Counties Urge Congressional Action on Transportation Funding Fix

During the fall sugarbeet harvest, agricultural truck traffic can get heavy on roads in Renville County.

Stretches of U.S. Route 212, or Renville County Road 5 might see hundreds of vehicles per hour, according to Bob Fox, a commissioner representing the Minnesota county’s District 2. “There are certain times of the year, what we call, especially in October, rural rush hour,” he said on Tuesday during an event in Washington, D.C.

Located about 100 miles west of Minneapolis, Renville encompasses about 982 square miles and, and has an estimated 15,025 residents, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. Farming is an important part of the local economy. In addition to sugar beets, corn and soybeans are major crops there.

For farmers to get their goods to market they depend on the county’s 711-mile network of roads, some of which, according to Fox, are in need upgrades and repairs.

“Our problem is that those roads that were built 50 or 60 years ago do not work for today’s agriculture,” he said. Increasing shoulder widths to four feet to cut down on road-edge wear and improve safety is one improvement he mentioned.

“If you met a John Deere tractor of the year 2015, on [a road] with a two foot shoulder, let me tell you, your heart is going to jump right out of you the first time,” he said.

Fox was among a group of county officials who traveled to Washington this week to urge congressional lawmakers to shore up long-term financial support for federal highway transportation funding. He and others spoke on Tuesday at the National Press Club, during a lunch organized by the National Association of Counties. For state and local governments, the U.S. Highway Trust Fund is a key source of cash that helps cover the cost of road and transit projects.

County governments own and maintain about 45 percent of the road miles in America, along with four out of every 10 bridges, according to National Association of Counties figures.

“We have tremendous responsibilities,” said Peter McLaughlin, the association’s transportation steering committee chair and a commissioner in Hennepin County, Minnesota, which surrounds Minneapolis. He added: “We need a federal partner here.”

Within McLaughlin’s electoral district is the site where a bridge on Interstate 35W catastrophically collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145. McLaughlin said he knew some of the children who were riding a school bus that was traveling on the bridge span when it fell down. They all survived the collapse. But still he said: “It is personal for me in that way.”

Deborah Lieberman is a commissioner in Montgomery County, Ohio. She said that five rivers and close to 500 bridges are located within the county’s boundaries. Montgomery, Lieberman said, is responsible for most of those spans and some, she added, are in “horrible disrepair.”

“Our engineer looks at us and he’s like: ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do,’” she said.

The most recent authorization of temporary funding for the highway trust fund is set to expire on May 31. In recent weeks, there has been no indication that a long-term, multi-year solution to reauthorize funding will arise before that deadline.

There are, however, signs that a short-term “patch” is emerging. This would secure funding for at least the next couple months, and perhaps through the end of the year.

"We need a long term solution, a six-year solution,” U.S. Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program last week. “I think it might take six months, until the end of the year, which is why I thought that might be the best route.” Levin added: “If we can do it in two months, that's fine.”

Revenue for the highway trust fund is derived largely from taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel.

According to a Pew Charitable Trusts analysis published earlier this year, revenue flowing into the trust fund has fallen short of expenditures for over a decade. A main driver of this shortfall is gas tax revenue declines, which the analysis attributed to more fuel-efficient cars and changing driving habits.

In recent years, federal lawmakers have made up for the declines by transferring money into the highway account from the general fund, and by drawing down its balance.

The gas tax is currently 18.4 cents per-gallon and was last raised in 1993. U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, reportedly said during a recent Christian Science Monitor breakfast that he was working with Levin and Senate Finance Committee leaders to come up with a $10 billion short-term transportation funding proposal, but ruled out a gas tax hike.

Levin said during his C-SPAN comments that sustaining transportation funding would require additional money, but acknowledged a “deep division” between Republicans and Democrats on this issue. “You can't do a long-term package without more revenues,” he said.

Critics of short-term trust fund measures argue that they drive up construction costs by creating uncertainty. And one official on hand at Tuesday’s lunch also said that the so-called patches have caused construction contractors to defer purchases of new machinery because it is unclear whether funding will be there for projects to proceed.

“These short-term measures, that have become almost habitual here in Washington, have left America’s urban counties stuck in traffic,” said Roy Brooks, a commissioner in Tarrant County, Texas, which is situated around Fort Worth, west of Dallas.

Brooks chairs the National Association of Counties’ Large Urban County Caucus and said that congestion is a problem in his area, which results in pollution, wasted time and lost money.

“We need to make transformative transportation investments, the type that require long term funding,” he said.

At least four states have recently delayed or canceled construction projects due to uncertainty surrounding the highway trust fund, according to information released by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association in late March.

According to Fox, Renville County has received the equivalent of about $300,000 annually in federal transportation dollars. This money comes along with about $5.1 million the state delivers each year, he said, and the county public works budget, which is totals about $2.1 million annually. In 2013, for the first time in the county’s history, Renville issued about $10 million of bonds to help pay for road maintenance and reconstruction projects.

“We knew we couldn’t wait any longer,” he said. “We took that first step.”

The county is using a combination of property taxes and a $10 “wheelage tax” levied on vehicles in the county to pay back the bonds.

Following the approval of the wheelage tax, Fox said that he caught flack from a friend who had gone to register two vehicles. “He made sure that I knew about it,” he said of the tax.

But then the county commissioner explained that the money was going to fix a road north of the town where his friend lived. The repairs cost about $1 million and weren’t eligible for state or federal funds.

“He lives a half mile off that road,” Fox said. “After he heard the story, he had no problem paying the 20 bucks.” The county commissioner added: “There’s none of us that want to pay more taxes, more fees, but we certainly want good roads to drive on.”