Trans Texas Corridor road race: Texans have persuaded their lawmakers to pass legislation hobbling the Trans Texas Corridor, and they are racing to build more support before the next legislative session.(NAFTA SUPERHIGHWAY)

Current reports about the Texas Department of Transportation's response to a mandated construction moratorium on the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) are alarming and confusing. But this is sure: the Texas Department of Transportation isn't going down without a fight. It wants the highways. On July

18-20, TxDOT hosted the 2nd Texas Transportation Forum to address changes resulting from the recent legislative session, and THE NEW AMERICAN was in attendance.

For the greenhorn, the TTC refers to the Texas segment of the NAFTA Superhighway--a planned system of highways to run from lower Mexico through Canada--and a statewide network of corridors. Multiple projects comprise the TTC, the most recognizable being TTC-35 that parallels 1-35. Designed for passenger, freight, rail, pipeline, and cabling capabilities, and financed through a suspicious series of contracts with Cintra (Spain), it has spawned perhaps the biggest battle in Texas legislative history, threatening to scar the entire state, then nation, if tolerated. At best, it would chomp huge sections of private property, disrupt local tax bases, aid illegal immigration, threaten local law enforcement, and pour millions of profit dollars into foreign coffers (through its operation as a toll road) at taxpayer expense. At worst, it is critical infrastructure for the establishment of the impending North American Union, the joining of Mexico, Canada, and the United States in a EU-style union.

Legislative Deception

The Texas Transportation Forum drew state and national transportation leaders to address transportation issues and to promote the corridor and the use of 3Ps (Public Private Partnerships). 3Ps are a new way to attract funding for supposed public-works projects in which private corporations put up some of the capital to build public-works projects in return for being granted control of the "public property" as a profit-generating enterprise. During his keynote speech, Texas Governor Rick Perry stated, "We should remain committed in our pursuit of public private partnerships."

Acknowledging the criticism the TTC has garnered from Texans since they learned it was scheduled to be built without their go-ahead, conference speakers admitted a tactical error by not being forthcoming with Texans about the corridor(s), and promised more transparency in hopes of soothing constituent anger while racing toward the 2009 session, critical to Superhighway success. J. C. Sandberg, counsel and senior public policy advisor at Baker Donelson, a well-known law firm including transportation and federal public policy in its areas of practice, summarized current thinking, "What happens in Texas in terms of transportation is being watched by Washington. They're looking for what works for duplication in other states." If this agenda can be bullied through in Texas, many other states in the United States will also see corridors spring up in their neck of the woods.

Once Texans learned of the legislative deception, they fought back. During the 2007 session, firestorms erupted as a few informed legislators battled on behalf of angry constituents against the rogue TxDOT and Governor Perry. Fallout is still uncertain, but significant ground was gained for anti-corridor folks, which encompass nearly everybody except the governor and TxDOT. At the conference, Dana Levenson, a managing director at Royal Bank of Scotland, was pessimistic in his assessment. "Six months ago, there was lots of progress, but in Texas, there were steps backward in terms of 3R The legislation seems to have stopped a good deal." But he was optimistic that by the 2009 session (the Texas legislature meets every two years), "the money out there looking for opportunities will still be in the market for Texas projects." State Representative Lois Kolkhorst, who led legislature opposition to the corridor, added, "The forum explained how global trade has created hundreds of billions of dollars in international private equity that now seems to be looking for a safe harbor. However, we should be wary of the investment community using 'urban congestion' as a vague excuse to build a NAFTA corridor that could erode our sovereignty. It's important to constantly delineate between building local toll projects and building an international NAFTA corridor."