Bills to kill Austin light rail project die again after missing key legislative deadlines
Senate Bill 2519, authored by Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt of Houston, passed the Senate and a House committee earlier this month. However, the bill was not scheduled for a vote in the Texas House before Sunday's deadline. Similarly, House Bill 3879, filed by Austin-area Republican Rep. Ellen Troxclair, advanced out of committee but was never brought to the full House for a vote.
Austin City Council Member Zo Qadri, who represents downtown Austin, said the defeat of the bills was good news and 'means a lot to the people of Austin.'
'With all due respect, if you don't represent Austin, you don't know Austin,' Qadri said in an interview Tuesday.
Representatives for Troxclair and Bettencourt did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Council Member Vanessa Fuentes echoed Qadri's sentiments but said she remains cautiously optimistic. That's because the bill could resurface as an amendment to separate legislation that is still under consideration.
"A lot can happen in these last few days of the Texas Legislature,' Fuentes told the American-Statesman.
The session adjourns on June 2.
Austin voters approved Project Connect in 2020 via an ongoing 20% increase to property taxes. Initially, the $7.1 billion plan included 27 miles of light rail along with smaller transportation projects. However, it has since been reduced to less than 10 miles of rail, even as its estimated cost has remained unchanged.
The project has seen numerous legal and legislative challenges from critics who have seized on the significant downsizing — and the project's novel funding mechanism.
Voters approved the creation of a local government corporation, the Austin Transit Partnership, to plan the project and take on debt to finance it. That debt is intended to be repaid through a transfer of property tax dollars approved by the Austin City Council. However, no debt has yet been issued as the city and the Transit Partnership face lawsuits from a group of local taxpayers and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who argue the financing model violates state law.
The Transit Partnership declined to comment on Tuesday.
'The City continues to monitor all legislation and will comply with whatever is passed,' city of Austin spokesperson David Ochsner said in a written statement.
This is not the first time Troxclair and Bettencourt attempted to derail the project. Troxclair, a conservative former Austin City Council member who has led the charge to kill Project Connect, filed a similar bill in 2023 that would have forced the city to get voter approval before issuing any debt for the project. It died on a last-minute technicality.
The bill Troxclair filed this year also sought to give taxpayers another means to sue the city and halt the collection of property taxes if the scope of a project changes significantly after voter approval.
The change in scope has been an issue in lawsuits filed on behalf of local taxpayers by attorneys Rick Fine and Bill Aleshire, a former Travis County tax collector and judge.
In a Tuesday statement, Aleshire, Fine, and several plaintiffs involved in the ongoing lawsuits blamed House Speaker Dustin Burrows for the failure of the bills, stating they could not secure his 'blessing' and vowing to continue opposing the advancement of the transit project.
'We hope that the abuse those bills addressed does not happen to other communities in Texas,' the statement said.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Bills to kill Austin light rail project die — again
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