The State of Taxes has run out of Money! (and other tall tales)

The latest Toller scare tactic is the “TxDOT ad” (TxDOT’s public relations campaign) that’s currently running in all the newspapers across the state. Yup, TxDOT is saying they’ve run out of money (again), so we need to use our limited Texas gas tax dollars to shift our freeways to toll roads.

In the Dallas paper, “State running out of cash for new roads”:

Texas will soon run out of money to pay for new roads or bridges, state transportation officials said Thursday.

Within three years, nearly all of the state's construction budget will be spent on maintenance and to pay debt incurred in building existing roads, top officials of the Texas Department of Transportation said.

"The people of Texas need to understand that within a very short period of time, there will be no money for mobility projects," said Texas Transportation Commission member Ned Holmes of Houston

This corruption of our government can be summed up in one word.

Diversion.

And everyone, from the Governor, to Sen. Kirk Watson, to Rep. Mike Krusee and TxDOT are guilty as charged.

Here’s how diversions work. And, how the parasites profit.

The Ledge diverts our gas tax dollars intended for free roads for too many pet projects that don’t include transportation. The President and Congress divert our gas tax dollars into the war and building free roads in other countries like Iraq.

And the largest diversion yet - TxDOT diverts the limited gas tax dollars we do get back - to shift our freeways to toll ways. Once the tolls are placed on our freeways, the tollers admit, they will never be removed. A eternal slush fund for all the parasites in this story, and other vermin like Take on Traffic (Austin Chamber of Commerce). The freeway toll tax will be administered by unelected people who give out NO BID contracts to themselves and freinds (like the CTRMA). And after the freeways are shifted to toll roads, they will be sold to corporations.

Gov. Rick Perry and his appointed holdover, Ric Williamsan at TxDOT profit off the diversions.

Sen. Kirk Watson, a blue democrat and Rep. Mike Krusee, a red republican find the color green in common - as they both profit off double tax tolls - as our families pay more.

The real solutions are simple, but they are not profitable for the crooks above.

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Sen. Steve Ogden and Special Interest Pals Push Multi Billion Toll Pension Scheme!

UPDATED

So, you thought our Texas muddy government waters of massive diversions and special interests skimming off privatization deals couldn't get worse? Think again.

Investment bankers, TxDOT and the unaccountable toll tax loving Senator Steve Ogden, the Senate Finance Chairman, are pushing for a radical plan to intermingle state pension funds and unaccountable toll roads - as they drool over the $130 Billion dollars in the state pension fund.

From the Houston Chronicle:

"Investment bankers and a state highway official Tuesday told legislators the state's two largest pension funds should consider investing some of their $130 billion in holdings into building toll roads in Texas."

Thomas Osborne of the UBS Investment Bank was there with his hand out for some Billion dollar crumbs. Ogden's historical love affair with special interests who seek public subsidies and toll tax revenue goes way back.

Sen. Ogden was a Co-sponsor of Krusee's HB 3588 (which made it legal to steal our roads and land - freeway tolls/TTC). Ogden is also a former CAMPO board member who voted to divert our tax dollars to shift our Austin freeways to tollways in 2004 and 2005.

Ogden also supports creating more levels of bureaucratic government so our tax dollars can get lost in the shuffle even faster. More on all this shameful scheme from QuorumReport.com today:

"PLANS TO OPEN TOLL ROAD INVESTMENTS TO STATE PENSION FUNDS GET PUSH IN SENATE FINANCE

Chairman Steve Ogden said using pension funds to invest in Texas roads a win-win but other Senators sound cautionary notes; Senators also cautioned that funds' focus on high rates of return need to be balanced with risk management.

A joint Senate panel tossed around today a novel way of paying for more roads – getting pension funds to invest in new projects. And to give the discussion an added twist, Senators were also asked to consider creating a new quasi-public entity that would funnel pension fund money from Texas and elsewhere into new road projects."

And from Sen. Odgen's (steve.ogden@senate.state.tx.us) Op-Ed in the Austin American Statesman yesterday:

"...I want to explore the possibility of investing a portion of our state's trust funds (i.e., Employees Retirement System, Teachers Retirement System, Permanent School Fund, Permanent University Fund) in TxDOT toll projects."

Constitutional Amendment Election: Special Interests Get Massive Credit Card

Texas voters gave state lawmakers a massive credit card Tuesday night, authorizing nearly $10 billion of future unaccountable spending (future tax hikes) on highways, cancer research, prisons and more.

The election marks one of the largest expansions of state debt ever.

Some blame uneducated voters, others blame the special interests who profit or the more than 90% of the registered voters who didn't vote (which allows the small percentage of special interest votes to dominate).

There's plenty of blame to go around.

The other problem is the news media, often part of the special interests, fails to inform and educate citizens. The major newspapers are tight with the City Chambers, where most of their ad revenue comes from, and too many TV news reporters don't have the time or expertise to get the story right.

I'll tell you that NOT ONE major paper in Texas allowed my OP-Ed opposing Prop 12 to be published this year. All of those papers supported the $5 Billion gift to TxDOT which will continue it's freeway to tollway conversions. The same major papers printed my Op Ed in 2005, which opposed Prop 1 and 9.

Count on more tax and toll tax diversions, more unaccountable government and more lies folks. That's what Texas voters fall for most of the time.

So, when you hear people complaining about paying their bills, or taxes being too high, or not being able to buy a house or a car, ask them if they ever went out to vote against tax increases, otherwise known as "bonds".

Statesman Debunks Texas Toll Road Promises

TxDOT's much-touted
'Economic Engine' Runs Like
an Overpriced Jalopy.

Toll roads and diversions of Billions of tax dollars are being forced on Texans by the likes of Gov. Perry and Sen. Kirk Watson.

This important Statesman article finally exposes how the promises of revenue generation turns out to be a massive financial albatross. Here's how the con works: We pay and pay and pay - the elite benefit by Billions.

And, we now find out that Loop 1, Texas 45 North and Texas 130 tollways are under performing at less than three quarters of what was projected.

A myth cultivated by TxDOT in order to promote their road privatization solution as a cure-all for funding shortfalls, is debunked by Austin American Statesman transportation reporter Ben Wear today. Better late than never, Ben tells of TxDOT's "I've got some swampland to sell you" pitch:

It was the first, and seemingly best, argument I heard for toll roads when I got this beat more than four years ago. Haven't heard it much lately, however.

Toll roads, Texas Department of Transportation officials said, would be an "economic engine" for highway financing as gas taxes grow increasingly scarce, generating excess cash that could be spent on other roads. Like in Houston, they'd say, where the Harris County Toll Road Authority has spun off cash for other nontoll projects and still has hundreds of millions of dollars stockpiled.

Asking the right questions at the right time:

But when TxDOT officials the other day gave legislators a spreadsheet with the agency's expected cash flow through 2015, I didn't see any toll road profits in there. I asked James Bass, the agency's chief financial officer, about that. After all, TxDOT owns six toll roads now, including three in the Austin area. Won't they be throwing off some cash, I asked Bass?

Not anytime soon, he said.

So I looked at the "official statement" for the Central Texas Turnpike Project, which is the overall name for the Loop 1, Texas 45 North and Texas 130 tollways. It was a thick document shared with the investment community before the agency went out and borrowed $2.2 billion on the bond market in 2002.

The numbers are startling. It looks like the only thing throwing off dollars will be TxDOT itself.

The first shoe drops. BORROWING $2.2 BILLION EQUALS $7.2 BILLION IN DEBT and more expenses to boot. That's real money folks!:

According to that statement, the three roads will make $8.7 billion in toll revenue through 2042. In that same time, there will be $7.2 billion in debt payments for that borrowed $2.2 billion, $1.1 billion in operations costs, $752 million in routine maintenance and $388 million for long-term maintenance. The net of all that? Almost $750 million in the hole over 35 years.

The second shoe drops. Austin new toll roads 130, 45 and 1 are performing at only 73% of the promised traffic projections!:

The three roads made $27.5 million from January through November, $3.6 million in the last month, which equates to about $31 million for the first full year. That's well under the $42.4 million first-year projection in the official statement. That statement shows revenue nearly doubling in three years, to $79.4 million, and then topping $100 million in year five.

Now I know why TxDOT has not sent me the traffic projections I asked for almost 2 months ago. Instead, they asked the AG if they could keep them a secret.

Part of the toll road scam is producing traffic and revenue projections that promise much more than can be delivered. Standard and Poor's bond analysts, after reviewing forecasting case studies for years, have concluded

"Optimism bias remains a consistent feature of toll road traffic forecasting."

Two of our largest tollers, Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kirk Watson don't care. As their special interest pals benefit off our tax dollars, debt, right of way and toll taxes, Perry and Watson laugh all the way to the bank.

Too bad our families are the ones who pay and pay and pay.

Important related articles:

Who Voted for MORE Central Texas Tolls?

Taxpayer's Pay Sen. KIRK WATSON $450 hr for Land Deals!

MILLION$ WORTH OF NO BID CONTRACTS
Given Out By Central Texas Toll Authority!

Everything You Need To Know About Austin Freeway Tolls

TxDOT's Bob Daigh and Convicted Criminal Toll Freeways

2006 Poll: 85% want to stop Texas Highway Fund diversions

Voters Continue to Show Unawareness about Bond Issues

Did you know bonds = higher future taxes?

Read about it as well as Kirk Watson's bond diversions from the year 2000 — join in the discussion HERE at AustinatIssue.com's Town Hall.

Give them an inch and they will take a foot - and the food off your famlies table.

Construction of three stretches of major east-west roads approved by Travis County voters in a 2005 bond election have stalled because developers have not put up their share of the money.

Voters said yes to a bond election that stated the costs were to be shared with developers that benefit from the roads. The developers didn't pony up the money and now most of the $7.4 million approved for the roads have been diverted.

Now Travis County Commissioners want the tax payers to pay ALL of the costs, even though we voted to only pay 50% of the costs for Wells Branch Parkway, Howard Lane and Slaughter.

I think it's wrong for County Commissioners to have us pay all of the costs without holding another election. Why do we always pay more and have our taxes raised again in the future? They must ask voters to pay for the whole cost.

This from a Statesman article today:

"If private interests do not agree to pitch in, the county could pay their share as well — a step that could triple the price tag because of rising construction costs, but one that some county officials say they must consider.

"While it's never pretty to ask voters for more money to finish a project," said County Commissioner Sarah Eckhardt, whose precinct includes Wells Branch Parkway, "I think the reasons for the change in numbers are exceedingly reasonable."

Sal Costello, a critic of Central Texas road planning, disagreed. He said that the 2005 ballot language led voters to believe that those roads were going to be built with developer help and that voters will be less likely to support future bond projects "because of this kind of bait and switch."

The Wells Branch Parkway and Howard Lane extensions were among the bond package's seven "public-private partnerships," in which the cost would be split about 50-50 between the county and private interests who stood to benefit from the roads being built.

The partnerships, which are done around the country, are a mechanism intended to save taxpayer money..."

The article says the county will now ask CAMPO for the additional tax dollars.

I believe Sen Kirk Watson, Chair of CAMPO is also a Lobbyist (on the payroll) for one of the developers (Goodnight Ranch - Goodnight Tract) that didn't pay up. Can you say conflict of interest?

Watson is very familiar with diversions of our tax and bond dollars. Not only did he just vote to spend nearly 1 Billion tax dollars to shift our Austin freeways to toll ways on CAMPO, but his City of Austin Prop 1, of the year 2000, diverted a whopping $67.2 million of our bond dollars, intended for free roads, into the 45N and 130 toll roads Central Texans drive today!

The diversion of our tax dollars and bond dollars is a major problem with our government and the reason we keep paying more every year.

Toll Road Privatization May Result in Indirect Impacts

"The problem we seek to solve by tolling and privatization will not solve the problem at all. Our research suggests that it will only make it worse."

by Steve Hevner, Penn State University

Privatizing toll roads in the U.S. may result in significant diversions of truck traffic from privatized toll roads to "free" roads, and may result in more crashes and increased costs associated with use of other roads, according to a new study.

Peter Swan of Penn State- Harrisburg and Michael Belzer of Wayne State University will present the findings of their study, "Empirical Evidence of Toll Road Traffic Diversion and Implications for Highway Infrastructure Privatization" on Jan. 14 at the 87th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, D.C.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

Inspector General Reports Impact of Transportation Funding Diversions (CLICK TO READ)

"The American people understand that transportation earmarks often have more to do with a politician's re-election campaign than the true priorities of each state's department of transportation," Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) said.

SA EXPRESS: Gov. Perry's Ric Williamson is responsible for gas tax diversions!