Yesterday, I gave you a quick rundown of the more than 100 bills affecting transportation that are already filed in the Texas Legislature. Today, let’s look at what coming up this week.
Biennial Revenue Estimate
Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar is scheduled to release his estimate of the state’s revenues at 10 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 9. The Biennial Revenue Estimate, or BRE, effectively constrains the Legislature’s appropriations, so it is an important milestone on the Legislature’s journey. When published, it will join the previous BREs here. Historically, the State Highway Fund is summed up in Table A-11 (shown at right; click the image to enlarge it). | View the BRE for the last biennium
GEER
The Legislative Budget Board — the Legislature’s number crunchers — solicits public suggestions for programs to review and selects programs during each interim to evaluate with an eye toward improving the efficiency of state and local government operations. The LBB issues a report at the beginning of each session called the Government Effectiveness and Efficiency Report, or GEER. There have been 14 transportation-related reviews since 2009. Last interim’s had three:
- Enhance the Process Used to Remove Non-Integral Roads from the State Highway System
- Improve the Operations and State Oversite of Overweight Corridors
- Increase the Fee for a Duplicate Motor Vehicle Title to Recover State Costs
The GEER is typically released in the first two weeks of session. It will be posted here.
Interim Committee Reports
During the session, it’s retail: bill, bill, bill. The interim allows the Legislature a chance to take a step back and look at broader policy questions. Committees in both houses have been doing just that and are now reporting back to their respective bodies. We go into some detail about interim committee activities here.
You can read every committee report ever here if you’re so inclined. Or you can go one by one for the current biennium:
- Senate Transportation Committee
- Senate Select Committee on Texas Ports
- House Transportation Committee: pending release
Sunset Takes up TxDOT
On Wednesday, Jan. 11, the Sunset Advisory Committee will consider and vote on recommendations regarding the Texas Department of Transportation. If you aren’t familiar with the Sunset process, read up on it. It’s a big deal.
As additional bills are filed, we’ll be posting more analysis on the home page of the TTI Transportation Policy Research Center. Opt in to our Transport Trends newsletter and catch up on the last 18 months of Texas Legislature transportation action here.
Steven Polunsky is a TTI Research Scientist.