U.S. Capitol’s rift hits home with stall on road funds

An article by Leslie Shepard    No Comments

The Oakland County Federal Aid Task Force, the panel that oversees the process of awarding federal transportation dollars to specific road projects in the county, will be holding its annual meeting Tuesday, Feb. 7; but atypical to the task force’s standard procedures, it will not be selecting any future road projects for funding due to the U.S. Congress’ inability to pass a federal highway transportation funding bill.

The task force’s Funding Committee typically meets each February to select road projects that will receive federal funding. The federal dollars are awarded for projects planned four years into the future.

“The task force members will not be awarding project (funds) this year because they don’t know how much they will be getting from the feds,” said Road Commission for Oakland County (RCOC) Spokesperson Craig Bryson. “They would have selected projects for 2016 based on what SEMCOG (the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments) tells them on how much they are getting, but there’s been no federal highway bill passed.”

According to SEMCOG Transportation Director Carmine Palombo, the previous federal road funding act reached its sunset date two years ago, but the U.S. House and Senate are divided on how to approach the funding.

“The Senate wants a two-year bill with no new money, meaning flat revenues, whereas the House wants a five-year bill with 30 percent less dollars in it each year than we’re receiving,” Palombo said. “There is no agreement, so they keep extending the legislation.”

Historically, the Oakland County Federal Aid Task Force receives funding from two sources: the Surface Transportation Program (STP), federal dollars awarded to each region based on a formula; and the Transportation Economic Development Fund (TEDF), a combination of state and federal dollars intended to address congestion caused by economic developments.

Federal funds are doled out by the Federal Highway Transportation Committee that uses a formula to divvy up funding to each state. SEMCOG then administers that formula here and allocates dollars to each county.

“Until we get a highway bill from Washington D.C., we simply don’t know how much money we’ll have available for future road projects,” said RCOC Managing Director Dennis Kolar. “As a result, we cannot select projects to receive those funds.”

When the amount of available funding is known, the committee will solicit proposed projects from the RCOC and communities in Oakland County to compete for those dollars.

The projects will then be ranked using an objective point system that gives the most points to those projects that will do the most to improve motorist safety and reduce traffic congestion. Then, only the projects that receive the most points receive funding. Every year, numerous worthy projects remain unfunded because needs far exceed the available funding.

“This is a ‘worst-first’ funding formula,” Kolar said.

A new deadline of March 23 has been set for Congress to vote on the transportation funding issue.

“They could extend the legislation or have a new bill in place, which is very unlikely, but possible,” Palombo said.

Other items on the Oakland County Federal Aid Task Force meeting agenda include: filling a vacant committee position; proposing that Martin Parkway in Commerce Township be added to the National Functional Classification system (ensuring this new road is eligible for federal funds in the future); and adjusting the project lists for which federal funds were previously designated for 2012 and 2013 to account for anticipated reductions in funding levels in each of those years.