I admit it's unlikely that TxDOT will be stripped of its jurisdiction over city roads and renamed the Rural Texas Public Works and Electrification Authority. But there are lots of serious people who want Texas cities to have more control over their own infrastructure. State Senator Kirk Watson for one:
If accountability [at TxDOT] is to be more centralized, Watson wants decision-making better distributed. He proposes giving more authority to the metropolitan planning organizations (the next task, he said, is to make the "P" in Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization "really mean something"). After decades of legislator frustration with TxDOT's "one-size-fits-all" model, Watson said, he's even seeing support for localized fundraising, such as gas tax and vehicle registration charges. "It may be the old mayor in me," he said, "but I really believe in this concept of local control, as long as you build in mechanisms of accountability."
Local control is meaningless, of course, without money. Senate Bill 855 would fix that, sort of, by allowing counties to raise gas taxes and five other fees in order to finance infrastructure improvements. (Using the gas tax for rail would require a constitutional amendment, though.) I say "sort of" because the local gas tax would be capped at 10 cents/per gallon. And, as a practical matter, one county in a metropolitan area cannot raise the gas tax unless the other counties do, too; drivers will simply drive across the border for cheaper gas.
Assuming counties can coordinate their actions, though, raising the gas tax might actually be politically feasible if the locals think they will get infrastructure improvements they actually want.
This would get us about a quarter of the way to full local control. To get the whole nine yards, cities would also have to get back the money they send the state, and TxDOT would have to lose jurisdiction over metropolitan infrastructure projects. Who knows. TxDOT doesn't have many friends these days.
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