[T]he U.S. House voted to extend authorization for the federal Highway Trust Fund for two months late Tuesday, possibly averting a shutoff in aid to state transportation projects.
The House voted 387-35 to extend use of the Highway Trust Fund through July 31. The Senate is expected to take up the reauthorization bill this week. Funding is due to be cut off May 31 if Congress fails to act.
The stopgap measure is the 12th such extension as lawmakers fight over a long-term solution to paying for the nation’s transportation infrastructure repairs.
Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., voted against the extension Tuesday. He has said before that he supports finding a long-range solution now, rather than revisiting the issue every few months.
The possibility of a break in federal funding for state highway projects has left Vermont officials frustrated.
Federal funds make up more than 60 percent of Vermont’s transportation budget and state officials have been preparing contingency plans.
Sue Minter, secretary of the Agency of Transportation, said if Congress doesn’t pass legislation, “We’ll be in a pretty dire situation, because Congress will not have authorized the Federal Highway Administration to spend money. Every week we’re spending about $1 million to pay for the work we have VTrans doing back out there in the field.”
While the FY 2015 projects – which rely on $195 million in federal dollars – are all funded and 37 open work zones across the state will not be in jeopardy, Minter said contractors are spending money each day that will be billed to the state.
“A portion of that [money we pay them] comes from the federal government. We’d be in a very big financial pickle” if the payments come to a halt, she noted. “We’re really pushing Congress to act.”
Interstate projects – such as major bridge replacements in Waterbury and Brattleboro – are 90 percent reliant on federal funds, she said.
Last year, the Highway Trust Fund faced running out of money as a result of declining gas tax revenues from a dip in fuel consumption as Americans continued driving less and buying more energy efficient cars. In 2014, gas consumption was down by 4 percent from a record high in 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The difference between the insolvency from 2014 is that this year, any authorization of reimbursements to states would be blocked, shutting down the Federal Highway Administration – which employs 3,000 people across the nation and has a Montpelier bureau – as well as sending transportation projects into a tailspin, Minter said.
Vermonters working for the Federal Highway Administration, which oversees VTrans, “would be affected just like the rest of the agency,” spokesman Doug Hecox said. That would mean furloughs, Minter said.
“Assuming Congress doesn’t act, the authorizing language that allows us to function as an agency will end at midnight on May 31. We’re still cautiously optimistic Congress will do the right thing,” said Hecox.
“It is very serious, very grave,” at a state level, Minter said. As the funds have petered out, she added, different states were choosing different routes and, “Some have chosen to cut projects completely.”
“The last thing we’d do is put projects on hold that are underway. We’d probably look to put new projects on hold that are going out to bid,” she said.
If a deal is not reached by the end of the week, the agency would likely seek to reconvene some legislative committees and set up a process to reimburse contracts as they come in.
“We have contingency plans with the treasurer,” she said. The plans would put the agency into a short-term bill-paying arrangement using borrowed money from the treasury.
“Worst-case scenario, we’d use state dollars on a cash-flow basis, and week by week we’d be deciding on which projects we could keep going,” she said. “We couldn’t sustain it for all that long, only a month or so, and it depends on what the state treasurer tells us is possible.”
Even if Congress does push the deadline back to July 31, the agency could be facing the same scenario all over again.
