The Kirk Has No Clothes - AND, he's on the Payroll of Special Interests

UPDATED 10:33 pm - CITY LINK FOR WATSON REGISTERED AS LOBBYIST IS HERE.

CAMPO Chair, Kirk Watson sent out an email yesterday - with a lie that he and the Chamber’s Take on Traffic keep on weaving - that we have no other choice than to toll our freeways. Watson says in the email,

"In recent weeks, some have demanded that we take an approach that doesn’t involve user fees or tolls of any kind. I wish it were possible. Members of the CAMPO board, all of whom are good-hearted and dedicated public servants, would not subject themselves to the vitriol and name-calling that has come to mark this debate if they believed they had a choice."

The fact is the "user fees" (Kirk won't use the "toll" word) cost 2-4 times as much as a freeway. Watson and the Chamber continue to ignore the facts and they tell folks we don't have any other choice.

The fact is non-tolled roads cost much less since they don't have to separate the "Have" and "Have Not's".

SEN. WATSON'S CONFLICT OF INTEREST

City of Austin records prove that one month after Sen. Kirk Watson became chair of Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) -- an organization that directs billions of road dollars in Central Texas -- Watson was put on the payroll of special interest developers who profit from important transportation decisions (Watson registered as a lobbyist with the City in 2/2007).

Developers, a core of the toll lobby, see the toll road slush fund as an eternal source to pay for more sprawling roads to the land they buy cheap.

The media has failed to tell that blatant conflict of interest story.

And the Chamber's Take on Traffic Website, Signs and Radio ads continue to trick the public into giving pro toll feedback to CAMPO - by hiding the word "Toll" in the fine print, just like Kirk.

And just try to reply to Watson's pro-toll propaganda emails, you'll never get a reply.

What citizens have said to Watson:

"By the way, it is especially annoying for you to send emails to me without giving me a chance to respond to you. The email address you use to send me propaganda repeatedly rejects my attempts to reply to your emails. It is common courtesy to at least include a working email address so that I can communicate with you since you're the one that initially contacted me!"

Since Kirk is stealing $700 to $900 million of our tax dollars and Billions of our public highway right of way, perhaps we should ask for a discount since so many of our tax dollars will have already paid some of that user fee.