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.

We’re hearing conflicting rumors at the Legislature about SB 792, the toll-road measure that’s supposed to provide some oversight over private development deals with multinational corporations, such as Cintra Concesiones.

A source in the House told us this morning that Governor Ricky has succeeded in getting an amendment by state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst stripped from the bill. Amendment 13, as you will recall, would close a loophole that would allow the Trans-Texas Corridor to proceed.

But that doesn’t mean the hated network of super-corridors will actually be allowed to go forward. John Carona, the Dallas Republican who chairs the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee and has played a major role in drafting the toll-road legislation, said he’s confident that language in the bill will make it clear that TTC cannot proceed while the two-year moratorium is in effect.

“The negotiations are still going on,” said Carona. “I remain optimistic that we will reach an agreement in the next 24 hours.”

Carona said that he saw no support for a movement to override Ricky’s veto of HB 1892, which is very similar to the measure that’s still in play. Any over-ride effort, Carona cautioned, would almost certainly lead to a special session and no one wants that.

When all’s said and done, the bill’s so loaded with “carve-outs,” or road projects that are exempt from the two-year moratorium, that it seems like a shell. But a few good provisions remain. The non-compete clauses have been scaled back, the contract lengths curtailed to 50 years or less, and buy-back provisions have been added that will protect the state from paying gazillions for roads.

In the process, TxDot and its imperious chairman, Ric Williamson, have been badly mauled. Hopefully the department and its high-level operatives have learned some humility and will go out of their way to be more cooperative with the public and with local officials. And the bill itself cedes a lot of authority to local governments to decide what roads will be built.

That said, the Lege did nothing to solve the underlying problem, which is traffic congestion. So it might be worthwhile to think about that the next time you’re sitting in your car, alone, in traffic.

Sources tell us this evening that Tricky Ricky is displeased with an amendment put up by state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, which closed a loophole in SB 792, the transportation legislation designed to temporarily halt the rush to privatize the state’s roads.

The loophole was big enough to drive, well, the the Trans-Texas Corridor through. And, of course, that’s exactly what Tricky Ricky wanted.

For five years, Ricky has been pushing his futuristic plan to pave the state with super-highways the width of several football fields. The corridors will eat up hundreds of thousands of acres of prime farmland and facilitate global trade, but they won’t reduce congestion at all, records and testimony show.

SB 792, which has passed the House and Senate, is now supposedly going to a conference committee made up of House and Senate members. The bill sponsor, State Rep. Wayne Smith, a Baytown Republican, said tonight that the conferees have been trying to come to agreement on the nearly two dozen amendments tacked on by various legislators. He declined to say what amendments, if any, are causing problems.

The loophole that Lois Kolkhorst fixed was spotted by the grassroots organization, Corridor Watch, and dealt with something called a facility agreement, which is a sub-agreement to a comprehensive development agreement.

The eager beavers over at TxDot have already entered into a comprehensive development agreement with Cintra to develop the Trans-Texas Corridor, but the legislation didn’t specificially address these facility agreements. Watchdogs fear that without the amendment, TxDot would continue full steam ahead on the TTC.

Ricky’s been threatening to hold a special session. And that might not be a bad idea, given that billions of dollars are at stake and these toll roads will affect commuters for the next 50 years.

If legislators don’t deal honestly with this hot-button issue now, they may find themselves on the griddle during the next election cycle. Various citizens’ groups are promising a jihad if the legislators don’t reign in these private toll-road deals. “We’re not going to walk away. We’re going to keep the grassroots fire burning,” says Terri Hall of the San Antonio Toll Party.

We wrote a blog yesterday about a proposed Senate bill, SB 893, which would allow all the border counties — except for El Paso — to enter into agreements to build or acquire railroad toll bridges.

Eliot Shapleigh, the state senator from El Paso, inserted the amendment exempting El Paso. Here’s his written explanation, which was faxed over to our office last night:

Statement by Senator Eliot Shapleigh Regarding SB 893

The Texas Observer’s blog posting today by Eileen Welsome is incorrect.

My position on rail to and from Mexico is clear. When Governor Richardson proposed moving rail from downtown Juárez to Santa Teresa, I took an early and strong stand to ensure that El Paso would also have a rail connection to Mexico.

By letter dated November 21, 2005 to Congressman Reyes, I made clear that moving rail to Santa Teresa without a Texas connection “would only result in a loss of jobs in rail dependent businesses, as warehouses and related businesses migrate to Santa Teresa, a loss of inter-modal capacity and international rail to Mexico, and a reduced ability to attract certain types of industries. In the absence of other investments, relocating our rail yard only reduces the tax base in what is already one of the poorest cities in the nation.”

Furthermore, El Paso County has no experience and no desire to operate rail toll bridges.

If you review the County legislative agenda for this year (or any year) there is no item regarding rail. In contrast, the City RMA already has express authority to move rail or operate rail, thus making the grant of authority in Zaffirini’s bill unnecessary. Given recent developments in El Paso County government, I know of no one in my community who believes that giving the County power to operate rail is a good idea.

My amendment to SB 893 ensures greater coordination, competence and transparency in El Paso’s regional transportation future.

It’s going to be a bumpy ride tomorrow when lawmakers in the House take up a 62-page highway bill known as SB 792. The bill, which was hammered out behind closed doors, is being offered as a substitute for HB 1892, which passed the House and Senate by veto-proof margins and was sent on to the Governor’s Office.

Pretty Ricky had a fit when he saw HB 1892 and threatened to hold a special session. So dozens of state legislators, local officials from Dallas and Houston, the Governor’s Office and TxDot got together and drafted the compromise legislation.

Although Sen. John Carona and his fellow legislators made a valiant effort to keep some of the toll-road controls in place, the compromise bill has so many authors, so many special interests, and so many exemptions that the final product is very difficult to decipher. (How we yearn for the days in the not-too-distant past when Sen. Robert Nichols offered up an elegantly simple two-page moratorium bill.)

When the action shifts back to the House tomorrow, members will have a number of choices. If they go along with the Senate version, the bill in all likelihood will be rushed to the Governor’s Office. Ricky has already indicated he will sign that one.

But if the House members are in a “mischievous” mood, as Round Rock Rep. Mike Krusee delicately puts it, they could tack their own amendments onto the Senate legislation. Then the package heads back to conference committee. If no compromise can be reached, the bill probably will die.

The Legislature could then begin the ugly fight to override Perry’s veto of the original legislation. And that’s where the road could get really rough. Stay tuned.

A bill making its way through the Lege, SB 893, would allow all the border counties in Texas – except for El Paso County – to enter into agreements to acquire or build railroad toll bridges.

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini of Laredo, who is sponsoring the bill, said that Eliot Shapleigh, the Democratic state senator from El Paso, added the amendment that would effectively exempt El Paso from the legislation. Shapleigh declined to respond to both oral and written questions about the measure.

Joe Pickett, a state representative from El Paso who sits on the House Border and International Affairs Committee, said Shapleigh’s position is inconsistent, explaining that Shapleigh supports toll roads but doesn’t support tolled railroad bridges. “It doesn’t make sense that El Paso would not have the ability to do a private railroad toll bridge in the future.”

Pickett speculated that Shapleigh’s efforts to block El Paso County from building or acquiring a tolled railroad bridge was designed to help developers in neighboring New Mexico. “If you were applying for a presidential permit or talking to the federal folks about where to do a bridge, it would seem to me it would help your cause in New Mexico if there was some statute or some language that said it couldn’t be done in El Paso County,” said Pickett. “To have something like this is very suspect.”

Verde Corporate Realty Services, established by El Paso billionare Bill Sanders, owns approximately 20,000 acres adjacent to New Mexico’s Santa Teresa Port of Entry, which is about a 30-minute drive from downtown El Paso. Sanders is also a leading force in El Paso’s downtown redevelopment plan.

There’s a been a lot of talk of relocating rail lines to Santa Teresa, which would obviously benefit Sanders’ business parks. One 2003 study, which was prepared for the city of El Paso, recommended moving many regional urban rail facilities to Santa Teresa, including the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s rail yards in El Paso, as well as the Ferromex rail lines in Juárez.

In addition, Union Pacific Corp’s planning a $150 million terminal just four miles west of Santa Teresa that may process as many as 100,000 container units per year, according to news reports.

With only a couple of weeks left in the session, lawmakers are rushing to put through legislation that eventually could cost taxpayers billions of dollars. One bill that passed the House and is pending in the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security committee is a very brief piece of legislation, HB 3747, that would allow TxDot to use money from the general fund for the Texas Rail Relocation and Improvement Fund.

The rail relocation effort is part of TxDot’s grand scheme to build the Trans-Texas Corridor, which is actually a network of super-highways that will have lanes for cars, trucks, trains, pipelines, and other infrastructure. The Legislature has not yet capitalized the rail relocation fund, which was approved by voters in 2005.

The current House appropriations bill contains a one-time payment of $150 million to TxDot, which will allow the agency to begin laying the groundwork for public-private partnerships with railroad companies and other corporations. But that’s just the beginning of what could be a flood of money from state coffers.

TxDot has identified $17.4 billion in needed rail projects across Texas. Even industry insiders have described some of these rail projects as “pure pork,” which will require huge amounts of debt and taxpayer-funded subsidies. In its analysis, the House Research Organization quoted opponents as saying,”At a time when the Legislature has expressed concerns about TxDot’s decisions and funding priorities, especially those involving participation in partnerships with private enterprise, it would be unwise to allow TxDot to create its own rules for spending money and deeming eligibility of projects. The state should not spend public dollars on projects that benefit private companies, and this bill would provide no safeguard against that possibility.”