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NLC Seeks Full Funding for Transportation Programs
by Cherie Duvall
With city officials abuzz with talk on how transportation finances are becoming unhealthy and unsustainable, the chair of NLC’s Transportation Infrastructure and Services (TIS) policy and advocacy committee proposes uniting on a focused message: There needs to be a partnership with the federal government that will provide mobility and access to citizens.
TIS Chair Laura Padgett, council member, Wilmington, N.C., spoke last month at the National Transportation Summit in Washington, D.C., about the logistics behind NLC’s “Surface Transportation Funding and Reauthorization” priority, one of NLC’s five legislative priorities for the 2nd Session of the 110th Congress.
During the summit, Padgett discussed NLC’s continued work on a number of transportation issues, and its request that Congress provide full funding for federal transportation programs that support bridges, roads, highways, transit and Amtrak, and support funding that goes directly to local governments, such as funding for transit, transportation enhancements and the Congestion Management Air Quality Program that helps reduce congestion and protect the environment.
“NLC believes that the federal government must fund, first, the maintenance and improved efficiency of existing facilities, second, the addition of capacity and, third, the development of innovative new systems,” said Padgett. “These are national priority issues.”
NLC is also encouraging Congress to ensure that local elected officials have an opportunity to participate in the upcoming debate on the reauthorization of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), which authorizes the federal surface transportation programs for highways, highway safety, and transit and expires next year.
“Local governments want to be active partners in solving the challenges of mobility and we want and need the tools to do that,” Padgett said.
Messages to Congress
As part of its lobbying efforts for Surface Transportation Funding and Reauthorization, NLC is taking the following messages to Congress:
• As owners of 77 percent of the miles of roadway in the U.S., and home to the citizens who support roads, bridges and transit systems through gas taxes, cities and towns have a significant stake in the national transportation debate.
• The Highway Trust Fund, financed by federal gasoline taxes and redistributed to cities and towns through the states, is not keeping up with demand. Estimates indicate that it will fall $4.3 billion short of the authorized spending level next year.
• The current lack of a national vision for and underinvestment in the country’s transportation future threatens the economic health of metropolitan areas. Every $1 billion in new infrastructure investment creates 47,500 American jobs.
• Without action, the nation’s transportation system assets will further deteriorate. Its current system is aging, requiring increasing investment just to maintain its current condition, much less improve it.
• Federal transportation policy must be coordinated with the country’s energy and environmental policies by decreasing reliance on foreign oil, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and other adverse public health impacts.
Action at the Federal Level
Several key transportation infrastructure issues, including the significant shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund, the wide-ranging recommendations for the future of the nation’s transportation programs and the impact of transportation on energy consumption, will be confronted by the 2nd Session of the 110th Congress.
As the debate on reauthorizing SAFETEA-LU continues, Congress has fully funded the highway program at the authorized level of $40.2 billion, which is $600 million more than President Bush proposed.
In addition, several commissions are making recommendations on how transportation should be funded.
The call for an updated national vision for transportation began with the release of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission’s report to Congress. The report included four key recommendations: a significant investment in the national surface transportation system, the federal government be a full partner in addressing the looming transportation crisis, fundamental and wide-ranging reform of the federal transportation program, and a wide range of revenue enhancements.
“We believe our recommendations, if enacted as a package, will give the American people the transportation system they need and deserve,” said Jack Schenendorf, vice chair of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, during a testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in January.
The report has received mixed reviews, largely due to its recommendations to triple the federal gasoline tax and to give decision-making authority for infrastructure investments to an independent commission.
A National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission report with recommendations for funding the future federal surface transportation program will be released late this year. The commission released a preliminary report earlier this year stating that it’s time for some fresh thinking about transportation financing. The recommendations are likely to carry considerable weight in the legislative development of the financing title of the next surface transportation reauthorization.
Details: For more information on NLC’s federal lobbying priorities, go to www.nlc.org.
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