IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Grassroots score COMPLETE
VICTORY during special session!
Contact: Hank
Gilbert, Board Member, Texans Uniting
for Reform and Freedom (TURF), President
of Piney Woods Subregional Planning
Commission (903) 570-3613, WEB:
www.TexasTURF.org
Grassroots defeat GOLIATH: Stop the
sale of TX roads to foreign
corporations, protect public pension
funds
(Austin, TX – July 2, 2009)
Today, ordinary Texans brought Governor
Rick Perry’s road privatization, toll
road, and Trans Texas Corridor agenda to
a screeching halt. The Legislature
adjourned without re-authorizing private
toll road contracts called Comprehensive
Development Agreements (or CDAs). The
grassroots scored another victory by
KILLING the revolving fund in HB 1,
preventing the $2 billion in bonds from
being spent to build toll roads, convert
freeways to toll roads, or subsidize
private toll deals, as well as
protecting public employee pension funds
from risky toll roads schemes that are
failing all over the world.
“It is a
hard-fought victory for the grassroots.
We killed Goliath, not just Perry’s
controversial toll road policies, but we
defeated a sold out Senate and the BIG
MONEY, the lobbyists, who sank millions
into pushing for the sale of Texas
highways,” Hank
Gilbert, Texas TURF Board
member and President of Piney Woods
Subregional Planning Commission.
“We
applaud Rep. David Leibowitz, once
again, for standing up for Texas
taxpayers and leading the charge to fix
the bill that created a revolving fund
that would have raided teacher
retirement and public employee pension
funds for risky toll road schemes. He
authored the bill to KILL the Trans
Texas Corridor and another to prevent
the conversion of freeways to tollways
during the regular session. He’s a
proven taxpayer hero and Texans owe him
a tremendous debt of gratitude,” said
TURF Founder,
Terri
Hall.
“However, no session is without a few
villains. CDA proponents and senate
leaders like
John
Carona
and
Steve
Ogden
need to be taken to the woodshed for
promising to promote the MOST expensive
method of road funding, CDAs, next
session, and for wanting to continue to
raid public pension funds over the LOUD
objections of Texans. None of this is
dead in their minds, just postponed
until they can resurrect this
controversial public fleecing for
another day,” Hall emphasized.
Taxpayers wanted
Perry’s controversial and virtually
universally detested road privatization
schemes to die a natural death August 31
as scheduled, which will also KILL the
mechanism to build the
Trans Texas Corridor (or
TTC).
Today, they achieved just that. However,
TTC-69/I-69 was excepted out of the
moratorium, SB 792, in 2007, so TxDOT
has the authority to enter into CDAs for
that project through 2011. TURF, in
cooperation with two private property
rights foundations (Stewards of the
Range and American Land Foundation) and
local governments, have been
instrumental in forming subregional
planning commissions in the path of
TTC-69, and plan to use these
commissions to challenge the TTC and
keep it from ever being built.
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