AFP's Montgomery County Chapter Watchdog Adrian Heath had strong words for members of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee and the House Transportation Committee when they met in joint session on Monday to talk about transportation funding.

Heath drove to Austin from his home in The Woodlands and waited for hours before he was given time to speak (for an allotted 3 minutes) about the out-of-control spending and accumulating debt of Texas local governments and government agencies.

His testimony was powerful and exposed much of the wastefulness that's occurring at the hands of the very local government leaders who came to the hearing with their hands out, asking for increased tax dollars to build roads.

Here are some of the key points Heath had to make:

"The Texas Bond Review Board 2009 Annual [Report] tells a grim story about Texas debt. In 2000, Texas ranked ninth in state debt outstanding. In local debt outstanding for the preceding year, Texas ranked third among these same states ... In 2007, we actually advanced to the #2 position for local debt per capita, right behind New York, and earned the #1 rank for the honor of being the state with the highest percent of local debt in the nation - probably the world."

"Here is the problem with TxDOT and our elected officials in Washington, Austin, and at home: Washington is broke, Social Security it broke, Medicare is broke, the FDIC is on its knees and the Federal debt is $12 trillion. Texas debt went up from $24 billion to $34 billion, so we can guess that the state and local debt (combined) is already in the $200 billion to $240 billion range. And yet, the existing crop of incumbent politicians continue to mock the taxpayers by actually asking for more money."

"So, I reckon Texans are overtaxed, over-regulated and over-borrowed by the very ones who pretend to defend their life, liberty and property. TxDOT is a threat to private property and must be stopped. We recognize that to suggest encumbering taxpayers with such debt is irrational. We need a state and local debt clock in every county and city across Texas."

Click the PDF attachment below to read Adrian Heath's entire testimony.

UPDATE:

Adrian Heath sent the following update after his testimony - it reveals new local government debt figures for Texas, and the numbers are shocking:

Today I received the attached spreadsheet from the BRB with the 2009 total.

It reveals Texas now has total LOCAL debt as follows:

174,551,391,539.60 PRINCIPAL
123,764,476,846.19 INTEREST
298,315,868,385.79 TOTAL LOCAL DEBT