“There’s no reason for the bureaucrats, if you will, to really engage the citizens because they’re really not accountable to them,” said Rep. Scott Sanford, R-McKinney. “Their salaries aren’t and their careers aren’t.”
Sanford and Rep. Matt Shaheen, R-Plano, have each filed bills that would require county commissioners courts to sign off on toll projects in their jurisdictions.
Currently, the decision to build a toll road is typically made by the North Texas Tollway Authority, the Regional Transportation Council or the Texas Department of Transportation. Even Dallas Area Rapid Transit officials in recent weeks have considered building a toll road to help fund a transit expansion in Collin County.
Voters don’t directly elect members of any of those bodies. Instead, the agencies’ boards are made up of people appointed by other elected officials.
“If you believe that tolls are a tax, you really do have taxation without representation,” Shaheen said.
The two pieces of legislation are among a series of nine bills that the lawmakers, along with Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, are pushing to combat the proliferation of toll roads in Texas. It’s not clear this early in the session how successful the three Collin County lawmakers will be in winning passage of the bills.
Some of their measures are likely to face opposition from transportation agencies whose bureaucratic and financing methods would be fundamentally changed under the potential new rules. Those agencies, meanwhile, have remained mostly mum about the legislation the men are pushing. Government employees don’t typically weigh in on pending legislation, even what might affect their agencies.
NTTA uses tolls across its system of roads to finance new projects. That means the agency doesn’t silo construction debt for each project. Tolls remain on roads whose debt may have been paid off so the agency can pay for maintenance and future expansions. Some of the new bills would hinder that process because they would require that tolls be removed once an individual road’s construction and financing has been paid off.
NTTA spokesman Michael Rey said he can’t speculate on how a particular bill would affect NTTA, but said the toll cessation requirement “would obviously change our system-finance model.”
The requirement that tolls be removed once construction and financing debt is paid off could potentially hinder any roads in which private companies front construction costs. Toll revenues essentially make up the profit companies expect to make after initial capital investment is recouped.
That could complicate plans to fund the controversial Trinity Parkway toll road in Dallas. The $1.5 billion project is already facing a shortfall of more than $900 million. Dallas assistant city manager Jill Jordan said last week she wasn’t aware of the bills, so she couldn’t speak to how they would hinder the project or if the city would lobby against them.
The RTC steers federal funds to area transportation projects and writes the region’s long-term transportation plan. To make up for low state funding, that entity for years has relied on tolling components to help maximize limited public funds.
The RTC’s legislative policy calls for opposing any bills that would take away such financing options. But the agency is likely to support two of Leach’s bills, which aim to steer existing tax revenue away from the state’s general fund and send it directly to the highway fund.
“Clearly our hope is that the pendulum swings back towards a pay-as-you-go system to fund transportation improvements,” said spokeswoman Amanda Wilson.
Follow Brandon Formby on Twitter at @brandonformby.
___
(c)2015 The Dallas Morning News
Visit The Dallas Morning News at www.dallasnews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
