Reason Foundation blog hits the nail right on the head...

While Kay has made a very clear and obvious decision to base her campaign on opposing the Trans Texas Corridor which has been dead already for quite some time... Reason Foundation always has great ideas when it comes to transportation especially... Leonard Gilroy just rips Kay's guts out, which she deserves for demagoguing the transportation issue so baldly (link). Excerpt follows...

In a puzzling tiptoe act, while she bashes and misrepresents Perry's pro-privatization transportation policies with one hand, with the other she claims that she would also be open to toll concessions, just not as much. She rants against foreign toll road investors in her campaign ads, while seemingly failing to recognize that an international consortium—joined by their homegrown equity partner, the Dallas Police & Fire Pension Fund—are investing in two multi-billion dollar, congestion-busting highway megaprojects in the Metroplex, Hutchison's home turf. These are projects that the state would have not otherwise been able to afford without private financing.

[SNIP]

There's no such thing as a "free" road...simple as that. Having served on Capitol Hill for years where the national transportation funding crisis is very well known, Hutchison should know that better than anyone. Recognizing the depth of the crisis and the threat to U.S. economic competitiveness, the U.S. Congress even chartered two national commissions to help chart a new path forward on transportation policy and financing.

Hence, it's incredibly disingenuous for the Senator to base her transportation agenda on an unattainable goal—"return to our tradition of free, quality highways and roads"—that will never possibly be achieved (unless she's willing to raise the current gas tax by multiples, a political loser). That "traditional" tax-based, government-monopoly-based system has run out of gas and is not coming back, which is why policymakers at all levels of government are frantically exploring new financing innovations, like PPP toll roads. Promising a return to the glory days of Texas tax-road building only promotes false hope and makes the inevitable reality check that much more difficult to swallow.

If I had not been swayed by Kay's misguided unemployment insurance attack against Rick... this issue would probably be straw that broke Kay's back as far as I am concerned... Kay's whiny complaints on transportation are not helpful at all... they do not advance the ball at all... and they are just confusing and misleading...

Rick's web ad hitting back at Kay's ad I blogged here last week is pretty good, but I think Rick's peeps should be careful not to run from privatization too much (link)...



Hitting Kay for also being for toll roads is a good hit... but Rick's peeps should make it more about her hypocrisy and less about the policy itself. In reality Rick's peeps should want to direct the conversation away from transportation and back toward bailouts, Washington versus Texas, moderate versus conservative... those kinds of things...