Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

When lawmakers defeated a plan to expand commuter rail throughout North Texas' suburbs in 2007, scores of area leaders vowed to try again in 2009.

Well, they're back.

A new bill would create a transportation district, a tax-levying entity that would cover all of the Dallas-Fort Worth area and would be controlled by the Regional Transportation Council or its designees.

The bill, if passed, would authorize each county to hold elections so voters could decide whether to fund a 215-mile suburban rail line and to provide millions of dollars annually to build new roads.

Counties that decided to hold the transportation funding elections would be authorized to pick from a menu of taxing options, including perhaps additional fees on vehicle registration, new sales taxes on gasoline purchases and even new property taxes.

Michael Morris, who leads the Regional Transportation Council, has called the approach, half in jest, a West Coast offense. He says the plan would give the transportation council the tools and the money to tackle not just the long-cherished idea of a suburban rail plan, but also to build roads that many in the area think Austin will never be able to adequately fund.

The new plan can do all this – and more – if it can do what its two comparatively modest predecessor plans never could: pass the Texas Legislature and become law.

Technicality

Last session's failed bill would have allowed local cities to raise sales taxes to build 251 miles of suburban rail by 2025. It passed the Senate but failed on a technicality in the House. Some of the strongest supporters of that bill, and a similarly failed effort in 2005, worry that the new plan is too ambitious and, perhaps worse, too complicated to pass the Legislature.

"You go to approach a legislator, and maybe he's put off by the idea of raising property taxes, just against it completely," said Walter J. Humann, a longtime transit backer sometimes called the godfather of Dallas Area Rapid Transit. "Well, you can say, 'Hey, we have a whole menu of options, if you don't like that one,' but that one legislator, you've lost him already. He tuned out after he saw property taxes."

Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said she's against the idea of creating a new taxing entity.

"This is just more taxes, and giving another layer of government taxing authority. I am opposed to that," she said. "The RTC has a very specific mission. It is a metropolitan planning authority – put the emphasis on planning – and not a taxing authority."

The plan, however, was approved by about 2-to-1 at the Regional Transportation Council on Nov. 6, where it won support from some of the leading voices on transportation in the area, including Linda Koop of the Dallas City Council and Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley.

Cities across North Texas have contributed to a $1 million lobbying fund to help make the case for transit in the Legislature. Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck said his city is giving $75,000 because it desperately needs rail options. He said some elements of the plan, including the possibility of raising property taxes, trouble him.

"But I am for it," he said. "We needed to get a plan to the legislators and let them tell us what they will support and what they won't."

When asked about the plan earlier this month, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst grimaced. It's a complex proposal, he said.

"I understand that the region would like an option of being able to fund some of its needs through local revenues," Mr. Dewhurst said. "I am willing to listen to that idea."

But he also said that a bill that seeks permission to raise as many as six different taxes is not going to have an easy time in Austin – even if the tax increases would first be subjected to a county-by-county vote.

Noting that the economy is slowing, even in Texas, he said: "There's not going to be a big appetite for raising taxes of any kind."

Ms. Shapiro said one of her chief objections to the new approach is that it would ask voters to pay more in local taxes for roads and other projects that have traditionally been funded by state and federal taxes.

"It's picking a different pocket of the same taxpayer," she said. "There should be more pressure put on the state and more pressure put on the federal government" to fund roads, she said.

Offering to use local taxes to fund basic transportation needs, she said, only gives Austin more reason to spend its money elsewhere.

But Mr. Whitley sees it differently. State lawmakers have refused again and again to raise taxes to pay for spiraling transportation needs, he said. Why should local governments expect them to do anything different in the coming years?

Would raising local taxes to pay for roads take the heat off of Austin?

"Yes," he said. "That's the short answer. But the longer answer is that there is, unfortunately, not any appetite at the state or federal level to increase fees or taxes to pay for this. We can choose to keep the heat on them and know nothing will happen, or we can choose to stand up locally and say here is what it is going to take to solve the problem."

Road funding

Mr. Dewhurst said he's committed to finding the funds to keep the Texas Department of Transportation building all the roads needed in areas like North Texas.

"We know we are going to have to come in this session and do everything we can to get more funds to TxDOT," he said. He and Gov. Rick Perry, for instance, have already promised to quit siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars away from the state gas-tax funds to pay for other needs.

Still, Mr. Whitley isn't ready to bet on the region getting the funds it needs from Austin, or Washington. "Instead of asking voters for money for rail and then going back in a few years and asking for more, we're going to be very honest, look at our problems and define what the solutions were. Then we are going to allow voters to decide if they want to fund the solutions."

Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, the Senate's transportation committee chairman, plans to carry a rail bill for North Texas again this session. It's too early to tell whether that bill will be Mr. Morris' proposal or something different, said Steven Polunsky, Mr. Carona's top committee aide.

"With the new cooperative approach being shown by the governor and the Transportation Commission, this session looks very promising," Mr. Polunsky said. "Senator Carona expects the details to evolve as the bill progresses through the session but is anxious to get a bill in the hopper."