Give Me 30% More or Else

For us Texans the recent phenomenon of selling our major highways to the highest bidders has caused an unsettling effect. We've seen the ECSTASY of significant funds coming to the State Treasury with "little or no downside?"

For us in the Dallas-Ft. Worth-McKinney area, the time has come to pay the piper and experience the AGONY of the state's decision of auctioning the rights to build and COLLECT TOLLS on Highway 121 from the entrance of DFW airport to McKinney. The bidding war between the Spanish firm who had bid and apparently won the competition and the North Texas Toll Authority resulted in a last-minute victory for the NTTA. Their bid must have been a bit high, too high to sustain! We are now paying a third (30% plus, Folks) on ALL TOLL ROADS IN THE NORTH TEXAS REGION for their foolishness and reckless bidding! This increase was applied without any approval or in reality, any discussion! At the risk of creating another bureaucratic stumbling bloc, we need to have input into the bidding process or at least a way of protecting the public against these rate changes. Someone (the public, maybe)should have significant input to keep un-elected executives from 1)making these unreasonable and un-sustainable bidding mistakes and 2)the ability currently available to them of making the public to pay for their mistakes.