Consensus? What Consensus?

Dear Editor,
   Having substituted character assassination and bizarre fantasy for rational reporting on the proposed $2.2 billion toll road scheme, Mike Clark-Madison now seeks to backtrack and insist that his views really are reasonable, well-informed, and "reflect public consensus" ["Austin@Large," News, July 30]. Instead, he repeats key false claims while ignoring reality.
   When our elected transportation officials receive an unprecedented 6,000 public comments against the toll scheme and fewer than 600 in favor, and that was only before the vote, one has to ask of what public consensus Clark-Madison speaks?
   He claims the toll scheme favors local control, comparing the unelected but local toll road authority to the unelected state transportation commission. That’s a false comparison; the real comparison is to the mostly elected and local CAMPO board itself. Unless reversed within the very near future – before the unelected CTRMA makes financial commitments – the CAMPO vote will stand as only the first wholesale and irreversible giveaway of voter control over local roadways and transportation dollars.
   The biggest whopper is that the toll scheme is consistent with Envision Central Texas. The CAMPO 2025 plan – which the $2-billion-plus debt-financed toll scheme would accelerate – is based entirely on passed sprawl growth trends. The whole premise of ECT was to change how we grow, especially over the Edwards Aquifer.
   Last week Clark-Madison even tried to suggest that the toll scheme was good for Barton Springs, noting CAMPO’s amendment calling for "water quality controls on South MoPac." He didn’t bother to mention that CAMPO gave all of South MoPac over to CTRMA’s control, not just the William Cannon bridge, without any public notice or public hearing. Or that five of the first nine and more than $700 million in expanded concrete would be located in the Barton Springs Watershed – all justified by and intended to serve future growth that ECT and the larger public have said we don’t want. If this happens, it will only increase, not decrease, congestion on MoPac and on the still undisclosed MoPac-to-downtown freeway. That’s in addition to killing the springs.
   Thankfully, there are plenty of motivated people from across the region who aren’t willing to sacrifice Barton Springs and our local control to bullying from Mike Krusee and Gov. Perry.