Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

With statewide gas taxes stagnant and the public wary of tollways, urban areas in Texas could vote to levy local taxes and fees to build road and rail projects under legislation filed Monday.

State Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, the Senate's transportation committee chief, unveiled the bill and a companion constitutional amendment proposal backed by eight legislators from both parties and a phalanx of Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex officials. Calls Monday did not turn up any staunch opposition to the concept from the governor or business groups often resistant to tax proposals.

But past attempts to augment the statewide 20-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax with local levies have run aground. And Gov. Rick Perry's main transportation adviser indicated Monday that the governor's initial support of what Carona has in mind was based on using it for rail projects in Dallas-Fort Worth. Expanding it statewide, makes the governor uncomfortable, said Kris Heckman, Perry's deputy chief of staff.

"He thinks it solves a unique problem that they have" of having proposed rail lines passing through dozens of city and county jurisdictions, Heckman said. If the bill is expanded to include other metropolitan areas, as Carona says is his intention, Perry "would look at it with a lot more scrutiny."

The bill would allow county commissioners courts to call elections asking voters to raise any or all of six fees or taxes, including the gas tax and driver's license renewal fee. Ballot language would have to list specific projects that the added money would pay for and specify when the fee or tax would expire.

Austin-area business groups for months have been talking up the proposal as a way to pay for local road and rail projects. State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, vice chairman of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, which Carona chairs, called the legislation "a big new step. The state has been very stingy in providing tools for the folks at a local level to be able to plan, to be able to prepare.

"The unfortunate part is that this is being driven by a failure on the part of the state to do its job."

Various studies over the past five years have put the state's transportation funding shortfall at anywhere from $44 billion to more than $300 billion. Much of that was for highways. And now urban areas, including Austin, increasingly are pushing for rail projects.

Carona's bill, because it allows gas taxes to be spent on something other than roads, would require a change in the Texas Constitution by voters.

Here are the taxes and fees, all of them to be levied countywide, that could be raised under Senate Bill 855:

Gas tax, capped at 10 cents a gallon.

"Mobility improvement fee," capped at $60, essentially an increase in the annual vehicle registration fee.

"Parking regulation and management fee" of up to $1 per hour for use of a parking space.

Annual motor vehicle emissions fee, based on the amount of pollutants emitted by a vehicle, of up to $15.

Added driver's license renewal fee (once every six years) equal to the renewal fees in current law for various types of licenses.

"New resident impact fee" of up to $250, levied on vehicles previous registered in another state.