By Gordon Dickson, Star Telegram
Poor planning inside the Texas Department of Transportation -- and not a shortage of state or federal funding -- is to blame for an ongoing cash crunch that led the agency to stop most road work in 2008, members of two state Senate committees said.
"I think we have an agency in turmoil. I think we have an agency in chaos," state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, said during a joint meeting of the Senate finance and transportation committees in Austin. "I think it's intellectually dishonest to blame Congress or the state Legislature for problems caused by poor planning."
Bad estimates
Transportation officials acknowledged that they had made planning mistakes -- for example, they overestimated how much they would receive from bond sales by hundreds of millions of dollars because they counted some proceeds twice.
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5 comments:
Zaffarini is the only one who even came close to diagnosing the TxDOT problem.
She said she thought TxDOT may have "fabricated" the funding shortage to pressure the legislature to let them go ahead with more toll roads.
I think the "incompetency theory" and the "mistakes were made" and the "failure to communicate" ideas are being purveyed amazingly fast.
Auditor should not look at their records to fullfill those hasty diagnoses. They should look for deliberate fabrication, such actions requiring great competency to get buy with them and keep them disquised as "mistakes."
The only thing that may come of all this is that TxDOT's top "mistake makers" will get a big pay boost.
Stay tuned.
I see this Senate stuff as a primer for the Sunset Review, so Carona and Dewhurst can claim some glory for their next elections.
BUT, they only target privatization, and not the fact that tolling freeways is unaccountable double taxation, and the most expensive way to pay for roads.
Since April 2004 (in Austin), citizens have been flagging the dishonesty of self-serving toll-protagonists and TxDOT/CTRMA conspirators. Spring 2007, Carona led a parade of state legislators charading control over TxDOT & TTC shenanigans. That's almost four years of negligent complicity by Texas representatives allowing Perry's TTC/TxDOT fiasco to evolve against the common good and majority sentiments of Texas constituents. Messages need to be sent. Cut the head of the snake off by mpeaching Perry and removing his politcal appointees.
TXDOT is so transparent it cracks me up. I don't know why but whenever I hear them whine about not having money it reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit- where a killer shark is knocking on some lady's door, feebly claiming he just wants to deliver a "candy gram".
TXDOT is so transparent it cracks me up. I don't know why but whenever I hear them whine about not having money it reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit- where a killer shark is knocking on some lady's door, feebly claiming he just wants to deliver a "candy gram".
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