Nevada delegation sees fight over highway funds

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2005 | 9:52 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawmakers are bracing for battle this year in Congress over federal highway money. At stake for the state is at least $1 billion for federal transportation projects.

This week President Bush called on Congress to set aside $284 billion for highway and transit projects as part of his $2.5 trillion federal budget proposal.

Congress sets the nation's highway and transit projects budget on a six-year cycle as part of legislation dubbed the Safe, Accountabile, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Act, or SAFETEA. The money for the projects comes from a Highway Trust Fund, which collects 18.4 cents in federal gas taxes on every dollar spent.

Lawmakers were to have re-authorized a six-year budget that should have begun Oct. 1, 2003 and expired in 2009.

But Congress badly missed its deadline. In fact, lawmakers spent all of last year debating how much to spend and still have not set a SAFETEA budget. Since 2003, lawmakers six times have simply frozen funding at former levels, most recently through May 2005.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, was expected to introduce a bill as early as today that matches Bush's call for $284 billion, although Young and others have called for a much higher SAFETEA budget since 2003.

It's not clear how much Nevada would receive under the Bush plan. Under a plan that called for $375 billion last year, the state would have reaped more than $1.7 billion for highway and road projects and $250 million for transit projects, according to Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

At a budget briefing Monday, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta urged lawmakers to act promptly within the next few months to approve the $284 billion proposal and to not tack on a "proliferation of set-asides" -- pork projects -- for their districts.

Nevada has two members on the front line of the battle over highway money -- one on each side of the aisle -- who sit on the Transportation panel's subcommittee on highways.

Berkley agreed last year to vote in committee for a $275 billion bill, knowing that it was compromise with President Bush, which had advocated $256 billion.

"Of course I would like it to be higher, but this seems to be a compromise worked out with the White House," Berkley said. She said she would push for a higher budget, but she said it was important for Congress to promptly approve a re-authorization to increase funding for Nevada projects stuck on 2003 funding levels.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., side-stepped a question about whether he advocates a higher funding level than $284 billion. He added that he had requested money for a number of Nevada projects and had Young's support.

"I can't tell you if it should be $284 billion, $285 billion, $286 billion," Porter said. "I'm going to continue to push for money for Nevada."

Much of the debate over transportation funding centers on the issue of "donor" versus "recipient" states. Donor states pay more money in gas taxes than they receive in money for road projects. Donor states are arguing for at least 90 percent of the gas tax they pay.

Nevada is a recipient state, but barely. It received $1.02 back on every gas tax dollar it sent to Washington in 2003, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

The state has a number of projects that rely on federal funding planned for the 2006 fiscal year, including continued work on Interstates 15 and 95 and on the Hoover Dam bypass bridge.

State officials are carefully eyeing Congress to see how much lawmakers ultimately approve for highway and transit projects, Nevada Department of Transportation Director Jeff Fontaine said. More is better, he said.

"We want to see a long-term, well-funded bill that provides as much of an increase to Nevada as we can possibly get," Fontaine said. "The federal funding is an important component of our program."

There is likely to be some debate between the House and Senate over the amount of money included in the SAFETEA legislation. Last year the Senate argued for more than Bush requested, eventually approving $301 billion in spending.

This week Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the $284 billion figure was "inadequate."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has not decided how much money the Senate Democrats will argue should be included in SAFETEA, spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said.