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Follow TURFWhen the State is already $31 BILLION in debt for roads, it's unfathomable how the Senate can think we can afford to plunge additional $3 billion into more debt. These lawmakers have got to address our long-term structural shortfall in road funding. It is true that the priorities of this legislature are crystal clear. It's a special interests lovefest in Austin!
Budget woes mostly miss transportation
TxDOT would see 23 percent budget increase, and continued construction blitz, under Senate version of 2012-13 state budget.
By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 8:38 p.m. Thursday, May 5, 2011
What budget problem?
In contrast to the steep cuts for most of the rest of state government, the Texas Department of Transportation would see a 23 percent increase in its 2012-13 spending under the budget bill approved Wednesday by the Texas Senate. Even the House version approved April 3 would give TxDOT a 2.2 percent increase for the two years beginning Sept. 1.
Senate leaders say they'll push for their $19.5 billion TxDOT budget, a $3.6 billion increase over 2010-11 and $3.3 billion more than the House version, as the two chambers negotiate a final budget in the legislative session's final weeks. And an interview with a key House member indicates senators may find a receptive audience.
"The $3 billion simply completes what the people of Texas recognized as a need to help their infrastructure, and I'm very supportive of that," said state Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, who chaired the subcommittee of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee that wrote the TxDOT section of the proposed budget, House Bill 1. Spending that added money on roads, Darby said, will spur economic development, save people time frittered away in traffic congestion, and take advantage of depressed construction prices.
TxDOT, under heavy political pressure for the past few years because of a sharp policy turn toward toll road building, may get added authority to give private companies long-term leases to build tollways. The TxDOT "sunset" bill approved by the House last week would authorize about 20 such projects.
While TxDOT's budget primarily comes from taxes and fees that state law dedicates to transportation, the bulk of the difference between the House and Senate budgets is $3 billion in bonds that TxDOT would sell to raise money for projects. And under an amendment to the Texas Constitution that voters approved in 2007, the debt payments for that borrowing — about $257 million over the next two years — would come primarily from the state's general fund. That's the same pot of money that fell an estimated $23 billion short this legislative session and is forcing spending cuts for social services, education and prisons, among other state needs.
Beyond that, the debt-service tab would rise to more than $600 million every two years once all $5 billion allowed under the Proposition 12 amendment four years ago is borrowed . The payments would last for three decades. Almost all of that money would come from the state's general fund.
"We're borrowing money for highways. We're not borrowing money for our kids," state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte , D-San Antonio, said during the debate this week over the budget. She and the rest of the Senate's Democrats voted against that budget plan, while every Senate Republican voted for it.
Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, said he has no problem with giving TxDOT the money it needs to build highways. But he said the way it is being handled is a symptom of a larger policy failure.
"We have a Legislature that in good faith is trying to met our needs," McCown said, "but has to do it through this Rube Goldberg budget that relies on debt, deception and diversion."
The Proposition 12 program is the last of three borrowing regimes that the Legislature, with voter approval, created over the past decade, including the Texas Mobility Fund and the Proposition 14 program. The $6 billion borrowed under the mobility fund is paid back from several long-established transportation fees, and the $4.5 billion borrowed so far under Proposition 14 is repaid using gasoline tax revenue.
TxDOT has already borrowed $1 billion under the Proposition 12 program, and the House version of the budget would allow a second $800 million in debt, leaving the remaining $3.2 billion for sometime after the 2013 fiscal year. The Senate version would allow TxDOT to move ahead with the full $5 billion.
In all, the three programs authorize about $17 billion in borrowing. The debt incurred so far, along with $2.2 billion from the 2009 federal stimulus program and a handful of private toll road leases, has allowed TxDOT to spend heavily on roads in recent years.
Officials had indicated over the past year that the 2012-13 biennium could be the beginning of a transportation funding crisis for the state, that there would be no money to authorize transportation projects not already funded. However, approval of the Senate's version of the budget, and that extra $3 billion in borrowing, would forestall that scenario.
The added spending would include $500 million for large bridge projects, $1.4 billion for road rehabilitation and safety projects, $200 million for "statewide connectivity" work largely in rural areas, $300 million for engineering and design and $600 million for primarily urban projects meant to decrease traffic congestion.
Deirdre Delisi, chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, said the agency had asked for the $800 million in additional Proposition 12 borrowing approved by the House.
"The Senate is giving us more," Delisi said. "Just like every other budget negotiation, somewhere in between we will land."
State Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, will push for a landing on or near the full $19.5 billion for TxDOT.
"We'll do our best to convince our House colleagues that we're correct," Ogden said. "I'm reasonably optimistic."
Transportation Department's growing budget
If the Senate's version of House Bill 1 passes, the Texas Department of Transportation's budget will have grown almost 90 percent in the past decade. The House version of TxDOT's 2012-13 budget would be 58 percent higher than what the agency was allotted for the 2002-03 biennium.
Budget years TxDOT two-year budget
2002-03 $10.3 billion
2004-05 $10.6 billion
2006-07 $15.2 billion
2008-09 $16.7 billion
2010-11 $15.9 billion
2012-13 Senate $19.5 billion
House $16.3 billion
Source: Legislative Budget Board