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Follow TURFBut didn’t Chan’s company design the SH 130 tollway?
First of all, I met with Chan at her company. I’m fully aware of her engineering firm. The segment of SH 130 her firm was involved with was the northern portion that TxDOT operates, not the concession public private partnership that’s operated by Cintra. That portion of the tollway was built before our group even existed or understood the difference between a design build project and the traditional design-bid-build model or before the concession model was utilized, which is design-build-finance-operate-maintain, or DBFOM, as it later was on the southern segments.
Elisa Chan was not necessisarily anti-toll when we sat down to vet her, other than opposing tolls on existing roads like every candidate will tell you. She knows it’s a big problem in the district and that the people don’t want tolls, and she wanted to understand the deeper problems involved. Once she understood the nuances between traditional turnpikes and the new toll road models with all the trap doors, taxpayer subsidies, loan guarantees, and sweetheart provisions now being utilized across the state, nuances Donna Campbell does not understand, she immediately said no taxpayer money should be going into these deals.
She took copious notes - something Campbell never did in spending hours with her trying to get her to understand the differences between all these things, all the different agencies, how everything is funded, and how it needed to be fixed. Chan's questions were very sharp and demonstrated a level of understanding that’s rare in a public official.
Chan immediately saw the anti-taxpayer and fiscally reckless aspects of these deals and is calling for public protections and proper reforms to be put in place. So she’s not for toll roads the way they’re being done in our state under the current leadership. She’s signed onto our legislative agenda and understands what good public policy looks like as it pertains to transportation.
She’s very smart and understands the level of sophistication involved in these deals. Chan is very technical and her background and her depth of knowledge in the industry may just prove to be a big asset. Most of these Transportation Committee members don’t have a clue what’s involved in these complex contracts. They don’t read the bills they pass, or have the first clue how to protect the public interest, Campbell included.
Campbell also signed onto our legislative goals, but betrayed us. We already know how Campbell will vote on transportation. We’ll also watchdog Chan, and if she doesn’t keep her promises she'll get a poor rating, too. We didn’t choose the candidates in this race. It’s our job to vet them. Of the three, Chan is clearly the sharpest on transportation.
Read more: Campbell’s betrayal on tolls leaves Chan opening to snag senate seat