Highway Deal Almost Done

May 24, 2007

by Eileen Welsome, THE TEXAS OBSERVER

State Rep. Wayne Smith, a Baytown Republican, said this afternoon that a House and Senate conference committee has come to an agreement on a complex transportation bill, SB 792, that will slow down TxDot’s rush to turn highways into tollways and put a two-year moratorium on certain road projects.

The House and Senate must both approve the measure and then the bill goes to Gov. Rick Perry. Ricky said a couple of days ago that he would sign the bill, despite the fact that he’s unhappy with certain portions of the measure, including provisions that deal with right-of-way issues.

The bill does have a section requiring TxDot to provide right-of-way to local toll entities. Those entities, in turn, will then be required to reimburse TxDot for the actual costs.

Rep. Smith said he hoped the governor will sign the bill “with great dispatch.” Otherwise, he added, there will be movement in the Legislature to override HB 1892, an earlier bill that Perry vetoed, which contains much of the language in the current bill.

That would undoubtedly lead to a special session, which no one in the House or Senate seems to want. But if nothing gets done during this session, legislators know they’ll be the first to feel voter wrath.

(It’s instructive at this point to remember state Sen. Steve Ogden’s lament early in the session when he told TxDot officials that there wasn’t one legislator who hadn’t experienced voter backlash as a result of the department’s headlong rush to turn over the state’s infrastructure to multinational corporations.)

Smith said he and fellow legislators were acutely aware of voters’ concerns and tried to address them. “This is probably the first bill that the Legislature has ever done which has said to a state agency, ‘We see what you’re doing and we want to be part of the direction in which you’re going.’”

Smith emphasized the bill is just a first step in an ongoing evaluation of how roads are financed and built. Under the measure, a nine-member committee will continue to study and monitor the issue during the two-year period when the Legislature is not in session.

Smith said Amendment 13, an item sponsored by state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, is no longer in the bill. Amendment 13 would have specifically included facility agreements in the moratorium. These agreements are basically sub-agreements to comprehensive development agreements. CDAs are the over-arching contracts that lay out the terms for how the toll roads are financed and constructed.

Numerous grassroots groups have said the Kolkhorst’s amendment was essential because it closed a loophole that would have allowed the Trans Texas Corridor to proceed.

But Smith and Rep. Larry Phillips emphasized that portions of the TTC that are not already under construction or in the planning phase are definitely part of the moratorium.

(TxDot has not officially stated what roads will be part of the TTC-35, but it’s clear that State Highway 130, as well as a loop road planned in the Dallas-Fort Worth area will be part of the mega-project.)

Disagreements over how roads are built in El Paso were also sticking points in the negotiations. Joe Pickett, a state representative from El Paso, tacked on a handful of amendments that reportedly displeased his counterpart in the Senate, Eliot Shapleigh.

Pickett, for example, wanted to put all road projects in excess of $200 million to voters. But Shapleigh, who is gung-ho over toll roads, didn’t like that amendment at all.