Toll road compromise reached

May 14, 2007

By Ben Wear

Lawmakers, representatives from the Texas Department of Transportation and others have reached agreement on major toll road legislation that will be laid out this morning in a meeting of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee.

But there could be a backlash. Many legislators had said this session that what they didn’t want was to be presented with a large “agreed-upon” transportation bill late in the session with little or no time to absorb it.

That’s exactly what they’re getting, however.

The bill, in this instance, is SB 792, which was the original twin bill to HB 1892. It is now more than 80 pages long, and only a handful of legislators have seen it so far.

If you don’t remember, HB 1892 was overwhelmingly approved by both the House and the Senate (combined vote: 166-5) and is sitting on Gov. Rick Perry’s desk awaiting action. He has until later this week to decide what to do.

But while it’s been sitting there, Perry and the Texas Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration have been busy attacking the bill, and Perry has made it clear he would veto HB 1892. The bill would threaten Texas’ federal highway funds, they say, and kill any chance of building Interstate 69 in South Texas. That barrage, along with some technical errors in HB 1892, were enough to bring sponsor state Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, and state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, back to the table. Those senators, along with the Transportation Department and various other people, spent the last part of last week and the weekend, doing major surgery on SB 792.

Their handiwork will be introduced this morning in Carona’s committee at 10 a.m. as an alternative to HB 1892. If SB 792 makes a lightning run through the Legislature this week, as its new advocates desire, then HB 1892 would be recalled by the Legislature. Or Perry, if he runs out of time, could just veto it, leaving the Legislature to choose between a veto override and SB 792. Or doing nothing at all, even after all the noise this session.

So what does SB 792 do?

• It allows private toll road contracts to last 50 years, instead of 40 years as in HB 1892, and up to 70 years under current law.

• It exempts some more roads from the two-year moratorium on private toll road contracts, including Texas 99 near Houston and I-69 south of Interstate 37. South Texans, believing Perry’s claim that HB 1892 would kill any chance for that road, demanded this.

• It changes language in HB 1892 that would have allowed the state to buy back a profitable toll road from a private company based primarily on what the company had invested in the road. Instead, the buyback amount would be based on original estimates of toll revenue for the life of the project. This would be higher price generally than under HB 1892, but lower than under current law for successful toll roads.

• It fixes a mistake in HB 1892 which would have directly all money from multi-billion concession payments for the Texas 121 tollway to Dallas. Under this bill, the money would be allocated to both the Dallas and Fort Worth areas.

• The Harris County Toll Road Authority, which under HB 1892 would have gotten right of way free from the state for some new tollways, will have to pay the state its the original cost to the state of getting the land. However, those payments will stay in the Houston area for other road projects.

• In a completely new section, all future toll road projects would undergo a “market valuation” by a third-party to determine what their value might be in up-front concession payments. Then the local toll road agency would have first shot at doing the project as long as it could raise that up-front money.