Naked City

And what about SH 130? Well, the do-or-die CAMPO vote on that longtime conversation starter got kinda weird. The east-side highway was already in the CAMPO 2025 plan and wasn't about to be extracted, but it wasn't in CAMPO's short-term Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), which determines what projects can get money right now. And SH 130 backers wanted it in the TIP in the worst way.

Actually, they wanted it added to the TIP months ago, but the Feds stepped in and said CAMPO had to adopt its 2025 plan first. On June 12, the MPO effectively adopted its plan, and a TIP that included SH 130, at the same time, or at least tried to. What it couldn't -- or didn't -- do was specify that any SH 130 that got built would be on the "east-east" alignment (east of Round Rock, east of Lake Walter Long) preferred by Austin, Round Rock, and Travis County, and not on the "west-west" alignment preferred by the Texas Turnpike Authority.

At its March meeting, the CAMPO board had endorsed the eastern alignment by a vote of 19-2. But that was just a recommendation, not a binding act. Leading the charge to carve the eastern alignment in stone was Travis County Commissioner Karen Sonleitner, in what -- even if you didn't agree with her -- was probably her finest hour in public service. "It is our job to represent what our constituents want, and have said they want over and over again," she said. "The route is not a minor detail. The route is everything. Taking action on it is not only our right, but our responsibility."

The contentious part was whether CAMPO indeed had the legal right to set an alignment for SH 130 in the TIP. Officially, by federal law, the alignment of a project like SH 130 is determined by its environmental impact study (EIS). The Texas Turnpike Authority presented its draft EIS for SH 130 in December, took about 2,000 (largely negative) comments, and is now processing them and preparing its final EIS for submission to the Federal Highway Administration, which would probably give SH 130 a green light on whatever route by year's end.

Federal law and regulations are quite blunt in saying that agencies cannot do anything to intervene in, circumvent, prejudice, or otherwise screw with this environmental-impact process. Sonleitner and her side countered that CAMPO is not a federal agency and isn't bound by these rules, but it proved to be not so simple, and after about an hour of dialogue between FHWA, TTA, CAMPO and Travis County staff, and the CAMPO board, the mood of the crew was pretty inconclusive.

Sonleitner's motion ultimately failed on an 11-10 vote, with Mayor Watson, significantly, voting with the suburbanites to kill it. This means SH 130 is in, and can start getting funding, before the alignment issue is decided. Originally, this hurry-up approach was intended to get SH 130 in before Austin went into non-attainment and the Clean Air Act jeopardized funding for new highways. But the state has intervened to delay that moment of truth, so SH 130's need for speed is now to make it attractive for new transportation grant funds.

Despite the legal and procedural murk, one thing that came through quite clearly from FHWA planner Barbara Maley's colloquy with the CAMPO board was that, in a clean world, SH 130 should not have been included in the TIP until its alignment was decided, and if CAMPO didn't like that alignment, it would keep SH 130 out of the TIP indefinitely. What the board ultimately decided was that, even though it went on record as strongly preferring east over west, it really doesn't matter where it goes, as long as SH 130 gets built.

What Sonleitner tried to do was ultimately a middle-ground position, trying to secure the eastern alignment and still get SH 130 built quick-like-a-bunny. What many Central Texans -- not just hippie enviros, but Round Rock Republicans and everyone in between -- have really been saying is that if SH 130 isn't built on the eastern alignment, then they don't want it built at all. The CAMPO board -- by one vote -- forfeited its last chance to make that statement on Monday night .