Travis County Commissioners Court
February 17, 2009, 2009
Item 27
Thank you for your patience.
speaking of patience, wem pefcome to the legislative item, mr.
ek stein.
and that is item 27, consider and take appropriate action on legislative matters, including a, status report on the 81st Texas legislature.
b, Travis County's position regarding legislative options to increase transportation mobility funding, c, draft bill language for certain Travis County legislative priorities.
and d, bills pending before the 81st Texas legislature.
and I guess marietta a good question for legal would be whether 27 d is sufficient as worded in the future or what?
>> morning.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners.
let me go to 27-a first.
this will be a regular feature of our weekly agenda item for the Commissioners court and really is intended to be a status I am date.
we wanted to give you numbers about the number of bills filed with the legislature that are now croing the 2000 mark.
600 of those we are tracking here on behalf of Travis County and our cracker jack staff analysts have done over 220 analyses of bills and we're beginning the process of bringing to the court bills that the court either support or oppose on behalf of the county.
so what I've put in your packet is a spreadsheet that tracks those and we'll update the spreadsheet over the course of the legislative session.
so that the court has an idea couple actively of what it is we're keeping an eye on and how we're doing on it.
>> the third item, the senate committees have begun meeting.
two bills that the county are tracking are scheduled for a hearing tomorrow in senator went worth's jurisprudence committee.
not only are the committees meeting, but they're already begin to go reach our bills.
>> what bills are they?
>> one is senate bill 312 which has to do with the medical examiner's office and the other is senate bill 320 which has to do with the qualifications of a justice of the peace.
both -- we're tracking botd of those and probably will want to visit with you about those next week.
but I mention that to the court today just by way of saying that we're now in the part of the session where we're hearing our bills and we hope to be bringing to the court recommendations on bills to support or oppose or to continue to monitor beginning, in fact, this week.
>> on bills like the two you just mentioned, we check in with the jp's on the jp bill, our medical examine other that one?
>> absolutely.
>> on the committee assignments, the house committee assignments were done last week a copy is included in your packet.
i would like to make a couple of general comments about the committee assignments.
first of all, I think the committee assignments reflect new realities in the Texas house of representatives.
we've gone from 40 committees down to 34.
there are now 18 republican committee chairs and 16 democratic committee chairs, so there's a more balanced representation among the committee chairman in a legislative body that has 76 republican members and 74 democratic members.
so is itself pretty balanced.
so I think I would make the general comment that the committee composition themselves are more balanced in my judgment than they have been in the past.
Travis County also did pretty well on the committee assignments.
and I just want to highlight what some of our state representatives are doing.
state representative belinda bolton is on the county affairs committee and on the land and resource management committee, which are two very important committees to the county.
representative dawnna dukes continues to serve on the committee that is very important to everybody.
representative donna howard is on the higher education committee.
representative elliott naishtat is on both the human services committee and the public health committee of which he is the vice-chair.
and ms.
fleming and the health and human services people have a lot of bills they're tracking and a lot of issues that affect the county in that committee.
representative eddie rodriguez is on the public safety committee.
and also on the technology, economic development and workforce committee, which is chaired by the sixth member of the Travis County house delegation, representative mark strama.
he is also on the energy resources committee and so a lot of the bills that have to do with green technology and all that are going to be running through that committee.
so we're pleased with our I'm pleased with the assignments that Travis County legislative delegation members have gotten in the house of representatives.
i wanted to ask greg knapp, our legislative consultant, if he had any comments.
>> I had one little thing.
in addition to that, at the luncheon that we had as well, the speaker happened to be at another meeting across the hall from the p.u.c.
and he was able to drop in.
i think the fact that he is elected from an urban area, he said he was a friend to counties, so that should be very promising to us as well.
>> I think we expect a good relationship with the speaker's office.
>> I agree with that.
i think he will be a friend to counties and I think just the broad picture I think is he is going to be an effective speaker and allow the members to vote their districts, which I think is going to benefit Travis County.
but to just add a little bit to what dee said about the committees, I agree that we have a very well balanced assignments in the committees just kind of house-wide.
i will say that as far as from the county's perspective where we might be lacking a little bit is transportation.
there's no one from the Travis County delegation on that committee.
the same goes with natural resources.
the same goes with environmental regulation.
and on at least one bill that we're proactively working on moving right now, criminal jurisprudence is another committee that we will utilize.
but that's not a problem.
i mean, that's what we will address this session, either working with our Travis County members through those committees or just directly with members on those committees with whom we have good working relationships.
>> a couple other points.
the filing deadline for legislation without permission from the -- either house to file a bill is going to be on Friday, March 13th.
so we're about three weeks out from the filing deadline.
you can file a bill in either the house or the senate after that date, but it has to be with the consent of four-fifths of the members of that body.
that is traditionally given, but it's not a situation where we want to get ourselves into in terms of our own legislative agenda.
with respect to that, there was a memo sent out by the legislative council this meeting asking that drafting requests for any bills that we want to have filed by March 13th be turned in by this Friday.
i think we've got most of what we want in terms of the county's legislative priorities in the hopper except for what we're calling our extraterritorial jurisdiction bill, which we are working on and will get tow them by this Friday.
also, I was -- I spoke briefly with rodney rodes from planning and budget today about another issue having to do with the -- how overtime pay is treated inside the sheriff's office and we may go to lej council with a request for that in anticipation of bringing a fuller discussion of that to the Commissioners court next week.
but those are the two things I'm aware of that we need to get turned in to lege council by the end of this week.
>> and one addition to that is that deadline does not apply to local bills.
that's more of a statewide impact type bill.
so there will still be an opportunity with many of our bills from the county speaker spect active will be local bracketed for Travis County that we can still send through legislative council later.
>> final element on part a is that last week the court gave approval to go forward with four legislative priorities.
on the early retiree bill, I'm told that the benefits committee -- you asked us to check with the benefits committee before we went forward to that.
the benefits committee is going to meet next Monday, so we'll put it on the agenda next Tuesday to report back to the court on what the benefits committee has said and hopefully finally send that bill forward.
what we also approved the utility relocation, the storm water management and the special court fee bill last week.
greg has been negotiating with both house and senate sponsors for those bills.
and we anticipate having those filed pretty quickly here.
so we're moving forward on the bills that we've already done.
that's all I have on item 27-a.
i'd be happy to answer any questions the court has.
>> questions?
okay.
>> item 27-b has to do with the topic that the court has been discussing for several weeks now having to do with what position the court should take with respect to local options for transportation and mobility funding.
the court has -- in your packet you have the document that joe gieselman produced a couple of weeks ago and that we also discussed in the work session last week.
and now I think the question is for the court to on owe last week we discussed in the work session and I wanted the court to affirm whatever it was they did last week, but it may be that we have a more specific resolution to the issue that the court wants to discuss.
so maybe I'll turn it over to joe at this point.
>> just to reiterate, the court did adopt a policy on April 22nd, 2008 entitled policy statement on alternatives to transportation mobility funding.
we had discussed modifying or expanding the last bullet, which was on the local option, transportation options.
and then I handed out-- because we expect this particular bill to be widely debated across the state, to not necessarily to lock into a specific version tbowrks have a set of principles that the court would adopt within which our legislative consultant and liaison could indicate.
we proposed, tnr proposed a set of county principles that would guide our legislative team.
have you a copy of that in your packet as well.
i would recommend for today any way that you focus on the policy that you've already adopted as well as those principles.
>> I would -- in regard to the principles, I had one -- I had one little area of -- on the very first one, the user-based bullet.
i would suggest that we leave the user-based bullet as it is, although we strike the last clause of that sentence, the versus thely levee on the general population or the property owners.
the reason I would advocate for striking verses to the end of the line is because I do see a benefit to a broad based tax even for those who don't heavily utilize, directly utilize the transportation system because much like public schools, even if you don't have a child in public school, you derive a benefit from an educated -- from an educated population.
in the same sense even if you don't drive the highways on a regular basis as a commuter, you still derive the benefits from the goods that come into the region and the workforce that flows through the region.
so in recognition of the fact that our broad based taxing structure right now is terribly regressive andry lying heavily on property tax, which is no longer a good indicator of one's wealth, but in hopes that some day we will become enlightened, I would just like to strike the versus portion of that, leaving it to read user based, new funding transportation sources should be levied on users of the transportation system and/or sources that generate the use.
actually, I changed it a little bit.
transportation systems and/or sources that generate or benefit from the use.
and I've drafted that up in language.
i just wanted to see what you all thought of that.
>> second.
>> I think that is surplus language anyway.
>> discussion?
all in favor of the motion?
>> adopt the whole policy with the language changes?
>> there's one more thing.
>> motion really was that one change on the user base.
all in favor of that?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> judge, I just wanted to remind you, you had an insert, I believe, on the net increase in transportation funding.
when we talked about the bill that's -- that has been filed, we said really that there ought to be substantial revenues generated, and I think in our last discussions you recommended inserting the word I think substantial, but I can't remember whether it was net substantial increase in transportation funding.
that's the only thing I wanted to bring up.
>> and I think that's important too because you're talking about just to get it in place, we would spend significant dollars to do the election, do the public education, campaign, etcetera.
if you go through that you ought to do enough to get something with.
if you're talking about a transportation project, unfortunately they tend to be pretty expensive.
and based on the options being considered, I think the biggest one would generate in the 80 to 90-million-dollar range, which you can work with, but there was a -- there was a 10-dollar -- 10-cent dollar a gallon gas fee was one, wasn't it?
>> and also index to the construction price index.
so it had two provisions.
not only was it substantial, but it increased with cost of construction.
>> yeah.
that's what I -- I fi thy if you go through all these, you ought to generate enough general revenue to do some good.
>> I second that change.
>> so we just insert substantial net increase.
>> any more discussion of that motion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
with that are we ready for a motion on the owe on our five bullets?
have we approved those already?
>> move the adoption of the principles.
>> seconded by half the court.
or more.
discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
ms.
porter, you did know to pick your favorite Commissioner as the person that seconded that.
>> [ laughter ] sherri whipped me after the meeting today.
>> [ laughter ] what else?
>> policy statements?
>> were there any other changes, Commissioner Eckhardt, that you wanted to propose to the policy statement?
>> I would suggest on the policy statement two thing.
one bullet regarding establish local option regional revenue sources.
i have suggested replacement language that I just passed out that tracks some of the movement that's been happening in regard to the bill that was recently filed and the reca request and some other things.
two more, I'm sorry.
here are several more.
so that the bullet established local option regional revenue sources would instead read Travis County supports legislation to provide for a local option gas tax, motorcycle gas tacks for vehicles over $30,000, vehicle registration fee, distance based road user fee, congestion charges or impact fees.
Travis County has a preference for regional revenue sources that are progressive and support reduction in vehicle miles traveled.
it's a little more specific without tying us down to any one of these menu options.
it simply says these are the menu options and we say go for it and give us the option to adopt one.
>> second.
>> okay.
any discussion of the motion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> the second thing that I would request we consider is the addition of a final bullet, in recognition of what tarrant county's resolution says, there is a bullet in there that says a resolution to fully fund the relocation and rail improvement program, which has been in existence for how many sessions without substantial funding?
two sessions?
>> second.
>> two or three, yes.
>> and tarrant county has it on their resolution, I believe others are including it in resolution, and I figured we would throw it into the hopper.
>> okay.
is that the gist of what ross ma loy is saying on the other side there?
>> yes.
that was red cross sending a -- that was ross sending a letter to say the relocation of freight to his knowledge would not occur in eastern Travis County.
>> okay.
>> seconded by Commissioner Davis.
>> discussion?
>> would you repeat the last sentence that you said?
something about the commitments?
not through Travis County?
>> ross maloy had -- there were concerns about the possibility of freight being relocate understand eastern Travis County.
but ross maloy had gone back and done some triple checking and he could find nothing that would indicate that it would be relocated in eastern Travis County and much that would indicate it would not.
he couldn't say for sure, there are no guarantees, but he said that the probability was exceedingly low.
>> all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> would the court want to make another separate motion to adopt these two things as its position with respect to local options for transportation funding and direct its legislative consultants to go forth and try to get -- try to find whatever is the best legislative vehicle for those values?
or something to that effect?
>> I think we just did it, didn't we?
by unanimous vote?
>> anything else?
>> the only thing that you may need at some point is a resolution basically setting fort what we just did.
but if you don't need that, no problem.
i do know that the Travis County legislative delegation are moving forth on these funding options, aren't they?
>> yes.
>> especially with senator watson.
>> I think senator core corona filed his much anticipated bill yesterday.
so that will probably be the vehicle in the senate at least for a mobility option discussion.
>> yeah.
i think what we need to do is if a bill is filed that contains provisions other than what we just approved, then we may want to address those differences.
>> yes, sir.
>> at the appropriate time.
>> we can still figure out how that money will be allocated per region.
in other words, who will actually be in control of how the money is spent on the collection and use of these particular fees, it would really be good to know.
i really don't know what role Travis County, other than we got to get things based on the ballot maybe, and for the voters to choose options or choose the package of whatever, but it's still -- I don't know which stage of the process that would allow us to know how the -- if approved by the voters, how it will be disbursed to make sure that Travis County gets its portion according to what the voters vote on, especially in selecting the kind of projects.
so it's very important for us to know if that's possible.
i don't think the bill actually dug deep into that question that I'm asking today.
but give me some kind of comfort if -- comfort level as if --
>> Commissioner, let me try to respond to that.
i'll ask reagan and joe to do homework.
as I understand it, senator corona's thought is that he is going to try to design a bill that will allow the local areas to decide how they want to make the decisions about what they do with the money.
so that, for instance, in north Texas they have a multi-county regional transportation authority, and I think that the approach that they -- that the people in north Texas are talking about is to have the money funneled through that organization.
i think that in bexar county, for instance, they might take a different approach and they might run it through their metropolitan transportation authority.
so I think the intent is at some point along in this process, we might actually be able to have an amendment or an addition to the bill that would address how we want to address it in Travis County.
i'd like to ask greg and joe to see if that's still the case.
>> well, I think we had a principal that dealt with that.
it really was to make sure that the mechanism was efficient and accountable.
those are fairly broad terms.
i think what we intended there was number one, no new bureaucracies.
whatever administers knees new funds do it with low agency costs.
that we have taxation with representation.
all that speaks to the issue of who ultimately takes this to the voters if it requires a vote of the people and then who administers the money once it's approved.
right now poth bills, at least the early version of this in the corona bill currently have the commission ers court as being the one who takes it to the voters.
with consult taights of the transportation entities within the area as well as the metropolitan planning organization.
the issue for us are if that in the process of amendment starts drifting, where the court merely takes it to the voters, but all the decision authority rests with someone else, that might give you some concern to the court that all you get to do is get credit for the tax, but have no ability to effect how it's used.
that would be of some concern.
>> that was my point.
in other words, accountability.
especially if we ask the voters -- I don't want to just be a trampoline for a particular bill.
in other words, the county.
and then after we get through using, then we can't use the trampoline anymore.
we need to -- we need to really tie this thing down.
i think early on I think to give our voters a confident level.
if they decide to vote to support a transportation project, whether it be rail or whether it be road, whatever those projects are, then I think they also need to be rest assured that there will be some accountability on those projects to make sure they're done and not tied up in some other layer of government where there's no accountability.
i'm very concerned about that because the buck is going to stop right here when folks look at us.
thank you.
>> and Commissioner Davis, just taking it one step further, the intent also of the legislation because of the ongoing concerns we have with diversion of transportation funds to other things, other needs of the state, is that there's language in there that would protect Travis County, for example, if you do have revenue come in for transportation projects, then the state cannot correspondingly reduce funds that it's already sending to the county.
>> so it will be a net gain as opposed to we're going to substitute local money for state money that should have been given to us.
>> okay.
anything else?
>> no, sir.
>> what is happening in the area of juvenile justice?
i'm specifically thinking of the sunset commission's recommendation and the overall situation down at tyc.
>> the sunset commission has recommended a combining of the Texas youth commission, which is the correctional arm for youth, and the juvenile justice or I guess the juvenile probation commission, which does you've probation.
as I understand it, the con conference of urban counties has come out against that proposal.
i don't know that a bill has been filed yet to accomplish the sunset recommendation, so I don't know whether or not they even -- there will probably be a sunset bill, but I don't know how hard they will push that idea.
and I know that our justice and public safety people are following that issue.
>> judge murr also recently testified before the sunset commission saying that she as a judge on her own behalf supports all the recommendations of the sunset commission except for the consolidation.
that the other recommendations she found very laudable.
>> what about level of funding?
>> I don't know.
i can get back to you about that.
>> we need to monitor that situation because it's -- I am impact us -- it it packets us no matter what happens.
as far as I know, our juvenile judges really send very, very few juveniles to the state system.
which means that we're providing, you know, services, treatment services locally.
>> absolutely.
>> which I don't know that we have a whole lot of choice really until they straighten out that situation.
okay?
>> on item 27- c, this is one of our legislative priorities is to pass legislation that would allow -- give counties the option of assessing an impact fee for certain kinds of transportation improvements.
because it is one of our legislative priorities we wanted to bring legislative language to the court for its review and approval before we move to try to get it filed.
so we have two bills here and I think joe will speak to them.
>> they're not separate bills, they're both related.
what they do is allow Travis County to do what most municipalities already have the authority to do, and that is to levee a fee on new development that helps pay for the arterial roadway system that serves that subdivision.
and it would be done basically in rough proportionality to the impact being caused on the transportation system.
this applies only to Travis County.
it's a bracketed bill.
and it applies just to arterial roadway construction or reconstruction.
>> do you know what the experience there have been as far as captured revenue making things possible?
is that bexar county that have also done something similar as far as the bracketed?
other counties that have existed that's already doing this?
>> no, there's not --
>> tho th is all new?
>> this is new.
>> no other counties in Texas, but it's regular in other states.
>> absolutely correct.
>> thank you, Commissioner.
>> and the law that is drafted here is very similar to the municipal authority.
>> all right.
>> this would how us to charge -- this would allow us to charge an impact fee in rough proportion to the subdivision's anticipated impact on the arterial roadway system.
just to elaborate on that for a moment, by understanding from you joe and from legal is that rough proportionality is essentially a term of art that has been well litigate understand other states and that methods for calculating rough proportionality, they've already been vetted, they just haven't been done here.
>> it actually comes from a u.s.
supreme court ruling that says that a local government when they use an impact fee first of all it has to have a direct connection.
in other words, whatever is causing the impact has to be a direct impact.
it has to have some association, for instance, the subdivision has to create traffic in order for you to assess a fee on traffic.
the other test is that it has to be roughly proportional to the impact being created by the land development.
Travis County or counties in Texas in particular have authority on developing guidelines for roadways and drainage and subdivisions.
so it's very clear that we have the authority to require that roads be developed.
it's very -- it's a long tradition in county government that we do that as one of our core businesses.
so we've limited the impact fee to transportation because it relates to what we do day in and day out.
this particular bill also relates to mobility.
that we're only after improving the arterial system that serves that subdivision.
and we're only after the impact that is the net increase in traffic that it is placing on that arterial roadway system that we can measure.
there are tools that have been developed over the years from traffic generation models on distribution models that we use as engineering standards that we can actually measure this.
we would also apply the fees to like a travel shed so that anyone who is providing these fees would be assured that the money collected would be used for the arterial roadway system that seives the subdivision.
so we've tried to craft the bill fairly tightly and disciplined so that we're within the umbrella of the supreme court ruling?
>> these fees would be collected during the subdivision process?
>> that's correct.
>> the edward's aquifer is in Travis County and only hays?
>> but the 800,000 population would be the other part that would -- pretty much is only Travis County.
and only within the unincorporated area of Travis County.
so we're even more limited.
>> do we expect the other counties to shoot us down under cover of darkness, joe, or line up to join us?
>> I think they'll wait and see.
i think we're pioneering here.
i don't think they'll object, but they may not join us.
>> good luck on that.
>> move approval --
>> what we'd like is approval from the court to go ahead and file these bills.
>> there's a motion.
Commissioner Eckhardt.
seconded by Commissioner Huber.
discussion?
motion specifically covers joe's two bills?
>> one bill amending two provisions of statute.
>> all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
joe, we've got your back on those.
>> thank you.
>> thank you very much.
>> judge, on number 27-d, you have asked the 64,000-dollar question.
the agenda item does not mention any specific bills, but we do have actually a bill or three bills that are all identical that cyd grimes has asked for the court to take a position in support of.
i would suppose the court has two options.
either we could give some direction this week and we could ratify that in next week's meeting or we could just postpone it until next week.
that I know of, there is no rush to schedule these bills.
we're -- the clock is not running in terms of committee hearing being scheduled.
>> to demonstrate ongoing efficiency, why don't we approve these and then ratify them next week?
our lawyers want us to be efficient, don't they, john?
>> at least lay them out and discuss them.
i have problem with that.
it would be cleaner if you approved them next week so no action necessarily that they would be doing.
>> I already put them on the in agenda for next week.
>> then let's hold off on that discussion.
we'll read them ourselves.
they're pretty simple, right?
>> yes, sir.
this just raises the minimum limit for which competitive bidding is required from 25 to $50,000.
>> to show we're human and slightly inefficient on occasion, let's wait until next week.
what else today?
good to see y'all.
thanks for your patience.
>> thank you very much.
move that we recess until 1:30.
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 2:10 PM