This week, both the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure took steps closer to introducing their surface transportation reauthorization bills.  Senate EPW Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has now said that in order to maintain existing funding levels, the Committee will introduce a two-year, $109 billion measure.  This would mean an additional $12 billion in additional funding would be needed; from where has not yet been decided.

House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman John L. Mica (R-FL) also released information on the House’s long-term surface transportation reauthorization measure at a public “roll out” on July 7.  Chairman Mica’s bill is expected to be a six-year, $230 billion measure.  This bill would give states considerably more input over things such as project approval and where to spend federal dollars.  Both the House and Senate measures are likely to consolidate federal highway programs from about 70 down to 30.  No legislative text was released but a link to the details discussed at the press conference can be found at http://www.transportation.house.gov/news/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=1337 (http://www NULL.transportation NULL.house NULL.gov/news/PRArticle NULL.aspx?NewsID=1337).

Further complicating the differences between the House and the Senate bills is the April passage of H. Con. Res. 34, the Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Resolution, which limits the amount of money spent on new transportation projects to what is currently in the Highway Trust Fund.  This results in a 36 percent reduction in transportation spending and could potentially cause a loss of 500,000 highway jobs and 140,000 transit jobs.  Also important to note is that the last surface reauthorization, SAFETEA-LU (P.L. 109-59) was authorized for $286.5 billion and President Obama’s FY2012 budget request was for a $556 billion six-year reauthorization measure.

We expect both the House and Senate bills to contain substantial and substantive changes to statewide Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and Regional Transportation Planning Organizations (RTPOs) planning.  NADO has been working to voice our priorities and recommendations to both chambers.

Democratic Members of Transportation Committee Respond to Roll out

Immediately following Chairman Mica’s press conference, Democratic leaders of the Committee, led by Ranking Member Nick Rahall (D-WV), held a press conference to respond to the House Republican roll out of the surface transportation reauthorization bill.  Details from the Democrat’s press conference can be found at http://democrats.transportation.house.gov/press-release/committee-democrats-respond-republican-surface-transportation-proposal (http://democrats NULL.transportation NULL.house NULL.gov/press-release/committee-democrats-respond-republican-surface-transportation-proposal).