AASHTO Journal, 30 January 2015
The governors of four states told senators they need certainty about federal spending through a long-term replenishment of the Highway Trust Fund, and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx urged lawmakers to take “dramatic” action to invest “substantially” more in infrastructure.
In a Jan. 28 hearing on the next highway and transit bill by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said the short-term measures Congress has been passing threaten state planning for construction projects.
That committee writes the highway portion of any reauthorization, while others handle the transit and safety sections.
“Certainty” that comes with a long-term federal program, Bentley said, “probably is the most important thing we are asking for on a state level.”
He said not knowing if the federal money is coming hurts planning. “We just need certainty, whatever that certainty is, whatever the federal government can help us with … Over the last five or six years we have not had that certainty.”
He said Alabama is financing $1 billion in highway system projects with bonds paid for by future receipts from the federal program, so he needed those funds coming in to cover the bond payments.
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin said without a long-term federal program “we’re in a troubling position of having to dig for cash” or tell contractors the state does not have available funds to cover construction costs.
Shumlin also urged senators to keep in mind the special needs of small and rural states. He said 80 percent of the nation’s highway system is in such areas, but without large local populations they cannot raise enough money through state taxes or local tolls to cover large maintenance costs and build major new projects.
“We’ve got more to maintain” in the national system even with fewer people inside state borders to pay for those lane miles, he said, so Vermont and other rural states need federal funding help.
South Dakota Transportation Secretary Darin Bergquist testified on behalf of Gov. Dennis Daugaard, who submitted written comments. Bergquist said South Dakota also faces problems covering costs for a large highway system with a small population.
For instance, he said 65 percent of truck traffic in South Dakota is just passing through, so while those roads are the state’s responsibility that freight traffic is a national interest.
He and the governors also urged Congress to provide states more flexibility in how they allocate Highway Trust Fund money.
Daugaard in his prepared remarks said, “I have proposed funding increases and user fees in my own state, but stronger federal funding is also needed. States cannot do it alone.”
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy was scheduled to attend, but had to cancel to deal with the effects of a major Northeast snowstorm. In his written testimony, Malloy said his administration had sharply increased state transportation spending “but it’s still not enough … Connecticut must do more on its own as well as in partnership with the federal government.”
And, Malloy wrote: “We need the federal government to increase funding for surface transportation. A reauthorization at current funding levels is nothing less than a significant deterioration of purchasing ability when adjusted for inflation.”
Foxx likewise pressed lawmakers to go big on transportation funding. He said this country’s infrastructure is behind others “and when you are behind you must run faster and do more than just keep pace.”
He also said that “the transportation system itself does not care about the political challenges of addressing its needs. From its perspective and from mine, we are either meeting those needs or we aren’t … we must do something dramatic. To hell with the politics.” Those comments are about 22 minutes into this video of the hearing.
Foxx said the administration will send Congress “a new and improved” version of the transportation plan it proposed last year, which would use a temporary windfall from repatriated foreign corporate profits to boost spending in many road, transit and rail programs. Last year’s proposal never gained traction in Congress.
Foxx said any new bill should move beyond flat-level funding and deal with long-term needs. “We’re going to need a substantially greater investment,” he said.