SB 792 ready for House floor

May 15, 2007

By Ben Wear, AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN

SB 792, now THE toll road bill of the session, didn’t tarry in the House County Affairs Committee. That committee, meeting after Monday’s floor session ended about 6:30 p.m., approved SB 792 just a few hours after the 60-page bill cleared the Senate.

Details were not immediately available today about the vote count, or how long the committee might have spent learning about or debating the bill. The committee chairman is state Rep. Wayne Smith, R-Baytown, who carried HB 1892, the bill that passed the Legislature overwhelmingly and would now be supplanted by SB 792.

This newest tollway bill does not go as far as HB 1892 in limiting private toll road contracts with the state and grants local tollway authorities less leeway in building toll roads than the predecessor bill. Gov. Rick Perry had made it clear he intended to veto HB 1892, so the Legislature is scrambling to pass a replacement this week. Perry, whose office was in on the negotiations that produced the current form of SB 792, said Monday he is satisfied with the bill as it stands.

A committee report was filed with the House clerk’s office this morning, meaning the bill would be eligible for consideration by the full House on second reading as early as Wednesday morning. Assuming the bill is not amended, removing the need for a House-Senate conference committee, it could be headed to Perry’s desk by sometime Thursday.