Like TURF
Follow TURFStraus to turn to 'Gang of Seven' on transportation funding ideas
The 'options' are real easy: dedicate the tax revenues we ALREADY PAY to roads. like vehicles sales tax that's going to general revenue, not to roads. That's $3 billion/yr, TxDOT needs $4 billion. So this coupled with ending gas tax diversions, which is close $1 billion, and we're there.
Texas House has ‘Gang of Five, Six or Seven’ to spearhead transportation solutions
By Rodger Jones
Dallas Morning News
February 13, 2013
Expect Texas House Speaker Joe Straus to turn to a nucleus of members versed in transportation policy to come up with and evangelize for funding solutions for highways.
One observer referred to it as the Gang of Five. One of the five told me it’s more like seven, to start with. The idea is for members to form up a package of revenue options that could be roped together into legislation. The idea also is to keep adding members to the Gang and get momentum for finding real money.
The names I’m hearing are:
Drew Darby
Ryan Guillen
Patricia Harless
Linda Harper-Brown
Larry Phillips
Joe Pickett
Wayne Smith
Last week in Senate Finance, Chairman Tommy Williams laid out his starting point for scraping together funding for TxDOT. It included curtailing diversions from Fund 6 by $400 million, raising vehicle registration over multiple years, for an initial $220 million, and putting $2 billion from the rainy day fund into an infrastructure bank to backstop loans for toll projects (with the annual dollar amount for lettings unclear).
Still, that’s not going to fill TxDOT’s identified annual lettings shortfall of $4 billion ($3 billion for new capacity, $1 billion for maintenance).
I asked one member of the Gang of … Seven what possible new source of transportation revenue will be the big horse that members will saddle up and ride this session.
“It’ll be more like a bunch of Shetland ponies,” the member said.
Translation: Raising big new amounts of money is still a hard vote in the Legislature.