AASHTO Journal, 27 March 2015
Congress considered a range of issues related to extending the Highway Trust Fund in the past week, including performance management rules for state departments of transportation, and the uncertainty costs to states when they can’t count on long-term funding.
Meanwhile, members of the House Ways and Means Committee, which would be charged with coming up with House options to pay for any reauthorization of federal road and transit programs past May 31, have begun to discuss how long of a temporary HTF extension Congress might need to pass.
Nichols testifies as AASHTO’s Jim Tymon looks on.Those developments came at a time when the latest tally of delayed projects so far in 2015, due to states’ being unable to plan projects when the federal payments might not come on time, rose above $1.3 billion. (See story in Nation section of this week’s Journal).
A major construction industry group also launched a new social media campaign to enlist the public to push Congress to provide “better roads” before the May 31 deadline. (See related story.)
The U.S. Conference of Mayors also called on Congress to increase federal transportation funding, and specifically to provide more funds to local governments.
And both the House and Senate have passed budget resolutions that allow for measures to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent, as long as they do not add to the overall budget deficit.
On March 24, a subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee conducted a hearing on “Surface Transportation Reauthorization: Performance, not Prescription,” that reviewed performance-based federal regulations required by the MAP-21 law in 2012 and the performance-based management systems state DOTs are using in transportation policy.
Witnesses included U.S. DOT Policy Undersecretary Peter Rogoff and Missouri DOT Director Dave Nichols, who represented the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials as well as his own agency.
Nichols told the panel that “this is not the first time state DOTs have implemented performance management concepts. The 12 national-level performance measures required by MAP-21 are just the top layer of a much more robust set of performance measures state DOTs use on a regular basis to plan, program, and operate their transportation networks.”
He said all states use such management techniques to assess condition of physical assets and to target safety improvements.
But Nichols said it takes extra money to compile and analyze the data to guide such programs, and “state DOTs are concerned” that federal officials set “minimum condition” performance requirements for roads and bridges without knowing whether enough funding was available.
“It is AASHTO’s estimate that some state DOTs will not be able to meet certain minimum condition requirements,” Nichols said in his prepared remarks, “even if all available funding were spent on improving bridge and pavement conditions.”
Senators also used the hearing to underscore other issues in a trust fund reauthorization. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., asked Nichols to explain “the consequences” for state DOTs of Congress repeatedly enacting short-term program extensions such as six-month extension from May rather than a multiyear measure.
That exchange starts at about 1 hour, 3 minutes into the committee’s video of the hearing webcast.
Nichols said he speaks for AASHTO and all state DOTs in saying “we do need a sustainable funding program, a long-term bill, because it allows states to plan lengthy projects without disruptions of the federal financing.
It takes states time to prepare projects, but “we’re always on this precipice” of having disruptions to the federal share “and then we’re going to have to stop or prevent a project from moving forward.”
He said that can add to the project costs when contractors cannot count on timely reimbursements and may have to halt and then re-start the projects.
On March 25, the Politico news service reported that Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., said the Ways and Means Committee he serves on has begun discussing the length of a Highway Trust Fund extension, though not the detailed options to pay for one.
“We’ve talked about general approaches in terms of what would be the duration of a patch, but we haven’t gotten to the substance yet,” he told Politico. Boustany said lawmakers are weighing whether to extend the federal program through the September end of the fiscal year or the rest of this calendar year, and that the length would in turn determine how much revenue the tax-writing panel would need to look for.”
He also said the committee would focus more on the problem after the congressional Easter recess in April. That is the same time frame that House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., recently gave for when lawmakers must decide whether to attempt passage of a long-term bill by May 31 or a short extension.