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Since the TX governor is weak, your implying that he is lining his pockets is not credible.

In fact, everything that has been done is a result of actions taken by the legislature. That Perry would promote a fee based road is a good fiscally conservative policy, plus it is congruent with the reality that the legislature has not been willing to raise the gas tax.

So while Perry doesn't have the authority to implement, he does have ability to put this issue(and others) on the front burner. In the case of a multi-modal corridor, the concept was developed over a decade ago and languished in a drawer until he pushed it onto those who have to act on it.

So now, we have a group of legislators who have finally stepped up to the level of rhetoric. It will be interesting to see what and when the come with something.

Excuse me for being cynical and suspicious, but I recognize how the legislators could see this as a way of dealing not only with roads but also with that nagging, unresolvable problem of school funding.

[BF] Since the TX governor is weak, your implying that he is lining his pockets is not credible.

Non sequitur. You may want to consider, however, some very damning quotes from some West Texas millionaires who told Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, when she visited them on an "exploratory" campaign fund-raising trip, to forget about running for governor in 2006 and get back up to D.C. instead. They bluntly told her, in a conversation reported in amazing detail in the Houston Chronicle -- I think the story's source had to be Hutchison herself -- that they had a very large amount of money invested in Perry and they fully intended to get their money's worth out of him. (They then proceeded to give him a whole lot more.)

Perry's bought. Q. E. D.

That Perry would promote a fee based road is a good fiscally conservative policy,....

No it isn't. It's letting the usual grasping "pigs at the trough" get access to state sources of revenue, under the guise of a public-private co-venture. It's Wall Street getting into the public revenue stream and skimming for their own benefit. It's public corruption raised to the level of policy, with the help of brainiac study papers ginned up on demand by wonks at the American Enterprise Institute as cover.

..... plus it is congruent with the reality that the legislature has not been willing to raise the gas tax.

It's congruent with elected politicians' constant hunger for virginal revenue sources that are the fons et origo of all serious political vig. And with the inconvenient political fact that advocating a state income tax in Texas is politically suicidal, notwithstanding that the late Bob Bullock, who is no doubt crisping nicely in hell, engineered a back-door way for the legislature to introduce one without any particular legislator's having to leave his fingerprints on it.