BILL ANALYSIS

Senate Research Center	S.B. 1654
85R5179 JTS-F	By: Watson
	Transportation
	4/6/2017
	As Filed

AUTHOR'S / SPONSOR'S STATEMENT OF INTENT

Current law requires the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to send paper invoices for all of its pay by mail toll transactions. TxDOT must use the customer address registered with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (TxDMV) for this purpose.

Sending paper invoices is expensive for TxDOT (about $380,000 per month) and inconvenient for many customers. For example, by the time customers receive a paper invoice they may have forgotten about driving on the toll road or even moved without updating their address with TxDMV.

S.B. 1654 provides a simple alternative to help alleviate these problems. More specifically, S.B. 1654 authorizes TxDOT to email a toll bill to a customer who first authorizes this delivery method. S.B. 1654 is modelled after H.B. 2549 from the 84th Legislature, Regular Session, which authorized email toll bills for the North Texas Toll Agency (NTTA). Since H.B. 2549 passed, NTTA has seen success with this program as over 100,000 customers have benefited from it and NTTA has saved over $500,000 a year. S.B. 1654 seeks to bring these benefits to the state and other toll road customers.

As proposed, S.B. 1654 amends current law relating to the electronic transmission of a notice of toll nonpayment by the Texas Department of Transportation.

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

This bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, institution, or agency.

SECTION BY SECTION ANALYSIS

SECTION 1. Amends Section 228.0545, Transportation Code, by adding Subsection (e), to authorize the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to provide that the notice under Subsection (c) (relating to requiring TxDOT to send by first class mail to the registered owner of the vehicle a certain written notice), instead of being sent by first class mail, be sent as an electronic record to a registered owner that agrees to the terms of the electronic record transmission of the information.

SECTION 2. Effective date: upon passage or September 1, 2017.