Election 2025 - CoSA Illegal Transportation Funding Breaking TX Statute and City Charter - Funding VIA’s Green Line For Bus Prioritization Over Individual Auto Drivers On San Pedro Avenue
Excerpts from SAFA Press Release (3-18-2025) of foSAFA Legal Brief to Texas Attorney General Requesting AG Assistance to Stop CoSA Illegal Plan to Fund “Bus Rapid Transit” (BRT)
- The City’s plan to fund its “bus rapid transit” boondoggle violates state law and the City’s own charter by shoveling the responsibility for spending sales tax revenue over to VIA.
- In November 2020, voters approved an additional 1/8 of 1% sales and use tax as part of misguided bus rapid transit plan. (The first part of this plan calls for tearing up San Pedro Avenue, disrupting traffic and business and permanently replacing the middle turning lane with a bus lane.)
- Under state law (Transportation Code 451.702(g)), while most of the revenue is controlled by the transportation district (VIA Metropolitan Transit), San Antonio is entitled to receive a portion of the revenue, to be controlled by the representatives elected by San Antonio voters (City Council).
- But City Council agreed to shovel 100% of its portion of the sales and use tax increase over to VIA, severing any local political accountability for San Antonio voters in how the money is spent.
- This violates the Transportation Code because chapter 451 deliberately sets aside 25% of the revenue to be paid to the municipalities participating in any such transportation district. This ensures at least some local control over a portion of the tax revenues.
- Chapter 451 even contemplates interlocal agreements—but only one way: it expressly allows VIA to transfer funds to participating municipalities, but it does not provide authority for fund transfers from municipalities to VIA.
- The plan also violates San Antonio’s own charter. Texas law has long held that a city council may not delegate its powers to an outside body. The Charter vests the City Council—elected by City voters—with responsibility over the City’s property and finances. Charter art. II, Sec. 4. While City Council has discretion to determine exactly how to spend the additional tax revenue, it must exercise that discretion. It cannot shovel the money to another entity to spend in that entity’s discretion.