What do taxpayers want?

Ending Transportation & Political Gridlock in Texas

A pro-taxpayer agenda for Texas drivers & taxpayers

Current transportation policy in Texas is committing Texas to a future we do not want.

• More clogged roadways
• More tolls for drivers
• More diversions of tax dollars to projects that increase rather than reduce congestion
• More public debt and interest payments
• Higher fuel and maintenance costs for drivers dealing with congestion and poorly maintained roads
• More erosion of private property rights to condemn land for economic development and non-transportation revenue purposes
• A growing state bureaucracy to manage all of the “innovative” strategies to create new streams of revenue.

Solutions:

• Return to pay-as-you-go road financing. Stop building roads with debt.
• Ensure adequate tax revenues are available for Texans to control their own transportation destiny rather than being subject to the whims of the federal government, interest rates, and private toll road companies. Redirect transportation- related taxes to roads by ending diversions of the gasoline tax, dedicating vehicle sales taxes and registration fees to adding and maintaining road capacity.
• Ban ‘public private partnerships’ that hand public roads to private corporations.
• Prohibit tolling existing free lanes, and/or the conversion of public right of way into toll roads, and stop paying for toll projects with taxpayer dollars. Require that all toll projects be self-financed and prohibit taxpayer bailouts of losses in toll revenues and failed toll projects. Ban ‘non-compete’ agreements which prevent the state from building new capacity.
• Repeal ‘system financing’ which allows toll revenues from one corridor to be used to prop-up or finance another.
• Prohibit the leasing out of public right-of-way to a private company when the land was condemned for a ‘public use.’
• Prohibit taxing authority by unelected boards.