Summits and tragedies may be dominating the news today, but Texas politics is literally taking its toll on residents of the Lone Star State in a far more local way. A few years ago, budget shortfalls, a powerful aversion to taxes, and back to back decades of double digit population growth conspired to turn preexisting highways and metro loops in Central Texas into toll roads. From the classic old Austin neighborhoods stretching down both sides of the Colorado River to the prosperous new homes dotting the Dallas suburbs, this issue has universally infuriated just about everyone. Now the same region may be in line for some shovel ready stimulus money, and grassroots groups are worried that the powers that be have decided – with no small amount of encouragement from what locals call the Toll Road Lobby -- that those funds will be used to build more toll roads, and worse, put toll booths on existing public roadways.
A Ron Paul voter in Austin said she feels like she's being looted, but it's not just indies or Ron Paul supporters that are angry. Austin local P. Wilks, who voted for Obama, said, "In Texas, our representatives are no longer "our" representatives, they answer to someone else, let's find out who. Never re-elect anyone!" Those thoughts were echoed by proud McCain voter E. Mitch who added in classic cowboy style, "I feel like I’ve been broken open like a double-barrel shotgun. I pay taxes on income, groceries, and gasoline, I pay for my car tags every year, I voted for road bonds again and again, now I'm paying everyday to use those roads. It's double taxation and it's wrong!"
Conservatives deserve some credit for seeing through the usual ruse that a "user fee" is simply a T-A-X by any other name. Newly minted Austin progressives are getting a harsh lesson that democrats can be wined and dined by lobbyists too. Libertarians and independents are reminded that there's no such thing as a free and fair market when it comes to public money and private profit. And Gov. Rick Perry is getting it from all sides.
About the only people that seem to vocally support the tolls are a few contractors, a handful of large real estate developers, and a smattering of well heeled posh folks that stand to benefit. Outside of that, the groundswell is building rapidly. Anti Toll Road orgs are popping up on the Internet and linking up with other grassroots groups across the entire state:
We have allowed our government and their special interests friends to run amok. Both Republicans and Democrats are working with us. This is not a partisan issue, but a corrupt politicians' issue. All Texans must continue to work together and vote the person - not the party. Tens of thousands of Texans have already joined us.
Most critics point out that if someone wants to build a toll road using private capital from point A to point B, to compete head to head with existing public roadways, few Texans will object. What's driving people to pitchfork and torch mode is 1) Converting existing, paid for public roadways in to tolls, a process that could eventually leave little or no practical alternatives for motorists to use, and 2) Using taxpayer stimulus money to fund new, lucrative monopolies that prey on the very taxpayers forced to pay for their creation.
It doesn't exactly help matters when public transit in much of the vast state falls somewhere between barely adequate and nonexistent. Or that in some places there are unmanned booths that record license plates and send motorists a bill in the mail -- or send them to collections if the bill never arrives. And it doesn't sweeten the deal that one of the company's being paid to collect and manage the revenue is based in about the most corrupt foreign nation in the western hemisphere.
So far these groups have had little success bringing change. In 2007 the state ledge banned new tollway proposals, but the move was quickly lampooned by activists as so full of holes it was dubbed the Swiss Cheese Moratorium. Meanwhile, the tollbooths and new tollways metastasize, with no end in sight, and the operators are raking it in.
It's just nickels and dimes -- actually more like quarters and dollars -- but it's constantly on motorists' minds and particularly frustrating in the midst of an economic downturn. For a surprising number of voters in once divided political camps, the whole thing is converging on shared outrage. For political challengers, that spells opportunity. But for sitting politicians of every stripe, it may soon spell unemployment.