San Antonio Freeway Toll issue is Boiling over.

Texas Toll Party SA Director Terri Hall stood strong last night against freeway toller Rep. Casteel, her misrepresentations and her attempt at having Terri Hall forcefully thrown out by law enforcement.

The Texas Transportation Commission (Perry appointees) has stepped in, pushed aside the local RMA in San Antonio and is now trying to make a secret 50 year deal without the RMA involved to privatize and toll a SA Freeway with Spanish company Cintra.

REP. CASTEEL OUT OF CONTROL

State Representative Carter Casteel gives that "Freeway Toller" smile.

Sparks flew when Terri Hall, San Antonio Director of the grassroots Texas Toll Party.com, stood-up to shine the light on the misstatements made by State Representative Carter Casteel and her guest, San Antonio District Engineer for TxDOT, David Casteel. It was her meeting and she wasn't going to let a citizen armed with the truth be heard.

"You voted for toll roads in Bexar County, which we will have to drive on", Hall said, raising her voice and backing away when Casteel tried to reclaim the microphone. Hall told audience members the representative had refused to return her phone calls and letters, a charge denied by Casteel.

When Hall continued to argue her point, Rep. Casteel, flanked with a hefty number of Comal County law enforcement officers, asked Sgt. Jimmy Limmer, with the Comal County Sheriff's Office, to consider REMOVING her.

"That was uncalled for!," "let her finish, and "That wasn't necessary!" rang out through the Guadalupe Valley Telecommunications Cooperative auditorium. Rep. Casteel then backed off.

"We have an unelected, unaccountable governmental agency that can tax us as much as they want with tolls," Hall said. "It's not enough to say we won't have toll roads in Comal County. They will be in other places we drive."

READ The Herald-Zeitung story about it here

TEXAS TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION PISSES OFF RMA

FROM SA EXPRESS NEWS: "Let the Texas Department of Transportation take all the credit - or blame - for the toll plan that emerges for San Antonio, suggested Bill Thornton, chairman of the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority.

"Efforts on our part to insert ourselves or gain control of the process are only creating friction and discomfort," Thornton said in an e-mail this week to his board members. "That isn't good for anyone."

The roots of the problem are deep, with tension budding this year.

In an effort to control toll roads here and at the insistence of the state, Bexar County commissioners created the mobility authority early last year. State officials said they would build a 22-mile starter system on Loop 1604 and U.S. 281 on the North Side to kick-start the authority.

But at the same time, the Spanish company Cintra and its San Antonio partner Zachry American Infrastructure were gathering data from the state to submit a proposal to build and operate the starter system and double the mileage.

Cintra-Zachry would pay for the $1.3 billion 47-mile network, speeding up work and freeing up $610 million in tax subsidies. But the consortium would collect toll fees of 15 cents or more a mile for up to 50 years, money that local officials hoped to reinvest in other toll projects.

Local leaders didn't learn about the proposal until shortly after it was submitted to the state in April. Thornton, the county judge and the mayor quickly shot off a letter to ask that any final decisions be made locally, and the discussion has continued since.

Texas Transportation Commission members were surprised, even dismayed. At a meeting last week, Commissioner Ted Houghton told Thornton that the state can put in the hard work needed to evaluate private proposals, and besides, Austin and Dallas officials haven't taken such stiff stances.

"We were all taken aback by the position the RMA (in San Antonio) started taking," said Hope Andrade, a state commission member from San Antonio."...MORE HERE