Montana Towns Band Together for Big Infrastructure Lobbying Push
When serious structural problems were discovered on two interchange bridges for interstates 15-90 in Butte, Montana state transportation officials scrambled to reroute semis and get immediate repair work under way.
The “emergency” fix that started in September lasted into December, traffic was rerouted onto detour ramps for weeks, and the taxpayer tab for the repairs will be about $3 million.
None of that surprises state Sen. Jeff Welborn, a Republican from Dillon who watched legislation to steer tens of millions of dollars to roads, sewers and water systems die in the final days of the 2013 and 2015 sessions. A plan failed by a single vote last time, but blame was widespread.
“At the end of the day, we have to fund these things,” said Welborn, an eight-year representative who was elected to the Senate this year. “That bridge outside of Butte is a textbook example of what happens when you don’t address needs on a timely basis.”
In response to inaction, more than 80 business, labor and economic development organizations have joined numerous cities and counties this year to form the Montana Infrastructure Coalition.
They’re looking for more money now and sustainable funding into the future and are proposing an increase in Montana’s gasoline tax, changes to the Coal Tax Trust Fund and local option tourism taxes to fund infrastructure, among other things.
Welborn hopes their clout and upcoming lobbying push at the Legislature starting in January will get something significant over the finish line.
“If you think about the diversity of the coalition, if they don’t have the strength to get [major funding] passed, we are in trouble,” he said.
The coalition formed last spring, has grown since then and includes some heavy hitters among Montana lobbying groups, including the Montana Chamber of Commerce, Montana AFL-CIO, Montana Contractors Association and the Montana League of Cities and Towns.
Six cities paid $5,000 each to be voting members — Billings, Bozeman, Glendive, Helena, Kalispell and Laurel. Butte-Silver Bow, Dawson, Fallon and Richland counties also ponied up $5,000 each.
More than 70 other entities paid $500 each to join, including Colstrip, Great Falls and Missoula, and there are pro-business groups from every corner, including the Big Sky Chamber of Commerce and the Eastern Plains Economic Development Corp. that represents five lowland counties near the Dakotas.
Clint Burson, director of government affairs for the Missoula Chamber of Commerce, said joining was an easy decision.
“Our chamber, as well as other chambers for six of the major cities, have all agreed we support increased funding for infrastructure because it helps businesses,” he said. “It helps to transport their goods, and it allows people to come to their businesses.”
While Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers pointed fingers at one another when the big infrastructure bill flamed out in April 2015, lobbying groups looked at themselves. After all, they were fully engaged in the session, too.
“We kind of sat down and said, ‘This is our failure,’ ” said Darryl James, the coalition’s executive director. “We have kind of run at this thing independently, but what if we pooled all our resources and came at it?”
Cities and counties are thinking the same way.
Billings City Administrator Tina Volek, in a Nov. 28 story in the Billings Gazette, said anything that can be done “is better than sitting for another two or four years with nothing to show for it.”
Butte-Silver Bow commissioners agreed to the $5,000 membership fee in the last budget they enacted in August.
In recent years, Butte was able to secure a state loan for $30 million in upgrades to its sewage treatment plant, which ratepayers are paying back, and pollution-settlement money is behind a new $22-million water treatment plant, and $8 million more for water systems.
But Butte has missed out, too. Although it was not a street, sewer or water project, funding for a long-sought home in Butte for military veterans died with the final infrastructure bill last session.
To many county officials, spending $5,000 on the coalition was a no-brainer, because funding for any project would be worth much more.
“It just seems like, on both sides of the aisle, they could find some common ground and get it done this session, and that is part of the push from our end,” said Butte-Silver Bow Commissioner Dan Foley.
The final compromise package in 2015 was put together by Bullock and legislative leaders from both parties. It had $100 million in grants and loans for local road, street and water projects and $50 million in state projects.
It easily passed the Senate, but it failed to get a needed 67 votes in the House. It required a two-thirds vote in both chambers because it allowed the state to incur bond debt.
GOP leaders blamed Bullock, saying he refused to negotiate any late changes. Bullock said a “small minority” of Republicans blocked its passage. Some House Republicans said they didn’t like the bill because of its large, expensive state projects.
Those and other reasons don’t matter to the coalition now. They’re looking to this upcoming session and years beyond it, too.
The needs, they say, are well-documented and are summarized in a report card issued two years ago by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It gave a C- to the state’s overall quality of infrastructure, a C- for drinking water systems and dams, and a D+ for wastewater.
“Montana’s aging infrastructure is approaching a critical state of disrepair,” the report said.
And funding isn’t keeping up.
The coalition points to shortfalls at the Montana Department of Transportation as one example of that. The agency operates on an annual budget of about $700 million, the vast majority of it grants from the Federal Highway Administration.
The grants require small matching amounts from the state, but stagnant gas-tax revenue and budget shortfalls have left MDT short of those dollars.
The Bullock administration said in January that a $14.5-million deficit at MDT means it cannot get $130 million in federal cash this year, so it has delayed bidding on numerous projects until at least May.
The administration should know by then if lawmakers raised the gasoline tax or took other steps to get more road funding.
As it stands, Bullock spokesman Tim Crowe said, “There is no more reserve within the fund at the MDT to match those federal dollars.”
Although it would support a bonding package to pay for individual projects, the coalition has no interest in choosing which ones to include. Endorsing projects would amount to picking winners and losers, the coalition’s James said.
They’re focused more on adjusting existing revenue streams and creating new ones.
The coalition points to the shortfall at the MDT as a reason to raise the gasoline tax for the first time since 1994. The tax has stood at 27 cents per gallon since then, with most of the money distributed to MDT and the Montana Highway Patrol.
The group is calling for a 10-cents-per-gallon increase and adjustments to the revenue distribution formula “to provide a long-overdue funding increase for city and county road and bridge improvements.”
Montana’s gasoline tax raises about $219 million per year, but cities and counties get only $16.7 million per year.
Other proposals, which were adopted at a membership meeting in November, include:
• Allowing communities — with approval by local voters — to impose a “tourism tax” to fund infrastructure. Members decided it should not be a broad-based sales tax but one aimed primarily at services from hotels, restaurants and bars.
• Capping the Coal Tax Trust Fund at $1 billion and steering new coal tax revenue toward bonds for “vetted and prioritized infrastructure projects.” That plan is only in its “infancy,” James said.
• Legislation that would allow local governments to leverage investment through public-private partnerships — also called P3s.
The coalition hopes all of its proposals are discussed in the upcoming session, but James acknowledged that details can present big hurdles.
“We have to do something; we have broad agreement on that,” he said. “Who pays for it and how it is prioritized, those are the tough ones.”
The coalition is trying to approach the session in a nonpolitical, nonpartisan way and says it won’t be a one-and-done push.
“This is viewed as a long-term enterprise, not a one-session organization,” Tim Burton, executive director of the Montana League of Cities and Towns, told Butte officials in July. The League represents all but three of Montana’s 129 incorporated cities and towns and is on the coalition’s Board of Directors.
But the project will face some big legislative challenges right away.
Senate Minority Leader Jon Sesso (D-Butte) made last-minute attempts to get the infrastructure bill passed in 2015. He said talks this session should start with some parts of that bill.
That especially includes sections that would provide state money for local infrastructure on a sliding scale that considers how much counties and cities tax their residents now, he said.
“Leaders of both parties agreed to that,” Sesso said. “I would hope that is where we would start … and we don’t have to redebate that.”
Republican leaders have said they want to address infrastructure this session, and House Speaker Austin Knudsen (R-Culbertson) has said proposals from the coalition are under consideration.
But he also said most House Republicans have told him they don’t back increases in any tax, including the gasoline tax. And Sesso said another factor comes into play.
“The Legislature’s ability to increase that tax is tied directly to assurances that the money raised will go only to roads, and that is a tough nut to crack,” he said.
Capping the coal trust fund — instead of just finding ways to restructure revenue streams within it — also could be problematic, Sesso said. Many lawmakers will see it as breaking a promise.
“There are people who walk around here with a book of legislative commitments, and one of them is to never bust the trust,” Sesso said.
Dillon’s Sen. Welborn also knows it won’t be easy but notes that the upcoming session won’t be immediately followed by a gubernatorial election year. That might mean fewer lawmakers wanting political credit for “passing or killing” infrastructure legislation, he said.
He knows people in his district want it, he said, and the coalition has a sound approach.
“I like where the coalition is going,” Welborn said. “It has to be more than a one-session fight.”
