Slouching Toward a Special Session
May 10th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Mike Krusee, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said this afternoon that talks aimed at developing a compromise between the Governor’s Office and the Legislature over the toll-road legislation are going well.
“We’re making progress,” said Krusee, who two years ago brokered the massive toll-road bill that slipped through the Legislature without much notice. Krusee declined to provide any details on the negotiations. “We’re just trying to find common ground.”
The House and Senate have approved by a veto-proof margin HB 1892, which would put a two-year moratorium on toll roads governed by contracts called comprehensive development agreements. Several toll projects in Dallas have been exempted from the moratorium, as has all of El Paso county.
The bill, which Gov. Perry has until midnight on Thursday to veto, would do much more than just temporarily halt toll-road construction. It would also reduce the length of the contracts with private developers, enumerate buy-back provisions, rein in the non-compete clauses, and return control of road-building to local governments, such as counties and municipalities.
Perry doesn’t like the bill and has threatened to call a special session to resolve the issue. “The measure kills jobs, fractures the state’s transportation system, puts Texas at risk for losing federal money and, quite frankly, creates an environment that’s ripe for political corruption. You’re going to have county officials who are able to take donations from individuals who want to build roads rather than work through the state contractual system,” said Krista Moody, deputy press secretary.
(That comment is a little hard to take with a straight face, especially given the fact that Austin lobbyist Dan Shelley once worked for both Perry and Cintra, the Spanish firm that’s on the fast track to getting billions frm TxDot.)
Sources say that Tricky Ricky, as the folks back home in Haskell County call him, would like to avoid a potentially embarrassing show-down with the Lege by signing SB 1267, a no-frills moratorium bill introduced by Sen. Robert Nichols that has been bottled up in committee.
Nichols is not particularly enamored of that idea. “I think the governor’s got a good bill sitting on his desk.”
