02.06.08
Wrap-Up From Yesterday – Without Williamson, TxDOT Becomes Scapegoat
TxDOT’s first public performance without Ric Williamson didn’t go so well. Without the former chair’s ability to keep legislators in check, it was open season on those left behind to clean up his mess(es). For Texas lawmakers, and GOP lawmakers in particular, to act so surprised at TxDOT’s gamesmanship and “incompetence”, seemed hypocritical. Most lawmakers have been willing participants, until recently, in defunding our transportation system in order to privatize it. As mentioned yesterday, and many times throughout the years here at EOW, it’s long been the GOP/Perry-led TxDOT’s plan to defund Texas’ highway system to force corporate toll roads on Texans as the only way to build highways in the future.
That TxDOT is now claiming incompetence, and that Senators like Steve Ogden, John Carona, and Kirk Watson are acting outraged, is shameful. Ogden and Carona, especially, have been in the legislature, and in powerful positions, long enough to have known what’s going on. Sen. Carona even figured it out before this past session only to be cowed by the smooth talking Williamson in the end.
But it’s the neglect of our transportation infrastructure and the unwillingness to do what was needed long ago, raise the statewide gas tax, that’s gotten us into this mess. Elected officials, like Steve Odgen, instead of making sure our transportation infrastructure was adequately funded all these years, was instead a willing participant in defunding it. As long as the no-tax mantra kept getting more of his GOP buddies elected and reelected, he didn’t much mind that our infrastructure was withering and falling behind.
As long as voters didn’t see to mind building toll roads he was happy to go along. But now that the public has noticed what a bad deal toll roads are, and his buddies are starting to pay for it, he’s found Jesus on transportation funding. (This is not to single out Sen. Ogden in particular. Because excepting a few, pretty much any powerful GOP senator, representative, and statewide officeholder name could be substituted for him. And several Democrats as well. And many are changing their tune on this issue.)
What every traditional media outlet is reporting is that TxDOT double-counted $1.1 billion, and because of that will willingly submit itself to an outside audit.
The Texas Department of Transportation made a billion-dollar error, officials of the agency admitted Tuesday under stern questioning from legislators, a mistake they said contributed significantly to TxDOT’s sudden cash crunch.
TxDOT officials say agency planners inadvertently counted $1.1 billion of revenue twice, a mistake that caused them to commit to more road projects than the agency could handle.
[...]
State Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, pushed for a third party to look at TxDOT’s books.
“It’s important to me that we get the state auditor’s office in there as quickly as possible,” said Williams, who carried legislation last year that substantially curtailed TxDOT’s authority to agree to long-term leases with private companies to build and run tollways.
TxDOT’s executive director, Amadeo Saenz, said he would welcome an audit.
The question is, who, if anyone, will be held responsible for this? Apparently accounting for transportation money is very complicated.
How state and federal money goes into and out of TxDOT has long been a puzzle, one made only more complex by the addition of toll road financing and a growing practice of delegating road building to local agencies. Lawmakers, gazing at balance sheets gray with numbers and listening to Bass’ clarifications of them, said the opaque nature of how TxDOT presents its finances makes it hard to trust the numbers.
“This is screwed up,” said state Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, chairman of the Finance Committee, brandishing a revenue-and-expense table. “This is really bad. I heard your explanation. But based on the data, it doesn’t match.”
It’s important that the current state of our transportation system in Texas not be pushed of on TxDOT’s incompetence only. Allowing TXDOT incompetence to be the scapegoat solves nothing and allows blame to be placed where it doens’t belong. Our current dilemma is not because of a one-time $1.1 billion dollar accounting error. It’s years of negligence that’s caused it. Elected officials in Texas are as much, if not more to blame for underfunding TxDOT for many years. The gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1992, the last time Texas has a Democratic governor. Since then the Texas GOP’s no-tax mantras has held the political sway in Texas. They’ve been telling us for years about their fiscal conservative ways, that government is bad, and how the free market will save us, and it hasn’t come to pass. The choice is clear, raise and index the gas tax, or it’s toll roads everywhere. If Texans keep electing Republicans it’ll be toll roads everywhere.
HeavyDuty said,
February 6, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I told you so when I campaigned in 2006, though EOW wasn’t paying sufficient attention to notice (I didn’t campaign much, but I did campaign and I had a web site), that the Republicans were running on the promise of, “everything, and a tax break.” It worked well enough to get the overwhelming majority re-elected!
Not to worry, because after speaking with the editors of Austin’s and College Station’s newspapers, both chose to endorse the Republican incumbent; Mr. ‘I’m shocked to learn about TxDOT’s situation,’ Steve Ogden (Chairman of the TX Senate Appropriations Committee).
Hmmmm…
remerson said,
February 6, 2008 at 7:40 pm
To quote a rather appropriate commercial, “Shocked! You’re shocked! We’re shocked, bud, that you even got it!” Except that he most likely not only “got it,” he most likely created it!
Put him on your list of “Need to go.”
HeavyDuty said,
February 7, 2008 at 4:04 am
Oops!
I listed Senator Ogden as Appropriations Committee Chair, but he’s actually the Senate Finance Committee Chair.
HeavyDuty said,
February 7, 2008 at 3:02 pm
In the last, Texas, state legislative session the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) was put on hold, but no other method was made available for funding new road construction, or operating and maintaining existing infrastructure. So, the Perry appointees at TxDOT HQ whine that there’s no money for them to do their job; a corner they willfully backed into.
There has been an experiment in a private toll road in south Texas, the Camino-Columbia toll road, where drivers proved that they would much rather wait in snarled traffic than pay profitable toll rates. So, the lesson that Perry’s minions at TxDOT HQ learned was that you take negotiations for privately owned toll roads behind closed doors and give away the farm.
TX is now the second most populous state in the nation and is burdened with a burgeoning flow of NAFTA related traffic. This has put a tremendous, and increasing, burden on the ground transportation infrastructure of our state in the last decade, while inflation has upped the cost of building, operating and maintaining said facilities. Yet our fuel taxes have stagnated for well more than 10 years. Our state legislature wants us to believe that the only adequate solution is to turn our road and train routes over to private, campaign contributing, companies.
We’ve had one proof of the concept that common carriage transportation is not going to be sufficiently profitable for private companies, but if more proof is needed it should be on a project much smaller than the TTC. In the meantime let’s take care of the current needs by raising the state and federal fuel taxes, as the federal government’s commission has wisely suggested.
Texas Progressive Alliance Roun Up Feb 10 | BlueBloggin said,
February 11, 2008 at 6:20 am
[...] WCNews at Eye On Williamson has this wrap up from last week’s hearings on TxDOT at the capitol, Without Williamson, TxDOT Becomes Scapegoat. [...]
Eye on Williamson » Texas Blog Round Up (February 11, 2008) said,
February 11, 2008 at 12:48 pm
[...] WCNews at Eye On Williamson has this wrap up from last week’s hearings on TxDOT at the capitol, Without Williamson, TxDOT Becomes Scapegoat. [...]
Eye on Williamson » Texas GOP Running Scared On Toll Roads, Privatization said,
February 20, 2008 at 11:48 pm
[...] course we knew this was the plan after last months hearing, Wrap-Up From Yesterday – Without Williamson, TxDOT Becomes Scapegoat. It must be getting really bad out there on this issue for Texas Republicans. It’s about [...]
Eye on Williamson » Texas Transportation Revolving Fund? said,
April 28, 2009 at 1:49 pm
[...] TxDOT run a bank is probably not the best idea, considering TxDOT’s recent problems with fiscal management. Wouldn’t be wise to have TxDOT adminisgtering a transportation bank. The other problem [...]