Tollapalooza coming Thursday

February 26, 2007

By Ben Wear, Austin American-Statesman

It’s the opportunity opponents of the Trans-Texas Corridor and toll roads in general have been waiting for for about three years: A chance to sound off about tolls to a high-placed, sympathetic ear. The result is likely to be the legislative equivalent of a zoo.

The Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, has scheduled a public hearing for 8:30 a.m. Thursday the Capital Extension Auditorium. The subject of the hearing is listed as “toll roads, public private partnerships, the Trans-Texas Corridor.” And note that location again: an auditorium, mind you, a place with several hundred seats, not some puny committee room where lobbyists and Texas Department of Transportation staffers take up most of the seats.

The friendly ear, meanwhile, belongs to Carona, who has filed several bills intended to curb the Transportation Department’s move toward hiring private companies to build and operate toll roads. He has called on Gov. Rick Perry to replace Texas Transportation Commission chairman Ric Williamson, and a couple of weeks ago had a public confrontation with the chairman over what he saw as Williamson’s lack of respect for his position as Senate transportation czar. The two men had a private meeting shortly after that, but there’s is no evidence that Carona has suddenly got the religion of privately run toll roads.

The Thursday hearing, the subject of much excitement among anti-tollsters on the Web, is scheduled to go all day, another rarity for legislative hearings not involving the state budget or school finance. Will it lead to any radical change in state policy? Probably not as long as Perry lives at 11th and Colorado streets and the House Transportation Committee is run by Perry/Williamson ally Rep. Mike Krusee, a Williamson County Republican.

But it should be interesting theater.