Toll bill births a reading room

Lawmakers looking to hitch a ride on SB 792 for their dead bills, causing a delay in toll road bill's quick legislative itinerary

May 16, 2007

Ben Wear, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Senate Bill 792's sprint through the Legislature has run into some head winds.

A growing number of House members, according to bill sponsor Rep. Wayne Smith's office, have begun to regard the must-pass toll road legislation as a handy vehicle on which to hang dead or dying bills. By one estimate, there could be several dozen suggested amendments by this morning.

Throw in the traditional late-session suspicion by lawmakers of any huge, complicated and significant bill, as well as a general distrust this session of the Texas Department of Transportation, and you have a potent brew of delay. The bill, which under supporters' game plan was to come up for debate and a preliminary vote on the House floor today, isn't on today's calendar and won't be debated until at least Thursday.

Which might put final approval on Friday — absent a relatively rare suspension of the House rules — or later if things really bog down. This is the last day before the 11:59 p.m. Friday deadline for Gov. Rick Perry to sign or veto HB 1892.

To address all this, Smith's office is taking the extraordinary measure of setting up a legislators-only room in the Capitol today, complete with maps and other educational materials, so that lawmakers can come by and learn about the 60-page bill. And maybe listen to pleas that they drop those pesky amendments.

HB 1892, for those who might be having trouble keeping all this straight, was the toll road bill passed two weeks ago by the House and Senateby lopsided margins. It included a two-year moratorium on private toll road contracts with the state (although it was festooned with exempted projects), new limits on the terms of such contracts and many, many pages giving local toll road agencies first shot at projects in their areas.

Perry hated it, and made it clear a veto was coming. And maybe a special session or two if the Legislature were to override his veto. And, the message came from Perry allies, perhaps gubernatorial slayings of unrelated bills sponsored by those who vote to override the veto.

All that was enough to get folks back to the negotiating table and to birth SB 792's role as the compromise vehicle. As written and passed by the Senate and House County Affairs Committee Monday, it has still more exemptions from the moratorium (than HB 1892) and looser terms for private toll road contracts.

Perry said he likes that version, and the ideal scenario (from the point of view of Perry and his supporters) was for it to be passed unchanged in a preliminary vote today and final passage on Thursday. That would have easily beat the Friday deadline for an HB 1892 veto, saving everyone's increasingly haggard late-session faces.

Given emerging events, however, a number of doomsday scenarios exist, all of which start with a Perry veto of HB 1892. At that point, depending on what shape SB 792 is in, legislators would have to decide whether to begin work on a veto override. And whether to make those vacation reservations for June and July.