Foxx: Obama transportation bill would boost ‘local control’

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Thursday that President Obama’s proposed $302 billion transportation bill would give more control over infrastructure funding to cities and local governments.

Conservative groups have long criticized the federal government for playing a role in doling out money to help pay for state and local transportation projects.

Foxx said Thursday in a blog post on the Transportation Department’s website that Obama’s proposal would give more local control to “our nation’s [Metropolitan Planning Organizations], regional councils, and community leaders.

{mosads}”Today, 65 percent of America’s population live in metropolitan areas — and 95 percent of all the transit miles traveled are traveled there. Metropolitan regions are the engines of our economy,” Foxx wrote. “Yet only eight percent of core federal-aid highway funds are under local control. We need to fix that, and Grow America will.”

The current transportation funding measure is scheduled to expire at the end of September.

Lawmakers are trying to find a way to close a shortfall in transportation funding that is estimated to be as high as $15 billion before the Department of Transportation runs out of money for its Highway Trust Fund, which budget analysts have said could happen in August without congressional action.

The traditional source for transportation funding is revenue that is collected by the federal gas tax, which has been stagnant since 1993 and was not indexed to inflation. The tax only brings in about $34 billion per year, however, and the current level of transportation spending infrastructure advocates want lawmakers to maintain is about $50 billion annually.

Transportation advocates have pushed Congress to increase the gas tax for the first time in two decades to close the gap, but lawmakers have been reluctant to raise taxes in the middle of an election year.

Conservative groups like the Heritage Action foundation have argued that the funding impasse is an opportunity for Congress to remove itself from process of paying for roads and bridges altogether.

The process of eliminating the federal transportation funding system that has been in place since the creation of the interstate highway system in the 1950s is known in transportation circles as “devolution.”

In lieu of the current gas tax system, in which money is distributed to states and local governments based on federal formulas, devolution would call for transfer authority over highways and transit programs back to states and replace current congressional appropriations with block grants.

A bill that would enshrine the devolution idea has been introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.).

The measure, dubbed the Transportation Empowerment Act, would lower the gas tax that currently pays for most federal transportation projects from 18.4 cents per gallon to 3.7 cents in five years in an attempt gradually eliminate federal funding of transportation projects.

Opponents of the devolution proposal typically argue that the federal government is best suited to handle transportation infrastructure that runs between states, like highways.

Obama’s proposal does not come anywhere close to devolving the federal government’s role in transportation spending. The president’s proposal would actually increase the annual appropriation for infrastructure from the approximately $50 billion that is currently being spent to about $75 billion per year.

Obama has proposed using approximately $150 billion from closing corporate tax loopholes to pay for the transportation spending. The tax reform package is considered unlikely to become law this year, however, and lawmakers have begun looking for other transportation funding mechanisms.

Foxx said Thursday that the president’s transportation bill would give “high-performing MPOs more control [and] a larger share of federal funding” if it was approved by Congress. 

“And this isn’t the only way we’re supporting communities,” he added. “Among other things, our bill expands merit-based programs, like our TIGER grants, that have awarded $4.1 billion to good projects in communities of all sizes.”

Foxx said it was important for Congress to act quickly to prevent a bankruptcy in transportation funding because the effects would be harmful to the nation’s already challenged infrastructure.

“Make no mistake, the uncertainty over whether we’ll have funding beyond August has already caused projects to be delayed, or shut down completely — and that means delayed contracts and delayed hiring,” he wrote.

“The tragic thing is that we’re letting our transportation system crumble at the exact moment we need to build it up,” Foxx continued. “Over the next generation, more will be demanded of our infrastructure than ever before. This country will be home to up to 100 million new people by 2050 — imagine a dozen new New York Cities suddenly dotting our map. And we’ll have to move almost twice the amount of freight to support them.”