[Vision2020] Stimulus May Pay to Repair Roads

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (February 28, 2009) Spokesman Review.

---------------------------------------------------------

Stimulus may pay to repair roads
Parameters surprise officials in Idaho
Betsy Z. Russell / Staff writer  
 
BOISE – Idaho may be able to use federal economic stimulus money for high-
priority needs like paving roads, state lawmakers learned Friday, rather 
than just for big “shovel-ready” construction projects.

That news was a surprise – the Idaho Transportation Board had prepared a 
list of eight “shovel-ready” projects that would take up the entire $181.9 
million Idaho stands to receive for highway infrastructure. Replacement of 
the deteriorating Dover Bridge on Highway 2 in Bonner County, a $40 
million project, is among the items on the list, which includes projects 
all over the state.

“What was surprising to me was the broadness of the language,” said state 
Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint. “There was clearly … a broader range of 
potential uses for the stimulus money than what we initially thought.”

The Idaho Transportation Board will hold a meeting Tuesday to re-address 
its stimulus spending plans, spokesman Jeff Stratten said Friday. “The 
staff has been analyzing the bill and they will be making a recommendation 
to the transportation board,” he said.

The board’s earlier list was created under the assumption that 
only “shovel-ready” capital projects would be covered. However, the $181.9 
million is for “highway infrastructure investment” that 
includes “construction, reconstruction, rehabilitation, resurfacing, 
restoration and operational improvements for highways.”

Legislative budget analyst Paul Headlee noted that the law appears to 
allow for some of the road maintenance and rehabilitation work that an 
audit of the Idaho Transportation Department said is needed. It requires 
half the money to be obligated within 120 days but gives up to a year to 
obligate the rest.

The stimulus also could pay for a maintenance management software system 
for the Transportation Department, a critical missing link in the 
department’s planning process that was identified in the recent state-
funded audit. 

Headlee said it appears such systems are specifically covered by the 
stimulus legislation. “Certainly pavement management is on there,” he said.

Keough said she and other lawmakers from Boundary and Bonner counties 
still see the Dover Bridge as a top priority for stimulus funding “because 
of the severity of the problem – that bridge has been slated for 
replacement for 10 years or more.”

Beyond that, she said, “The governor and the ITD board will have to help 
us figure out what the priorities are.”

The Legislature’s joint budget committee, which wrapped up a week of 
hearings on the stimulus Friday with an examination of transportation 
funds in the bill, also learned about one thing the stimulus bill can’t 
fund: Payoff of Idaho’s existing GARVEE bonds. The bonds are a special way 
of borrowing money against anticipated future federal highway allocations.

House Transportation Chairwoman JoAn Wood, R-Rigby, had suggested using 
stimulus money to pay off the bonds. She wanted to then take the money 
that would have gone to bond payments and put it into rural road 
maintenance. But the federal bill wouldn’t allow that.

The stimulus bill divides the $181.9 million into three categories:

•$121.9 million for projects in any geographic area.

•$54.6 million allocated to areas according to population density.

•$5.5 million for “transportation enhancements,” such as pedestrian and 
bicycle paths.

In addition to the $181.9 million for infrastructure, the stimulus bill 
will send Idaho $18.4 million for transit capital assistance, such as bus 
purchases. That money can’t go for operating costs, however. 

Sen. Nicole LeFavour, D-Boise, said because the state doesn’t fund 
operating costs for public transit systems, that could render it unable to 
use some of that money – local governments wouldn’t want to acquire buses 
they can’t afford to run.

There’s also bad news in the stimulus bill for one Idaho community and 
good news for the rest, Headlee told lawmakers: Top priority for the 
infrastructure money goes to “economically distressed” areas, and that 
definition fits all of Idaho except for one community, the Sun Valley-
Ketchum area.

---------------------------------------------------------

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"For a lapsed Lutheran born-again Buddhist pan-Humanist Universalist 
Unitarian Wiccan Agnostic like myself there's really no reason ever to go 
to work."

- Roy Zimmerman


---------------------------------------------
This message was sent by First Step Internet.
           http://www.fsr.com/