Mica Opposes Measure to Curb Highway Privatization Deals

By Michele Fuetsch, Staff Reporter

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

WASHINGTON — House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica said he opposes a measure to curb the leasing of highways to private investors that is being discussed by the House-Senate conference committee on transportation reauthorization.

“It’s a question of privatization, and I want that option in there, that we can privatize some of the roads,” Mica said after a May 30 speech to an annual gathering here of the Associated General Contractors of America.

“We wouldn’t be here if we had all the money to [support highways], so why would you cut out the potential for expanding some of your capacity?” Mica said.

He stopped short of saying he would hold up a bill over the privatization issue.

American Trucking Associations supports the provisions, which would make leasing deals, such as that which privatized the Indiana Toll Road,

less attractive by ending tax incentives for investors. The provisions also would cut in half the federal funds that go to a state for the maintenance of privatized highways.

The privatization curbs are in the two-year Senate reauthorization bill that is the basis for the conference committee’s effort to hammer out a compromise transportation bill.

The House never voted on Mica’s proposed five-year bill because it lacked enough support, but it passed a bill to extend funding for highway programs and public transit through September.

If the conference committee does not agree on a long term bill or to the House’s temporary extension, federal funding for transportation will expire June 30.

Mica said he knows there were objections to parts of the Indiana lease negotiated by the state’s governor, Mitch Daniels. However, Mica said he supports the concept and that he was meeting with Daniels last week in Washington to discuss privatization.

Mica told the contractors group that the conference committee is making progress and that it could produce a compromise bill and have it passed in Congress by June 30.

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), ranking minority member on the transportation committee, told the contractors the situation is urgent and that the House has only 15 days in its legislative calendar before the June 30 deadline.

“Unfortunately, there are too many here in Washington who do not understand the magnitude of the infrastructure crisis and the economic decline the nation faces if we refuse to confront this challenge now,” Rahall said.

He also said House Republican leaders interjected “controversial issues” into the conference that could “derail the entire process.”

As an example, Rahall cited the Keystone XL Pipeline, which Republicans are insisting should be part of the highway bill. Rahall said he supports the pipeline’s construction but that it should not be in a transportation bill.

Mica told the contractors the current political climate makes it impossible to produce a longer-term highway bill or a new system for funding transportation.

The short-term bill still should be passed, he said, because it contains “reform” measures such as consolidation of highway programs and streamlining of regulations, which he said delay and increase the cost of construction projects.

The same day Mica and Rahall addressed the contractors, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood renewed the Obama administration’s call for a highway bill.

Speaking at a Freightliner Trucks event in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, LaHood said, “We’ve had enough of bickering and partisanship.

Workers are ready to roll up their sleeves and build, so we need Congress to get work and pass a new plan.”