House Transportation Funding Panel to Weigh Formula Money, Rural Road Grants in Corpus Christi

The Texas House Subcommittee on Transportation Funding will gavel in at 10 a.m. Sept. 2 at the Solomon P. Ortiz Center in Corpus Christi to take invited and public testimony on how the Texas Department of Transportation divides its money and whether the state raises enough of it. Anyone who wants to speak has to sign up at the door: the revised hearing notice says registration will be available on site only, that the chair may hold testimony to two minutes, and that no live video broadcast will be available. Written comment can be filed online until the hearing adjourns.

Rep. Terry Canales, D–Edinburg, chairs the five-member subcommittee — three Republicans and two Democrats — with Rep. Dennis Paul, R–Houston, as vice chair, according to Texas Legislature Online. The panel reports to the House Transportation Committee, and it convenes a week after the Texas Transportation Commission was set to adopt the state’s ten-year road plan, which gives members an approved document to question rather than a draft.

The single interim charge, Texas Department of Transportation Funding, directs members to examine the formula and discretionary funding categories TxDOT uses to allocate dollars for planning and construction, to assess whether current revenue is adequate to meet projected needs, to evaluate continuing the County Transportation Infrastructure Fund grant program and its benefits to rural roads, and to recommend improvements to funding, allocation methodology and transparency.

Allocation runs through the Unified Transportation Program, the ten-year plan TxDOT rebuilds every year and sorts into 12 funding categories. The draft 2027 program carries more than $95 billion; The Texas Dispatch reported that commissioners were scheduled to vote on it Aug. 26, after a comment period that closed Aug. 3. The plan TxDOT circulated a year earlier was bigger — a $101.6 billion draft the agency called the third consecutive program to top $100 billion. The distance between those two figures is the arithmetic behind the charge’s adequacy clause.

The revenue itself rests on two constitutional amendments. Proposition 1, approved in 2014, routes part of oil and gas severance tax collections to the State Highway Fund. Proposition 7, approved in 2015 with 83 percent of the vote, requires the comptroller to deposit $2.5 billion a year of state sales tax revenue above the first $28 billion into the highway fund beginning in fiscal 2018, and to send 35 percent of motor vehicle sales and rental tax revenue above $5 billion beginning in fiscal 2020, according to TxDOT. Senate Concurrent Resolution 2, adopted in 2023, extended both streams by a decade — the sales tax transfer through Aug. 31, 2042, and the motor vehicle piece through Aug. 31, 2039. Both thresholds are written in fixed dollars, not indexed to construction costs.

The County Transportation Infrastructure Fund is the charge’s most concrete question. The Legislature created it in 2013 through Senate Bill 1747, now Subchapter C of Chapter 256 of the Transportation Code, to help counties repair roads degraded by oil and gas development. TxDOT ran it as an 80/20 matching grant, and the 86th Legislature appropriated $250 million for the 2020 program call, which the agency says opened access to 216 counties. That round has closed; counties had until June 24, 2025, to spend their awards. Whether the program returns is a decision for the next Legislature, and this subcommittee’s recommendation is the first formal step toward it.

Coastal freight gives the venue its logic. The Dispatch reported that the full House Transportation Committee took up seaports, commercial driver licensing and TxDOT oversight on Aug. 17, and that the Senate Finance Committee opened its own interim agenda with roads in July. Nueces County sits where port traffic, energy hauling and farm-to-market roads use the same pavement, which is the collision the funding formulas are supposed to price.

Because this is an interim hearing, the subcommittee will take no votes and no legislation is before it. What members hear will shape the House Transportation Committee’s interim report and the funding bills filed for the 90th Legislature, which convenes in January 2027.

Meeting at a glance

Committee members

• Rep. Terry Canales, D–Edinburg (HD-40) — Chair
• Rep. Dennis Paul, R–Houston (HD-129) — Vice Chair
• Rep. Cole Hefner, R–Mount Pleasant (HD-5)
• Rep. Jared Patterson, R–Frisco (HD-106)
• Rep. Mary Ann Perez, D–Houston (HD-144)