DALLAS — State transportation officials are making plans for dealing with another short-term extension of federal highway funding this summer as well as a potential shutdown of reimbursements for state projects if Congress does not resolve the Highway Trust Fund's insolvency by the end of July.
The Transportation Department notified states last week that reimbursements would be delayed and possibly reduced beginning in August without an extension of the current two-month HTF patch that would keep it functioning past the July 31 expiration. Federal funding accounts for about 52% of state annual capital spending on highways, bridges, and transit systems.
The Washington State Department of Transportation said a federal shutdown would delay 101 projects and put another 435 projects in jeopardy.
The frequent short-term extensions and lack of a robust funding source is hindering long-range transportation planning, said Travis Brouwer, assistant director at ODOT.
"We can't select projects six years from now if we don't know how much funding we'll have six weeks from now," Brouwer said. "We don't want to spend millions [of dollars] developing projects that we're not going to be able to build."
Washington state transportation funding will be enhanced with agreement on a 16-year, $15 billion revenue package announced over the weekend that includes an 11.9 cent per gallon increase in the state's gasoline tax and $4.3 billion of state general obligation bonds. The proposal passed the state Senate in early March but has been held up in the House over a low-carbon fuel standard supported by Gov. Jay Inslee.
Inslee said he would sign the compromise measure without the low-carbon requirement, despite calling it "a poison pill that pits clean air against transit."
The revised proposal allows Seattle's Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority to ask voters for up to $15 billion in local option revenues. The Senate version had limited the revenue requests to $11 billion.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has approved a $275 billion, six-year highway bill with slight annual increases in federal funding. The proposal does not include transit funding or a revenue source to bring in the additional $90 billion needed to support a six-year surface transportation plan.
ODOT supports the Senate panel's long-term bill with its $13.5 billion allocation for freight transportation infrastructure, Brouwer said.
"We like the increased focus on freight mobility and efforts to streamline the private delivery process, and the stability that lasts longer than a few months," he said.
Arkansas has withdrawn 75 highway contracts totaling $335 million from its 2015 bid list over federal funding uncertainties, said Scott Bennett, executive director of the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department. The total includes six projects adding up to more than $55 million that were removed last week from the July project schedule, he said.
An intersection improvement project in Jonesboro, Ark., was included in the July project list after the city agreed to put up $2 million to ensure the work gets done if federal reimbursements are reduced or delayed, Bennett said.
Vermont Transportation Secretary Sue Minter said the agency would borrow from the state's cash flow account to keep projects going if Congress fails to pass a long-term highway bill by Aug. 1. Vermont receives about $6 million per week of federal reimbursements for road and bridge projects, she said.
"We know that we can carry that forward having the state treasury pay those which would otherwise be federal dollars for a short term," she said. "I think if that went on for a number of months we'd have to think about other scenarios."
Short-term extensions make for poor planning, Minter said.
"It means that we're all doing short-term thinking, and what we need to be doing isn't just limping forward and duct-taping our system back together," she said. "We need to be thinking big about the future."
