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Governor Perry Responds to Letter Threatening to ‘Undo’ PPPs
Governor Perry, a longtime advocate for involving the private sector in infrastructure development, recently sent a letter on July 2 to Representatives Oberstar and DeFazio, and copied to President Bush, U.S. DOT Secretary Mary Peters, and all U.S. governors, among others.
This was in response to the May 10 letter from Representative James Oberstar, Chair of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Representative Peter DeFazio, Chair of the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, which was sent to governors, state legislators and state transportation officials, discouraging states from entering into public-private partnership agreements that are “not in the long-term public interest” and threatening to “undo any state PPP agreements that do not fully protect the public interest.”
Perry’s letter lays out his case for his state’s efforts to involve the private sector and introduce market forces to the development of Texas’ transportation system. Perry states: “…as your committee studies the role of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in supporting our national transportation system, I encourage you to examine the fundamental question of why the states are looking to engage the private sector in the first place. I will tell you that the answer in Texas is that we could no longer wait for anyone else to solve our problems.”
Perry goes on to detail the growth of the population and the growth in trade caused by the nation’s free trade agreements, as well as the lack of funding to address this growth, much less the maintenance of the state’s existing infrastructure.
Additionally, he points out the role of Texas as a donor state to the nation’s highway fund, and the ongoing challenge of federal rescissions—already over $600 million in less than two years—that threaten the state’s ability to address its transportation needs.
“It should be clear to you,” Perry says, “that I am not in favor of sending more of Texas’ gas tax dollars to an unfocused federal program…I can tell each one of my fellow citizens that I am not sending their hard-earned money to Washington, D.C. to have it redistributed, earmarked, and locked into programs that do little to relieve congestion. If Texans pay a user fee, it now stays in that region of the state to relieve congestion, increase safety, clean the air, promote economic opportunity, and maintains their system. The federal government cannot promise the same results.”
