TxDOT's plan to hire five new executives — each paid up to at least $250,000 annually — has received heavy criticism. How do the salaries compare to those at other public entities? We checked our government salary database to find out.

Texas Transportation Commissioner Deirdre Delisi submitted her resignation to Gov. Rick Perry today. Now she will have more time to devote to his campaign.

A weeklong partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration has delayed airport construction projects in Houston and Abilene.

This week, Secretary of State Hope Andrade conducted a lottery that determined the order of the 10 new proposals on the November ballot. Each amendment already won approval from two-thirds of the House and Senate and now needs a nod from a majority of the voters. Here's the rundown... 

Consider it a do-over. The House today tentatively approved the Texas Department of Transportation Sunset bill, the measure that last year sent lawmakers into a surprise special session.

With less than five weeks left to go in the session, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst sat down with the Tribune to talk about his future political plans, the status of the budget in the Senate and in the biennial parley between the Senate and the House, redistricting and the tug-of-war over the Rainy Day Fund.

Lawmakers today filed a bill they hope will help drivers, cyclists and pedestrians safely share the roads.

A proposal by the Obama administration that would grant Mexican truckers greater access to Texas roadways would be a boon for business in the state, supporters say, since three of the top five ports for trade between the U.S. and Mexico are Laredo, El Paso and Houston. But unions contend the plan would cost American jobs. “This cheap-labor program comes at too high a risk and at too large a cost to middle-class American workers who work long, hard hours to help maintain a safe commerce system in our nation,” says a spokesman for the Texas AFL-CIO.

The sixth annual Texas Transportation Forum was the largest yet, with contractors, state officials and others meeting to talk mobility in the state. Mose Buchele of KUT News reports on the added challenges they will face this year to keep Texas moving.

More than a third of Texas drivers think roadways are less safe than they were five years ago even though data shows that deaths have steadily decreased, according to a survey by the Center for Transportation Safety at the Texas Transportation Institute.

For this week's installment of our non-scientific survey of political and policy insiders on issues of the moment, we focused on the budget. Specifically, we asked how big the shortfall is going to be, how the Legislature will close the gap and which areas of the budget are most likely to be cut.

M. Smith on the frailties of electronic voting machines, Hu on the big bump in early voter turnout, Chang talks to the national coordinator of Health Information Technology, Hamilton on why the nondiscrimination policies of state university systems don't include sexual orientation, Aguilar on the prospect of high school football referees on strike, Stiles updates our government employee salary app to include 20 more public agencies, Philpott on where the candidates in HD-52 stand on fast growth, Galbraith on damage to Texas roads caused by heavy truck traffic, Grissom interviews the first Hispanic sheriff of Harris County and my one-hour sit-downs with Rick Perry and Bill White: The best of our best from October 18 to 22, 2010.

Heavy truck traffic, some of it related to the wind industry, has increased sharply across the state in recent years, and it's taken a heavy toll on rural roadways. To its chagrin, the Texas Department of Transportation has little prospect of recouping repair costs.

Each year in the United States, idling trucks and cars burn several billion gallons of fuel, emitting various pollutants without driving a single mile. The Texas Legislature passed legislation in 2005 limiting big trucks to five minutes of idling time, but local governments aren't obligated to enforce the law, and the debate over exemptions continues to roil. 

After a 2006 bus accident in Beaumont that killed two students and injured several more, parents and legislators successfully demanded the state finance seat belts in school buses. Today, four years later, the Legislative Budget Board finally gave approval for a grant program — but the rules the board set likely will exclude the Beaumont area from getting the money, even though the grassroots movement started there. 

A new Texas Department of Transportation study names Texas' 100 most congested roadways, which are heavily concentrated in Houston and the Dallas Metroplex; Bexar is the only one of the big five counties without a top-10 trouble spot. Policymakers hope the study will focus the public and lawmakers on the state's problem areas.