HOUSTON – During Sec. Pete Buttigieg’s visit to Port Houston on Friday, he cut the ribbon on a terminal expansion project that aims to accommodate more containers and help speed up the movement of goods. Tens of millions of dollars for the project came from the federal government.
Sec. Buttigieg spoke one-on-one with KPRC 2′s Bryce Newberry at the end of the event on a variety of topics, including airlines under investigation, the I-45 expansion project, road conditions, and new Texas laws that target LGBTQ Texans.
Ports
Port Houston moved to the fifth ranked U.S. port and is now considered one of the fastest-growing ports in the country for loaded imports and exports.
Sec. Buttigieg celebrated the completion of the Bayport Container Terminal Expansion Project, took a boat tour to see ongoing dredging work, and looked at ongoing construction at the Barbours Cut Container Terminal. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law designated $17 billion for improving ports and waterways.
“Chances are every time you go to the store, you’re benefiting from goods that come in and out of here. Everything you can think of, including probably the device you’re using to watch this interview,” Sec. Buttigieg said. “Supply chains didn’t used to be a thing that most people talked about, but ever since 2021 and what we saw on the rebound from the pandemic, I think people realized we really count on every part of our supply chains and ports are, of course, a critical link.”
He said ships are getting larger and need a channel that’s dredged to a greater depth and width to be accommodated, which adds capacity at the port.
“That means more jobs. It’s great for the Gulf Coast. It’s great for Houston. It’s an important part of the overall big picture of American economic strength,” he said.
Airlines
After a holiday travel meltdown involving Southwest Airlines, Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation began investigating the airline and other domestic carriers for operating unrealistic schedules. Buttigieg would not name the other airlines being investigated.
“I can’t do too many investigative details right now while it’s in process, but what I will say is any time we find that an airline has operated an unrealistic schedule, there’s going to be a consequence to that. Just as through millions of dollars in fines, we’ve gotten hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds back to passengers who had airlines that were not living up to their end of the bargain. We require airlines to refund passengers when your flight gets canceled. And we have a whole new set of passenger protections compared to even one year ago in terms of what to expect when you experience a disruption. The good news is, after a lot of pressure on the airlines, that rate of cancellations, delays, disruptions has come back to normal. It’s actually a little bit below average. But when it does happen to you, you don’t care about the statistics, you just want to be taken care of. That’s why we pushed so hard on those passenger protections of rights,” Sec. Buttigieg said.
He said the DOT had good cause to open the investigations.
“We’re taking this issue very seriously because it can be an issue of unfair competition as well as an issue of passenger convenience, if an airline books a ticket, takes the money and knows that they’re unlikely to be able to actually serve that route well,” Sec. Buttigieg said.
He encouraged travelers to check FlightRights.gov to learn how airlines treat passengers when issues come up.
Airlines often blame weather for cancelations or delays. Sec. Buttigieg said weather can strike any time and extreme weather events are becoming more common.
“Airlines need to be resilient enough and they need to have invested enough in their systems that when they do get hit by those disruptions, they can recover quickly. If one airline is unable to recover when all the others have. To us, that’s a warning sign and an indication that we need to investigate,” he said.
I-45 Expansion
After years of contention over the I-45 expansion from downtown to Beltway 8, the Federal Highway Administration and TxDOT announced in March an agreement had been reached to move forward with construction.
The agreement came after Harris County sued TxDOT over community concerns about the project.
“It was very important to us from early on when we heard all of the community concerns and even legal issues around this highway expansion, that if it was going to be built, it needed to be on much better terms than we found it. Through a long and painstaking process with a lot of community engagement, there’s a new way forward that recognizes and respects the communities that could be impacted,” Sec. Buttigieg said. “We’re not saying you can never expand a road anywhere, ever. What we are saying is that when there’s a need to expand a highway or have a right of way that goes through an area that wasn’t a highway before, it is very, very important to go through all of the alternatives to include the community, to make sure there are measures to counteract displacement, because we have a history in this country of doing the wrong thing in the past. We’re going to do the right thing going forward.”
He said it’s important the commitments made will be met as the project moves forward.
Railroad Crossings
In June, the City of Houston was awarded a federal grant to eliminate some railroad crossings. The grant process was competitive, according to Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office.
“One of the reasons why we chose the Houston project is that it showed the benefits that were going to come in terms of safety and in terms of quality of life,” Sec. Buttigieg said.
Some of the main issues with the crossings include the higher risk of crashes with crossings on busy roads, inconvenience for people, and delaying emergency vehicles, he said.
“There was never a dedicated fund just for improving or eliminating these railroad crossings. So we’re really excited to see that project get completed. We hope there’s going to be more where that came from,” Sec. Buttigieg said.
The Federal Railway Administration has created a site where people can report blocked crossings, something Sec. Buttigieg said has never been systematically collected before.
“When we see the hot spots from people reporting it in, we can turn around and engage the railroads directly to try to clear that area,” Sec. Buttigieg said. “Railroads need to need to operate their business, but that shouldn’t be at the expense of communities.”
Road Conditions
A new UH poll came out this week that revealed road and street conditions are a top three priority for likely Houston voters in November. Sec. Buttigieg is former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
“I used to be a mayor, and the war between mayors and potholes is one that I remember being on the front lines of it. A lot of it does come down to funding,” he said. “We recognize and respect that a lot of this is a matter of local decision making and leadership. But one thing that that also is very important is that we have more federal support than we’ve ever had before.”
He said the government hasn’t invested enough in basic transportation infrastructure over the years.
“We want to make sure that we are creating a tailwind to help local communities, counties and cities deal with those basic road conditions that do reflect the general issue that we’ve had in this country for a long, long time,” Sec. Buttigieg said.
Texas ‘Drag Ban’
Two Texas laws that take effect Sept. 1 that target LGBTQ Texans. One will ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
The other criminalizes performers and business that host sexually explicit shows in front of children, a bill known as the ‘Drag Ban.’ Business that break the new law could be fined up to $10,000 per violation. Performers could be sent to jail or have to pay up to $4,000.
The ACLU has sued to block both laws.
Sec. Buttigieg, the first openly gay cabinet member, shared the message he believes the new laws send to LGBTQ Texans.
“It tells a lot of Texans that they are not safe or not welcome. And it’s especially heartbreaking to hear the stories of parents who are wondering whether their family is safe or whether their relationship with their kids is going to be intervened, if the governor is going to send somebody to separate them from their kids for no other reason than that they consulted a doctor on how to make sure that their kids are being safe and well treated,” Sec. Buttigieg said.
He said the deeper message is about priorities.
“You have some figures in elected office who decided of all of the issues they could work on, of all the things they could do with the time and the power and the money that has been placed in their hands, where they could be lowering the cost of prescription drugs or helping to make sure infrastructure is where it needs to be, that they’re concentrating their efforts on making life harder for teenagers who already have life pretty hard,” he said. “I’m just mystified that anybody would get up in the morning and make that their priority when we’re working so hard to build roads and bridges and ports and airports and do other things to make everybody better off.”