Continued raids on highway fund
mean toll road list will grow

02/04/2007

Jaime Castillo, San Antonio Express-News

If Lyle Larson were a boxer, he'd resemble a spent pugilist contemplating whether to get off his stool for another round of the great U.S. 281 toll road debate.

The Bexar County commissioner, who once upon a time joined with angry business owners to beat back the tolling of Texas 151, sounded Friday like he'd had enough of banging his head against a wall as Tuesday's public hearing on 281 approaches. "Short of an intervention by (Bexar County state lawmakers), I don't really see how we'll stop it," Larson said. "I'll get up and say my piece, but I don't know what good it's going to do."

Larson's public admission will likely be treated as high treason by the most rabid of anti-toll road activists, some of whom have polluted the debate with conspiracy theories and personal attacks on elected and non-elected officials.

But Larson's objection to tolling new express lanes on 281 between Loop 1604 and Stone Oak Parkway (if not farther north) has always been one about misplaced priorities and promises not kept.

To his credit, Larson hasn't been afraid to lay the blame for those misplaced priorities at the feet of the leaders of his own political party — the Republican Party.

Republicans have controlled the Governor's Mansion since 1994, but they've made no real attempt to stop the continued raiding of the state's highway fund for purposes other than building and maintaining roads.

Since 1986, about $9.3 billion has been diverted from the fund for non-highway things such as tourism packages and state historical and arts commissions.

The Department of Public Safety also is funded through highway dollars, which makes about as much sense as the city of San Antonio diverting streets and drainage funds to pay for the Police Department.

When it comes to U.S. 281, though, Larson and toll opponents say they will pack their tents and go home if TxDOT — the Texas Department of Transportation — simply fulfills its 2003 promise to build non-tolled overpasses between 1604 and Stone Oak.

Trouble is, before that project was stalled by lawsuits, its cost was pegged at $43 million in 2003 dollars. After paying for materials and some initial work done on the project, TxDOT has $34 million left.

And what is today's price for the same project? $110 million.

That means the Metropolitan Planning Organization, a group of 10 elected and nine appointed area officials who decide transportation priorities, could decide Tuesday to build non-tolled express lanes on 281.

But to do so, they'd have to de-fund $76 million from other local projects in the same "robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul" fashion that the state Legislature has taken to balancing the state's books.

(They'd also be ignoring the need to stretch the project along the fast-growing stretch of 281 to Borgfeld Road, which would add another $230 million to the project.)

Like Larson, I'm a homeowner on the same stretch of 281 that would be affected by tolls. But I hope that the angry chorus that gets going at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Alzafar Shrine Temple at 901 N.W. Loop 1604 will consider the long-term view as well.

The gas tax, the primary source of funding for the state's highway fund, hasn't been raised since 1991. And, in the meantime, we voters have sent a generation of politicians to Austin with the tacit message that if they raise taxes, they're gone.

And as long as the state's leadership continues to raid highway funds while pacifying voters with hollow pledges of no new taxes, U.S. 281 will not only be tolled.

It will just be one in a growing list of local toll roads.