01.08.09
Carona’s metamorphosis on private toll roads
What a difference two years and a reelection make. Two years ago in a Texas Monthly article by Paul Burka, about Gov. Rick Perry’s privatization plans for Texas roads, His Way or the Highway, Sen. John Carona had this to say.
What matters is whether the arrangement protects the public interest. Here is what John Carona, a Republican state senator from Dallas who is the new chairman of the Senate committee that deals with transportation, has to say on that subject: “Within thirty years’ time, under existing comprehensive development agreements, we’ll bring free roads in this state to a condition of ruin.”
As Burka goes on to describe in more detail in the article, those “existing comprehensive development agreements” that Carona was referring to are “non-compete” clauses, (recently mentioned here and here).
It may seem as if the system of granting a concession to private companies in return for money, like restaurants at an airport, is a great idea—“free money” that TxDOT can use to build other toll roads, enter into still more concession agreements, and build still more toll roads, as if the agency had succeeded in creating a perpetual-motion machine to finance roads in perpetuity.
But alas, there is no free money, and there is no perpetual-motion machine. The private companies that will build and operate the toll roads are in business to make a profit. In order to ensure that profit, they must have people who want to drive on their roads. And—here’s the rub—in order to be sure that people will want to drive on their roads, the CDAs with TxDOT will contain non-compete clauses that prohibit TxDOT from building new roads or upgrading existing highways. Any improvement to an existing highway that is not already planned at the time TxDOT enters into the contract is prohibited. That billion-dollar concession limits TxDOT’s ability to improve nearby secondary roads. How about adding extra lanes? Sorry, prohibited by the CDA. An HOV express lane? Not a chance. This is why Carona says that free roads will be reduced to ruin. TxDOT will no longer be able to respond to the transportation needs of the state, other than to say: If you don’t like the traffic, use the toll road.
All that being said, and the recent interim study on public-private partnerships (PPP’s), is the reason that what Carona said at the annual Texas Transportation Forum this week is so frustrating. Via Ben Wear at the AAS, LESS-atorium on concession agreements:
Lost in all the hullabaloo Tuesday over the tragic and oh-so-sudden “death” of the Trans-Texas Corridor was news that the Legislature’s transportation leader filed a bill that same day giving six more years of life to private toll road agreements.
That the bill, SB 404, came from state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, is no small thing. Carona is chairman of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee. With his counterpart on the other side of the Capitol now retired — former House Transportation Committee chairman Mike Krusee — and a majority of Krusee’s committee gone from the Legislature as well, Carona stands as the main mover-and-shaker on the issue.
Carona dropped news of his bill into the middle of remarks he made on a panel at the Texas Transportation Forum at the Austin Hilton.
“To foreclose any option (for building roads) would be foolish,” Carona said during his remarks on what might be coming during the legislative session.
That’s right Carona’s got a new term, and is the “legislatures transportation leader” now that Krusee’s gone. He seems to have absorbed some of Krusee’s ideas now that he’s the leader, and has had a change of heart when it comes to PPP/CDA’s. Wear goes on to do a short chronicling of Carona’s two year metamorphosis on private tolls:
Watching Carona has been interesting over the past two years. He began the 2007 session calling for the replacement of Texas Transportation Commission chairman Ric Williamson, then by late in the session had become something of a mediator between TxDOT and its most vehement critics. Similarly, last spring he sharply criticized current chairwoman Deirdre Delisi as a “missed opportunity” by Gov. Rick Perry in the wake of Williamson’s death, and said lawmakers did not find her “very warm and personable.” Tuesday, he praised Delisi, standing by his side as moderator of the panel, for how she had handled the job in her seven months leading the Texas Transportation Commission and said that “when you’re wrong, you’re wrong, and you have to stand up and say so.”
Actually Carona began in the Burka article, (see above), by calling CDA’s, essentially, the ruin of public roads. Then he went on to file a bill last session that would have done away with “non-compete” agreements, and he also recommended the replacement of Williamson. He then went on to jilt those against private toll roads by going back on his stance agains CDA’s during the last legislative session. (Others in the legislature eventually wound up leading and getting the two year moratorium passed). When TxDOT chair Ric Williamson passed away and it was rumored that Perry’s chosen replacement may be Deirdre Delisi, Carona called her a “political hack”. And once she was chosen he was resolute in calling her a hack stating, “I think that she is a political hack. I’ve said that before. It would be probably senseless for me to deny it”. That Carona and Delisi have now made nice and he’s been “won over” by her is no surprise. His flip on CDA’s was a surprise last session, but with the business being done in North Texas now with toll roads, this week’s comments are just a furthering of that flip-flop from last session.
It’s not just Carona but Dewhurst appears to be buying what TxDOT is selling too, Dewhurst praises TxDOT’s improvements.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst praised the Texas Department of Transportation on Wednesday for making the kinds of improvements legislators have asked for, and said he hoped to boost the agency’s annual budget to $10 billion in the next three years.
Dewhurst’s comments, which closed TxDOT’s annual Texas Transportation Forum, come as the agency faces sunset review by a skeptical Texas Legislature.
TxDOT being under Sunset Review, and putting on a charm offensive, more than likely has quite a bit to do with all their renewed support. But just like Carona, depending on what kind of public safeguards are actually adopted as a result of the review, once finished TxDOT could be free of the legislative shackles. And from the decision of the Sunset Commission (which is mostly just a bunch of legislators), and is only a recommendation to the legislature, of which Sen. Carona is the transportation leader, just what kind of changes will occur at TxDOT is still very much up in the air. With Dewhurst and Carona coming around on TxDOT, Perry never having been a problem for TxDOT, and the Speaker-apparent being from San Antonio, home of Zachry, and his Transportaion Committee chair unknown at this point, there’s no reason to take anything for granted in the upcoming session.