Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Apr. 21--AUSTIN -- For nearly six years, North Texas leaders have asked for -- and failed to get -- lawmakers' approval to let local residents decide whether to pay higher taxes and fees in return for billions of dollars' worth of rail and road improvements.

Such a proposal -- which passed the Texas Senate earlier this month -- takes center court today in the House, where the transportation committee will begin debating the bill.

It's an ambitious plan that could add as much as 200 miles of suburban rail over the next 15 years. Top transportation planners in the region say it's critical if North Texas is to stand any chance of comfortably absorbing the 1 million residents it expects to add every six or seven years.

It's also expensive. In all, the tax increases it envisions could total billions of dollars, and individuals could pay hundreds of dollars more per year, and maybe more, through a range of fee increases.

The House debate will offer the first real glimpse into the proposal's prospects for becoming law.

That's because the fight in the House has always seemed likely to be rougher than the debate, however contentious, in the Senate.

There, it was opposed by anti-tax conservatives but eventually passed 21-9. Credit for that mainly goes to its influential author, Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, the transportation committee chairman who stood on his feet for more than three hours deflecting dozens of questions and objections.

In the House, members are traditionally even less likely than their Senate counterparts to embrace tax increases -- whether they are directly imposed or, as in this case, levied only with the consent of voters.

"What I am hearing is very negative right now," said Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving, a member of the transportation committee. Harper-Brown supports the concept of letting local residents vote to tax themselves for better roads and other services, but she said she has concerns about the details of the bill passed by the Senate.

"I am not fighting this bill," she added, but she's not ready to support it either.

The bill's sponsor in the House, Rep. Vicki Truitt of Southlake, said the bill is up against long odds, but she remains optimistic.

"There are 150 members of the House, and that means a greater opportunity for debate and input," she said. "I do believe it faces a significant uphill battle."

Funding challenges

The key to its prospects could rest on the House's new transportation chairman, Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso. As chairman of his local transportation planning council, Pickett is deeply familiar with funding challenges for metro areas, but so far he's not willing to come out in favor of the bill, he said last week.

"I'm playing more cards close to my vest here," he said, keeping his ears open as members react.

On the one hand, Pickett said, he's convinced that Texas spends far too little on its roads. But he's leery of letting each urban area craft its own solution.

"I feel it would be more appropriate to simply spend more out of general revenue for transportation," he said, noting that he'd be willing to raise the motor fuels taxes that all Texans pay. "I know we are a very large and diverse state, but I am not sure that dividing up the way we pay for transportation is how it ought to be."

The bill passed by the Senate would allow each county in several urban areas -- Austin but not Houston, for instance -- to call elections to raise funds for specific rail or highway projects. In North Texas, the effort over the past six years has focused on expanding commuter rail throughout the suburbs -- a vastly expensive enterprise for which the state has traditionally supplied little or no funding.

In many cases, suburban cities could have once built their rail by joining DART. But in most cases, they have long since obligated all or most of their sales-tax capacity to other needs, such as police districts or economic development funds. In 2005 and 2007, North Texas leaders rallied behind a bill that would have allowed those cities to bust the state sales-tax cap of 8.25 percent in order to join DART or one of the other two regional rail authorities.

Immovable opposition from Texas' largest companies, including J.C. Penney and American Airlines, defeated the proposal in both sessions, and convinced backers, including Carona, that a change in approach was necessary in 2009.

The new approach would allow each county to call an election in order to raise fees, but each would be free to decide which fees to include and how much to charge. Dallas County could decide to ask voters to pay 10 cents more per gallon of gasoline, while Tarrant County could choose to impose only a $1 per day surcharge for downtown parking.

County-level voting

The bill would also require counties to specify exactly what the funds would be used for, and they would not be restricted to using them for rail.

That latter provision pleases Harper-Brown, who said Irving would certainly use what money voters approved for highways, not rail. But she said she's deeply wary of holding the elections on the county level, rather than city by city.

What's to prevent support in Dallas from overwhelming opposition by a majority in Irving, thus leaving the smaller city's residents paying extra fees for years for a project they didn't want?

Some of the fiercest opposition in the Senate came from anti-tax conservatives including Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston -- and Pickett and others said the same sentiment will certainly be a factor in the House. Another trouble sign for the bill is a strong pocket of resistance in Collin County, where County Judge Keith Self staunchly opposes it.

But it's the county-level voting that has another supporter of suburban transit worried about the bill. Rep. Robert Miklos, D-Mesquite, has filed a rival bill that would revert to the sales-tax plan and would allow each city to vote for itself -- much like past DART transit elections.

"Cities need to do this, and not county by county," he said.

But considering the recent fate of similar bills, the best chance for additional funds for rail and highways in North Texas appears to be the county-by-county bill now before the House.

Earlier this month, Michael Morris, the transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, urged Regional Transportation Council members to back it. A no vote by the Legislature, he said, could cripple the region's economy.

House members are in for a rough debate, if the rocky reception in the Senate is any indication. Carona said too few of his colleagues realize the state's transportation funding is in crisis.

"It has not yet reached full priority here in the Legislature," Carona said. "Legislators typically seek out easier problems to fix first."

Paying for highways, rail

The measure being debated by the House transportation committee would allow some urban area counties to hold elections in which any combination of the following items could be put before voters:

-- A tax of up to 10 cents per gallon on the sale of gasoline or diesel fuel.

-- A fee of up to $60 imposed on a person registering a motor vehicle in the county at the time of registration.

-- A fee of up to $2 per day for parking in city- or county-owned parking lots, excluding metered lots and airport parking.

-- A motor vehicle emissions fee of up to $15 on vehicles registered in the county.

-- A fee of up to $24 for the renewal of a driver's license issued to a county resident.

-- A fee of up to $250 for a new Texas resident to register a motor vehicle previously registered in another state.