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County Officials Offer Solutions to Transportation Crisis
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As TxDOT dollars dry up, elected officials look for new funding solutions
Vicki Truitt knows about growth, and she knows about transportation, particularly as it relates to Northeast Tarrant County, one of the fastest-growing areas in the United States.
Today, approximately 24 million people call Texas home, 6.1 million — 25 percent — of whom live in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. By 2040, the state’s population is projected to double in size to 50 million residents, 9 million of whom will live in the 12-county Dallas-Fort Worth region, which currently has the 12th largest metropolitan economy in the world.
Unfortunately, currently the Texas Department of Transportation’s bank is running dry; funds for building new roads are expected to be depleted by the first quarter of 2012.
“During the 81st session we were advised that by the first quarter of 2012 there will be only enough money maybe to maintain what we have and no — nothing — to build new capacity,” said Truitt, speaking at the Texas Association of Counties Annual Conference in late August. “Considering the current traffic gridlock that we already face in many areas of the state and in particular where I represent, we already have tremendous challenges. Now add three million people and folks, we’ve got a problem.”
The funding problems stem from various sources. The last time the state raised the fuel tax was back in 1991; at the time, cars were much less fuel efficient than they are now, which means the state is generating less money per car now than it was back then. Also, state dollars sent to Washington for the Federal Highway Trust Fund — which faces the same bankruptcy problems stemming from decreased collections due to increased fuel efficiency and a fuel tax that has not been raised since 1993 — have only an 80 percent return, since the federal government donates part of the state’s money to other states that cannot support their regional highway systems.
Add those factors to others, such as the amount of aging infrastructure and the percentage of state transportation funds being diverted to education and public safety, and it seems that local governments will be footing the bill for new roads — except they don’t have the funding, either.
“The bottom line is the income, the revenue, is insufficient to build the infrastructure to accommodate our growth needs,” Truitt said, adding that it is up to state legislators and locally elected officials to find a solution. “It is irresponsible for elected officials to be aware of a problem of this magnitude and ignore it.”
Some advocacy organizations, such as the Texas Public Policy Foundation Center for Fiscal Policy, have suggested simply ending the diversionary spending. According to the House Research Organization, which released its Highway Funding in Texas: A Status Report in February, approximately 13.8 percent of the State Highway Fund 6 dollars are spent on the Department of Public Safety, employee benefits and other projects. In 2007, that amounted to $1.95 billion diverted away from TxDOT. Truitt said even if the legislature stopped approving those diversions, that would only cover about half of the capacity needed to maintain the state’s roads — not enough to begin building new infrastructure.
Just to maintain the state’s highway network, the state will need $487 billion (adjusted for inflation) in highway funding over the next 21 years, according to the Texas Transportation Commission’s 2030 Committee, which was charged with calculating future highway funding needs.
That means that either the state must increase fuel taxes or the state and local governments will most likely have to rely more on public-private partnerships and toll roads, though Truitt and others proposed another solution during the 81st legislative session: Senate Bill 855, also called the Texas Local Option Transportation Act (TLOTA).
Had it passed, TLOTA would have allowed county voters to approve a local option transportation tax to fund a local project. According to the bill, the ballot would have clearly stated information about the project, the revenue sources for the project, and the duration of the tax. Voters could have agreed to either a new resident impact fee, a mobility improvement fee, a driver’s license fee, a local option gas tax, a parking fee or an emissions fee, and the money raised would have gone into a separate account to go entirely toward the approved project.
“It placed control and self-determination into the hands of the people, of the voters, who could choose whether or not to fund or raise taxes locally to accommodate the need within their county,” Truitt said. “It required transparency with ballot language describing project-specific details, costs of capital outlay, what it would cost for ongoing maintenance, timeline for the project.”
The bill gained support in the Senate but got caught up in a procedural delay in the House, during which hundreds of bills died, Truitt said.
Though the bill had support, it also had plenty of descent, with several lobbying organizations calling it “just another tax bill,” she added, calling for greater support of the bill during the 82nd legislative session.
“A lot of scare tactics and misinformation (were) out there on this,” she said. “Nothing scares the bejesus out of an elected official like having, knowing you’re having your face…on a tax bill.”
One believer in the bill is Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, who said a local option transportation tax may be necessary for regions to maintain their economic competitiveness in the future. Already, areas are losing major companies to other states; Whitley alluded to Dell’s decision in May 2007 to lay off 10 percent of its Round Rock work force, about 8,800 jobs. That trend continued into 2008, when the company closed its desktop PC factory in North Austin. Meanwhile, in 2005, the company had opened a new plant in North Carolina.
“With Texas being a donor state, we can expect to raise $155 billion between now and 2030,” Whitley said of federal funding. Ending diversionary spending — including the 25 percent of state fuel tax dollars that now goes toward public education — would make up for a third of the rest of the $487 billion needed, he said, but “That still leaves a third out there. …We think TLOTA is a solution.
“I like to really kind of compare TLOTA to your school board elections, to your city elections. When you’ve got capital projects, you put them up there and sometimes they pass, and sometimes they don’t. If the voters don’t like it, they don’t pass it. If the voters don’t think there’s something in it for them, they don’t pass it,” he said. “With TLOTA, every dollar that is raised in a county stays in the county and is used by that county for the building of that project.”
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