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Follow TURFTransportation funding gets one more shot in TX legislature
Wear: Transportation funding to get another chance at Legislature's spotlight
By Ben Wear
Jun 30, 2013 (Austin American-Statesman - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX)
What the heck, I didn't have any big plans in July anyway.
The Legislature, quick to capitalize on its boffo ratings as a summertime reality show, comes back to the Capitol on Monday afternoon for "Special Session, the Sequel."
The issue covered by this column, transportation, of course will dominate the 30-day session as lawmakers once again try to find more money for the state's highways. Senate Joint Resolution 1, the proposed constitutional amendment to send oil and gas revenue to the Texas Department of Transportation, sponsored by state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, is all the rage on social media now.
OK, who am I kidding?
I know Robert Nichols. Robert Nichols is a source of mine. But Sen. Nichols, you're no Wendy Davis.
That is not a shot, by the way. Nichols, an engineer, businessman and Texas Transportation Commission member, has a sharp mind and has come up with what most lawmakers believe is a clever way to raise transportation bucks without raising taxes or fees, or siphoning money from other state needs. His legislation would use tax revenue that would otherwise sit in what has become a very bloated rainy day fund, an elegant way to give TxDOT almost another billion dollars a year for roads.
But Nichols did not spend 13 hours last week filibustering against an abortion bill on the Senate floor while the state, then the nation and even part of the world watched. Pictures of his ankles and rouge-red jogging shoes (I doubt he has footwear of that shade) have not become iconic. National news shows are not clamoring for Nichols interviews. No, it is Davis, the Fort Worth Democrat and sudden political megastar, who did all that talking and has the famous ankles.
Nichols? He is not, you know, trending.
The real question, however, is how his SJR 1 is trending with the 180 members of the Legislature (down from 181, now that Austin state Rep. Mark Strama has gone off to Googleville)?
The legislation was certainly popular a week ago, when, going by the first special session's name of SJR 2, it sailed through the House and Senate in slightly different versions. It died on the last day of the session when Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst declined to let the Senate bring it up and vote on the final version before Davis began to filibuster the abortion law.
Now it's back.
For those of you who might have been paying more attention to Davis and Senate Bill 5 -- OK, all of you -- Nichols' constitutional amendment, if voters approve it in November, would divert half of the oil and gas tax revenue that otherwise would have gone to the state's rainy day fund and instead send it to TxDOT. The first payment would be in November 2014 and would amount to almost $900 million, and in subsequent two-year budget cycles TxDOT could get $2 billion and up.
Which is real money, even for TxDOT, although well less than the extra $4 billion a year that TxDOT leaders say is necessary to maintain Texas roads and fight congestion to a draw.
But Nichols' bill carries a catch, one that more conservative Republicans, with Nichols' acquiescence, inserted into the legislation during the first special session. It says that if sending money to TxDOT would reduce the rainy day fund to less than a third of its legal maximum -- about $15 billion currently -- then that TxDOT payment would be reduced or eliminated. Meaning, in the beginning, that about $5 billion must be set aside for the rainy day fund.
That's no problem right now, Nichols has said. Even with other draws on the fund approved in the regular session, and this one, the rainy day fund would still clear the bar in 2014. But going forward, that minimum amount would rise. And that could spell some trouble for SJR 1 from Democrats, even those who love highway spending (especially in their districts) and voted for it the last time.
That floor would in effect guarantee that the state would have a huge savings account, no matter what some legislators might see as the state's needs in the future for education, or medical spending, or prisons. Faced with the prospect of spending the rainy day fund down below that floor, and thus costing TxDOT large sums (and eliminating road projects), lawmakers in the future would be hard-pressed to do so.
Last week, after Perry had called the special session and put transportation funding on it, I asked state Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-Mission, about that minimum. Because proposed constitutional amendments require a two-thirds vote to pass, SJR 1 will need to 21 votes in the Senate and 100 in the House.
There are 19 Republicans in the Senate and 95 in the House, meaning the measure will need Democratic support.
"Unless that provision is removed, it will have difficulty getting 21 votes in the Senate," Hinojosa said.
Transportation might get a bigger role in the reality show this time, perhaps as the Democrats' hole card in the abortion fight. Hinojosa voted for SJR 2. But given more time to study the bill, he said there are no guarantees this time.
"It's a different day, and a different play."
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