Infrastructure Policy Forum
ACEC Texas Commentary
May 1, 2009
A key part of the transportation agenda for the 81st session moved forward this week as the House Transportation Committee approved HB 300, the Sunset bill for the Texas Department of Transportation. The bill includes significant reforms and accountability measures for the agency and could bring positive changes.
The measure:
- Creates a legislative transportation oversight committee with the chairs of the House and Senate Transportation Committees, two other senators, and two other house members to provide oversight during a short transition phase. The committee is authorized to contract with a management consulting firm to review the agency’s organizational structure, appropriate staffing levels, best practices, and streamlining.
- Grants metropolitan and rural planning organizations greater responsibility for project selection in their areas.
- Requires a 10-year project-specific business work plan with schedules for project phases, milestones, and funding and a finalized project plan for each biennium so that legislators and the public can have more predictability about when projects will be built. The bill also improves accountability for the execution of this plan by creating a number of business plan performance measures with a mandate for performance review. These are key reforms that move the agency toward the best practices of most modern public works organizations.
- Puts an attrition policy in place to address TxDOT’s overstaffing in the planning, design, and project management area, creating greater efficiency in a time of diminished resources.
- Creates an inspector general's office focused on business process improvements.
- Creates a separate department of motor vehicles in order for TxDOT to focus re strictly on its mission of mobility.
- Retains the five-member commission, but with three members appointed by the Governor, one by the Lt. Governor, and one from a list recommended by the Speaker.
Rep. Carl Isett (the lead sponsor), Chairman Joe Pickett,
and otherson the committee who worked on the substitute
bill should be commended.
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