Lawmakers and Texas Department of Transportation officials held an hour-long staff-briefing in the capitol auditorium today to go over the three major pieces of legislation on the call for the special session, which starts tomorrow at 10 a.m.

They first looked at HB1-SB1, which looks to allow the Texas Transportation Commission to finally issue $5 billion in bonds under Proposition 12, passed in November 2007.

It also creates the Texas Transportation Revolving Fund, from which loans can be paid to other transportation entities for other projects, which would be paid back in interest. Counties could receive such funds for example. This way money could be "continually recycled" for transportation funding, passing back and forth from one entity to another. Up to $1 billion in Prop 12 bonds could be deposited into the new fund. One of the issues raised at the briefing was whether money from the revolving fund could be doled out to private entities to build toll roads. TxDOT Chief Financial Officer James Bass pointed to page 8 line 21 of the bill indicating that private entities cannot receive money from the revolving fund.

Also, Bass said, depositing Prop 12 bonds into the revolving fund does not free those bonds from the limits placed on them under Prop 12.

House Transportation Chairman Joe Pickett (D-El Paso) suggested that some of the money from Fund 6 could be appropriated into the revolving fund. "In Fund 6, we're just spending," Pickett said. "We're just cutting a check, and giving you the money. If we put some of the fund 6 money into the revolving fund, we're lending the money out, so it's coming back to us plus interest."

Next was HB2-SB2, which reworks the sunset schedule for the next couple of biennia. Rep. Carl Isett (R-Lubbock) expressed confidence following the conference that the bill would ease the workload on the Sunset Commission -- somewhat. Sunsetting the the Health and Human Services Commission -- as well as, in a limited scope, the five agencies whose renewals fell through the cracks this year -- all in one session will still make for a very busy 2011.

"The problem is, when you have health and human services, you have health and human services," Isett said. "It's 40 percent of our budget."

The new sunset bill sets all the five agencies not renewed in the 81st regular session -- TxDOT, TDI, the Texas Racing Commission, the Texas State Affordable Housing Corporation, and the Office of Public Insurance Counsel -- will be re-reviewed in limited scope in 2011. On top of that, several agencies were moved from 2011 to 2013 and vice versa. The bill moves the Texas Education Agency's sunset from 2011 to 2013. In 2013, some 37 agencies will be up for sunset, compared to 27 before this bill. In 2011, the Public Utility Commission and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and the Railroad Commission, are up for review as well.

Also HB3-SB3 looks to extend CDAs until 2013, and looks to give primacy to local tolling authorities. But in some cases the tolling authorities given primacy may not be quite local enough. NTTA for example would be given primacy over tolling projects in all 16 counties in the DFW metroplex. But Collin County has an entirely separate tolling authority, which has basically been written out of the process under the legislation.

Pickett said he wished that lawmakers could do a full review of TxDOT during the special. "I still don't trust them," Pickett said, arguing that the billions of dollars the agency receives is under the control of about five people. "Those five people are pretty powerful."