Gimme Some More 'Pac

After reading Ms. Murphy's post concerning the proposed Express Lane project for Mopac, I was immediately intrigued.  I live less than one mile from Mopac, and experience its grandeur as well as its horrors daily.  When traffic is light, I can get from 183 to Slaughter in 20 minutes--a good excuse to see my brother.  When traffic is normal, I can get from Far West to 2222 in 15 minutes.  Every night that there isn't ice in town, I can hear the sounds of progress like something out of The Dubliners.  The Express Lanes sound like a wonderful idea.  It appears a thorough environmental study is near completion (http://www.mopacexpress.com/environmental/index.php), and TxDOT and its partners are going out of their way to encourage community involvement.  The noise abatement barriers are long overdue, but I'm curious to see how the demand-based tolling will work.

No one who drives in Austin during the daytime will dispute that we need more major traffic arteries.  Mopac is tough, and IH35 has become nearly as impassable as the Beltway in D.C.  Additionally, the Y in Oak Hill is perhaps the biggest abomination I have ever witnessed, traffic-wise.  2 hours to get through the light on a run of the mill Sunday afternoon in early November?  No wrecks, just the outdated infrastructure of a rapidly growing city.  Austin, like nearly every square mile of America, needs sweeping infrastructure upgrades.  Everything built in the 30's and 60's is OLD.  Those periods were major engineering successes, but we need to stop resting on our laurels--they're rusty and crumbling, too. 

The Mopac Improvement Project website I linked to earlier is very nice.  It details a project that could be an effective Band Aid for Austin's traffic woes.  They have a reasonable financing plan and are doing an amazing amount of due diligence.  I hope the voters put on their forward-looking glasses, because it is time to make sacrifices to make our city more efficient while still keeping it beautiful and melodic.

Don't Let the Tree Fertilize the Soil

On Thursday, April 26th, Kirk Ladendorf and Farzad Mashhood of the Austin American-Statesman reported that a much ballyhooed deal to increase Apple's presence in Austin was again uncertain in their article, "Official: Apple deal 'in peril' over delays in approving incentives."  Austin's courtship of Apple has been in the news for months.  In the current economic environment, it would seem that a municipality would be well-served to roll out the welcome mat for a high-technology powerhouse like Apple.  Apple is an economy unto itself.  As Apple goes, so goes the NASDAQ.  Given evidence of Apple's willingness to take advantage of overseas partners, however, Austin and Travis County should brace themselves for the possibility that Apple is not their savior.

My wife and I have recently been scouring the Austin real estate market for our first home.  We gravitated toward areas that turned out to be near the proposed Apple expansion.  It seemed that buying in an area where new Apple employees might relocate was a good idea.  Buy a home during a housing slump and watch your property value increase as tech workers flock to the neighborhood with fists full of dollars. 

Big businesses steer our world.  I have watched this for the 13 years I've been in Austin.  CSC got a sweetheart deal downtown.  Round Rock prostrated itself to IKEA.  These are only two examples.  Austin, admittedly like every other municipality, recognized that bringing in business was the road to growth.  Give a company massive tax breaks, and that company will bring jobs.  The people that get those jobs will buy homes and products, providing tax revenue to offset the corporate incentives. 

The issue with this model, as I see it, is that companies become more and more brazen in their demands.  Businesses are conceived to make profit.  Demand is a major driver of profit.  If a business knows that a city is willing to cut innumerable keys to its gates in order to lure that business and its attendant carnival to town, why not ask for the moon? 

Apple, like any successful profit-driven enterprise, seeks deals when it makes capital investments.  I understand this.  That is capitalism.  Austin needs to be just as resolute in ensuring that the incentives it offers have reasonable expectations of garnering real gains for the city, its residents and their futures.  Apple expansion in Austin under mutually beneficial terms would be welcome.  Apple expansion with Apple lining its pockets while Austin laments unrequited adoration seems to be the more likely outcome.

How Can We Pass on Petroleum?

In her blog, Lone Star State of Mind, Mrs. Matthews recently published a commentary on natural gas drilling entitled "Burning Hydrocarbons--What the Frack?!."  You don't have to look far down my  own blog to see that I have some fairly well-developed opinions on this subject.  While I find Mrs. Matthews' post to be well-written and well-informed, I would be most interested to hear any ideas she has about "[b]ring[ing] on the solar and wind energy."

One of my favorite parts of Mrs. Matthews' article is her discussion of the questionable quality of many of the "scientific" studies cited by the energy industry in defense of its practices.  This is a time-honored ploy of the energy industry that I first read about as a teenager in Oklahoma when the oil companies were trying to explain why you could run your lawn mower on tap water in Ponca City.  Governments at all levels in the United States derive massive amounts of revenue from the energy industry.  Given this, it is not so difficult to imagine why elected officials hem and haw at the prospect of ratcheting down on producers by introducing stern regulations.  Kansas is poised to be the next boom area that will have to weigh the benefits of natural gas drilling against its potential costs (http://cjonline.com/news/2012-04-08/technology-puts-kan-cusp-oil-boom).

It is difficult to argue with the positive short- and medium-term economic impacts of the natural gas boom made possible by fracking; however, it is becoming increasingly apparent that, shockingly, these dollars don't come without environmental costs.  Clean energy, specifically solar and wind power, comes with a much smaller environmental footprint, but doesn't become profitable in nearly the time a natural gas well does.  In order to shift the nation's energy production in the direction of renewable resources, new fiscal incentives and subsequent technological breakthroughs must come to light.

Let There Be Light Power

As natural gas inventories swell and prices swoon, the state of Texas should go out of its way to encourage the expansion of the solar energy industry.  Our star has made it possible for life to exist on Earth.  We use the sun's energy to power the satellites that make our real-time lives possible.  Scientists know how to harness the energy radiated by the sun to put electricity on our power grids, but the concerns of existing energy generation industries prompt those companies to pursue legislation, tax breaks and subsidies that price solar power out of the market.

As technology proceeds at an ever increasing rate, new possibilities emerge seemingly on a daily basis.  This is true across many industries.  What has also been true across those same industries is the following--those profiting from current methods have almost no incentive to change their ways.  In the energy industry, this is changing.  Coal power plants are going away.  Around the globe, countries (most notably Brazil) are insulating themselves from oil price shocks by powering vehicles with liquid natural gas. 

In Texas, natural gas is a curious case.  The ability to extricate methane from shale formations thousands of feet below the Earth's surface was perfected in Texas.  Thousands of gas wells have been drilled in the Fort Worth area alone.  Hydraulic fracturing has led to the opening of shale fields both nationwide and globally.  This gas "wildcatting" is beginning to show long term consequences.  Be it water supply contamination, aesthetic insults, foul-smelling gas towns or possibly even earthquakes in unforeseen places, the bloom is fading from the gas rose.  Still the sun shines.  In fact, on the gravel pads that surround natural gas wells, production data is collected and sent to home offices via solar power.  Even the mythical Texas oil man knows the affordable power of the sun.

The sun will keep radiating energy at least as long as humanity exists.  Solar energy is truly an inexhaustible resource.  If we can put water-filled tubes on our roofs to soak up sunlight to keep our pools warm, why can't we use solar energy to keep our homes themselves warm?  The biggest barrier to a solar-dominated energy infrastructure is cost.  A forward-looking government should seek to nurture an industry that capitalizes on a resource that is abundant beyond comprehension.  Well-written and well-regulated incentives for the production and dissemination of solar energy can keep Texas atop the energy production pyramid.  Oil and gas will still be the engines of the near future, but the power that facilitated our being will allow us to abide.

Black Gold Bonanza!

The Houston Chronicle published an opinion piece on Thursday, March 8th, 2012 entitled "Recipe For a Stable Energy Future."  The upshot of this editorial is that the United States has the opportunity to regain world petroleum superiority due to newly discovered reserves and newly proven methods to exploit those reserves--if the Democrats don't muck it up.  While I in no way dispute the fact that oil and gas rule the world, I question whether drilling with reckless abandon is the best long-term energy strategy for the United States.

In the first sentence of this opinion piece, Houstonians are addressed directly.  Less than halfway into the opinion, we find out that the true audience is Republican Texans who chuckle at the energy policies of the Democrats, all the while safe in the knowledge that they truly know which way the wind blows.  Statements such as, "[t]here is a quiet revolution going on in this country, one not well understood by the Obama administration . . . " make the conservative bias of this piece readily apparent.

 I would never deign to challenge the authority of Houstonians where oil is concerned.  That city and the state of Texas as a whole are in an unassailable position to comment on the petroleum industry in America.  Houston is where the magic happens in this country.

The author of this opinion (I do not find a byline) asserts that " . . . enormous oil and gas resources have become accessible in ways that are both economic(sic) and environmentally acceptable."  In fact, it is claimed, America's untapped reserves may be vastly greater than those of the Saudis.  The issue, we learn, is that the United States lacks two things:  the political leadership to seize this opportunity and a properly informed citizenry.  If Americans knew they didn't have to be dependent on oil imports, we could commence drilling on an unprecedented scale.

I in no way dispute that new reserves have been found.  I spent over two years working for a surveyor primarily billeted to staking new natural gas wells for a major national energy player.  I helped with the staking, and I prepared permitting plats.  Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have forever changed the way raw petroleum liquids and gasses are acquired.  In fact, fracking works so well that, in the United States, natural gas has become so plentiful in supply that prices have fallen through the floor. 

The issue, as I see it, is that America does not need to allow itself to be yoked to the oil and gas train any tighter.  Various new types of energy production are becoming economically viable.  Among others, solar and wind energy are becoming non-negligible factors.  Both are beginning to pay for themselves in Texas by putting much needed energy into the state's antiquated, hyper-stressed power grid.  In fact, a major part of solar and wind development projects is almost always high-voltage transmission lines that may help save the power grid nationwide.

If America is to achieve responsible, sustainable energy independence, we need to diversify our portfolio.  Vast oil reserves are an undeniable asset, especially if they can be recovered and refined; however, as Texans can begrudgingly attest, there is no such thing as permanent price stability.  We have the opportunity and the knowledge to harvest other types of energy that can help us support ourselves while insulating America from shocks in the global oil markets.  In my opinion, energy diversity is what America's leadership should foster and educate its populace about.

Reform, But Not Right Now

On Wednesday, February 22, 2012 the Editorial Board of the Austin American-Statesman published a column entitled "An Appropriate Adieu to Demands for Special Session on School Finance."  The authors state in no uncertain terms that Texas Governor Rick Perry's decision not to call a special session to discuss school finance is a good thing.  It seems the ladies and gentlemen responsible for this editorial are tired of the effects of politics on the education of our children.

This editorial was published in the Austin American-Statesman, a liberal-leaning newspaper in my experience.  This makes it likely that the screed I am discussing was intended for Democrats and others fed up with the Republican majority in the Texas State Legislature.  This is borne out by the treatment of Republicans versus Democrats within the piece.  "Democrats have been calling for a special session . . . because of the effects of the school finance bill approved in 2011."  Republican legislators "would not be in a mood to do anything that might resemble increased spending . . ." 

As the editorial board of the largest daily newspaper in the capitol of Texas, I believe the authors have likely seen the political wranglings of several biennial legislative sessions, giving them a fairly deep pool of observations from which to draw.  Both houses of the Texas Legislature have been in the control of the Republican party since 2003, so Democrats have had nearly a decade to stew, especially since nearly every other state office is held by a Republican.

The main focus of this editorial is the idea that, though likely necessary, a special session on school finance during an election cycle would be doomed to ineffectiveness at best.  Speaking to the necessity of a special session, the authors offer the recent experiences of the Hutto ISD as evidence.  In the authors' opinion, the 2011 school finance bill "did not fund enrollment growth."  As a result, Hutto is considering charging students to ride the bus, reducing its staff and even having teachers clean.  New financing is needed to prevent Hutto's situation from becoming the statewide norm.

The Editorial Board's evidence for the likelihood of the proposed special session being toothless draws heavily on past experience in observing political behavior.  The authors claim the timing of the proposed special session is poor.  Addressing pressing needs in school finance during an election year would produce few, if any results.  The authors claim that retiring legislators might make radical decisions, because no one could vote them out of office.  Republican incumbents seeking reelection would never risk losing that election by supporting increased spending.  These arguments arise from time spent observing the political arena, and, though tinged with Liberalism, seem to me to be sound.

Texas schools are in trouble.  I don't think Democrats or Republicans would dispute that.  Democrats want to spend money to ameliorate the issue, and it seems Republicans want to better spend the money currently allocated.  While I find this latter strategy dubious, throwing money around irresponsibly won't help either.  It is sad that our children are being stretched over a political barrel.  Something courageous needs to happen, but I agree with the Editorial Board of the Statesman:  attempting to fix the problem while the politicians tasked with reform are busy trying to keep their jobs is likely a no-win scenario.

Internecine Struggles Tarnish Texas' Star

On Friday, February 10th, 2012, the Texas Tribune published an article entitled, "Slow Redistricting Lowers Clout of Texas Voters," written by Ross Ramsey.  Mr. Ramsey chronicles how Texas would have been a major player in the March 6th Super Tuesday primaries if Texas had an approved redistricting plan.  In fact, according to Mr. Ramsey, Texas would have been the most coveted prize among 10 other states on that day, both in terms of convention delegates and fundraising.  Further, all candidates on the ballot as of late December would have remained on the ballot.  Rick Perry might have had to face a reality check back home.

Due to the redistricting battle being played out in courts and law offices, the earliest Texas can hold a Presidential primary is April.  By then, the Republican challenger will likely have been informally anointed, relegating Texas' primary to a formality.  The trickle down effects of this cheapening of Texas' big day are highlighted by the almost certain blow to voter turnout.  This year, Texas has races for a U.S. Senate Seat, Congressional seats, judgeships, state legislators, and every other facet of state and local government.  Reduced voter turnout could lessen the representative nature of these races.

I find this article interesting for its wistful tone.  Mr. Ramsey seems forlorn at the prospect of Texas being somewhat of a sideshow in the primary process.  I think this article dovetails nicely into our discussion on Texas exceptionalism.