Monday Morning Report
May 7, 2007

Internal

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The Austin-San Antonio Commuter Rail District Board met last Friday (5/4) in San Marcos to hear a final report on the financial and environmental benefits of the project prepared by Carter-Burgess and Cambridge Systematics. Impacts on IH-35, freight rail, and air quality were all discussed. The Board also formally adopted the criteria by which station locations will be selected - an important milestone for the effort.

Congratulations to longtime Corridor Council-ally Rusty Brockman of New Braunfels, named as the 2007 president of the Wurstfest Association. This great regional and ethnic celebration starts this year on Nov. 2. Mr. Brockman receives no salary for the post, but does get all the sausages he can eat. Details…

Infrastructure

The End Game: Now comes the interesting part of The Great Toll Road Moratorium Battle. Gov. Perry cannot let HB 1892 become law without ceding TxDOT's jurisdictional and financial supremacy to the regional toll road authorities; its bad policy and bad politics. He'll have veto and fight an over-ride in the Senate. But he could probably live with SB 1267 - a milder version of HB 1892 (AKA the "Deathstar" bill) - and that's probably why House Transportation Committee chairman Mike Krusee let that bill escape from his committee last week. Our guess is that an eventual compromise is in the works, but that won't happen without some stalling, a veto, a brutal over-ride struggle, and maybe a special session. As one of the smartest Capitol observers put it here, cancel your June plans.

Lost in the heat and smoke of the Great Toll Road Battle is the formerly displayed Legislative and voter-approved enthusiasm for financing the Texas Rail Relocation Fund. The Lege created it, voters approved a Constitutional amendment overwhelmingly in 2005, and the Fund has now hit a brick wall in a Legislative session long on posturing, short on policy. To his enormous credit, Sen. Jeff Wentworth tried to get $200 million a year into the Fund but that effort died in committee; Rep. Ruth McClendon got a $150 million contingent rider into the House appropriations bill, but that's only part of a 'wish list' and unlikely to survive unless House and Senate conferees on SB 1/HB 1 resurrect it. Other Austin-San Antonio Corridor legislators have remained silent and/or inactive on the issue, despite the fact that most cities and county governments here have passed resolutions supporting financing the Fund. The Governor's office believes there may be consensus building among legislative leadership to take $25 million a year from the Texas Emissions Reduction Program (with a current budget surplus of $118 million) to finance the Fund, but without sustained and quick action from the Corridor's Legislative delegation that prospect remains elusive. Some are saying, 'wait until next session,' but with an overall budget surplus in the State, and with relevant funding available and under-subscribed, if not now, when?

The Pickle Parkway Bill (HB 2296), naming sections of State Highway 130 after former Congressman J.J. 'Jake' Pickle, has passed the Senate 31-0 on the consent agenda and is headed to the Governor for his signature. State Rep. Mike Krusee (R) and Sen. Kirk Watson (D) got that done.

New U.S. House bill proposes to revamp rail safety.....read about it here

You want to know why TxDOT doesn’t just add another lane to IH35? 12.5 billion reasons. Read the HNTB report here.

Economic Development

Under an agreement announced last week, Austin-based Seton Hospital would open a 110-bed hospital in Kyle by 2010 at Interstate 35 at Kyle Parkway. The development, which would create nearly 5000 jobs, will include two medical office towers and 900,000 square feet of retail and restaurants; fully built out, the project will cost about $438 million, said the San Marcos Daily Record. Details…

New York Times art critic Edward Rothstein reviewed a current exhibit at The Alamo in San Antonio last week, ending on a nice note: 'And the Alamo is such a shrine, that for all the flaws and eccentricities of its inhabitants and its era left a heroic mark on the sluggish human trudge toward liberty. It still commands remembrance.' Read the full piece here.

San Antonio is still in the running for that big Federal $500 million lab to protect against bio-terrorism attacks, though still one of 14 locations on the short list. The bio- and agro-defense facility would replace the aging Plum Island Animal Disease Center in New York; but the new lab will also study diseases that can be used as weapons. Read more…

The Economist publishes a story this week detailing recent business transactions of Ferrovial, the Spanish construction giant that owns 62% of Cintra - lead financier for the Trans Texas Corridor 35 concession through Central Texas. The magazine notes that Ferrovial sold its nearly $4 billion housing and property business last December, apparently with perfect timing: the Spanish housing market has since collapsed. More here.

Lockhart is getting a Walgreen's drugstore, but it was not without some angst among city officials worried about protecting locally-owned businesses from national chain stores. For details go here.

Sports fans in Temple and Belton will want to know that former star quarterback Bret Stafford was inducted into the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame in Waco Saturday night (5/5) Details…

Dell Inc. plans to move its re-manufacturing operations form Austin to Lebanon, Tenn. later this year. The move will affect roughly 2% of Dell's Central Texas 18,000-employee workforce, or about 360 workers.

Marble Falls will get its first hospital in 2009. The hospital, to be built on donated land, will eventually have 120 beds and employ 500 workers. The acute care hospital will be a partnership between two nonprofit health systems, Scott & White and Llano Memorial Healthcare System.

Texas A&M University System accepted 696 acres from Triple L Management for its new San Antonio campus. The land is east of Zarzamora and south of Loop 410 on the city's South Side.

Austin-based Bury+Partners edged up several spots in national rankings among engineering design firms, according to the 2007 list from industry publication Engineering News-Record. Bury+Partners rose to No. 194 on the list of the Top 500 Design Firms, up from No. 229 in 2006.

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport saw more passengers in March than in any other month in its history. More than 767,000 passengers traveled through the airport -- up 3.5% from a year ago. Southwest Airlines carried more passengers than any other airline: 267,689 in March. That's up about 5% from a year ago. All the other airlines at ABIA posted gains, too.

Thought for the week:

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney