Two out of Three in the Special Session

The legislature wrapped up its special session today. Both chambers passed on a controversial toll road bill and chose to go home for Independence Day rather than slog it out in Austin for another week.

Bills renewing five state agencies and authorizing $2 billion in transportation bonds for highway construction sailed through both chambers, save for a scuffle over a Transportation Revolving Fund included in the transportation bill.

HB 3 and SB 3 which would have revived the state’s authority to enter into public-private toll road contracts sputtered out in committee. Legislators couldn't muster the votes or enthusiam to vote for the bills.

In 2007, the legislature put a moratorium on comprehensive development agreements, government contracts with private companies to build and operate—and profit from— toll roads. CDAs have long been one of Gov. Rick Perry’s favored means of financing highway construction in lieu of more traditional methods like a motor fuels tax, said Steven Polunsky, Sen. John Carona’s transportation spokesman. Carona, R-Dallas, and Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, authored legislation during the regular session that would have ended the moratorium on public-private toll contracts, and allowed limited CDAs.

Some legislators argue that CDAs are a necessary evil since other options like a local gas tax had been taken off the table.

“As far as the range of tools that you can use to build infrastructure, CDAs are not the most desirable at all. Tolls are not the most desirable,” Polunsky said. “But when all you have on the table are those less desirable options, when your urban areas are clogged with congestion and that’s affecting your air quality…. Is it a problem that you can just ignore and hope goes away?”

Toll road opponents, meanwhile, say the state shouldn’t give private companies a lease to tax citizens for driving on highways that used to be publicly owned.

“If that’s the only reason we’re here, you can just put me down as a no,” said Democratic Caucus leader Rep. Jim Dunnam. His comment was met with cheers from the handful of anti-toll road activists at the Transportation Committee hearing yesterday.  “If that’s the only reason we’re here, it’s offensive.” SB 3 got a similar reception at the Senate Finance Committee hearing.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise today when Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst pronounced what’s now dubbed the CDA bill dead. (“It wasn’t that urgent” he told reporters.) Many of the CDA projects the bill addressed—mostly in North Texas—would stay in the pipeline, at worst stalling until the next legislative session 18 months from now.

House transportation chair Joe Pickett carried HB 3, but didn’t seem to feel much urgency about it, either. “In transportation terms, two years is still a short period of time,” he said after the committee hearing, where he left the bill pending.

Only problem is, lawmakers may have forestalled a bill that could have added tighter guidelines for future CDAs, according to Sen. Nichols.  By not passing the legislation Nichols said they had “kicked the can down the road” to the next legislative session. He released a conciliatory, if slightly defeated, statement on the bill at the end of the day:

If the Legislature does not reauthorize CDAs during this very short special session, I don’t think it will cause any problems for the state. My only goal in authoring Senate Bill 3 was to make sure that if the Legislature decided to allow CDAs, we would only do so in a way that returned local control of transportation projects and established important protections for Texas drivers and taxpayers.