CBS News Austin reports on TxDOT’s estimate that “the state is lugging around $36.7 billion in toll road debt.” House Transportation Committee chair Joe Pickett (D-El Paso) tells CBS he isn’t opposed to all toll roads, but he thinks most of the current ones are the result of poorly negotiated deals and insufficient public input. “Some people are going to get encircled by tolls and wonder how that happened,” Pickett says. He adds that tolls should be eliminated once construction costs are repaid. “That is not being proposed today, we just add another in perpetuity.”
