds financed through the highway fund.
The proposed amendment, which Ogden plans to push in the coming regular legislative session, would require a two-thirds vote from lawmakers plus voter approval statewide.
“Going with a constitutional amendment does a couple of things. It provides some political cover for people who don’t want to be responsible for raising taxes, and it gives the voters a legitimate option: If you want us to continue to borrow money to improve the highways, this is how we propose to pay for it,” Ogden said. “And whatever their answer is, I’d accept.”
Ogden’s idea is another sign of the seriousness of the money problems facing transportation, with the gas-tax-fueled highway fund projected to run out of money for new projects in 2012.
The increase would apply only to Proposition 14 bonds, which are paid off by the highway fund. The Texas Department of Transportation has authority to issue $6 billion in such bonds; it has issued $4.6 billion.
According to TxDOT, the state is expected to pay $272.5 million from the $6.45 billion highway fund for debt service in the 2011 fiscal year and nearly $290 million in 2012. Between 2013 and 2032, debt service for the bonds will cost more than $400 million a year.
The 20-cent-a-gallon state motor-fuels tax hasn’t been raised since 1991; efforts to increase it have been seen as politically risky. Each penny yields about $155 million, with one-fourth going to education. Ogden would propose having the extra pennies fund only debt.
Ogden’s idea is not a sign of seriousness, Ogden’s idea is a sign of cowardice. Not only that but he wants to lay the blame off on voters instead of taking it on himself. Oh how we long for the day when we had real leaders in Texas. Leadership means sometimes you have to stand up and do what’s right and unpopular, consequences be damned. Trying to hide the GOP’s neglect of Texas highways since taking control of our state’s government, and attempting to lay the responsibility of paying for their neglect on the taxpayers, is anything but. Hopefully voters would reject such shenanigans. Sen. Ogden if raising taxes is what you want to do then offer a “straight up” tax increase.
If Ogden’s fairy tale amendment was to pass in the next legislative session, there wouldn’t even be a vote on this until November 2011. So the money wouldn’t be available until 2012 at the earliest. No word in the article about what would happen if it didn’t pass.
In today’s AAS with Ben Wear’s misleading headline, Truck relief on I-35? Maybe a little. The big story is not that truck’s aren’t leaving I-35 to drive SH 130, the big news is, which is almost always the case, the consultants T&R (Traffic and Revenue) numbers are not “paying off”.
The study indicates that the 25 percent lower toll would pull an additional 350 trucks a day to Texas 130. But I-35 at U.S. 183 in North Austin had 24,000 trucks a day in 2007. So the lower toll might remove less than 2 percent of I-35 truck traffic.
What isn’t changing on Texas 130, at least not yet: car tolls, for perhaps five years. And the overall financial picture, painted mostly in shades of red.
The 2002 financial prospectus for investors who put $2.2 billion into Texas 130, Loop 1 and Texas 45 North showed initial toll rates unchanged until 2015, when a 50 percent increase was scheduled. Transportation commissioners have the power to raise rates before then, but they aren’t talking publicly about doing so.
But they might be considering it privately. According to figures from TxDOT Chief Financial Officer James Bass, the three-road system has required $68 million in tax money to balance the books over the first three years.
We’re paying tolls and our tax money is going for these roads too. Who doesn’t feel burned yet by the toll road scheme? Tip to ACREblog, SH 130 in the red–taxpayers making up the difference, with this commentary.
So why is it a good idea to continue to build toll roads where taxpayers will be paying the investors? By the way, ground has been broken on the tolled interchange at 290 East and 183—a tolled interchange being paid for by taxpayer stimulus money.
Anyone who still believes toll roads are the answer to our state’s transportation problem can no longer be taken seriously. Seriously.
On Wednesday TxDOT released the Management Organizational Review (MOR) that was performed by Grant Thornton. Here’s the link to the report. If you don’t want to read the whole 628 page report these two paragraphs, from the introduction, sum up TxDOT’s problems pretty well.
Funding Needs
In May 2008, Texas Transportation Commission Chair Deirdre Delisi, “at the request of Texas Governor Rick Perry, appointed a volunteer committee of 12 experienced and respected business leaders designated as the 2030 Committee. The Committee’s charge was to provide an independent, authoritative assessment of the state’s transportation infrastructure and mobility needs from 2009 to 2030.” The 2030 Committee determined that the State requires $315 billion from 2009 through 2030 (or $14.3 billion per year, in 2008 dollars) to meet pavement, bridges, urban mobility, and rural mobility and safety needs. Despite the 2030 Committee’s findings, some members of the transportation community hold differing views on the actual amount of funding required to sustain the State’s transportation system for this period. [Emphasis added].
The lack of agreement on the amount of funding needed to meet Texas transportation requirements leads to a certain amount of discomfort with TxDOT requests for increased funding. In addition, mistrust of TxDOT and issues around the consistency and completeness of communications on this issue inhibits commitment to additional funding. Some stakeholders said that “TxDOT isn’t broken, it’s just broke.” Others said that TxDOT isn’t sufficiently high-functioning to know if it has the resources required to do the job needed. Still others expressed that whether or not TxDOT has enough funding, until the Department is more transparent and has improved its operations, it would be difficult to justify an increase in funding.
That means that state agency tasked with building and maintaining our roads cannot be trusted with the money needed to build and maintain our roads. Essentially everyone knows, although there is no agreement on the exact figure, that TxDOT needs a whole bunch of money in the future to build and maintain Texas’ roads. But few, if any in the legislature trust those in charge at TxDOT to do what’s right in given the money. By in charge I mean Perry and his appointees – a fish rots from the head down – not the employees at TxDOT.
I know I’ve said this many times but it bears repeating. How can anyone trust people who think government is the problem to be able to use government to solve problems? It just boggles the mind how anyone could still believe that that TxDOT can be turned around without a new governor.
TxDOT has a singular, deeply entrenched culture that reflects 93 years of service dedicated to providing top notch transportation infrastructure to the State of Texas. This culture, and the ways in which the organization is led and managed, are fundamental considerations in the MOR as they affect every aspect of TxDOT performance. The unifying thread through all the MOR observations and recommendations is the way in which leadership and management practices and cultural norms affect TxDOT behavior and efficacy. Changes in this area are the essential underpinning to achieving meaningful improvements in the areas of effectiveness, efficiency, communications and transparency.
Significantly change its leadership structure. It recommends that TxDOT create three executive positions that would answer to the executive director — chief administration officer, chief operations officer, and chief financial officer. These jobs would be new — even if, in the case of the CFO, they exist in some form today, and should not be automatically reserved for members of the executive now employed, the audit says.
Lessen its focus on engineering among its top leadership, and indeed throughout the agency. Currently, engineering expertise — even a license — seems to be the only coin of the realm that carries any value. That has meant putting engineers in non-engineering roles, just to keep them aboard, and making it harder for non-engineers “to be heard” no matter how strong their relevant, non-engineering expertise might be.
Make the aides to the five TxDOT commissioners who oversee the agency answer to the commissioners, not to the executive director. The report says that has created a conflict of interest. If the commissioners are to oversee the agency, they deserve unbiased and unfettered advice from their administrative assistants.
Divide the government relations staff and the communications staff. A few years ago, communications folks — spokesman and others — were merged under a new department led by Colby Chase, who had represented the department’s interests in Washington previously. The report says that has helped lead to TxDOT’s image as an overly political entity, and the staff of about 50 full-time workers should be divided once again.
Too little metrics, means it’s hard to assess TxDOT’s work. Is TxDOT doing good work? Efficiently? Who knows, says the audit.
Clearly TxDOT employees are accomplishing a great deal of work. However, in the absence of relevant metrics, performance reporting, management disciplines and controls – deployed across the organization – it isn’t possible to determine whether work is being done effectively or efficiently.
Burka has more as does Kuff who notes that “..State Sen. Kirk Watson and Bill White also weigh in from a more pointedly political perspective”.
The Williamson County Commissioners Court voted 5-0 Tuesday to issue $35 million in debt, to finish road improvement and expansion projects already underway for U.S. Highway 183, U.S. Highway 79 and Williams Drive in Georgetown.
But – despite arguments to the contrary from County Judge Dan Gattis and County Auditor David Flores – commissioners will pay for that work without federal stimulus dollars known as Build America Bonds.
“For us to not take advantage of BABS is for us to pay a higher cost for the borrowing of dollars,” Flores told commissioners.
Flores said if Williamson County entered the BABS federal stimulus program, it could expect to be reimbursed 35 percent of the interest payment for the $35 million in debt principal it is incurring.
That reimbursement, Flores said, would work out to about $150,000 per year for the next 20 years.
Most of the commissioners objections were straight from the warmed over tea party rhetoric – in other words partisan politics over good public policy.
“This is part of the stimulus plan and this is basically Williamson County condoning the growth of federal government,” Pct. 2 Commissioner Cynthia Long of Cedar Park said. “From my perspective, its sends the message that we support the stimulus program and we support the expansion of federal government.”
Pct. 1 Commissioner Lisa Birkman of Brushy Creek agreed, stating: “Every project we’ve done with the federal government, they end up wanting to micromanage and tell us what to do.”
Pct. 3 Commissioner Valerie Covey of Georgetown acknowledged that when Williamson County accepts funding from the Texas Department of Transportation, those funds include federal dollars passed down to the state level.
But, Covey said, she had also has concerns about administrative costs that might be associated with federal stimulus funding, as well as possible restrictions on how the money can be spent.
Although Gattis, makes sense in the article, he still voted with the rest of the court.
Gattis said that while he favors issuing the debt – in order to finish the ongoing road projects – he thinks the county is being shortsighted in rejecting federal stimulus money.
“We’re making a big mistake here, leaving $100,000 per year on the table,” Gattis said. “It’s going to be interesting, as we’re getting into the budget and you’re not wanting to spend $100,000. We could fund a lot of programs with that.”
Gattis realizes that the county is giving away between $2-3 million over the next 20 years, but he still voted with the rest of them. I guess it’s not polite to dissent when the court is denying federal funds. There were no comments regarding where precinct 4 Commissioner Rom Morrison this issue.
While it’s true the federal government may have some input into these roads if federal funds are taken, most times it’s regarding environmental concerns, that’s not worth giving this money away. This looks like it was done more for partisan political reasons, then for reasons of good public policy or what’ best for Williamson County.
There are always unintended consequences of legislative action, and the worse the legislation the worse the unintended consequences are. Mike Krusee’s HB 3588 and the toll roads it has wrought on our area is the case in point. TxDOT literally has no plan, or system in place, about how to collect from drivers who refuse to pay their tolls, Tough road ahead collecting late tolls, other then possibly clogging local Justice courts in Travis and Williamson County.
TXDOT’s Wisconsin-based collection agency is now calling violators at home and sending letters to try and get them to pay their tolls and fees.
But if you ignore the collection agency, there is little they can do. They cannot contact your credit report, they cannot prevent you from renewing your driver’s license and they cannot stop you from registering your vehicle with the state.
Taking violators to court could be TXDOT’s only option to collect the money. But until an Interlocal Agreement is reached, county officials said those cases will not be heard.
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More than 150,000 toll violators owe $56.1 million in outstanding tolls and “administrative fees” – but the Texas Department of Transportation is hitting a roadblock, or several, when it comes to collecting them.
To be exact, the amount of outstanding tolls is $3.12 million. But KXAN discovered TXDOT is charging some violators more than 4000 percent in those “administrative fees”. And those fees are what push the total amount of money owed to $56.1 million.
TXDOT said they’re now going to take those violators to court.
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KXAN spoke with the elected officials in Williamson and Travis counties, and they agree with Gammon.
Travis County Treasurer Delores Ortega Carter said TXDOT needs to get their ducks in a row before they file any toll violation cases.
“They can file all the cases they want, how long they’ll be there we don’t know,” she said.
Carter’s colleague in Williamson County, Treasurer Vivian Wood concurs. “I just can’t see our judge and commissioners agreeing to anything even though the statute is there.”
County officials said it all boils down to what is called an Interlocal Agreement: A set of rules and guidelines to outline procedures dealing with court costs, collection of tolls and fees, where the money collected goes, payment methods, timeliness and line items.
They said there has got to be an Interlocal Agreement before any cases can be heard in county courtrooms. Ortega-Carter and Wood told KXAN they’ve been trying to get an agreement with TXDOT since 2006, but have not heard anything from the state agency.
“I don’t have anything from the state that tells me…and we don’t just send money down to the Comptroller without the state’s requirements for identification of those funds,” Wood said.
Ortega-Carter added: “We need to have a paper trail so that, for auditing purposes, we can see where it’s going. We don’t care how the state spends the money, that’s their problem. We do care how the county receives that money.”
I stopped by the TxDOT Open House-Style Public Meeting in Austin yesterday. It was an opportunity to look at some maps, population estimates, and make sure our state’s transportation planners were aware of my 2 cents, (I was nice, but direct), regarding what I would like to see in the future. My message could be boiled down to , “Let’s stop the neglect and get back to building and paying for roads the way we used to in Texas, when we were the envy of many”.
Population growth estimates predict the number of people living in Texas will double by 2040.
On Thursday at the Brazos Center, residents were invited to give their input as to how the Texas Department of Transportation should manage long-term plans to accommodate the expected boom of new motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists flocking to the state.
About 50 people either stopped by the open house Thursday or gave input Wednesday at the Brazos Valley Council of Governments meeting.
“Instead of having a project-specific plan, this will be more of a visionary document to tell us what direction to head in,” said Bob Appleton, director of transportation, planning and development for TxDOT’s Bryan district.
Residents were encouraged to fill out surveys that will be used to craft the long-term plan. Questions on the form ranged from asking what types of transportation participants use to asking for a ranked order of transportation-related problems and solutions.
Appleton said the agency received criticism recently for not having updated its long-term plan since 1994. Now, the long-term plans for 2035 and beyond, he said, will be reviewed and updated every four years.
The good news is that other then the freebies that were available at the hearing, (pens, notepads, and rain gauges), everything else can be seen and done online. At TxDOT’s web site there is a page that has all the Meeting Handouts, as well as maps, which can be viewed online. But most important of all is this link where anyone can submit their own comments to TxDOT regarding the long range plan.
Let them know what you would like to see in the future. If you don’t tell them then how will they know? It’s your duty as a Texan.
No one wants to pay more for anything, but in transportation it’s becoming more and more clear that there is a cost – in both time and money – to doing nothing. This week, the Funding Subcommittee of the Texas House Select Committee on Transportation Funding heard testimony from Frank Bliss, a commercial real estate developer in the Metroplex, who investigated the cost to taxpayers in increased fuel costs through decreased fuel efficiency when traffic goes from free-flowing to “stop and go.”
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His conclusion: “Without adequate funding for transportation, as growth occurs we pay for the lack of infrastructure by buying more gasoline and having less time for our families, communities, and the businesses we represent. Instead of . . . [paying] to fund new roads, we’re giving it to the gas companies. If we understood the math, I think we might change our attitudes and put the money where it can help us the most.”
Holy crap!! Is that plain enough for everyone to understand!? Would you rather pay taxes to build roads, or but more gas and give it to the oil corporations.
Here’s Burka’s comments on what the engineers had to say:
Rick Perry can say that he hasn’t raised taxes, but tolls are more expensive than gasoline taxes, and they have surged upwards. The rate of toll revenue increase cited above — equivalent to a 1/2 cent per year increase in the gasoline tax (I’m not going to adopt the euphemism of “user fee”) since the last tax increase in 1991 — figures out, over 20 years, to be identical to a 10-cent increase in the gasoline tax. Critics of the gasoline tax have a point, that it has lost a lot of its revenue-raising potential due to greater fuel economy, but raising the tax is still better than stagnancy. We could have built a lot of free roads with a ten-cent increase in the tax. Instead, we have spent this decade fighting over unpopular toll roads and even more unpopular proposals to privatize roads. At any point, Perry could have stepped forward and said that we needed to raise the gasoline tax — or presented the public with a referendum of the two alternatives, toll roads or gasoline taxes. Instead, we took the most costly approach: borrowing. We spent billions of dollars on bonds and hundreds of millions on interest payments. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Or, I should say, politics, politics, politics. [Emphasis added].
I’ll go with greed, greed, greed. Or selfishness, selfishness, selfishness. So glad the “fiscal conservatives” have been running our state government.
Tolls are the most expensive way to pay for roads. But it benefits corporations and allows politicians to use snake oil – in the name of Public Private Partnerships (PPP’s), Comprehensive Development Agreements (CDO’s) to name a few – to tell voters they can have new roads without having their taxes raised. Tolls are just a different name for tax, and a more expensive one at that. Damn, this sounds like a broken record.
CAMPO is still taking public comments on their 25 Year Transportation Plan, comments are being taken online until 5 PM Friday May 14th. All the information including copies of the plan so far can be found HERE.
The new plan includes a much higher percentage of rail and other transit spending than its predecessor and a sharply reduced amount for maintaining highways. In the introduction, the plan claims to embrace a new philosophy of transportation planning based on encouraging dense centers of development rather than continuing suburban sprawl willy-nilly.
But even those working on the plan say the focus on centers — not an emphasis of previous plans — will make little real-world difference. The plan is only as accurate as its assumptions about the future, they said, and making predictions about the next quarter-century is inevitably an exercise in guesswork.
“To borrow a Hemingway phrase, it’s pretty to think we can plan 25 years in advance,” said Hays County Commissioner Jeff Barton , a Democrat who serves on the CAMPO board. “There’s value in the exercise, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves.”
What’s in the plan matters, however, because under federal law a transportation project can’t get federal dollars — almost all highway and transit projects are at least partially funded by the federal government — unless the project is in the long-range plan. But the 19-member CAMPO board, made up mostly of local elected officials from Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties, can amend the plan at any time. And there will be another wholesale rewrite five years from now, five years after that, and so on.
And as we see later in the article there are some differences between Travis and Williamson and how they intend to proceed in the future.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is asking for the public to cooperate with them in planning the Statewide Long-Range Transportation Plan 2035. It will be finalized in 2011 and will be the blue print for the “multimodal statewide transportation” in Texas for the next 24 years. There will be 26 meetings around the state of Texas, (From El Paso to Beaumont, and from Amarillo to Pharr), May 4th – 16th. (click here for the complete list.)
TxDOT has taken heat, and deservedly so, during it’s undertaking of the Trans-Texas Corridor for not involving the public and affected areas in the planning process. It looks like they’ve learned from that, and good to see that this time they are making a point of involving the public from the beginning. Here area few excerpts fromTxDOT Executive Director Amadeo Saenz words to the people of Texas:
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is currently updating the long-range, multimodal statewide transportation plan, and I would like to personally invite you to participate in its development.
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The Statewide Long-Range Transportation Plan 2035 is not a listing of projects (although it will include the project listing included in the Unified Transportation Program), but a “blueprint” for the planning process that will guide the collaborative efforts among TxDOT, local and regional decision-makers, and all transportation stakeholders to reach a consensus on needed transportation projects and services. This Plan requires a cooperative process among TxDOT, metropolitan areas, cities, counties, various public and private transportation organizations, and you – the traveling public.
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I encourage you to participate in the planning efforts at both the state and local levels. We want to ensure that your voice is heard, and your ideas and concerns are taken into consideration as decisions are made with regard to your transportation system and the services you depend on for your quality of life. I invite you to provide written comments at an open house-style public meeting, by mail, or on the TxDOT website. Your input is essential to TxDOT’s ability to serve the citizens of and visitors to the State of Texas and to be responsive to your transportation needs.
All of us who complained now owe it to our state and TxDOT to get involved, one way or another, and be heard on the future transportation needs of our state. Get involved or don’t complain in the future. There are many ways to get involved, via the TxDOT web site: