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Follow TURFTrinity toll backers withheld key info to win voter approval
This is why calling for public elections to approve toll projects won't work. The backers LIE, LIE, LIE and don't give the public all the information, especially any negative info that could derail the special interests' agenda! Note how the NTTA, already under fire for a litany of problems (more here and here), was a key player in withholding information from the public prior to the election for the Trinity toll road project.
Trinity toll road’s backers told only part of the story to win 2007 vote
By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER
Dallas Morning News
04 June 2011
Just days after Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt vowed in March 2007 to block a toll road in the Trinity River floodway, top federal highway officials in Texas met with the Army Corps of Engineers to ask an urgent question:
Given the corps’ concerns about such projects after Hurricane Katrina two years before, would the Army permit the road to be built between the levees, as Dallas officials so badly desired?
How the corps answered and, more critically, how the city later would use its answers as the focal point of a heavily funded campaign to defeat Hunt’s ballot initiative help explain the raw feelings that four years later cling to the still-stalled and still-controversial Trinity toll road.
Minutes of that March meeting — part of a cache of thousands of emails recently released to The Dallas Morning News after nearly two years of delays by the Army — show that the corps’ assurances were never so direct as the city and the road’s chief cheerleaders made them out to be.
The messages also underscore the internal debates, worries and, in some cases, warnings about the viability of the toll road that contrast with the united picture of inevitability projected by city leaders and road supporters.
In its reply at the March meeting, the corps said a 2000 study had determined that putting a road in the floodway was “plausible” — and that “nothing prohibits the roadway from being located in the floodway,” according to minutes taken by the highway officials.
Those statements from the corps became a centerpiece in the city’s campaign against Hunt’s initiative.
“The Army Corps of Engineers and TxDOT and NTTA have studied this,” then-Mayor Tom Leppert said in a typical exchange during a League of Women Voters debate on Sept. 25, 2007. “They are the experts … and every single one of them says it’s viable and it works, it can be done, and there is no reason not to believe it is [going to be] done.”
But that didn’t tell the whole story. The meeting summary shows that the full message from the corps was more carefully nuanced.
“The … [corps] agreed with the base assumption that a floodway alternative is a plausible concept, although it will be difficult to meet all the requirements to do such,” the minutes say. “The … [corps] confirmed that ‘nothing prohibits the roadway from being located in the floodway, as long as the floodway operates effectively — which will be solely a corps determination.’”
The city’s public arguments for the tollway didn’t include the kind of warnings contained in the corps records.
Hunt, who recently won re-election and remains opposed to the toll road, said the omissions were inexcusable.
“The corps and certain urban planners had told the city their concerns and that changes needed to be made,” she said. “But that didn’t keep Tom Leppert from proclaiming that the corps had signed off, and that the toll road was paid for.
“This came up frequently. It would be very — how can I put it? — almost an offhand remark by the mayor. ‘Look,’ he would say, ‘there is nothing to worry about. Everything is fine with the corps, and we’ve got the money, and there’s nothing to worry about.’”
Leppert, who left office this year to campaign for U.S. Senate, did not respond to requests for interviews. As a result, it’s unclear whether he ignored the caveats attached to the project or was unaware of them.
The toll road project that Hunt was trying to stop is just one part of a grander vision known as the Balanced Vision Plan, part of a massive effort to develop the barren acreage along the river into a giant park with lakes, white water for kayakers and long-planned levee improvements.
Leppert and other supporters believed that if Hunt succeeded in removing the road, the coalition behind the larger project that had been carefully assembled over years of effort would unravel.
Voters defeated Hunt’s proposal in November 2007, 53 percent to 47 percent.
As the campaign unfolded in late 2007, Leppert and other road supporters argued again and again that the road was not only essential but ready to be built. But the emails released by the corps show a series of potential problems for the road, which ultimately must be approved by the federal government. The failure of the levees in New Orleans two years before had intensified the corps’ scrutiny of projects affecting levees.
And the emails show, for instance, that the city and the North Texas Tollway Authority were aware that technical requirements adopted after Katrina would prompt the corps to “severely scrutinize” parts of the toll road design.
Similar cautions had been delivered to the NTTA at a February 2007 meeting, when tollway authority managers asked the corps point-blank whether the project was possible.
“Can there be a road in the floodway, or is it a non-starter?” NTTA asked, according to corps records.
Corps officials again said it was possible, but only if the NTTA could do something that had never been tried: Design a major toll road within a floodway so that it did not interfere with the corps’ ability to “maintain the required level of flood protection.”
Paul Wageman, NTTA chairman in 2007, said the tollway authority did not see its role as weighing in on the ultimate path of the toll road.
Instead, he said, the authority was eager to show it could build roads like the Trinity, which was the city’s top priority. The authority’s deal with Dallas was to design the road, using Regional Transportation Council funds, to a point at which federal authorities could make a final determination about where it would be built.
The Dallas-based commander of the corps’ Southwest division wouldn’t comment about the referendum.
‘Squirrelly project’
But while the kinds of reservations contained in the emails released last month never made it into the public discussion of the project that year, they were known well enough behind the scenes to worry an official with the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington.
She wrote to the Pentagon in May 2007 to express concern that the post-Katrina review by corps headquarters could torpedo the project — even if the Texas-based corps commander had signed off.
“This is regarding the Trinity Parkway project in Dallas,” began Ruth Rentch, an official overseeing the Federal Highway Administration’s work on the Trinity from Washington. “It is a squirrelly project that is proposing to put a roadway in the floodway.”
Rentch appeared concerned that even if corps officials in Dallas approved an alignment between the levees, the project could get “blown out of the water” by corps commanders in Washington. She wanted to know if that was really the case.
The corps’ national transportation liaison at its Pentagon headquarters wrote back shortly. “The answer to your question is yes,” the official said. “But I am certain we can achieve our mutually desired outcomes on this project in a timely fashion.”
That didn’t appear to reassure highway officials in Washington or in Texas.
“Hmmmmmm,” a Federal Highway Administration engineer based in Austin wrote to Rentch in Washington.
She replied: “Hmmmmmmmmm is right! … Not sure about these dynamics.”
‘NTTA PR machine’
The road’s champions began to coordinate a common message even before Hunt announced her anti-road petition drive on March 13, 2007.
The night before, Martin Malloy, president of Halff Associates, one of the big engineering firms the NTTA hired to advance the toll road, sent an email to NTTA officials and others under the subject: “IMPORTANT … Angela Hunt to start petition drive.”
He said board members of the Trinity Commons Foundation, an advocacy group, had sprung to action during a meeting earlier that day to solicit support from political heavyweights. Among them: former Mayor Ron Kirk, former Dallas County Judge Lee Jackson and state Rep. Barbara Mallory-Caraway.
Malloy said the road’s supporters should urge voters to keep intact the entire Trinity River project, including the road. The best strategy, he said, “is a strong warning against cherry-picking. … It is time to move forward decisively and not waste time on second-guessing the plan.”
“The NTTA PR machine needs to get ready to respond if this happens tomorrow,” he said.
‘Potential deal-killer’
NTTA did respond.
Within a week, the authority’s acting executive director, Jerry Hiebert, met with Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm about the campaign to support the toll road, according to an email account of the meeting.
A few weeks later, on April 4, he sent a strongly worded public letter to then-Mayor Laura Miller, a road supporter, arguing against Hunt’s efforts to keep it out of the floodway.
“We are troubled that once again there seems to be an attempt to unilaterally remove the transportation element” from the plan, wrote Hiebert, who had stepped away from a role with a key contractor on the Trinity project, HNTB Corp., to temporarily lead NTTA.
His letter conceded that the corps ultimately would have to approve the project, but in pushing back against Hunt, he left out a string of other concerns by NTTA that he and his governing board knew could prove fatal to the project.
Funding was uncertain — and still is, as the project’s funding gap remains at $1 billion or more, should it be approved. Another major sticking point was whether the corps, as it insisted then and still does, would retain the right to close or even remove parts of the road in response to a flood.
“That, to me, was a potential deal-killer, and it hasn’t been resolved,” Wageman, the NTTA chairman at the time, said in a recent interview. “It just wasn’t time yet to resolve it, with so many other issues ahead of it. But we would have trouble with our bondholders if we tried to finance a road that could be shut down at the corps’ discretion.”
Coordinated messages
As the campaign unfolded, the road’s boosters sought to coordinate their messages with the media, the emails show.
In May, a KERA radio reporter asked NTTA, the city of Dallas and the corps for interviews about the toll road.
The morning after one interview, a corps spokesman wrote to counterparts at the city and NTTA to apologize for not briefing them earlier. “Interview went well and [she] did not ask any ‘tough’ or controversial questions. We tried to stay neutral concerning the Ms. Hunt petition drive and other issues with proposed placements of the toll road.”
NTTA spokesman Sam Lopez wrote back a few minutes later with good news, saying the reporter had just interviewed a senior NTTA manager, who succeeded in staying on message.
“Perfect timing. … She kept trying to bring up the petition ramifications. Kevin did a good job of saying ‘We don’t know yet.’ He kept on point that the Trinity Parkway is still in the environmental process stage, [route] alternatives are still on the table …”
Wageman said such close coordination was routine, though he said the city did not dictate what his staff could say.
“They wanted to know what we are saying,” Wageman said, “and there was an informal protocol developed among the various PIOs [public information officers] so the city would be told what we were saying when we said it.”
‘Just tell us’
When the city won the toll road referendum in 2007, Leppert immediately vowed to speed up construction.
But within six months, a string of setbacks related to the corps’ sensitivity to construction within the levees had put the road on hold, where it remains.
It’s unclear whether his successor will support the toll road — former Police Chief David Kunkle opposes it, and businessman Mike Rawlings is waiting to hear what the corps ultimately decides.
Meanwhile, corps leadership has rotated, too, at the local, regional and national levels.
The new Dallas-based general in charge of the Southwest division says a decision on whether the toll road could be permitted in the floodway is still years away. It will come no sooner than 2014, if there are no further delays, he said last month.
After watching the project for a decade, Wageman said that if the city and its partners are waiting for a definitive answer from the corps about their plans for the toll road, they may be waiting forever.
“The frustration that I think all the stakeholders have is just, ‘If this can’t happen, just tell us,’” Wageman said. “What I have come to conclude is that the corps will not tell you that it can’t be done.
“I don’t think they see that as their role necessarily. But the impediments to successfully satisfying their concerns — which are legitimate concerns about safety — may drive the local decision-makers ultimately to the point where they conclude it can’t be done. The corps doesn’t see its role as to say yea or nay.”
TIMELINE
1998 — Dallas voters approve a $246 million bond package to pay for a series of improvements to the Trinity levees, plus parks and other amenities. About $84 million is dedicated to pay for a high-speed toll road built by the North Texas Tollway Authority.
1999 — The Army Corps of Engineers concludes that building a toll road between the levees as the city plans is possible, if “stringent” conditions are met.
2003 — Mayor Laura Miller persuades the Dallas City Council to adopt a Balanced Vision Plan, a reconfigured plan for the floodway that scales back the road and moves it away from the Oak Cliff side of the river.
August 2005 — Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans, breaching its aging levees. Some observers say the corps is partly to blame.
October 2006 — The corps changes procedures for approving projects that would affect a federal levee. Projects like the toll road need approval by the corps’ chief of engineers at the Pentagon.
November 2006 — Because of “escalating concerns” about plans to build the road between the levees, the corps tells the NTTA that it will not permit the road to be built along the route preferred by the city. This prompts the Federal Highway Administration to begin a revised environmental review, and the NTTA designs an alternative route to address corps concerns.
March 14, 2007 — Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt calls for a referendum on preventing the toll road from being built between the levees.
March 20, 2007 — At a meeting in Fort Worth, corps officials tell Federal Highway Administration officials that the toll road concept is “plausible” but that it would be “difficult to meet all the requirements.”
April 30, 2007 — The corps’ Fort Worth district commander writes to Miller to clear up “inaccuracies” in the toll road debate. He reiterates that the corps would have to approve any project that affects the levees. “While the requirements for approval of this project are challenging,” he adds, “the corps and NTTA are committed to working towards acceptable and safe solutions for locating and designing this road in the floodway.”
June 16, 2007 — Businessman Tom Leppert wins a runoff to become mayor, vows to see the Trinity toll road completed and becomes chief champion of a campaign to defeat Hunt’s ballot proposal.
Sept. 25, 2007 — Leppert tells a campaign audience: “The Army Corps of Engineers and TxDOT and NTTA have studied this. They say it is safe. They say it is environmentally sensitive, and they say it is economically viable. … They are the experts … and every single one of them says it’s viable and it works, it can be done, and there is no reason not to believe it is [going to be] done.”
November 2007 — Voters defeat Hunt’s proposal, prompting Leppert to vow speedy progress on toll road construction.
December 2007 — The city asks the NTTA to begin further design of the toll road, accepting the risk that if its preferred route is disallowed by the corps, the money spent would be wasted. The risk is necessary to meet Leppert’s speeded-up timetable for completion.
December 2007 — The corps conducts a periodic inspection of the Trinity levees.
April 2009 — Work on the toll road stops as the corps announces that the levees failed the 2007 inspection. National levee experts for the Army say they cannot be sure the levees will protect downtown Dallas from a flood.
WHAT’S NEXT
2011 or early 2012 — The Army Corps of Engineers will approve Dallas’ plan for fixing levee problems identified by corps inspectors in 2009. The city is working with engineering advisers to develop a plan to make the fixes.
Once that is done, federal highway officials will use information from the levee remediation plan to complete a new environmental review of the toll road. Public hearings and a new City Council vote for a preferred route could follow as soon as later this year or early next.
Shortly thereafter, the city must detail for the U.S. government how it plans to pay for the toll road, which is expected to cost at least $1 billion more than the amount currently available.
Late 2012 or 2013, at the earliest — The Federal Highway Administration will issue a final decision on where the toll road can be built, choosing among alternative routes and the option of not building the road.
The highway administration will could wait to issue that decision until the corps completes a feasibility study for the overall Trinity River project. A corps commander has said the feasibility report won’t come until at least 2014.
If the corps doesn’t agree, the toll road won’t be able to be built within the floodway, no matter what decision the highway administration makes.
New, post-Katrina rules mean that even if the local commanders determine that the road can be built within the floodway, the Army’s chief of engineers at the Pentagon will have to personally determine that the road would not hurt the levees’ ability to protect Dallas from a flood.
Getting the records
It took The Dallas Morning News more than two years to obtain from the Army Corps of Engineers the public documents necessary to describe the behind-the-scenes concerns about the Trinity toll road that were never shared with the public during the 2007 referendum campaign on the road’s future.
Why did it take so long?
In short, because the corps wanted it that way. While corps officials initially agreed with The News that the records were in the public interest and should be released, they then subjected the records to a level of scrutiny and redaction that slowed the release process almost to a standstill.
For a full accounting of the long and torturous process of getting the records, go to transportationblog.dallasnews.com.