The Texas Legislature is coming back Jan. 13, and change may be in the air.

The Sunset Advisory Commission, by a narrow margin, recently voted to abolish the five-member commission that oversees the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDoOT), and replace it with a single commissioner.

This is but the latest in the continuing evolution of Texas state government. When legislators think an agency isn’t working right, the urges generally are to change the agency’s personnel; to change the agency’s structure; to combine it with some other agency; to investigate it; or to abolish it.

Such it is with TxDOT. In 2002, the transportation oversight body was expanded from three to its current five members – to give more opportunity for wider regional representation, and to avoid some of the problems associated with the three-member commission’s Open Meetings requirements, that basically had any two commissioners comprising a majority, even if they were just having coffee.

The late Ric Williamson was appointed to TxDOT’s oversight board in 2001, and chaired it for almost four years until his death on Dec. 30, 2007. At Gov. Rick Perry’s behest, he ramrodded both toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor, and helped develop the pay-as-you-drive approach out of frustration, trying to get funding somewhere to increase mobility.

Now, after a few years of expanding toll roads, dissatisfaction by Texans used to toll-free highways with the tolls, and the notion of the Trans-Texas Corridor that irked a lot of rural residents, there’s a backlash. That’s partly because of a motor fuels tax that hasn’t increased in 17 years, plus tough times for other highway funding. Legislators are hearing from their constituents that they want something done.

One way, of course, would be for legislators to raise the amount of funds going to finance highways and other forms of transportation. But that would take raising taxes, and Gov. Perry put the quietus on at least a gas tax hike back in 2001, when he said he’d veto any tax increase.

Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, who chairs the Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security, has proposed indexing the state’s gas tax (20 cents a gallon since 1991) to the percentage annual increase in highway construction costs, not to exceed 4.5 percent in a year. But that hasn’t happened -- yet.

So at least some legislators take the route of trying to change things by changing the agency’s structure.

The Sunset commission, which reviews agencies usually every 12 years and requires them to re-justify themselves to have their existence continued by the Legislature, voted 7-5 for the single-commissioner idea. The commission is mostly made up of legislators; at least one wanted to elect the commissioner, rather than have him or her be appointed by the governor. Others thought the change to a lone commissioner would make no difference.

This rearranging the structure is by no means a new phenomenon. In the early 1990s, when there were seen to be problems with the state’s regulation of the insurance industry, the three-member State Board of Insurance was replaced by a single commissioner.

Also at that time, the Legislature combined agencies that regulated air and water into the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission. The name was changed in 2002 (as a result of Sunset review, fittingly) to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

The three-member Texas Railroad Commission was established in 1891, in an effort to keep the railroads from gouging farmers. Although the agency’s function has gradually transitioned to regulating oil and gas and pipelines, and has virtually nothing to do with railroads any more, it nonetheless survives with three elected members.

Although it does do some regulation, the principal function of the three elective commissioner positions seems to be as a stepping stone to higher political office.

Being a Railroad Commission member provides an opportunity for raising name identification, building a political network, and good leverage for raising campaign money from energy interests.

Among the politicians to first serve time as a railroad commissioner include state comptrollers John Sharp, a Democrat, and Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Republican; Kent Hance, a Republican who bided time there before another (unsuccessful) run for governor; Bob Krueger, a Democrat who left the commission upon appointment a U.S. Senate seat (which he lost in a special election months later); Barry Williamson, a Republican, who ran for attorney general (and lost); and Buddy Temple, a Democrat who then ran for governor (and lost).

Despite suggestions of replacing the three elected commissioners with one appointed one, the Railroad Commission’s elective three-member status continues.

Two current members of the commission – Republicans Michael Williams and Elizabeth Ames Jones – are both talking about running for the U.S. Senate.

Look for other agency discussions by the Legislature – particularly among those agencies up for Sunset review, which require an affirmative vote of the Legislature to stay in business.

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And So On. . . . Among the other agencies up for Sunset review in 2009 are the Texas Department of Agriculture, Credit Union Commission, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and several law enforcement agencies, including the Texas Public Safety Commission, and the Texas Youth Commission.

Contact McNeely at davemcneely111@gmail.com