Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

"Rise of the City-States" 

Once, Texas highways meant just that—for all of Texas.  But, no more.

After this session, we will see the 'Rise of the City-States.'  On September 20, 2006, Ric Williamson, head of TxDOT, said, " Right now, we face increased congestion, deteriorating roads, safety issues, and air pollution, all of which hinder mobility as well as current and future economic opportunities."  He said, we have $86 billion in roads to build and no money.

The plain fact is the money at TxDOT pays for only paving, period.

Since 1917, TxDOT has built roads for all Texans.  Since 1961, Texas has had a gas tax.  But, because of the "no new taxers" in the House and Senate, the gas tax has not been raised since 1991.  To add to the problem, $2.8 billion has been diverted from the state highway fund to pay for schools, trauma care, border security, and even the arts.

As a result, there is no more money to build new roads in Texas.  The gas tax money in the system now essentially pays for paving.

So, what happened?

Over the last two sessions, Sens. Steve Ogden and Todd Staples passed bills that created different highway financing tools.  One of these tools was Comprehensive Development Agreements (CDAs), where private entities could build highways.  Under one proposal, Cintra, a Spanish company, will pay the state for a 50-year lease on North Texas roadways to produce toll revenue, which will then be used to feed $2.1 billion in upfront money to other North Texas projects. 

In 2057, it's projected Texans could pay as much as $14.69 each time they travel the 26-mile stretch of road.

In a comprehensive May 7 story, Business Week reported that some $100 billion of public property could be privatized, nationwide, over the next two years—up from less than $7 billion over the past two years.  The upside is roads get built.  The downside is private companies own highways for 50 years and have a right to set the toll.  Higher tolls then pay for more roads.  And the money stays in metro areas.

So, what's the choice?  What I hear is Texans don't want to privatize highways.

Back home, one constituent told me that it's like selling your house to then lease it back.  As a state, CDAs move us closer to regionalized city-states—semi-autonomous governing bodies working independently, with no-one looking out for corridors, ports, plains and us.

So, how do we fund highways, build infrastructure and support the growth of a great state?  Here are three good ideas in bills around the Senate.

• Use a portion of the people's money that is currently invested in the Permanent University Fund (PUF) to fund highways secured by tolls. That way, the people get the 15% return, not Cintra.
  

• Increase bond capacity at TxDOT so we can build highways today and not incur high inflation costs in steel, concrete and other materials needed to build highways.  Costs rise every day from the demand for building materials in China and India, so let's build now, not later.
  

• Use the increased state sales tax revenue from the valuable real estate adjacent to new highways to retire highway bonds as a new and necessary revenue stream.

Do we fund highways the old-fashioned way?  Do we raise the revenues to pay as we go?  Or do we lease, privatize, and pay Cintra to do what we should do?

What do you think?

Eliot Shapleigh