Do you have that bad taste in your mouth again? You should

While Texans are told that Gov. Rick Perry's pet project, the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) is dead, legislators seem hell-bent to push through various TTC "tributaries" at a huge cost to the Texas community. Tolls are new taxes!

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Governor Rick Perry: http://www2.governor.state.tx.us/contact/
Senate (State Sen. Jeff Wentworth): http://www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/senate/Members.htm
House of Representatives (State Rep. Patrick Rose): http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/welcome.php

By Peter Stern

The Legislature began its 81st session Tuesday, Jan. 13, and already Transportation Chair Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas) is extending private toll road contracts for 6 years.

Is this the same guy in 2008 who flipped when then TxDOT Commissioner Ric Williamson (who died last year) arrogantly refused to open discussion on toll activities and contracts with the Transportation Committee? Is this the man who promoted a moratorium on private toll road contracts?

What exactly is going on?

What is happening is that Sen. John Carona is setting the pace for the legislature to go more lenient with TxDOT and its previous questionable actions, contracts and activities during the past 7 years, under the guise that the agency now has more ethical management and that for some reason, previous private toll road contracts should be honored and extended.

Sorry, Sen. Carona and other legislators, Texans do NOT want toll roads and certainly we don't want such roads privatized whereby 80 percent of the revenues from tolls go back to the road corporation. That's just NOT cost-effective in the long run.

* The first order of transportation business is to repeal the law that permits elected officials to divert any gas tax revenue to other interests, e.g., Department of Public Safety and to higher education (UT).
* The 2nd issue is to unfreeze the gas tax and to permit an indexing as per the inflationary and/or cost-of-living adjustment rate.
* The 3rd item is to consider increasing the gasoline tax, which I don't believe we should do.
* The 4th option is to improve or develop rail, light-rail and busing lines.
* The 5th focus on the transportation agenda must be to consider other sources of financing for building and maintaining Texas roadways.

Under no circumstance must the legislature consider toll roads except as a last resort when the previous 4 items have been approved and more revenue is needed.

While Texans are told that Gov. Rick Perry's pet project, the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) is dead, legislators seem hell-bent to push through various TTC "tributaries" at a huge cost to the Texas community. Tolls are new taxes! Toll costs are manipulated by the state and privateers. Toll revenues are diverted to other interests. Generally, tolls remain after roadways are purchased over time. Consequently, tolls are infinite taxes that we pass along to future generations.

TxDOT is still under investigation for fraud and criminal activities. Legislators must review all other options before continuing TxDOT's questionable old ways and certainly toll roads are NOT the first choice of providing the financing for our current and future road needs. All other options must be reviewed first.

Hey, buddy, y'all got a photo ID?

A large chunk of lawmakers again are trying to push through legislation to force voters to show a photo ID as a means to protect us from voter fraud. Exactly how this defends against voter fraud remains unclear.

Too many people are making this a racial issue, which it should NOT be, e.g., how many illegal Mexicans do you know who are showing up at the voting booths to create voter fraud? What exactly would they have to gain?

Most of the Mexicans I know just want to be left alone so they can work and make a life here for themselves and their families. Before you fall-off your horse, I'm not saying the illegal immigration issue is not a major problem, but we need to resolve illegal immigration on another front by enforcing our immigration policy and laws.

Sorry, folks, voter fraud will NOT be stopped when people are required to show photo ID's. That's about as absurd as making a fire in your fireplace on Christmas Eve so that Santa can stay warm when he climbs down your chimney. No pun intended, but it's a smoke-screen issue.

Look, the voting process is easy and fine the way it is. If you are registered to vote, you have a voter registration card you show at the polls so you may vote. If you lost it or forgot the card, you show a picture ID so you may vote.

If elected officials truly want to curb election fraud they should focus more on the electronic voting machine systems, paper trails and vote collection processing throughout Texas. More uniform voting procedures are needed throughout our counties.

Many electronic voting machines are corrupted or have systems issues and are made by manufacturers like Diebold, who actually provided large financial contributions during Bush's two campaigns for President. Conflict of interest, anyone? In addition, every district has some voter fraud issues whether premeditated or not. Mistakes happen all the time. Some issues are fraudulent, some accidental.

In addition, if you want people to vote why maintain a system that makes them wait on lines for several hours as has occurred in several voting districts in past years. If we want to enable people to vote easily and without any corruption or contamination in the system, then let's do intelligent things to make it work better.

Once again, people are being misled by lackluster decision-making and/or special interest needs.

Peter Stern of Driftwood, Texas, a former Director of Information Services, university professor and public school administrator, is a political writer published frequently throughout the Texas community and nationwide. Mr. Stern is a Disabled Vietnam Veteran. He holds three post-graduate degrees.