The Highway to Hell Extravaganza
(Highway 121 Toll Road)

by Harold Gentry

In a time when common hard working Americans folks are losing their jobs at a record pace the taxpayers are looking to our elected officials - local, state and federal - for someone with plain ole common sense. Our financial system, including the banks, credit card companies, mortgage companies, Wall Street and the auto makers, have been destroyed by greed for power and lusting after the other man’s dollar. Instead of common sense, taxpayers are getting a continual bailout bill rewarding arrogance, ignorance and greed that seems to have no end.

Our Congressmen and Senators rattle their sabers and beat their chests demanding that the taxpayer’s money be spent in a responsible manner. They demand that millions in bonuses be paid back from those whom they say have ruined the financial system of the world.  Yet while American families are living in tents, they are living the high life on our tax dollars. Unable to solve the problems of healthcare for our country, they have the best healthcare that taxpayer money can buy. If they so much as sneeze they will immediately have ten of the finest specialists from all over the country eager to wipe their noses at our expense.

Recently a group of our local city officials went to Washington DC to lobby some of these folks for what I call the Highway to Hell, Highway 121. The Congressmen and Senators they went to visit are about to vote themselves a $4,700 cost of living raise at a time when some folks don’t have 47 cents in their pockets to buy bread.

The question I ask is was this all absolutely reasonable and necessary, or could it have been done in a more responsible manner? After all, the Washington officials they went to lobby all have local offices. I also question why they could not have set up a conference call or, in our day and age of technology, used video conferencing.

All of the following expenditures listed are from a Public Information request made to the City of Cleburne . Six Cleburne city representatives went to DC on February 25th and returned on the 26th. They all flew to Washington via American Airlines, First Class at the rate of $1,539.20 each for a total of $9235.20 of your local tax dollars. According to the travel folio, a non refundable, non transferable booking fee of $35 was added to each of the tickets.

Accommodations for lodging were made at the Embassy Suites Hotel, Arlington , Virginia . Four rooms were charged at $288.03 per night and two were charged at $310.08. Taxpayers, your lodging bill for one night came to $1772.28. All six stayed in separate rooms. Five hundred dollars was advanced to one member of the group. Of this, $45 was spent for shuttle service from the airport to hotel/Capitol Hill,  and another $45 was spent for various meals for 7 persons totaling $90. The remaining $410 was returned to the city finance coordinator.

The total charged to local taxpayers for the Highway to Hell lobbying extravaganza was $11,097.48. Some obvious questions come to mind. Why go at all since the people they went to lobby have local offices, and also telephones? Why couldn’t just two or three go instead of 6? Why could they have not used only three rooms and cut the bill in half? Why did they have to travel First Class? It’s only a 3-hour flight to DC, and there was nobody to impress on the plane. Lowly peons can make travel reservations without paying booking fees, so why can’t the City of Cleburne ’s bureaucracy do the same? Am I being unreasonable?

The only thing you can be sure about the building of fabled Highway 121 is that excuse will be used by every local governmental body to waste money and raise your taxes in one way or another. 

There is already a commission established to study whether the proposed Highway 121 tollway would have enough traffic to pay for it. Their findings will determine when, and if, Highway 121 is built, not six Cleburne folks flying to Washington, and not the Cleburne ISD hiring a consultant firm to study whether Highway 121 will increase enrollment enough to build a new high school.

But until that day, in your fantasies, look west to the proposed Highway 121 site and watch for that swarm of people so thick it looks like a cloud of locusts. Then run for your lives, for the people are coming and you’d best get out of the way!