INSIDE WASHINGTON/Lobbying for more transportation funds

As Congress works to reauthorize a massive highway bill, city and county leaders are requesting a bigger share of federal transportation funds and more say in how the money is spent. The bill, which has not been formally named, could allocate as much as $375 billion over the next six years to pay for new roads and bridges and to maintain existing ones.

The most recent highway bill, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), expires on Sept. 30. Mayors and county commissioners are urging Congress to place a greater emphasis on local needs as they write the first major transportation bill of the 21st Century. “Congress should give metropolitan areas more resources and greater decision ability to direct transportation funds where they are most needed,” Knoxville, Tenn., Mayor Victor Ashe told the House Highways, Transit and Pipelines Subcommittee last month.

While Congress is likely to agree that local funding needs to be boosted, it is less clear if federal lawmakers feel there is a need to send money directly to local governments. Still, local leaders are calling on Congress to suballocate funds to cities and counties and bypass the states, which traditionally have served as the main distributor of federal highway funds.

“Under the current law, local officials are only allowed to make decisions on approximately six cents of every federal transportation dollar,” Laredo, Texas, Mayor Elizabeth Flores told the House panel. “This is a woefully modest allocation of resources to metropolitan areas that represent more than one-half of the nation’s population and 80 percent of the nation’s employment, income and production of goods and services. This is an insult to mayors on the front line.”

Ashe and Flores were just two of the five mayors and county commissioners who appeared before the subcommittee in May to plead the case of local governments. Local leaders are expected to continue to make appearances before other congressional committees in the coming months to argue the same point.

In addition to suballocating funds, city and county officials also are calling on Congress to increase funding for mass transit projects, which they say are key to alleviating traffic congestion. It is estimated that 14 million people use transit each day, and that number is increasing, says Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.

“People, businesses and communities rely on transit to get around, and [they] depend on their elected officials to make a strong investment in buses, commuter rail, light rail, ferries and other transportation modes that provide choices other than being stuck in traffic,” Nickels told the subcommittee.

Congress uses the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) report, “The Status of the Nation’s Highways, Bridges and Transit,” to help determine funding levels for building and maintaining highways. The cost to improve the nation’s bridges and highways over the next 20 years is $106.9 billion per year, according to the report. Maintaining the current infrastructure would cost $75.9 billion per year over the same time period, according to the DOT.

Maintaining the status quo does not appeal to at least one key House member. “The current level of funding for the federal highway and transit programs is insufficient to meet the needs of our deteriorating transportation infrastructure,” says Rep. Tom Petri, R-Wis., chairman of the Highways, Transit and Pipelines Subcommittee.

Unlike most issues on Capitol Hill, very little partisan fighting exists over the reauthorization of the highway bill, which has the potential to deliver millions of dollars to every congressional district in the country. The sparring this year will be between Congress and the White House, which is trying to cut back on federal spending.

The author is Washington correspondent for American City & County.