This story from Tuesday perplexed me a little at first.
Harris County would have to turn over tens of millions in toll road dollars to the city of Houston for use on public safety and emergency services under a bill before the Texas Senate.
Senate Bill 2722 by Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, is scheduled for a hearing on Wednesday.
“I filed the bill so that we could have more transparent use of excess funds,” Bettencourt said Wednesday. “It’s important to recognize that if we are going to have excess toll road revenue that it should be shared with the big cities within the county.”
HCTRA generates upwards of $1 billion dollars a year for the county, according to a May 2024 credit opinion by Moody’s.
Under Bettencourt’s bill, toll road revenues would be restricted to building, operating and maintaining the county’s toll road system or paying down debt associated with the system.
The county for years has used hundreds of millions of dollars in so-called excess HCTRA revenues – funding above operation and debt costs – to fund road projects that connect to the toll road system in some way. Commissioners Court has used some of that money for other purposes in recent years, including more trailways and bikeways and road maintenance.
Bettencourt’s bill would require the county to give 30 percent of that revenue to “the municipality that contains more than 40 percent of the number of lane miles” — which is the city of Houston. The remaining 70 percent would go back to the county and “only be used on roads owned and maintained by the county.”
The revenue that Houston would get could only be used to reimburse costs “related to law enforcement and other emergency services during accidents and other disasters affecting a project of the county,” according to the bill.
My first thought was that maybe Mayor Whitmire had found a way to get the Legislature to help him out with balancing the budget. It would be quite ironic if that assistance came at the expense of Harris County. But there were no quotes in the story from anyone connected with the city, and the restrictions on the way the revenue could be used makes it sound a lot smaller than at first appearance. Like I said, it was puzzling.
Friday’s Chron story helped shed a little light.
Harris County officials and other advocates, including environmentalists and public transit experts, accused lawmakers of intervening to block planned county projects like nature trails and bike paths – which Bettencourt and Houston Mayor John Whitmire have publicly opposed.
“This entire bill is a money grab for the city of Houston,” said Jay Blazek Crossley, the executive director of the Farm & City, a statewide sustainability nonprofit. “This would just force one government that owns a facility and manages [its] money to just give that money to a different government for police.”
Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia, who represents Precinct 2, said in an interview that the county would happily reimburse the city for any police or fire costs it incurs on the toll roads.
“If this is about the city covering costs on the toll road, please send us the bill,” he said.
According to an analysis by Garcia’s office, the vast majority of incidents on toll roads are handled by county constables — only 1,854 out of 113,729 calls last year were answered by city-employed first responders.
In the hearing Wednesday, Houston Police Chief J. Noe Diaz testified that the police and fire departments had responded to 6,500 calls on the toll roads between 2022 and 2024.
That’s still a fraction of the more than 300,000 calls constables received during the same time period, according to data shared by Houston city council member Abbie Kamim in a meeting on Wednesday.
State Sen. Nathan Johnson, a Dallas Democrat, expressed concern over the precedent such a law would set.
“Do we have any other instance in Texas history where we are, as a state, stepping in and statutorily diverting the revenue of an authority, be it a toll road, a port … to a municipality for its general purposes?” he asked during the Senate hearing.
“I’m not advised on that,” Bettencourt responded. “I do know this is a unique fact pattern because we don’t have any other toll road authority with $600 million of excess tolls.”
HCTRA’s executive director Roberto Treviño disputed that figure. Last year, the toll road authority’s surplus revenue was $193 million, Trevino told Hearst Newspapers.
Current state law allows for the toll authority’s surplus revenue to be spent on “a transportation project, highway project, or air quality project.”
By requiring that the county spend excess toll revenue exclusively on county roads, Bettencourt’s bill would upend the authority’s plans to invest in transportation options for non-drivers.
Among other things, that would screw the neighborhoods that are directly affected vy the proposed Hardy Toll Road extension, as noted by the story. Not that Paul Bettencourt cares about any of them. Given the numbers – and I don’t see anything in the text of the bill to say what happens to the rest of that 30% once all of the city’s “law enforcement and other emergency services” costs have been reimbursed – I think this is more about animus to Harris County and any spending that isn’t on roads than helping out Houston. Maybe Bettencourt thinks he’s doing Whitmire a solid along the way, I can’t rule that out, but it’s always open season on Harris County and anyone who doesn’t drive. That’s my interpretation, at least for now.
The bill had its hearing on Wednesday and was left pending in committee, so who knows if it will advance any further. We’re beginning to get into the busy part of the legislative calendar, and most bills don’t make it anywhere close to the finish line. The main point here is at even if you just take Bettencourt at his word, the fiscal effect for the city would likely be pretty minimal. And as Commissioner Garcia notes, if the city has a complaint about how much they spend on HPD and/or HFD responding to incidents on the toll roads, the city can present its case to the county and ask for reimbursement directly. The fact that as far as I know this hasn’t been an issue before says a lot.
The city also responds to emergencies on highways that the state is responsible for. Will they get reimbursed for that?
They often remove the homeless from underneath those underpaths that are supposed to be maintained by the state. Will they be reimbursed for that?
Will the county be reimbursed for those flood control projects that benefit the city?