Nevadans want fair share of highway funds

Friday, Feb. 7, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

ISTEA is a cool, refreshing drink of funds for our nation's repair-thirsty highways -- especially Las Vegas' overburdened thoroughfares -- but it also is a murky pool of pork over which lawmakers will sweat out the apportionments.

Nevada's congressional members, including the senator who helped write the original Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in 1991, want a fair-size piece of the pie for Nevada, most notably Las Vegas where a high volume of visitor traffic helps accelerate highway decay.

The 16-member Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, of which Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is a member, is expected to address the multibillion-dollar program in March, while the 66-member House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is scheduled to hear the issue this month.

"Since 1991, Nevada has received more than $962 million in federal highway funding (through ISTEA)," said Reid, who wrote the first Senate ISTEA bill and was a member of the joint conference committee that hammered out the legislation that was signed into law.

"My challenge in rewriting ISTEA this time is to make sure the formulas are fairer for high-growth states like Nevada so we can get more money for projects like the Spaghetti Bowl, the widening of Interstate 15 and mass transit projects like the proposed new monorail and more CAT buses."

Reid's key projects include:

* Improvements to I-15 from Las Vegas to Victorville, Calif., including widening the highway between Barstow and Victorville from two to three lanes each way.

* More funds to fix the I-15-U.S. 95 interchange, also known as the Spaghetti Bowl.

* Widening State Route 160 between Pahrump and Las Vegas.

* Finishing the Spring Mountain interchange at I-15.

* Building a bridge over the Colorado River as an alternative to Hoover Dam -- a $300 million-plus project.

* Improvements to the highway between Reno and Carson City.

The first version of ISTEA was a $151 billion plan that was considered revolutionary at the time. It expires at the end of this fiscal year, on Sept. 30, resulting in the need for the new ISTEA, a proposed $180 billion plan.

The package calls for 111,000 miles of roads and highways to be built, resurfaced, widened and otherwise made safer. Tens of thousands of bridges, some rusted and some made of wood, will be replaced or improved.

"I am working hard to educate my colleagues on the House Transportation Committee about Southern Nevada's extraordinary infrastructure needs and recommended policies which will treat us fairly in the process of updating ISTEA," said Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev.

He has established five "broad goals" for Nevada's glass of ISTEA:

* Make sure Nevada receives its fair share.

* Obtain funding for a proposed monorail system along the resort corridor.

* Implement technology that will target auto emission pollution at the source.

* Ensure that federal fuel taxes are used specifically for transportation infrastructure.

* Streamline regulations so transportation dollars can be spent quickly and flexibly.

"I view Nevada's unparalleled growth as the issue," Ensign said. "The formula must recognize that no other state is coping with an infrastructure crisis on the same scale."

But critics say such posturing is the very reason they stick the pork-barrel legislation label on ISTEA.

Political watchdog groups point to the enormous size of the House committee -- the largest in congressional history with one of every seven House members on it. Ensign is not one of them.

They say the monster committee will bite off a hog's share of the taxpayers' bacon and drag it home to their districts to show it off as a trophy to voters.

Proponents of ISTEA, however, say charges of pork barreling may be premature because the bill is yet to be structured.

Supporters say 85 percent of the 1991 ISTEA went to the states with no strings attached and 10 percent went to the secretary of transportation with no restraints on how it should be spent, leaving just 5 percent that went through the members of Congress -- hardly enough fat to call pork.

Other critics say the size of the committee is disproportionate to the importance of the issue. After all, this fight is over transportation money, not world peace, global hunger, entitlements, defense spending or reducing the federal debt.

To put the matter in an even more glaring perspective, the annual federal budget is about $1.69 trillion, about $36 billion of which is for transportation. This means that the largest House committee actually oversees about 2.2 percent of the budget.

Reauthorizing ISTEA pits advocates of transportation spending against deficit hawks, highway interests against supporters of bike trail funding and advocates of mass transit and, perhaps most importantly, states against states.

States that appear to be in the greatest need are those in the Northeast, where harsh winters and massive congestion chew up already crumbling roadways, and those in sparsely populated Western states like Nevada that do not have the tax base to maintain highways that are largely used by out-of-staters.

However, another viewpoint is that Congress should direct dollars to the areas that contribute the most gas tax revenue to the federal Treasury, such as California, and to many Southern and Midwestern states.

Representatives from those states argue that they now receive as little as 80 cents for every $1 they remit in gas taxes to the Highway Trust Fund.

"That is where it will be real difficult this time," Reid said. "Nevada is a state that has gotten much more than it has put into the fund."

GANNETT NEWS SERVICE, Scripps Howard News Service and Congressional Quarterly contributed to this report.