For Whom the Toll Road Tolls

Did you ever wonder where people got the idea that toll roads are inherently good things?

Did you ever wonder how toll roads have become so numerous around these parts?

I have, and so have the Fort Bend County voters in Precinct 1 who came out and voted against a toll road authority candidate and for a Democratic candidate, Richard Morrison, whose call to battle was “No Toll Roads.” At the time, it was Section C that created the hue and cry. Section C, also known as the Toll Road to Nowhere. Section C would have created a ribbon of concrete through a quiet development known as Greatwood. Then onward to the south over a treeless plain.

That issued was settled with the voters in 2008. But now another toll road has reared its ugly head.

Section D.

Section D is a stretch of the Grand Parkway that has already been built between the Westpark Tollway and US 59. It’s free. The proposal is to finish the project by building a tollway in addition to the existing 4 lane artery currently handling the traffic.

Then charge commuters money to drive on it.

According to Bob Hebert, “Ph.D.” it is completely fitting and necessary to build the thing.

From The Chron:

“County Judge Bob Hebert said tolling would be the only option to build the
road as taxpayers would be opposed to county using their tax money for the
project.”

As if that is the only option.

There is another option.

Don’t expand it.

And who said the taxpayers will object to their tax money funding the project? Where does he get his facts? The funny papers? If memory serves, the taxpayers in Fort Bend County overwhelmingly approved a county bond issue to expand existing county roads all over the place. It was Fort Bend County Proposition 1 on the May 2007 Ballot.

Take a look. It’s here 79.21% of the voters voted in favor of selling millions of dollars in bonds to improve the county road system.

That’s 12,932 votes, by the way.

Now my point is twofold.

One, what the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks are we doing listening to this guy talk about expanding the Grand Parkway by having it paid for in tolls when the county road expansion project has yet to show any results? If congestion is such an issue, or prevention of it, where are the road expansions that were meant to alleviate the situation?

Two, what is this about taxpayers will oppose having their taxes go to expanding the Grand Parkway. Has he asked any of them yet? I can count 12,932 voters out there who will vote for anything that Judge Hebert and his cronies want to buy. All he needs is another off-off year election in May to get another bond issue passed.

2011 sounds like a very good year for something like that.

Face it. Until the voters catch on about these guys and their construction company cronies we will continue to have these ribbons of pavement foisted on us and there isn’t a thing we can do about it until the voters wake up and smell the concrete.

Paraphrasing John Donne who said it best when he wrote in his Devotions:

“…never send to know for whom the toll road tolls; it tolls for thee."

Fort Bend County Takes a 33% Increase for Services

I really don’t know what to think about the latest posting to go up on FortBendNow. It seems that the county government has, in the past, enlisted the services of a group called the Fort Bend Economic Development Council to predict and promote growth in the county.

It just seems to be a little bit too much money for something that seems to be inevitable. Granted, the council may have been responsible for the gigantic population growth rate that Fort Bend County has experienced since 1960 (see figure below), but maybe, now just maybe, there is growth that is starting to exceed what has made this area an attractive place to be living in.

Traffic at rush hour has certainly changed in just the last few years. It is just possible that growth has proceeded at a pace that was either not predicted well – and full blame can be placed at the FBEDC for that – or that predicted growth did not keep up with infrastructure – again, who was supposed to predict that?

And is it no wonder that we are getting a poor return for our taxpayer dollars? The arrangement is just too incestuous to believe. Judge Hebert, who was making the case for this monumental increase, sits on the board of directors of the FBEDC. The movers and shakers that represented the “Keep Fort Bend Moving” campaign, the campaign that succeeded in getting voters to approve sale of $153 million worth of “mobility bonds” are all officers or on the board of directors of the FBEDC. The people who stand to gain the most from runaway growth in Fort Bend County are asking for taxpayer money to fund the very organization that will bring the old mazooma rolling in to their businesses.

Don’t you love it? An organization gets taxpayer money to promote growth in Fort Bend County so that it will enrich them and their respective businesses.

And they need an additional 100 large this year to do the job better.

You know, you hear Repbulicans whine and whine about wasting taxpayer dollars. Here we have a Republican dominated county government not only throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars at an organization that promotes county growth (something that is not in the best interests of most county residents), but the organization’s work monetarily benefits the very people who run it.

Hebert says that the 100 grand raise is to make up for the council not raising their fees for a number of years. I have a modest proposal. How about, since all these gentlemen on the FBEDC substantially benefitted from the rampant growth in this county, how about they work next year for free?

Makes perfect sense to me.

That way the county can finally give well-deserved pay raises to the lower tiered county workers.

A win-win.

I am characteristically pessimistic that anyone in this will take my modest proposal seriously.

Watt$ To Grease the Wheels of SDEC Members This Weekend

That’s going to be his modus operandi. Spreading out the campaign cash that he has self-funded to grease some Texas politicians’ wheels, and this time get them greased at the same time. Mikal Watt$ has decided to throw a big party for SDEC members (and his consultant entourage) by hosting a hospitality room at the Hilton this Saturday evening in Austin. This is a regularly scheduled quarterly meeting of the Texas State Democratic Executive Committee to be held all day at the Hilton in Austin this Saturday.

How did I find out about Watt$’ party? He told me. Or rather, an SDEC member let me listen to the script that Watt$ left on his answering machine. That’s right I said script. I know when someone is reading a script because I have done it thousands of times and know how it sounds. Here’s what he said:

“Hey , Mikal Watts running for the US Senate. Hey, that’s not why I’m callin’ the reason I’m callin’ is I know that the SDEC is gettin’ together in Austin this weekend so I wanted to call yew and tell yew that our campaign is opening up a hospitality suite for yew guys . . . uh . . .we’ll open up at the Hilton there . . . uh . . .some time around seven, so that when everybody gets done with the christening of the new building . . . uh . . . we can all talk about all the good things that are happening there . . .uh . . . with the Democrats in Texas and I can git you up to speed on the campaign. I hope you’ll be there and look forward to seeing ya. Good-bye."

Get that? Free booze, probably some hors d’oeuvres, and . . . well . . . hospitality for a bunch of guys who are in town on their own dime – yep, there’s no money in being an SDEC member.

So the SDEC member and I were wondering who would outnumber whom at this hoedown, SDEC Committee members, or Watt$ fawning consultant entourage.

But here’s the real rub. Several SDEC members were going in together to host a “Meet and Greet” for Rick Noriega at the very same time. Hospitality rooms are pricey and they (remember, SDEC members are not paid to do this) decided to just take over the Hilton bar and have everyone come on down, buy some drinks and talk to the best, but not the richest, candidate for US Senate from Texas, Lt. Col and State Rep Rick Noriega.

I suspect that the Watt$ campaign caught wind of this long-planned event and decided to one-up these SDEC members in the best way he knows how, spending campaign cash and buying SDEC supporters.

So here’s what I say the SDEC members should do: go on up to Watt$ suite and meet the guy. Heck, on the phone he sounds like a nice enough guy – maybe the accent is a little forced – but there you go. Go and have a couple of drinks on Watt$ dime and take that second drink downstairs to the Hilton’s main bar where you can finish it, meet Rick, and mix with a true people-powered campaign.

Now if you think that Watt$ is pulling an underhanded ploy in creating this time conflict, why not say so with cash. Rick Noriega needs your monetary support so he can show Texas that the richest candidate for US Senate is not necessarily the best one. Go to ActBlue. Bring money.

Why I Voted NO on Fort Bend County Proposition 1

I sometimes have difficulty focusing on something to write about. I had several irons in the fire today but they all fizzled. Then I thought I’d better empty my mailbox. I empty my mailbox once a week whether it needs it or not.

What do I find in and among the other items? Not one but two campaign mailers from the Keep Fort Bend Moving campaign. One is an 8 x 10 glossy full color on one side mailer. The other . . . the other is a new one for me.

It was a DVD.

Keep Fort Bend Moving sent me a DVD with a 6 minute message on it. Someone here in Fort Bend County, Texas REALLY wants me to vote yes on this bond issue..

Someone really well funded.

And I smell Republicans and construction companies.

I couldn’t make heads or tails out of Dan Roach who is the campaign treasurer. He is below the radar. But the chairman of the campaign R. C. Brown, III is very much on the radar screen. He is president of R. C. Brown and Associates and sits on the Board of Directors, along with Christine DeLay, of the Rio Bend Project, a project to build a colony of foster care homes in Fort Bend County. I’ve been by there. The development pays no property taxes to Fort Bend County. None.

Brown also sits on the board of directors of the Fort Bend Economic Development Council, whose secretary and treasurer are owners of an engineering company (Brown and Gay) and an engineering and survey company, respectively.

You don’t suppose these guys have it in mind to be successful bidders for some of these road projects, do you?

I really don’t mind that these guys are just trying to earn a buck. But really. Can’t they just send me a simple bulk mail black and white postcard with something like this written on the back:

"Dear Hal,

We’re a bunch of fat cat road builders and surveyors who want to feed at the public trough that your county commissioners have presented to you in County Proposition 1. 156.2 million dollars is a lot of bread and we sure could use a piece of it. So please vote yes on Proposition 1. You won’t regret it."

Yeah, just like I didn’t regret voting for the last county jail construction bond issue last May that saw a not so insignificant chunk of mazooma go right into the pocket of Judge Vacek and his partner Jeffrey Hoffman with a unanimous vote of the county commissioners last October.

Nope. Not this time, guys.

That’s why I voted NO on this bond issue. I will not vote for a county bond issue again until I see that little squirrelly things like that will never take place again.

Perry on HPV Vaccination: Progressivism or Pandering?

On executive order, Governor Rick Perry made Texas the first state, the first governing entity, to require that girls entering 6th grade be vaccinated for Human Papilloma Virus or HPV.

Isn’t that just about the last thing you would have expected to come out of this Texas governor? Vaccination to prevent cervical cancer before a girl becomes sexually active is such a good idea it doesn’t really need debate. My great-grandmother died of cervical cancer 30 years before I was born. She died at a relatively young 55 years of age.

It’s such a good idea that it is being considered in the US Senate (SB 54) and in several other state houses besides Texas, including New Jersey, California, Georgia, and Kentucky. Now that Perry made this an executive order, the Texas state house bill, HB 146 submitted by Joe Deshotel of HD 22, is now unnecessary. Deshotel commented that he didn’t think it would have ever made it to the floor, so he was pleased at this outcome.

But this is Texas and we need to debate this anyway. FortBendNow is reporting that State Representative Charlie Howard is going to put up a fuss about this. It seems Rep. Howard thinks that vaccinating young girls will send a signal to them that it’s OK to have sex now.

Funny. That isn’t what he wrote in his letter to Perry. He made mention of how costly the vaccine was, how being vaccinated could lead to a false sense of security because it only vaccinates against one of four strains of the virus, how it is relatively new and does not have any long-term studies on its effects, and finally, how Perry usurped the authority of the legislature by making it an executive order.

But then, I guess you don’t put in writing the fact that you think 12 year old girls will all be wanting sex now that they’re vaccinated against HPV.

If that is the real issue.

Think about it. Who in their right mind (besides a few Neocon Nutjobs) believes that this is a signal to 12-year old girls that it’s OK for them to have sex now? Parents, if you don’t want your 12-year old daughters to have sex just yet, RAISE THEM with values and morals. A little guilt thrown in is always something for good measure. That should do it.

No that isn’t the issue, is it? It’s about Merck, isn’t it? It’s about a campaign contribution (and more to come). It’s about how Merck’s Texas lobbyist is Mike Toomey, Rick Perry’s former chief of staff. It’s about the huge windfall to Merck when it sells its pricey vaccine, Gardasil, three doses for a full course, at 120 dollars a pop, to the parents of every 12 year old girl in Texas.

It’s about what it’s always about.