Cause and Effect: Anti-Toll Movie Wins Award: Lege Goes Anti-Toll

... Anyway, what I meant to say on the slow-clap salute to the filmmakers of Truth be Tolled (the blog post yesterday got truncated!!! Technical issues!!! I'm not the number 2 blogger in San Antonio like Dave Maass!!! I'm not even in the top 100, the daily's transportation reporter Patrick Driscoll even has me beat)

... is congrats on taking the top honor at the WorldFest Houston Film Festival and look at what's happening in the state legislature.

Your documentary on the grassroots resistance to private investment in Texas toll roads (like the mothertrucking Trans-Texas Corridor) got the Texas lege to support a two-year moratorium on these types of public-private partnerships - well, that's what A-ganger Terri Hall of the SA Toll Party and Turf.org says.

The latest edit of the film was given to every Texas legislator this March. And then the pro toll road gargoyle who chairs the House Transportation Committee, Mike Krusee, voted along with the rest of his committee yesterday in support of a toll-road moratorium (SB 1267) - finally giving Texas its "when pigs fly" moment (and continuing the lege rebellion against Governor Perry, who's been pushing the privatization of state highways). The Senate already approved that moratorium, too.

Hall said Krusee is just going with the lesser of two anti-toll road restriction bills; "he's in abject panic that HB 1892 will be the tonic of choice for an angry Legislature!" she emailed me yesterday. Unlike the standalone moratorium bill mentioned above, HB 1892 would put a sunset on comprehensive development agreements - contracts that contort the state in all kinds of bendy ways to make sure the private companies make a profit on tolls for decades.

Even if Perry vetoes SB 1267 (said to be already on his desk) the lege still has time to override him. The session ends May 28.