On March 12, President Clinton and new U.S. DOT Secretary Rodney Slater unveiled NEXTEA, the National Economic Crossroads Transportation Efficiency Act. NEXTEA, with a few twists, would continue the profoundly intermodal and environmentalist tradition of the existing legislation, the Intermodal Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA, pronounced "ice tea"), which expires Sept. 30.

Clinton's proposal would authorize a six-year surface transportation program at $175 billion over six years. The proposal would increase funding by 11 percent through 2003. New legislation must be enacted by Oct. 1, or the federal highway program will grind to a halt.
 

ISTEA under attack

But this year, ISTEA's elements are under fire by a highway establishment which smells blood in an age of upheaval. To its credit, ISTEA brought with it much higher levels of transportation funding. But it also contains elements that have inflamed many in the highway construction community.

ISTEA permits gas tax money to be spent on a wide range of non-roadbuilding-related end uses, such as subsidies for mass transit and high-speed rail, and transportation "enhancements", which can include tourist facilities, and even day care centers adjacent to mass transit stops.

ISTEA's interaction with the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 can obstruct highway capacity improvements in air pollution nonattainment areas. And by its sending gas tax money directly to a metropolitan area to spend on roads or on transit, as it chooses, ISTEA sidesteps state DOTs and has miffed some of them.

The reaction against ISTEA has led some lobbyists to proclaim that 1997 is the year for a highways-only bill, or HOTEA ("hot tea"). Leading that effort is the Transportation Construction Coalition (TCC), an alliance made up of more than a dozen national organizations representing all private sectors of the transportation construction industry. It has strongly pro-highway goals for the next surface transportation act.

In the meantime, donor states -- those states which send more money to the federal program than they get back -- are demanding a higher rate of return. Their complaints get lip service in the Clinton Administration's NEXTEA, with slightly higher minimum allocation ratios. 
 

Dumping federal program

But other states want to limit, or eliminate the federal program altogether. They are so repelled by what they see as the degeneration of the federal program into a goodie box for special interests -- with the U.S. government taking its own cut for redistributing gas tax money back to the states with strings attached -- that they see no benefit in its continuation.

Known as "devolution", the concept exists in at least two permutations. A moderate devolution of the federal road program to the states was introduced in summer of 1996, and is known as STEP 21, for Streamlined Transportation Efficiency Program for the 21st Century. STEP 21 attempts to solve the problems of donor/donee inequity, while maintaining a moderate federal presence.

Near the end of the 104th Congress last fall, the Transportation Empowerment Act of 1996 (TEA 1996) was introduced by Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio), and Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.). After a two-year transition, the act would lower the federal gas tax dedicated to the trust fund from 14 cents to 2 cents, and allow dozens of federal programs to expire while eliminating others. The remaining two cents would continue to fund a core federal program, including interstate maintenance and federal lands, and more. Kasich and Mack reintroduced the bill as TEA II this year.
 

Reauthorization endangered

Bringing this furor into focus was American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) executive director Frank Francois, who in late March warned that unless proponents of competing reauthorization concepts can get together, there may be no reauthorization of federal surface transportation by Sept. 30.

Francois reviewed some of the proposals that are on the table, including 

• NEXTEA, from the Clinton Administration, introduced in the Senate as S.468, described above
• STEP 21, introduced in the Senate as S. 335, described above 
• ISTEA Works!, a Northeastern states' proposal -- primarily urban states with intense transit interests, and "donee" states -- which would retain ISTEA and its distribution formulas, and
• STARS 2000, for Surface Transportation Authorization and Regulatory Streamlining Act 2000, being drafted by Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Dirk Kempthorne (R-Idaho), that reflects the needs of low-population Western states. Their bill would call for full use of the Highway Trust Fund to allow annual highway spending of some $26 billion. 

Kempthorne has noted that under the administration's formula, 10 Western states would receive a smaller percentage of federal highway funding than under current law. Those states are Arizona, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming.

Other states with decreasing percentages under the administration's formula are Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Nebraska. 
 

• TEA II, the Transportation Empowerment Act of 1997, the Mack/Kasich radical devolution bill described above, and 
• The Highway Trust Fund Integrity Act, introduced by Sens. John Chafee (R-R.I.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.) to set yearly highway spending at the level of taxes paid into the Highway Account of the Highway Trust Fund in the previous year.

The senators' proposal ensures that HTF money will be used exclusively for roads and bridges and will result in a significant increase in the overall pot of highway improvement money available to Missouri and other states. The Bond/Chafee proposal establishes new budget rules for the trust fund, to ensure that highway programs are fully funded and deficit neutral.