In his Dec. 16 Watchdog column, Dave Lieber did not accurately or fairly describe the new toll enforcement remedies being pursued by the North Texas Tollway Authority. (See: "Tollway Authority wants own court")
This is such an important issue to NTTA customers; we need to set the record straight.More than 90 percent of the NTTA's customers pay their tolls on time, every time. That's crucial because the NTTA does not levy taxes and is not in the state's budget. Instead, the people who use its roads -- and only those people -- pay the costs required to provide the roads they use.The small percentage of motorists who use the NTTA's roads and refuse to pay for them are shifting their share of those costs onto motorists who pay as they should.While the percentage of violators is small, the impact is not. The NTTA processes 1.8 million toll transactions a day. Even a small percentage of such a huge volume translates to millions of dollars that people who cheat the system make unavailable to maintain, enlarge and expand the roadways. The shortfall must be funded by people who already pay their share.Is that fair? Our customers don't think so.Our customers tell us they want the NTTA to request the legislative tools it needs to stop the chronic violators from stealing from the roadways that honest customers pay to build and operate.The focus of the NTTA's efforts is not the inadvertent violator who misses a toll or two. The NTTA seeks remedies that would apply only to "habitual violators" -- individuals who have accrued at least 100 unpaid tolls and have ignored no fewer than 16 separate written notices.In addition to all the notices, the toll enforcement powers sought by the NTTA would further guarantee these violators the right to a hearing, before an impartial hearing officer, to tell their side of the story or work out a payment plan.Similar administrative hearing processes like the one proposed by the NTTA are used by other governmental entities around the state to resolve disputes in an informal and collaborative atmosphere. The point of the administrative hearing process is to give apparent violators a chance to be heard before courts get involved.Does the NTTA sometimes make mistakes? With a half-billion transactions every year, certainly. But regardless of who's at fault, when a motorist contacts the NTTA with an issue, a mutually acceptable resolution is typically achieved.Each of the three customers cited in Lieber's column as evidence of the NTTA's alleged unfairness had settled his bill before the article appeared -- in fact, before Lieber contacted the NTTA about them.Yes, this is a story about people in dire need of having their interests protected and their voices heard, people who want a watchdog. But they aren't the people whose interests Lieber championed in his column.Instead, they are the NTTA's customers who, day in and day out, pay what they should to provide some of the finest roads anywhere to the people of North Texas.Kimberly Jackson is the North Texas Tollway Authority's director of public affairs.Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
