Legislation would cut TxDOT funding by $2.3 billion over two years
Texas transportation funding could take a $2.3 billion haircut under a resolution filed Thursday by the state House’s budget chief.
House Concurrent Resolution 108, authored by state Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, would instruct the Texas comptroller to cut by half the money going to the state highway fund under Proposition 7. Texas voters overwhelmingly passed that constitutional amendment in 2015, directing to the Texas Department of Transportation all state sales tax revenue above $28 billion each year, up to a limit of $2.5 billion per year.
That amendment would generate $2.2 billion for TxDOT in fiscal 2018 and the maximum $2.5 billion in 2019, according to estimates from the state comptroller’s office in January. That would bring TxDOT’s total revenue for the coming biennium to $28.2 billion, according to the budget bills filed in the House and Senate earlier this session, an increase of $3.5 billion.
But the 2015 legislation that led to the constitutional amendment, authored by state Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, provided what was in effect a rainy day escape clause that allows the Legislature to cut TxDOT’s Prop 7 funding by up to 50 percent.
Read more: http://www.mystatesman.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/legislation-would-cut-txdot-funding-billion-over-two-years/vss1EzKH5FKNGmBp6csViO/