Highway Bill to Focus on Policy Changes Rather Than Costs, Oberstar Predicts

This story appears in the May 4 print edition of Transport Topics.

WASHINGTON — With the expiration of the current highway authorization just five months away, leaders in the House and Senate said they were preparing to draft its replacement with an eye on major structural changes.

Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.) told reporters April 24 the focus of debate on the new legislation should be on the benefits a revised transportation policy could have, and not the costs.

Oberstar said that until “we have new structures, a new delivery mechanism, a reshaping off the Department of Transportation, a restructuring of the Federal Highway System, and a much more efficient effective, delivery mechanism . . . I don’t think it’s appropriate to assess the costs.”

Oberstar spoke at an event where he received a report from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials that said the country — at all levels of government — needed to spend $166 billion annually on highways, or more than double what was spent in 2006.

Previously, Oberstar has said he is targeting a $450 billion to $500 billion price tag for the six-year bill.

That bill, he said, should be introduced soon and brought to the House floor the first week of June. The current law expires Sept. 30.

“We’re going to move our bill the first week of June,” he said, “and the Senate will move, I expect very shortly thereafter, but we will lead the way.”

However, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told members of Natso at the group’s annual Washington meeting there was still a lot of work to be done before an agreement can be reached.

Inhofe said April 28 that transportation leaders from the House and Senate met recently and “nothing was accomplished.”

“Two things we have to come up with are the amount of money . . . and what to do with that amount of money and that has not taken place,” he said.

Inhofe also took a dim view of raising the federal fuel tax, something transportation advocates have said is necessary.

“The votes aren’t there,” he said.

Later that day, during a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood reiterated the administration was opposed to raising the tax.

“I will tell you this, and I know this gives some people heartburn, but the administration is not going to be for raising [fuel taxes for] the Highway Trust Fund,” LaHood said. “With the kind of economy we have today, it is not the time to be raising the gas tax.”

Instead, LaHood said the federal government needed to “think outside the box” about items like public-private partnerships, tolling and a proposal made by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) to sell so-called “Build America Bonds.”

Thune, who in January co-sponsored legislation to sell bonds to fund infrastructure, said they “could provide $50 billion in new funding for transportation projects.” He cautioned the proposal “is not a substitute for the Highway Trust Fund, but it could provide valuable supplemental funding for transportation projects.”

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), ranking minority member of the Commerce panel, pressed LaHood to back her proposal to allow states to “opt out” of the federal highway program and have all the federal fuel tax revenue collected in their state returned to them.

“The existing funding formula is no longer serving the best interest of each state and the traveling public,” Hutchison said.

Hutchison said her proposal would “allow all states to receive a more equitable distribution of gas tax dollars, while ensuring funds are directed toward improving transportation in the high-growth areas within those states.”

Thune said warned against making “knee-jerk changes” to the formulas that the government uses to distribute funds and said redrawing those formulas could have “particularly negative effects on large, rural states such as mine and in turn, travelers across the country.”

LaHood declined to take a position on Hutchison’s proposal, but he did say the department had sent a set of principles for the upcoming highway bill debate to the White House for review.

“We’re going to present some principles to the Congress that we think are very important,” he said. “We want to be in the room; we want to be in the game; we want to be available when folks are writing the bill.”

LaHood later told reporters DOT was “just waiting for some guidance” and hoped to have something for Congress “pretty soon,” that “will be something pretty bold.”

Among the items LaHood said would be addressed in the administration’s outline would be funding and financing options, as well as freight and goods movement options.