01.29.07
Kirk Watson’s Op-Ed
It’s in today’s AAS. Former Austin Mayor, current state Senator, and head of CAMPO Kirk Watson penned an Op-Ed, Stopping area toll roads doesn’t mean a free ride. His title and this paragraph setup a straw man argument for the piece:
But reality requires action. We must stop talking about “free roads,” as if there ever were such things. Any tool we use, any road we’re on, costs money from some source. We can’t simply oppose things or divert attention from problems with slogans or personal attacks. Our citizens are too smart to let half-truths, untruths, innuendo and conspiracy theories define our future. We don’t have the time and shouldn’t have the patience for unaccountable ideologues distorting our present or jeopardizing our future.
Most of us “anti-tollers” are not against toll roads, per se. The Phase II roads have already been paid for with tax money, that’s why there’s a beef about tolling those roads. The beef has never been about free roads, but about double taxation. The problem we have with the other roads is that a gas tax is much, much cheaper than the tolls that we will pay for driving them, not to mention the corruption involved in getting them built, and ceding all future decisions about our transportation decisions to the corporations that build them. Calling us conspiracy theorists isn’t going to help his cause either.
He’s correct when he talks about the the closed and unaccountable way the transportation decisions have been made in the past:
While I look forward to hearing creative transportation ideas in the coming months, let me be very clear: I won’t support a transportation policy that’s less than completely open and fully accountable to the people of Central Texas. One of the lessons of the past several months is that “don’t ask, just tell” policies — about tolls or anything else — cannot and shouldn’t work.
But another task force filled with “experts” and local business and political leaders is not the answer either:
I recommended and the CAMPO board has endorsed a process that should leave the organization more functional, accountable, responsive and strong. And I’ve formed a task force of local leaders and national experts to evaluate ways we build and pay for our transportation systems.
I know this won’t happen but how about bringing in some ordinary folks that will be driving these roads to take part in your “task force” so it doesn’t seem like a rubber stamp of an already agreed upon plan? How about allowing some of those “conspiracy theorists” on the “task force” to legitimize it?
By using a straw man argument and belittling CAMPO’s critics Sen. Watson is not getting off on the right foot as CAMPO’s new leader.