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See TURF & TxDOT's response in this Austin News 8 TV report here.
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New TV commercial criticizes Rick Perry over Trans-Texas Corridor
Houston lawyer pays for latest ad from Democratic group, Back to Basics PAC.
By Jason Embry
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Updated: 9:58 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2010
Published: 11:41 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2010
Houston trial lawyer Steve Mostyn will open a new front in his election-year war against Gov. Rick Perry today by launching a television commercial that criticizes Perry's pursuit of the Trans-Texas Corridor.
Mostyn is fast becoming the pre-eminent donor in Texas Democratic politics and a key player in the race for governor. He has put more than $2 million into Democratic causes and campaigns in this election cycle and appears poised to spend several million more.
Much of that money has gone to the Back to Basics Political Action Committee, which has already aired two statewide television commercials critical of the governor.
In the group's third ad, which will launch statewide today, a rancher says Perry "would bulldoze half a million acres of private land — and give it to a Spanish company to build toll roads and let the company set the tolls. When lawmakers tried to stop him, Perry vetoed the law."
The 500,000-acre figure is a reference to early plans for the Trans-Texas Corridor, a long-range plan for 4,000 miles of cross-state tollways, passenger and freight rail lines, and utilities that Perry first laid out in 2002.
The corridor ran into considerable criticism in rural Texas, and members of Perry's administration long ago, even while they were actively developing an Interstate 35 corridor plan, admitted that nothing close to that 4,000 miles would ever be built.
Later, in January 2009, transportation officials declared that the corridor concept was dead.
A few legal remnants of the plan are still on the books, and the state is still working on Interstate 69 from the Rio Grande Valley to Texarkana, which was a key part of the corridor. But the current plans for I-69 are vastly different from what the corridor plan envisioned, Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Chris Lippincott said.
"We're not going to develop Trans-Texas Corridor projects," Lippincott said.
Cintra , a Spanish company, never had a contract to build every road in the corridor, Lippincott said. Also, he said a private company would never have been able to set tolls because the state Transportation Commission would have had final say.
Back to Basics director Clifton Walker said Perry could try to revive portions of the corridor if voters re-elect him.
"Our land, homes and family farms just aren't safe with Rick Perry as governor," Walker said.
Back to Basics has relied heavily on Mostyn's money to pay for statewide television ads knocking Perry for taxpayer spending on his western Travis County rental home and on his 2007 attempt to require schools to offer a human papillomavirus vaccine.
The group's latest ad buy cost about $900,000.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill White said recently that he isn't coordinating with Back to Basics. But if the group's ads are effective, they could prove a tremendous benefit to White: The spots would bruise Perry without costing White any of his own campaign money.
Perry spokesman Mark Miner dismissed the ad.
"Baseless attacks from Bill White's front groups aren't going to solve problems," Miner said.