INSIDE WASHINGTON/States, locals battle for ISTEA

When it was passed in 1991, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act was hailed by local governments as the answer to their transportation woes. The $151 billion, six-year act radically altered the nation’s transportation system, giving local governments unprecedented authority in deciding how to use money targeted for highways, local roads and bridges and mass transit.

It was supposed to help fix the deplorable state of the nation’s transportation infrastructure and provide a jolt to the then-sluggish economy.

Since 1992, ISTEA has provided about $26 billion a year toward that end, money that comes from the 14.3 cent-a-gallon gasoline excise tax.

“One of ISTEA’s major accomplishments has been to bring local government officials into the project selection and funding process,” says Palm Beach County Commissioner Carol Roberts, who chairs the National Association of Counties transportation and telecommunications steering committee.

That may not be the case much longer. ISTEA is due to expire at the end of September 1997, and a number of political players want to use its reauthorization to remove local officials from the decision-making process.

Currently, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in cities and counties with populations over 200,000 have a say in how state funds are spent. Occasionally, states consult with MPOs representing smaller communities, but that is at their discretion.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials wants to raise the 200,000 threshold to 1 million. That may draw support from some in Congress who see it as a way to reduce red tape, says Roy Kienitz, assistant director of federal policy for the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a public interest group that works with cities and counties. Still, Kienitz is not convinced those “highway traditionalists,” as he calls them, will get their way. “The bottom line is it is the mayors who have access to their congressmen, not the state highway commissioners,” he says. “Who are those commissioners? They are nobodies.”

On the flip side, NACO and the National League of Cities want the 200,000 threshold to be lowered. “Some county officials in smaller metropolitan areas and rural areas have been invited to participate in project selection,” Roberts says. “But others have not.”

The overarching issue in any reauthorization is whether transportation funding should continue to be a federal responsibility, and, if so, how much of the gas tax should be targeted for that purpose. Some states rightly argue that they pay much more in gas taxes than they receive in highway, bridge and airport funding.

A number of those so-called “donor” states are supporting one or both of two radical reforms. Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) and Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio) have introduced the Transportation Empowerment Act, which sets out a three-year program during which the federal gas tax would be reduced to two cents per gallon and its use restricted to interstate highway maintenance. States would be expected to enact their own taxes to fund their transportation programs.

But donor states calling themselves the Step 21 Coalition are pushing to leave the 14.3-cent tax intact but divided into two funds. One of those would support state projects within the National Highway System, and the second would provide block grants to the states. Neither plan has local government support. “I don’t want to see a devolution of federal gas tax authority to the states,” Roberts says.

The author is the Washington correspondent for American City & County.