Changes are being proposed to TXDot:
The House's decision over the weekend to paste a 15-member elected transportation commission onto a Texas Department of Transportation bill — replacing the current board of five gubernatorially appointed commissioners — is getting a lot of attention.
But as the 199-page bill moves to the Senate, the real fight between the two chambers — one that could gridlock the legislation in the session's final three weeks — is over language that state Rep. Joseph Pickett, D-El Paso , inserted into the bill that basically would defang the transportation agency.
As presented in a Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee meeting Wednesday , it would have TxDOT take its money and then parcel it out to the 25 metropolitan planning organizations across the state. Those bodies, made up of a combination of local elected officials and legislators, would then have final authority over which highway projects get done.
The bill is HB 300.
