State officials are growing concerned that Congress won't pass a long-term federal transportation bill this year. They’ve developed a contingency plan to ensure that road and bridge construction projects in Vermont stay on schedule this summer.
There's good news and bad news coming out of Congress this week about the bill. Here's the good news. On Wednesday, the Senate Public Works committee gave its unanimous support to a plan to allocate $278 billion over the next six years to fund transportation projects.
Vermont Transportation Secretary Sue Minter says Vermont would receive $1.3 billion under this legislation. "That means that we would be able to keep relatively level funding from what we've had over the past three or four years from the federal government, which is great news," she says.
Here's the bad news. The bill now goes to the Senate Finance committee, and there's no agreement about how to pay for the long-term plan.
Minter says the state spends roughly $6 million of federal money every week on road and bridge projects. If Congress fails to pass a transportation bill by the end of July, Minter says these federal funds will be put on hold. She wants these projects to stay on schedule, so her agency will borrow the money from the state's cash flow account.
"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 says. “I think if that went on for a number of months we'd have to think about other scenarios."
"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. We need to be thinking big about the future." - Transportation Secretary Sue Minter
The last time Congress approved a long-term transportation bill was in 2005. Since that time, 33 short-term extensions have been passed. Minter says these short term fixes are bad for public policy. “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. We need to be thinking big about the future. We need an infrastructure for the 21st century,” she says.
Minter says efforts to raise the federal gas tax have become very controversial in Congress. This tax has not been increased since 1995 and revenues from the 18-cent per-gallon tax no longer supply the Federal Highway Trust Fund with enough money to meet the transportation demands of all 50 states.
