A few years back -- 2001 -- the Texas Legislature passed a bill that created the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan (TERP), a program at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that promised to earmark money for projects that help Texas clean up our dirty smog (officially called ground level ozone) by providing incentives to get cleaner vehicles and engines on the road. The project on the one hand has been hugely beneficial taking 290,000 tons of nitrogen oxides out of the air but has also faced a cruel reality: the Legislature never allocates the money coming in from revenues for their intended purpose, and since 2001, over $1,740,000,000 has accumulated in the TERP account and never been spent for these clean air programs. And again this session, in the budget bill, there is only about $75 million per year allocated for these programs, despite the $1.7 billion available.
So can the Legislature do something still? Yes, there is a great bill by Cecil Bell Jr (R-Matagorda), HB 3745 that would continue the revenues that support TERP but put them in a “lock box” or trust fund that TCEQ could access going forward without having to get permission every budget cycle from the Legislature. That bill passed the House of Representatives, went to the Senate, was picked up by Natural Resource Committee Chair Bryan Birdwell (R-Waco), passed out of committee and set on the Senate floor. Unfortunately, the Senate decided they favored a different approach, only continuing the revenues for two years, and not putting the money in a “trust” account, again subjecting it to not ever getting spent.
Now the bill is in the world of “Conference Committee,” where essentially Rep. Bell and four House conferees, with and Sen. Birdwell and four senate conferees, will need to decide which approach to take -- solve and fix TERP once and for all or just kick the can down the road for another two years.
The Sierra Club is on record as favoring the House approach (HB 3745) and the House and Senate will need to reach an agreement by midnight on Saturday to have any chance of having the bill pass on Sunday. Stay tuned, and if you want to make a call we suggest telling the Speaker of the House and the Lt. Governor that we want TERP fixed so we can clean up the dirty air in San Antonio, El Paso, Austin, Dallas, and Houston among other “smoggy” cities and get us breathing again. Let’s fix TERP and get cleaner engines and vehicles on our roads!