Nevada gets big piece of highway bill pie

Friday, May 22, 1998 | 9:47 a.m.

Congress is ready to vote today on the six-year, $204 billion transportation bill, known as the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, or ISTEA.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., serving on the House-Senate conference committee responsible for dividing the money among the states, worked till early this morning on the proposed amounts.

Reid said that under the committee's final agreement, Nevada will receive $190 million a year over the next six years.

"This bill will guarantee Nevada its fair share of highway funds," Reid said. "My biggest challenge in negotiating this bill was educating other members of the committee about our rapid growth and our need for a larger share of the pie. I believe we were successful in this regard. Under the bill we have negotiated, Nevada will get back $1.14 for every $1 that we pay into the highway trust fund."

The proposed amount for Nevada represents an increase of about 60 percent from Congress's last transportation bill.

"This is testimony to our rapid growth," Reid said. "These increased funds will allow the state to complete its priority projects and will allow us to fund several special programs."

The special programs include the widening of Craig Road in North Las Vegas for $2 million, the corridor improvement project in Henderson for $7 million, the reconstruction of the interchange at Sahara Avenue and I-15 for $5 million, the widening of Interstate 15 from the Strip to the state line for $1.875 million, and Reid's highest priority project, the widening of I-15 in San Bernardino, Calif., for $24 million, which will facilitate the continued high flow of tourists from that area to Nevada. The $24 million was requested by both Nevada and California.

Nationally, the bill aims to give states a fairer share of federal gasoline tax money, while not imposing a national drunken driving standard of 0.08 percent blood alcohol that had been sought by the Senate and the White House.

Expected House and Senate passage today would speed the measure to the White House for President Clinton's signature. Enactment would free states across the nation from concerns there would be no federal money for summer construction projects.

Congressional aides worked well into the night Thursday on the final details, particularly on formulas for distributing the approximately $168 billion in highway money and $36 billion in transit money.

"I'm extremely happy and extremely tired," House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa., said. He said the deal was in place "unless something falls out of bed."

"This compromise represents a good solid bill and it is centered on the concepts of innovation, safety and environmental protection," said the lead Senate negotiator, Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Chafee, R-R.I. "We've overcome a very big challenge."

At stake was the need to get a bill passed by both the House and Senate today, before Congress leaves for a weeklong recess. There was agreement that further delay could seriously affect state construction plans.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said earlier that he had a commitment from the negotiators to finish their work because "they know that we need to complete this legislation before we go home for the Memorial Day recess."

Shuster said the final tasks were fine tuning the distribution formula and refining language assuring that in the future all the taxes paid by motorists at the gas pump would go into highway building.

The last big issue resolved was mass transit funding, with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., and the Clinton administration scoring some success in their demand that mass transit get a larger percentage of the package.

The bill was more than $20 billion above the money set aside in last year's balanced budget agreement for transportation, and finding ways to offset the extra spending had been a major headache for the negotiators.

Much of the money would come from a program to give veterans who took up smoking in the military disability compensation for tobacco-related diseases. Veterans groups met Thursday with House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders to protest that decision, but were told the Clinton administration was fully behind ending the tobacco program.

"Congress has seen fit to reach into the very heart of what the VA is, and that is the compensation program," said Dave Gorman of the Disabled American Veterans.

He said the lawmakers did promise to come up with $1.5 billion to $2 billion for veterans education programs.

There were other disgruntled groups: Environmentalists were fighting language in the bill they said restricted the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to reduce air pollution: and highway safety advocates were unhappy that the negotiators had chosen a weaker House approach on combatting drunken driving.

The Senate wanted a stringent national standard for blood alcohol levels for drunken driving, but the House chose rather to use economic incentives, not punitive measures, to get states to crack down on drunken driving.

The administration, which only a week ago was threatening to veto the bill because it spent too much money, was generally favorable to the final product.

In the original bills, the Senate asked for $214 billion and the House $217 billion, compared with about $155 billion spent during the previous six-year program.

The administration's concern was that social programs would be sacrificed in order to find more money for highways.

The final bill retained the 1,500 special highway projects that the House named in its bill, but the money for those House projects was reduced from $9.35 billion to $7 billion. The Senate was given control over the other $2.35 billion.