12.17.09

Dewhurst and transportation funding

Posted in Around The State, Commentary, Election 2010, Privatization, Road Issues, Transportation, Williamson County at 12:43 pm by wcnews

As a rule Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s reelection campaign, as long as it lasts, and his statements should be filtered through a couple of prisms. One is that he’s likely parsing all his words toward his eventual run for US Senate, whenever current GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison leaves office. The other is that he’s the weakest Lt. Gov. Texas has had in a long time, and whether he’s for or against anything, as the Texas Senate is currently configured, doesn’t mean much as far as what the Senate will actually do.

That’s why the first paragraph in this piece in yesterday’s DMN, Dewhurst considers steering some sales taxes to road projects, when viewed through those prisms, struck me as humorous.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said Tuesday that he wouldn’t support a tax increase to fund the state’s exploding transportation needs, though he did have an idea for where to get some of the money needed to build roads.

The only reason Dwhurst’s support would matter is if the vote came down to a tie, and that’s not likely. Also notice the words he uses - “exploding” needs, “some” money. He goes on…

Dewhurst said he would study whether to allow sales taxes from businesses on or near new roads to be diverted from the state’s general revenue fund to pay the principal and interest on the transportation project. The businesses and the new roads would in essence form a domain similar to a tax increment finance district.“I’m not going to call for a huge increase in taxes in the middle of a recession,” Dewhurst told The Dallas Morning News’ editorial board. “We’re going to need to widen a lot of roads, to build a lot of roads. The question is, where will you look first?”

His plan would require legislation, which Dewhurst said passed through the Senate this year but died in the House.

[…]

Dewhurst said the state needs a solution, and he declined to rule out tax increases in future years.

Diverting sales tax money, which is declining, means that money will either need to be made up somewhere else, or cut. This from the fiscal note on the engrossed version of the resolution (SJR 18), which would have created the plan he’s speaking of, transportation finance zones, that didn’t make it through the last legislative session:

Based on the analysis of the Comptroller of Public Accounts CPA, it is assumed the provisions of the proposed amendment could result in a significant loss of revenue to the General Revenue Fund and an increase in revenue to the Texas Mobility Fund depending on the number of transportation finance zones designated by TTC and approved by the Legislature. [Emphasis added].

(To learn more about how these zones would work, read this exchange [.pdf] between two Senators during the debate over the resolution).With the state already having a structural deficit and facing a revenue shortfall in the next budget cycle, taking “significant” money out of general revenue is a really bad idea.

The DMS’s TranspoBlog delves deeper into what Dewhurst in proposing and highlights that he may be stepping into the Rural vs. Urban fight on highway financing, Dewhurst and rural roads, which likely won’t help his reelection chances.

I’m more interested in the touchy subject of rural roads. Dewhurst questioned why TxDOT spends the amount it does in less-populated areas while urban roadways suffer from rush-hour congestion.

[…]

Dewhurst suggested that per capital spending is too generous outside of metro areas, considering the capacity needs in the cities.

As Gromer pointed out, Dewhurst conceded that the state needs more road revenue. I say “conceded,” because we had to drag that out of him in a conversation that started with taxes, a subject that made him grimace.

At first he said there was “arguably enough money to attack congestion,” but that the distribution is made according to an outmoded formula for spreading the cash around to TxDOT’s districts.

Later in our conversation, he said there is “not enough to build all the roads that everyone needs.” And he laid out his ideas.

Here’s where the rural roads discussion leads: If urban lawmakers are going to prevail on the idea of concentrating on cities, they will have to make the case that rural areas have what they need or have benefited from extravagance.

Rural lawmakers will have to make the case that country highways get people from regional hubs to cities to do business or spend their money. And vice versa. Rural lawmakers will have to make the case that there’s no sense in shortchanging one solid roadway system to try to rescue another.

Of course those on the Randian far right in Texas thinks that what Dewhurst is proposing will bring us one step closer to Galt’s Gulch.

GOP state Sen. Steve Ogden was the author of SJR 18 in the 81st Legislature. It’s part of his continuing attempt to atone for being the Senate sponsor of the disastrous HB 3588 from 2003. Which brought the horrors of the Trans-Texas Corridor and CDA/PPP’s to the vocabulary of many Texans.

As with any proposal in this elections season, Dewhurst should answer where he’s willing to cut in order to finance this significant cut to our state’s general revenue. Otherwise this idea should not be taken seriously. Dewhust likely thinks he’s a insulated from the electorate by making such bad policy proposal. He isn’t powerful enough to do much more than propose. And even if this was implemented it wouldn’t do much of anything to make up for what he called the exploding transportation needs in our state.

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