October 2011
Lake Travis
Economic Impact Report

Too Late for the 2035 Plan

The CAMPO 2035 Plan, due to be finalized by June, is a sad reflection of what I believe to be a grossly dysfunctional organization called CAMPO – your Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization.

CAMPO is one of the few “regional” organizations with the authority to do some regional planning – but it is doing very little.  First, I must say, that Judge Sam Biscoe and Senator Kirk Watson, the current and immediate past chairs of CAMPO, have worked hard to try to bring CAMPO into its own as a regional planning organization.  The problem is not in the leadership – it is systemic
. 
There are several factors that contribute to this:   (1) The voluminous information burden placed on elected officials by CAMPO, (2) Its structural organization, and (3) The CAMPO/TXDOT historic “road-building” mentality which needs metamorphosis to realize the true integrated nature of infrastructure planning (i.e. roads, water and other utilities).
The Transportation Policy Board (TPB) is composed of city and county elected officials from three (soon to be five) counties in Central Texas.  Elected officials know their jurisdictions, but the voluminous information put before them the week before each CAMPO meeting can be daunting.  Being an informed, active and regional-thinking participant of the TPB is dependent upon having the personal time and/or staff to delve into and research the issues.  Unfortunately, this is not something to which most elected officials have the luxury of resources to commit.

By default, then, the TPB regularly relies on the recommendations of CAMPO’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC).  However, composed of technical representatives from each of the jurisdictions, the TAC’s representation is not “balanced” in a way that represents the geography of the region’s population.  At last count, six representatives were from Williamson County with Travis and Hays counties each having three and remaining counties having one each.  I called attention to this in the January CAMPO meeting, but review of this composition has been tabled until this summer due to lack of CAMPO staff-time to facilitate it.  So, the 2035 Plan was primarily created by the TAC, which is not “balanced” in its representation.

There was also no uniform standard of financing capacity used for each jurisdiction’s submission of projects to the 2035 Plan.  For example, Williamson County submitted $4.2 billion in projects that they claim they can underwrite, compared to Travis County’s project list of $700 million. San Marcos claimed $745 million, compared to City of Austin’s $1 billion. With concern over these discrepancies, the TPB twice directed (in January and March 2010) the Finance Committee Chair, who is from Williamson County, to call a meeting to discuss this and other financing issues, but the Chairperson has, unilaterally, chosen not to meet.  Without uniform standards and without regional priority setting for projects, local governments that manipulate the system are rewarded with a decided advantage at the funding troughs. 
As a result of these systemic deficiencies, and if you investigate the list of projects, you’ll find another scary story.  This Plan loops together a potpourri of independent jurisdictional projects with little consideration for true regional planning and prioritization.  I applaud the initial effort to incorporate the “centers concept” and funding for multi-modal systems.  However, even though the 2035 Plan claims to implement the centers concept, funding for centers is expected to be less than 10% of the region’s total transportation funding, which is similar to past plans.  The 2035 plan primarily reflects the same unorganized “trend” approach towards growth, meaning a hodgepodge of roads that respond retroactively to scattered development. 
  
Bexar County leadership (both public and private sector) has had similar concerns with its planning organization.  They acknowledged that the lack of effective regional planning and shared vision was leading to a declining quality of life.  Bexar County composed a task force of regional organizations, private sector leaders, and elected officials to examine and make recommendations on improving and better implementing regional planning and transportation funding for the San Antonio/Bexar County region.  I believe all the issues associated with the CAMPO 2035 Plan highlight the need for our region to create a similar task force which could recommend changes that lead to a unified implementable vision. 

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