81st Legislative Session Ends with Some Wins and Some Losses

The North Texas Commission focuses on transportation, water supply, air quality and other policy issues important to the North Texas economy and quality of life. In the 81st session, NTC worked to expand resources available for transportation investment and to promote specific higher education, clean air, and water policy positions. Actions of the 81st Texas Legislature spell success for higher education, some progress with air quality and continuing the status quo with transportation and water.

Texas has only three national research or top tier universities – far fewer than needed to be competitive in an innovation economy. The Legislature passed HB 51 by Representative Dan Branch and HJR 14 that define a pathway and potential funding to move the seven emerging research universities including UTA, UTD and UNT toward national stature, provided voters support the constitutional amendment in November 2009 to repurpose the stranded Higher Education Fund as the National Research University Fund.

The Legislature also passed SB 956 by Senator Royce West creating the University of North Texas at Dallas School of Law. The plan is to renovate the old Dallas Municipal Building on Main Street and convert it into a law school – the first public law school in the region.

The Legislature passed SB 1515 by Senator Kirk Watson, another measure important to the economy of North Texas. It makes changes the state comptroller recommended to two special events funds and expands eligibility parameters for incentive funding that will facilitate the Super Bowl to be held in North Texas in 2012.

NTC supported extending the Texas Emission Reduction Plan (TERP) program from 2015 to 2019, expanding the Low Income Repair and Assistance Program (LIRAP) and full appropriation of all TERP & LIRAP fee revenue to carry out clean air programs. Legislation was passed to extend TERP, to expand LIRAP and to increase clean air appropriations. NTC also supported efforts to strengthen the vehicle inspection and maintenance (I & M) program to reduce fraudulent emissions certification, but none of the bills to accomplish this objective passed.

NTC advocates for legislative policy to advance long range water supply development and against policy perceived as detrimental to water supply development to serve North Texas. Much of the effort in this regard is defensive. As nothing really harmful to water supply development passed this session, some success was achieved. However, there was no progress in advancing the objective of establishing a revenue source dedicated to implementing water supply projects identified in the state water plan.

Going into the 81st session, there were high hopes for making advances in transportation policy, especially with revenue to increase the level of transportation investment. There were several indicators to suggest some real progress could be made, but such was not to be. At the end of the day, nothing was passed to address the overriding transportation issue facing Texas – lack of funding.

Policy goals going into the session included stopping the diversion of transportation funding, indexing the motor fuels tax, capitalizing the rail relocation and improvement fund, recapitalizing the mobility fund, enabling legislation for Proposition 12 bonds, and local option authority for North Texas counties. Bills were filed to accomplish each of these objectives except recapitalization of the mobility fund, and multiple bills were filed in some instances.

Clearly the slowdown to avoid having the voter ID bill come up for debate on the House floor contributed to the failure of the some of the bills. We may well have been able to pass a bill addressing diversions and the enabling legislation for the Prop 12 bonds but for the voter ID slowdown. There was very little support for gas tax indexing. By way of house floor amendment to SB 1, the annual appropriations bill, the rail relocation and improvement fund did get capitalized to the tune of $182 million for the biennium.

The big disappointment of the session was failure to pass SB 855, giving counties authority to submit to their voters a ballot listing mobility improvement projects and fees to pay for the those projects. It passed the Senate but died in the House. Opposition to the bill portrayed it as a tax bill rather than a local option bill, and there was less than enthusiastic support from the House leadership for the bill. Senator John Carona and Representative Vicki Truitt were the bill authors and were excellent champions for it, and there was a great deal of support from North Texas local elected officials and business leaders for the bill. Meanwhile, the North Texas population, vehicle miles traveled, roadway congestion and delay all continue to increase, jeopardizing our economy and quality of life. For this reason, the effort to pass local option will not die; it will be back stronger than ever.