I'm referring, in case you're confused, to the last of nine suggested changes to the Texas Constitution that the Legislature has submitted for your consideration Nov. 8. Early voting begins today.

Proposition 9 belongs to that long and undistinguished tradition of Texas constitutional amendments that in a better world wouldn't be cluttering up such a supposedly lofty document. The Legislature, using mere statutes, really ought to be able to handle deciding how long appointed board members of regional mobility authorities serve.

But our oh-so-specific and easily amended constitution stipulates that members of regional boards serve only two years. So when the Legislature in 2003 set the terms for regional mobility authority board members at six years, that provided an opening for the anti-toll road organization People for Efficient Transportation.

That Austin-based group, looking to foil a pending $234 million bond sale for the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, filed a lawsuit on March 1, the day before the sale was about to be completed. The board action authorizing the sale was illegitimate, the lawsuit contended, because the board members who made the decision were serving unconstitutional terms.

As it turned out, more than a quorum of the seven-member board still had two-term terms, and all were in the first two years of their terms. The bond sale went forward.

But so did the lawsuit, which People for Efficient Transportation won in July. In anticipation of that, the Legislature this spring passed what became Proposition 9, which would create an exception to that two-year limit, allowing up to six-year staggered terms for mobility authority boards.

And given that mobility authorities have to issue bonds, the argument for longer terms is that they provide a comforting stability for investors and thus keep interest rates lower.

It essentially had to purchase a good rating for those bonds it sold in March (an arrangement set before the lawsuit) by spending $9 million on bond insurance. It's likely that investors are a lot more concerned about traffic projections and the future of the local economy than they are about whether Lowell Lebermann Jr. has a two-, four- or six-year term.

On the other hand, the argument by toll road opponents against the proposition -- that two-year terms somehow provide a safeguard -- isn't hugely compelling either.

County commissioners and the governor appoint the board members. Given the high-profile and controversial nature of toll roads, it's unlikely that board members are going to take actions that their overseers violently oppose. And if any of them do, it's a safe bet their six-year term would get shorter in a real hurry.

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