Texas Tribune
Many Texas counties lack plans to mitigate disasters
by By Jess Huff, The Texas Tribune – 2024-06-27 12:51:21
SUMMARY: More than 100 Texas counties lack a federally approved hazard mitigation plan, depriving them of access to billions in non-emergency grants for rebuilding infrastructure post-natural disasters. Most of these are rural counties with populations under 50,000, affecting about 3.5 million residents. Developing these plans is labor-intensive and costly, resulting in significant hurdles for resource-limited counties. Examples include Midland and Ector Counties, which are working on their first plans. FEMA's funding distribution prioritizes urban areas with high property values, further disadvantaging rural areas. Counties seek grants for planning but face challenges in obtaining necessary state and federal aid.
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LUFKIN — More than 100 Texas counties do not have a hazard mitigation plan, federal data shows, cutting off access to billions in non-emergency grants to help rebuild infrastructure after natural disasters.
Of 254 counties in the state, 103 counties lack plans approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Most of these are rural, with fewer than 50,000 residents, a Texas Tribune analysis of federal data found. A total of 3.5 million Texans — or about 12% of the state's population — live in a county without a plan.
On average, counties with no hazard mitigation plan have a population of 34,315 people, roughly one fifth the population of counties with an approved plan. Most counties without a plan stretch from the Panhandle through West Texas and down to Rio Grande Valley.
Among the most populated counties with no plans are Midland and Ector counties, which anchor the state's oil-rich Permian Basin. Officials in both counties told the Tribune they were working to submit plans for review.
This will be Midland County's first hazard mitigation plan, county officials said. The county received an $88,000 grant to write its plan, work that is expected to take up to two years.
In neighboring Ector County, Emergency Management Coordinator James Wes Carta said the process to develop an updated plan demands cooperation from city officials, first responders and the public — a time consuming endeavor that could take more than a year.
“We want an accurate, realistic plan,” Carta said. “What do they see as being the issues that we can address through this hazard mitigation plan? Is it upgrading our building codes to help our buildings be more resilient for tornadoes or severe weather? Is it the flooding? Is it fire? It becomes very daunting.”
Without such plans, these communities are precluded from federal disaster preparation funding, further broadening the gap in infrastructure development between urban and rural communities. As these communities shrink, they face growing hurdles to rebuild and prepare for the future.
These plans typically provide an assessment of risks from hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and wildfires. A plan can include, for example, an estimate of how many buildings are prone to flooding and how much it would take to clean up a flood. The plan also lays out goals for local governments to save lives and property. One such objective could be to create cooling centers during times of extreme heat. Another might be updating zoning policies to ensure buildings can withstand a stronger earthquake.
Ultimately, the plan can help communities prepare for and recover faster from any type of disaster.
“When done correctly, a hazard mitigation plan can help the community get behind projects and prioritize them, as well as help the community reflect on the risks they have and try to do something about them,” said Kristin Smith, a lead researcher for Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based nonprofit that helps communities with land management.
But developing a comprehensive plan is time-consuming and expensive, said Polk County Judge Sydney Murphy.
Long-term disaster and relief planning can often fail to make a list of top priorities when a small community with few resources is also attempting to solve everyday problems.
Polk, population 53,255, is one of 14 East Texas counties without a hazard mitigation plan. Its five-year plan, which also covers Trinity County, expired in February, months before the county was drenched by rain storms that caused widespread flooding. It's the first time Murphy is aware the county failed to meet its deadline.
In this case, Murphy said, a lack of funding prevented the work from being done. However, just this week, the county agreed to pay a consulting firm $100,000 to complete its plan.
This year's flooding was the biggest emergency management situation the county has handled, Murphy said, but the 2018 plan “still held true.”
As natural disasters have become more common, many rural counties face a shrinking tax base and rising inflation, stretching small budgets and making outside help more vital.
Recognizing the shortfalls within her own budget, Murphy and her emergency coordinator, Courtney Comstock, applied for grants to cover the cost of updating the hazard mitigation plan two years ago. They were denied the money at every step.
It takes time and money to update a plan, which demands granular details, such as the cost of fuel to fight a wildfire.
“It's not just the research,” Murphy said. “It's the legwork. It's compiling all the information and making sure the policies all line up so you don't have contradictory information in the different sections. It's everything. It's a lot of work.”
Polk County's now expired plan fills a 5-inch three-ring binder with no space to add anything else, Murphy said.
The amount of time and money is dependent on the number of communities and groups involved, as well as whether residents participate in the update. If the community is rewriting an entire plan, needs help with funding or faces natural disasters during the planning process, it could take even longer.
“$100,000 is a lot of money out of my budget for a rural area,” Murphy said. “I also cover Trinity County with my hazard mitigation plan. So who's going to pay? I can't split it 50/50 because my population is a whole lot bigger than theirs is.”
Trinity County's population is 14,000.
The county tax base just doesn't cover everything it needs to, Murphy said.
To make up the difference, counties often seek grants to pay for the staff and research to produce the plans. However, rural counties across the U.S. also face significant barriers to applying for the necessary state and federal aid to cover the costly process of updating a hazard mitigation plan, said Jennifer Horney, a University of Delaware professor and former associate professor at Texas A&M where she also engaged in hazard mitigation and community resilience work.
The largest barrier is the work to write, submit and follow-up on grant applications, she said. Many small, rural governments are short staffed with people doing multiple jobs, which sets them at a disadvantage to their urban counterparts who may have an entire team dedicated to grant management.
“Texas in particular has a very weak local planning structure,” Horney said. “So you end up having a few people in a rural community who wear a lot of hats — they're unlikely to have a full-time person dedicated to something like resilience or even recovery.”
When they do apply, there is no guarantee if or when the cash will arrive.
One county north of Polk, Angelina County had a plan that expired in April. The county is working with Lufkin city officials to submit an updated hazard mitigation plan now.
Both entities paid $10,000 each at the start of the process to update the plan and are now seeking additional grant funding for the other Angelina County entities. Emergency management coordinator Ricky Connor said the grant process takes time and is awaiting both state and federal approval.
Connor expects the total cost to update the plan to be around $100,000 with approximately $80,000 coming from grants.
The county spent several months working with community leaders and small business owners, accepting community input and coordinating with an expert in the field of emergency management. But Angelina County hasn't faced the same barriers as its southern neighbor. The flooding that overwhelmed Livingston for weeks, was felt only briefly in Lufkin.
Since Murphy was elected Polk County judge, the county's top executive that also has broad emergency powers, there have been historic tornadoes, winter freezes, the COVID-19 pandemic and flooding.
“I'm just tired of it,” Murphy said.
And every time something hits her county, Murphy sees the rural communities within it sliding further back. Examples include the loss of paved roadways and the further degradation of homes in the area.
FEMA distributes funding based on a cost-benefit analysis which helps the agency to prioritize projects and ensure money is well spent, said Smith, the nonprofit executive who helps local governments plan for hazards. But the system is based widely on property values, which are going to be higher in big cities compared to rural areas, creating a system that tilts against less-populated counties.
It is easier for a wealthy neighborhood in Houston to prove the value of a hazard mitigation project than it is for small neighborhoods just south of the Lake Livingston Dam, where lives were upended when the floodgates were released.
“If you have a project that's going to protect a neighborhood that is very wealthy with a lot of very expensive homes, you're going to have a lot of benefits from that. You're going to save millions of dollars in avoided costs from a flood,” Smith said. “On the flip side, if you have a bunch of homes in a neighborhood that are maybe mobile homes, or are lower property value homes, the benefits of protecting them are just going to be lower.”
Murphy said she is glad the county took steps this week to move Polk's plan forward, and said she plans to use data she and Comstock collected over the last two years in preparation for this point.
She hopes to submit the county's plan later this year.
— Carlos Nogueras Ramos contributed.
Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
The 5th Circuit’s terrible Supreme Court term
by By Eleanor Klibanoff, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-02 05:00:00
SUMMARY: The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, had a tumultuous term with the U.S. Supreme Court overturning eight of its rulings while upholding three. Known for its conservative stance, the 5th Circuit has faced Supreme Court criticism for its decisions on issues like abortion medication, gun control, and social media. Judges appointed by Trump have further pushed its right-leaning agenda. Despite Supreme Court rejections, the 5th Circuit continues to influence national legal discussions. Experts suggest this trend shapes the judiciary's conservative trajectory, even as these controversial rulings frequently face higher court repudiation.
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If the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was a boxer, you'd bet on the other guy.
The 5th Circuit, which hears appeals from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, had three rulings upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, and eight overturned, more than any other court this term. The conservative circuit court saw its rulings on abortion medication, gun control, administrative power and social media moderation all rejected by the Supreme Court.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh cautioned that the 5th Circuit was taking the judiciary down “an uncharted path.” Chief Justice John Roberts said they were “slaying a straw man.” Justice Clarence Thomas, the most conservative member of the court, authored two opinions rejecting the 5th Circuit's interpretation of the law.
The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit leaned to the right even before President Donald Trump appointed six judges to the bench. The new judges, many of whom trained in Texas' conservative legal circles, have attracted a slew of ideologically-aligned cases.
“One of the most conservative Supreme Courts we've ever had is still repudiating right-leaning decisions from the most conservative appeals courts in the country,” said Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University. “But even then, it's doing so in cases that should never have gotten to the Supreme Court in the first place.”
Just because these rulings ultimately got knocked down at the Supreme Court doesn't mean the 5th Circuit is toothless, Vladeck said.
“These rulings have the effect of taking legal theories that were off the wall, and putting them on the wall,” he said. “Even when they're losing, the effect is to make these cases of national import and give credibility to those arguments.”
The Texas two-step
The story of how the 5th Circuit comes to rule on so many conservative cases starts far away from the John Minor Wisdom federal courthouse in New Orleans. It starts in a handful of district courts in remote parts of the three-state region, where, due to geography and population distribution, only one federal judge hears all or nearly all of the cases.
In Amarillo, it's U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. In Lubbock, Judge Wesley Hendrix. In Victoria, Judge Drew Tipton. These judges share something beyond professional isolation — they were all appointed by Trump based on their conservative legal bonafides.
When a group of anti-abortion doctors wanted to revoke the Food and Drug Administration's approval of mifepristone, a common abortion-inducing drug, they filed the case in Amarillo.
Kacsmaryk's ruling, in which he referred to doctors as “abortionists” and the process of a medication abortion as “starv[ing] the unborn human until death,” was unprecedented in revoking a medication's long-standing FDA approval. Kacsmaryk overruled the government's argument that the doctors who brought the lawsuit did not have the legal right to sue, known as standing.
“The associations' members have standing because they allege adverse events from chemical abortion drugs can overwhelm the medical system and place ‘enormous pressure and stress' on doctors during emergencies and complications,” Kacmsaryk wrote.
This ruling would have resulted in mifepristone being removed from the market, throwing abortion and miscarriage care into chaos nationwide. But the U.S. Supreme Court intervened, ruling that the medication could remain on the market while the case moved through the system.
The case then went to the 5th Circuit. The three-judge panel, two Trump appointees and one President George W. Bush appointee, agreed that the plaintiffs did have standing to sue. The appeals court ruling would have allowed mifepristone to remain on the market with significant restrictions.
In its first abortion ruling after overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the 5th Circuit's ruling and found the doctors who sued did not have standing. Justice Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, quoted conservative legal icon Justice Antonin Scalia in authoring the opinion.
“As Justice Scalia memorably said, [standing] requires a plaintiff to first answer a basic question: ‘What's it to you?'” Kavanaugh wrote. “For a plaintiff to get in the federal courthouse door and obtain a judicial determination of what the governing law is, the plaintiff cannot be a mere bystander, but instead must have a ‘personal stake' in the dispute.”
The 5th Circuit was advancing an “unprecedented and limitless approach” to standing, Kavanaugh wrote, which would “seemingly not end until virtually every citizen had standing to challenge virtually every government action that they do not like.”
“Citizens and doctors who object to what the law allows others to do may always take their concerns to the Executive and Legislative Branches and seek greater regulatory or legislative restrictions on certain activities,” Kavanaugh wrote.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, another Trump appointee, similarly chided the 5th Circuit for its interpretation of standing on a Louisiana case, Murthy v. Missouri. In that case, the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri and five individuals accused the Biden administration of pressuring social media companies to censor information during COVID. They filed the lawsuit in Monroe, Louisiana, a city of 47,000 people, where Trump-appointed Judge Terry Doughty hears most cases.
Doughty ruled that the plaintiffs had standing, and the 5th Circuit agreed. Barrett, on behalf of the Supreme Court, did not.
“This theory is startlingly broad, as it would grant all social-media users the right to sue over someone else's censorship — at least so long as they claim an interest in that person's speech,” Barrett wrote. “This Court has never accepted such a boundless theory of standing.”
“These are lawsuits that should never have been lawsuits,” Vladeck said. “By holding that these plaintiffs do have standing, the 5th Circuit is allowing the federal courts to decide cases they have no business deciding.”
It's not just standing. In a case concerning whether domestic abusers can be barred from possessing guns, Chief Justice John Roberts overturned the 5th Circuit and noted that “some courts have misunderstood the methodology of our recent Second Amendment cases.”
Thomas overturned a 5th Circuit ruling that found the funding structure of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional. And on the last day of the term, the Supreme Court ruled that the 5th Circuit had failed to adequately assess whether a new Texas social media law was constitutional.
Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law, said these rulings reflect the simple fact that the 5th Circuit is to the right of the Supreme Court.
“Every judge takes an oath to the Constitution, and I think the judges in the 5th Circuit, and really all the courts, have very strong views on what the Constitution means,” Blackman said. “The Supreme Court disagrees on that. That's their call.”
The Supreme Court did allow the 5th Circuit's rulings to stand in three cases this term, including the overturn of a Trump-era rule that banned bump stocks under the federal machine gun ban. The Supreme Court's conservative majority also upheld the 5th Circuit's ruling in a case involving the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
What does it mean?
By staking out such conservative positions, even ones that get overturned in the end, the 5th Circuit has shifted the nation's jurisprudence to the right.
“Litigants deliberately steer lawsuits that could have been brought anywhere into single judge divisions in the 5th Circuit,” Vladeck said. They get favorable lower court rulings that make for great press. They get fairly favorable 5th Circuit rulings. Maybe they lose in the Supreme Court, but look at how much they've done, look at how much they've accomplished by that point.”
One side effect of this cat-and-mouse game, Vladeck said, is the Supreme Court gaining a reputation as a “profoundly centrist institution” because it blocks the 5th Circuit's most extreme rulings.
This repeated repudiation from the Supreme Court is unlikely to impact how the 5th Circuit rules going forward.
“The judges of the 5th Circuit don't work for the Supreme Court anymore than I work for you,” Blackman said. “It's a myth that the 5th Circuit will say, ‘Oh man, I got reversed. Maybe I should rule differently next time.'”
The job of an appellate judge is not to try to guess what opinions would be upheld by the Supreme Court, Blackman said. But the string of legal losses may still have an impact on how this legal strategy plays out going forward.
“It's not surprising that conservative litigants are getting more aggressive because you have a conservative Supreme Court,” said Blackman “But three years in, there have been a lot of cases that just did not yield success. Do they reevaluate and reassess? Or do they keep bringing these cases even when the Supreme Court keeps saying, ‘Go away. Go away. Go, we don't want these cases.'”
Despite taking a tone in recent rulings, the Supreme Court has not taken steps to more formally express its displeasure with the 5th Circuit.
“There's a sizable cohort of judges on the 5th Circuit whose basic attitude is, you know, ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,'” Vladeck said. “In prior eras, that kind of behavior from a lower court would have elicited not just reversals from the Supreme Court, but a pretty stern lecture, and we haven't had that yet.”
It may be that, in some cases, conservative justices appreciate the chance to engage on legal issues that otherwise wouldn't come before the court. When the Supreme Court heard the mifepristone case, for example, justices Thomas and Alito both raised the specter of the Comstock Act. These 19th century anti-obscenity laws have been essentially defunct for more than 100 years, but conservative lawyers have been trying to revive them to further restrict access to abortion.
Neither the original case, nor the eventual ruling from the Supreme Court, hinged on the Comstock Act. But the hearing offered an opportunity to bring the issue onto the most significant legal stage the country has.
“The cumulative effect of all of this is to exert a whole lot of pressure on the legal system in one direction,” Vladeck said.
Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
Permian Basin truckers protest over restrooms, unpaid hours
by By Carlos Nogueras Ramos, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-02 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Truck drivers in the Permian Basin are protesting low wages and poor working conditions by blocking sand mine entrances and distributing fliers. They demand better pay for waiting times, more restroom facilities, and negotiable rates based on driving times and cargo weight. Many drivers face long unpaid hours waiting to load and unload, lack amenities, and have to cover repair costs. Protests last year led to some drivers being fired, prompting them to file complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. The trucking industry faces a severe driver shortage, worsened by low wages, poor conditions, and inadequate recruitment incentives.
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MONAHANS — Low wages and working conditions that truck drivers describe as degrading have sparked an organized labor movement in the Permian Basin, a historic first for the nation's busiest oil field.
About a dozen truckers and local environmental activists descended Monday on three West Texas cities — Kermit, Mohanans and Odessa — and blocked entrances to sand mines with a row of cars to hand out fliers listing their demands to other truckers.
Workers said the one-day demonstration, which slowed production in the nation's largest oil supplier, was a sequel to a similar protest last year that was largely ignored and a warning of the steps they'll take to be heard.
The truckers are demanding to be paid for the long hours they spend waiting to load and unload frac sand — or sand used during fracking to separate the rock, prop it open and prevent it from closing — more restroom facilities near loading areas and the ability to negotiate pay rates based on driving times and cargo weight and, said Billy Randel, a lifelong trucker and organizer with the Truckers Movement for Justice.
“There are no bathrooms for the men and women to keep this economy running out here to use while sitting from two to four to 12 to 36 hours at the wellheads,” Randel said. “There's no facility to go to the bathroom. You know how dehumanizing that is for either a man or a woman to have to use a bucket? This is insanity.”
Federal law mandates that drivers take a ten-hour break before beginning their shifts and may not drive for more than 14 hours straight afterward. After driving for eight uninterrupted hours, they must take a 30-minute break. And truckers may only drive for 70 hours within eight consecutive workdays, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The law says nothing about access to amenities like restrooms.
Members of the Truckers Movement for Justice flag down semi-truck drivers to share educational and promotional material as they protest outside of the Capital Sand mine on Monday, July 1, 2024, in Monahans. The group, led by Billy Randel, protested across the Permian Basin Monday, calling for better wages and working conditions within the trucking industry.
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Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
Oscar Lobos flags down a trucker as he hands out informational pamphlets during a protest outside of the Alpine Silica sand mine on Monday, July 1, 2024, in Monahans.
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Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
Leticia Salas, a driver, holds a protest sign outside of Halliburton's regional office on Monday, July 1, 2024, in Odessa.
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Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
Randel said there are loopholes in the law that can significantly prolong a driver's shift. Truckers have to wait in hours-long lines at drilling sites to collect frac sand, for example, and the time they spend waiting does not count toward their pay.
Drivers deal with similar wait times when delivering their cargo. Drivers can't abandon their place in line, no matter how long the wait is — if they do they could be fined, suspended or fired.
Many truckers also foot repair costs when their contracts do not include insurance.
“I couldn't afford tires or oil changes,” said Luis Ramirez, one of the protesters Monday. “My family's suffering because of this. The money's not enough.”
Drivers made similar grievances last year in August. Approximately 20 truckers held signs outside sand mines in Kermit and refused to fulfill their deliveries for one day to pressure their employers into improving the terms of their contracts. They wanted pay for every hour they spent on the truck and demanded restroom facilities at every well site requiring sand deliveries.
Two days later, about 30 truckers were fired from their jobs, workers told The Texas Tribune. One of them was Cesar Lopez, a 27-year-old truck driver from El Paso.
In 2022, Lopez saved up $3,500 while working as a forklift operator to obtain a commercial driver's license, which is required for anyone who wants to sit behind the wheel of a truck. Through social media, he came across a sand-hauling job paying handsome wages and was hired for it. He called it a stroke of luck for someone with his experience.
The long wait times in and out of the oil fields eventually dampened his enthusiasm. One shift lasted 18 hours, just waiting to unload sand, Lopez said. He and other truckers use buckets or the open fields as restrooms when there are no facilities.
Most contracts only pay for the delivery, meaning truckers aren't paid for the time they spend driving and waiting in lines. The company paid Lopez $120 for that delivery, he said.
Lopez participated in last year's protest and lost his job two days later. Lopez said the company told him at the time he was fired because business was slow but he believes it was related to his participation in the protest.
Lopez eventually found a new job. Nowadays he calls his belly dump truck home. Parked in a gas station in Pecos near the site of a road construction project, he sleeps in a twin-sized bed squished in the space behind the two front seats of his truck.
He and 18 other truckers who were fired last year filed federal complaints to the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that investigates labor practices. In the complaints, drivers allege several companies retaliated against them for protesting, including 5F-Superhighway Platform, a digital application that matches truckers to third-party carriers, and transportation firms LoHi Logistics, Boomerang Delivery Services Inc., Cegre Trucking, CSM Navarros, J.C. Logistics, Maessa Transportation, Mister M&K Trucking LLC, Petrus and Amus, RBB Transportation and V&F Logistics.
The board has assigned an investigator to interview the workers and companies. If the board finds wrongful labor practices, the complaints will be heard in court.
A representative for 5F declined to comment.
Brandon Horton, a driver for Allied Eagle Transports, monitors the transfer of a load of salt water, a byproduct of fracking, to a salt water disposal site on Tuesday, June 25, 2024, south of Midland.
Credit:
Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
Semi-trucks park in a Love's truck stop on Thursday, June 27, 2024 in Odessa.
Credit:
Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
Trucker Marlon Lawe smokes a cigar at the end of his shift at a Pilot truck stop on Wednesday, June 26, 2024, in Monahans. Lawe feels working in the Permian Basin has been getting tougher as of late. “You're just not making enough right now [to survive],” Lawe said.
Credit:
Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
The relationship between truckers and the energy industry is largely indirect. Oil and gas companies don't generally contract drivers. Rather, they rely on providers or third-party carriers to hire drivers, establish work schedules and set pay. One provider can contract hundreds, if not thousands, of truckers.
Currently, the number of licensed truckers isn't enough to fill vacant jobs across the country, a trend truckers said is a consequence of the low wages and working conditions.
Chris Spear, president and chief executive officer of the American Trucking Associations, told Congress in 2023 that the trucking industry faces “an alarming driver shortage.” The number of qualified drivers needed nationwide reached 78,000 last year, a record high. He said that number is likely to double by 2031.
In Texas, trucking accounts for 800,000 jobs, according to the American Transportation Research Institute. One in every 14 jobs in Texas is a trucking position. By the end of the decade, the state will need 160,000 more drivers, said John Esparza, president of the Texas Trucking Association.
“We are losing a generation of drivers, and we aren't replacing them with a generation of potential drivers that is large enough in Texas or in the United States,” Esparza said.
Multiple reasons contribute to the shortage. He said lawmakers have failed to create incentives to attract new drivers. Other factors include “underrepresentation of women and lifestyle preferences that preclude many jobseekers from considering long haul trucking,” he said.
James Beauchamp, president of the Midland Odessa Transportation Alliance, said regional efforts to hire more truckers are in play, including more training programs for aspiring drivers. He said the programs have helped but not enough to keep up with the demand.
Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Texas to double state fund aimed at expanding power grid
by By Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune – 2024-07-01 17:05:54
SUMMARY: The state of Texas plans to double the Texas Energy Fund from $5 billion to $10 billion to expand the power grid as electricity demand is expected to nearly double by 2030. This follows a forecast by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which estimated the state's main grid would need to supply nearly twice its current power. The fund, approved by voters in November 2023, offers low-interest loans for new gas-fueled power plants. The state's grid has faced scrutiny since a 2021 winter storm caused extensive outages. Companies must apply for loans by July 27.
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The state of Texas plans to double a state fund aimed at expanding the power grid as demand for electricity is expected to nearly double over the next six years.
The state will look to boost the Texas Energy Fund from $5 billion to $10 billion, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced on Monday. The fund was approved by voters in November 2023 to offer low-interest loans to incentivize development of new gas-fueled power plants.
The announcement comes soon after a new prediction by the state's main grid operator that said electricity needs will surge in the coming years. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas estimated that the state's main power grid would have to provide nearly double the amount of power it currently supplies by 2030.
The numbers in the new forecast, Abbott and Patrick said in a press release, “call for an immediate review of all policies concerning the grid.”
The state's grid came under intense public and legislative scrutiny after a winter storm in 2021 knocked out its operations, causing dayslong power outages across the state in freezing temperatures that left millions of Texans without lights or heat. Hundreds died.
The Texas Energy Fund set aside $5 billion to fund 3% interest loans to help construct new gas-fueled power plants that are not dependent on the weather and that could power 20,000 homes or more.
The fund was also designed to pay out bonuses to companies that connect new gas-fueled plants to the main grid by June 2029, and to offer grants for modernizing, weatherizing and managing vegetation growth around electricity infrastructure in Texas outside the main electricity market, which meets around 90% of the state's power needs.
The state received notices of intent to apply for $39 billion in loans — almost eight times more than what was initially set aside, Abbott and Patrick said. They added that the average plant will take three to four years to complete, and new transmission lines will take three to six years to complete.
Companies have until July 27 to apply for a loan.
Just in: Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania; and Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
The post Texas to double state fund aimed at expanding power grid appeared first on TexasTribune.org.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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