Texas
Texas Is Taking Back the State Highway 288 Tollway—at a Steep Price
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is set to take back ownership of the State Highway 288 tollway, one of the state’s most expensive privately built toll roads, which connects Houston to its southern suburbs. This action will terminate a 52-year agreement, originally set to end in 2068, for the Blueridge Transportation Group (BTG) to build and operate the tollway—a 10-mile stretch running from an intersection just south of downtown Houston to the Brazoria/Harris County line—that was built in the median of the publicly owned State Highway 288.
The buyback comes with a hefty price tag.
BTG, a consortium of international private infrastructure development firms, paid up-front for about a third of the billion-dollar tollway construction project, with the remaining two-thirds coming primarily through federal and state-backed debt. TxDOT is exercising a right to retake the tollway enshrined in the original agreement, but doing so requires paying BTG some $1.7 billion—on top of what the firms already raked in through tolls, construction contracts and selling shares in the project. The money from TxDOT will more than cover the $650 million debt that BTG still owes.
But Texas taxpayers and drivers will be left holding the bag, paying off the tollway for many years to come. In May, TxDOT formed the Texas Transportation Finance Corporation in order to take out a loan of $1.7 billion from TxDOT to acquire the tollway—with the plan of paying back the debt with future toll revenues.
The 288 toll road has long been controversial—in no small part because of its high cost both in terms of fees and human lives. Since the tollway opened in November 2020, toll rates have increased by sixty percent, going from $11 for the full 20-mile round trip during peak hours to $29 dollars now.
“We’re trying to get in a position where we can control that and have more reasonable rates.”
Last November, the Texas Observer revealed how the state allowed BTG to profit from the 288 tollway at the expense of both drivers forced to pay exorbitant rates and construction workers who were injured, or died building the tollway. Twenty-one-year-old Juan Simental fell 85 feet to his death in June 2019 after his employers failed to provide the appropriate safety lanyard. Dozens of other workers experienced severe injuries, reporting that there was no one monitoring safety conditions, no flagger or spotter, and no safety training.
TxDOT rejected BTG’s offer to renegotiate the contract. In an August press release, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said, “We will provide meaningful relief for Texas drivers along this corridor. Securing a more than $4 billion asset for just $1.7 billion will not only benefit Texas drivers, it will also enable TxDOT to continue investing in and advancing crucial roadway projects across the state.” Patrick did not respond to requests for an interview for this story.
Texas Transportation Commission Chairman Bruce Bugg Jr. called the buyback “a big win for taxpayers,” stating in the press release that the buyback would allow the agency to cut rates by half “as soon as possible” and add more free lanes. SH 288, also known as the South Freeway, is a major hurricane evacuation route, and some exits serve the Museum District and the Texas Medical Center.
TxDOT inked its original agreement in 2016 with BTG, which consisted at the time of six equity members including ACS Group (based in Spain), Shikun & Binui (Israel), and InfraRed Capital Partners (Britain). Last year, ACS Group acquired BTG in its entirety.
In response to the Observer’s request for comment, BTG spokesperson Alan Goss said, “We are deeply disappointed by TxDOT’s decision to expedite the purchase of the SH-288 toll road without fully considering the significant concessions we offered for motorists.”
The companies have already profited handsomely from the tollway mainly through deals with their construction subsidiaries and through toll revenues. In annual reports, ACS Group reported the tollway earned $74 million in 2022 and $97 million in 2023, though BTG has refused to disclose its entire take. Based on invoices obtained by the Observer, during construction from 2016 to 2020, BTG paid $815 million to subsidiaries of the same firms—Dragados USA and Pulice Construction, owned by ACS Group, and Shikun & Binui America, the three of which formed a joint venture called Almeda Genoa Constructors.
Despite reports of construction-related deaths and injuries related to Almeda Genoa Constructors, the venture continued to receive new TxDOT contracts, now totaling at least $4.9 billion for at least 24 projects since 2016, according to state records.
Even with all those profits, the equity firms making up BTG have so far repaid little of their debts, some of which were financed by public agencies and taxpayers, according to credit reports and experts interviewed by the Observer. For the $1.1 billion-construction phase, TxDOT contributed $17.1 million to the 288 tollway project, the U.S. Department of Transportation loaned $357 million to the companies under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA), and the Texas Private Activity Bond Surface Transportation Corporation, a finance arm of TxDOT, issued a $273 million tax-exempt private activity bond to BTG.
Sandro Scenga, a spokesperson for the national credit rating agency Fitch Ratings, told the Observer that BTG still owes all $273 million in bonds and $378 million on the TIFIA loan, which is anticipated to be paid off after the company receives compensation from TxDOT for the early termination of the agreement.
Between August 2022 and March 2023, ACS Group bought out the five other BTG equity partners, generating hundreds of millions in profits for those companies. Then, last December, ACS Group sold a 57 percent stake in BTG for $1.5 billion to Abertis, a company that is half owned by ACS Group. The move generated $200 million in capital gains, according to ACS Group’s 2023 annual report.
In an interview, Rosemary Batt, professor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and author of Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street, explained that ACS Group operated the tollway like most private equity firms operate any company: invest a scant amount, accumulate debts, and siphon as much profit as possible before getting out without assuming liability for the company’s long-term debt.
“The debt is leveraged on the company, and then they try to recoup the money in about a five-year period,” Batt said, adding that private equity companies generally invest little to get a higher rate of return when they sell. “If I buy something for 100 million and then sell it later for 200, then my return on my own equity is two to one, right? But if I only put in 50 and then I sell it for 200, my reported return on equity is four to one.”
Unlike public corporations which generally operate companies with about 70 percent equity and 30 percent debt, the ratios are typically reversed for private equity companies, Batt writes in her book.
Batt said that ACS Group most likely bought and sold 288 tollway shares so it could return more earnings to shareholders within the typical five-year funding cycle. “It may be because they waited until year seven, a company might be more valuable and they would get higher returns, which would go to the investors. But if they need to sell something in year five, they sell it often to another private equity firm. So there’s a lot of horse trading that happens.”
Seemingly, months before the Texas Transportation Commission decided to initiate the process to terminate the tollway lease, ACS Group was already on its way out. At the end of 2023, ACS Group announced to its shareholders it would be selling off another 22 percent of its shares.
The Spanish firm has constructed and operated more than 130 public-private infrastructure projects worldwide since 1967. It took in a net profit of $867 million last year, and its largest market now is in North America.
ACS Group did not respond to a request for comment for this story by publication time and has previously referred requests about the 288 tollway to BTG.
These days, private-public partnership tollways have fallen out of favor with Texans. The SH 288 tollway was the last from former Texas Governor Rick Perry’s initiative to build private tollways statewide. Others included the LBJ-635 Express Corridor, the North Tarrant Express, and State Highway 130 in Central Texas.
GOP state Senator Robert Nichols told the Observer that TxDOT turned to leasing out public highways for private tollways when the state did not have enough revenues to build new roads. Now, the situation is different, he says. “Now that we’ve got money to build highways … we’re kind of getting away from that. We’re trying to get in a position where we can control that and have more reasonable rates.”
In 2013, Nichols carried a bill to limit the state toll road buyback price to a set amount based on the number of contract years elapsed instead of market rate. That bill became law; otherwise, TxDOT would be paying much more than $1.7 billion to buy back the 288 tollway today.
TxDOT did not respond to the Observer’s question about whether the Texas Transportation Finance Corporation, newly formed to engage in the “acquisition, construction, maintenance, or operation of a toll facility,” will be buying back any other privately owned tollways around the state.
HIDALGO — During a visit to the border Friday, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said changes in immigration laws should wait until the border is completely secure, a contrast from Republican lawmakers who are willing to explore legal status for immigrant workers to address labor shortages prompted by enforcement efforts at work sites.
Cornyn was part of a group of Republican U.S. senators and Senate hopefuls who flocked to the Rio Grande Valley to praise President Donald Trump’s border policies as they attempt to promote their achievements and shape political narratives ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Aggressive enforcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has prompted some unauthorized workers to stay clear of job sites, leading to labor shortages in construction and restaurants. The Valley has been among the areas hardest hit by the worker shortage, prompting a group of local builders to call for solutions to economic struggles in their industry.
U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, an Edinburg Republican, met with the group and expressed support for a visa program for construction workers, akin to the H-2A visa program that allows foreign nationals to work in the agriculture sector.
Cornyn, though, said it was too early to consider such an option.
“The first thing we need to do is secure the border,” Coryn said during a news conference along the border in the city of Hidalgo. “There is no way that the American people, and certainly my constituents in Texas, would allow us to take another stab at reforming our immigration laws until we’ve got the border secure.”
After securing the border, he said, the next step would be to remove people who “never should have been here in the first place.” Only after that had been accomplished, Cornyn said, should lawmakers delve into changing immigration laws.
Much of Trump’s border policy has been set by executive action. The Republican Congress passed $170 billion in funding for immigration and border enforcement through 2029, making ICE the best-funded law enforcement agency in the country and giving the agency unprecedented recruitment, enforcement, deportation and detention powers. But the effort did not codify many of Trump’s changes to border practices.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who stood beside Cornyn during Friday’s news conference, said he was open to legislation that would address the need for qualified workers but also said the first priority was to secure the border.
“I think we can work in a constructive way on how we come up with a mechanism whereby people who come to this country legally can contribute and be members of our work force,” said Thune, R-South Dakota.
ICE activity at construction sites has intimidated workers — those unauthorized to live in the U.S. and those with legal authorization — from accepting work, builders say. This labor shortage has prompted construction delays that economists suggest will drive up housing costs.
Absent a change in immigration laws, Cornyn suggested job sectors would benefit from cuts to assistance like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid, saying it would encourage people to work.
“If you are an able-bodied young adult, you can’t qualify for food stamps, you can’t qualify for welfare benefits like Medicaid and the like, in order to encourage more people to get off the couch,” Cornyn said. “That’s good for them, good for their families, good for their communities.”
For Cornyn, who is locked in an expensive primary race with Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston, the news conference was also an opportunity to tout a major provision from Republicans’ 2025 mega-bill — reimbursement for Operation Lone Star.
Cornyn publicly stated during spring negotiations that his vote in support of the package was contingent on reimbursing Texas for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative. Ultimately, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed in July with support from nearly all Republicans and no Democrats, included $13.5 billion in two funds to reimburse states for border security spending.
Abbott had requested $11.1 billion, and the vast majority of the bill’s money is expected to go to Texas. But six months after the bill’s passage, the Trump administration has yet to allocate funding. State Republicans, led by Cornyn, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. August Pfluger, sent a December letter asking the departments of Homeland Security and Justice to prioritize Texas in the disbursement.
“That money will now soon be flowing into the coffers of the state of Texas, to the tune of roughly $11 billion, to do justice — which is to reimburse Texas taxpayers for stepping up and filling the gap when the federal government simply refused to do so,” Cornyn said Friday. “That would not have happened without the leadership of the majority leader and the whip and the direction of the president of the United States, to whom I am very grateful.”
The Cornyn campaign and allied groups have spent more than $40 million in advertising, helping to close Paxton’s initial polling lead. Polls have shown no candidate close to the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff in the March 3 primary.
Cornyn has the backing of Thune and OneNation, a group aligned with the Senate Republican leader that organized Friday’s border trip after spending millions in pro-Cornyn advertising.
Thune on Friday praised Cornyn, whom he beat out to become majority leader in 2024.
“He has been such an advocate through the years on the issue of border security — foremost expert on it,” Thune said. “Most of us, what we know about the border, we know from him.”
Part of Cornyn’s campaign strategy has been to emphasize his support for Trump in ads and on social media. Thune, Cornyn, other Republican senators and Senate hopeful Michael Whatley, former chair of the Republican National Committee from North Carolina, praised Trump’s border actions, with Cornyn expressing his gratitude for Trump’s leadership in getting the One Big Beautiful Bill passed and for his Border Patrol leadership appointments.
The president’s endorsement — or lack of, thus far — has factored heavily into the state’s Senate primary. It is one of a handful of Republican contests for Senate where Trump has yet to put his thumb on the scale, and the president has said that he likes both Cornyn and Paxton.
Cornyn and Thune have appealed to Trump for his endorsement.
The border trip was also an opportunity for Cornyn’s opponents to press their cases.
Paxton preemptively criticized Cornyn’s visit in a Thursday statement that noted the senator said a border wall “makes no sense” in a February 2017 speech in Weslaco, among other instances of wall skepticism in early 2017. At the time, Cornyn said technology and personnel are more effective than physical barriers in some areas. On Friday, Cornyn praised the border wall and its outfitting with cameras, sensors and other technology.
“His 40-plus year career has been spent fighting for amnesty for illegals, cutting deals with Democrats, trying to stop President Trump, and standing in the way of building the wall,” Paxton said in the statement. “Texans aren’t going to forget how Cornyn’s betrayed our country, and no last minute trip to the border to try and act tough is going to change that.”
Hunt posted an ad on X criticizing Cornyn’s previous apprehension for a border wall.
“Now that Trump’s secured our border, John Cornyn wants to take the credit for the wall he tried to block,” the ad said.
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.
Disclosure: Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc. has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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One of the biggest questions facing Rhett Lashlee and his SMU football program this offseason is how the Mustangs will replenish the tight end position.
Not only did SMU’s tight ends coach leave, but the Mustangs are losing their top four tight ends from the 2025 roster. RJ Maryland, Matthew Hibner and Stone Eby all graduated and redshirt sophomore Adam Moore entered the transfer portal.
SMU began its rebuild of the tight ends room with a commitment from Texas A&M transfer Theo Melin Öhrström.
Melin Öhrström entered the portal on Dec. 26 after four years with the Aggies. The Stockholm, Sweden native appeared in 40 games for Texas A&M, catching 29 balls for 352 yards and three touchdowns. In 2025, the 6-foot-6, 257-pound tight end made four starts and caught 19 passes for 168 yards and a touchdown.
Melin Öhrström redshirted in 2022, so he has one year of eligibility remaining and will have a chance to secure a bigger role during his final collegiate season. He chose the Mustangs over Houston, Kansas State and Auburn
Find more college sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
Find more SMU coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
Recruiting a running back out of the NCAA transfer portal wasn’t clean and simple after the winter window opened last week, but the Texas Longhorns were able to land a huge commitment from Arizona State transfer Raleek Brown on Thursday.
The 5’9, 196-pounder has one season of eligibility remaining.
Texas offered Brown out of Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana (Calif.) when he was a top-100 prospect in the 2022 recruiting class. A consensus four-star prospect ranked as the No. 3 running back nationally in the 247Sports Composite rankings, Brown committed to home-state USC without taking any other official visits.
Brown’s career with the Trojans didn’t go as planned, however — after flashing as a freshman with 227 yards on 42 carries (5.4 avg) with three touchdowns and 16 receptions for 175 yards (10.97 avg) and three touchdowns, Brown moved to wide receiver as a sophomore and only appeared in two games, recording three catches for 16 yards and a touchdown.
Wanting to play running back again, Brown transferred to Arizona State in 2024, but was limited by a hamstring injury to 48 yards of total offense.
In 2025, though, Brown finally had his breakout season with 186 carries for 1,141 yards and four touchdowns, adding 34 receptions for 239 yards and two touchdowns. Brown forced 53 missed tackles last season, 67 percent of the total missed tackles forced by Texas running backs, and more than half of his rushing yardage came after contact.
Brown ran a sub 4.5 40-yard dash and sub-11 100-meter dash in high school and flashed that explosiveness with runs of 75 yards and 88 yards in 2025, so Brown brings the speed that the Longhorns need with 31 yards over 10 yards, as well as proven route-running and pass-catching ability.
At Arizona State, the scheme leaned towards gap runs, but Brown has the skill set to be an excellent outsize zone back if Texas head coach Steve Sarksian decides that he wants to major in that scheme once again.
With one running back secured from the portal, the question becomes whether Sarkisian and new running backs coach Jabbar Juluke want to add a big-bodied back to the roster or are comfortable with rising redshirt sophomore Christian Clark and incoming freshman Derrek Cooper handling that role.
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