Please complete the following at your Democratic Precinct Convention on Tuesday, March 4,2008:

Adopted/Not Adopted by Precinct ,Senate District -.

(circle one)

Opposition to Toll Roads & Trans-Texas Corridor,

and Support for Traditional Funding of Highways
WHEREAS, Toll roads are an unfair, undemocratic, and inefficient transportation system, which removes
transportation fiom the public domain and switches it to exclusive access and often private control, especially
when sold to corporations in long-term contracts; and

WHEREAS, Many inappropriate consequences would accompany the TTC, such as Imminent Domain seizures,
isolating small communities and lesser roads, exclusive private contracts for concessions, fuel, lodging, and
even security; and

WHEREAS, Privately managed toll roads often encompass non-compete clauses that are clearly contrary to the
public good, and may single-handedly lead to major deterioration of our once-superior State highway system,
and private profits will siphon-off future funding fiom our State's transportation system, when growth
projections call instead for dramatic expansion; and

WHEREAS, By often doubling (or worse) the total cost to the motorist per mile driven, toll roads concentrate
the cost burden on those forced to rely heavily upon them, instead of spreading the costs among all drivers, as
the gas tax has traditionally done; and

WHEREAS, Toll roads divide and isolate communities by arbitrarily limiting access and disrupting long-
established transit routes; and

WHEREAS, Toll roads are not effective solutions for congestion because they are more expensive than
freeways, but are not as widely used, while they disrupt the flow of traffic on surrounding roads, offer sluggish
service roads as the non-tolled equivalent, and because they siphon funding away from needed projects; and

WHEREAS, The approaches taken to implement these programs violate our constitutional access to the
decision-making process through secret planning and private contracts, which could also include the secret
transmission of water, utilities, or other resources via private, tolled corridors; and

WHEREAS, The Legislature approved vague language that allowed TxDoT to usurp too much of the legislative
role of setting policy, thereby destabilizing the balance of power between these two branches of government;
now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That we call upon the Texas Legislature to restore the gas tax as the major funding mechanism for
our highway system by indexing gas taxes and using their entirety for construction and upkeep of our State's
transportation system; and

RESOLVED, That we call upon the Texas Legislature to preserve all transportation policy-making authority for
duly-elected bodies, with total public scrutiny of all processes; and

RESOLVED, That we call upon the Texas Legislature to restore free access to these unreasonably tolled
corridors to the public as soon as possible.
Submitted by Ron Coldiron, from Precinct 220, Travis County, Senate District 14