TxDOT makes Craddick’s (loooong) list

December 3, 2007

Ben Wear / Austin American-Statesman

If you think of the legislative process as a lengthy petroleum pipeline, then what House Speaker Tom Craddick proposed for TxDOT last week amounts to the crude entering the front end of the pipe. And what comes out of the other end could be Mazola, or olive oil. Or never emerge at all.

Nonetheless, it is worth noting (as the San Antonio Express-News first reported) that scrutiny of TxDOT was among the several hundred issues Craddick told his committees to study before the Legislature returns in 2009. These so-called “interim charges” from the speaker (the light guv will have his set of charges for the Senate boys and girls as well) quite often lead to legislation, which sometimes passes both the Senate and House, though many times in much-changed form, which might get a signature from the governor and become law. Though not always.

You get the picture.

Craddick had the following charges concerning TxDOT:

To the State Affairs Committee: Look at how state agencies advertise their services “to discern if taxpayer dollars are being spent appropriately … (and) that these dollars are not spent to coerce, but rather benefit, the public through honest educative efforts.”

TxDOT has been accused in a lawsuit, filed by a San Antonio-based group called TURF, of spending more than $7 million on a program called Keep Texas Moving that, the opponents charge, is thinly veiled advocacy for toll roads.

To the Appropriations Committee: Look at TxDOT’s “current financial condition … including but not limited to cash in bank, encumbered funds, use of bond capacity and projected needs,” including diversion of money from the state highway funds to other state needs. TxDOT has been saying, in light of new restrictions from the Legislature on private toll road contracts, that it will run out of money for new construction starting next year.

To the Transportation Committee: Look for ways to find money for the Rail Relocation Fund, which was created by voters in 2005 but not funded last session; look at allowing buses to use highway shoulders so they can bypass gridlock (legislation to do this failed in the 2007 session); review the Driver Responsibility Program to see why the collection rate hasn’t been better.

We’ll let you know when and if any of this gets further down the pipeline.