An excerpt from BikeWalk.org newsletter (Centerlines #166):
Commentary by Bill Wilkinson
RECISIONS — SHOW ME WHERE THE MONEY WENT!
Last October, Tom Murtha of the Chicago MPO posted a question on one of
the listservs about how the various State DOTs have dealt with
Congressionally-mandated recisions for federal transportation funds.
Periodically, the Congress will direct that the amount of funds
authorized be reduced by some percentage. The FHWA allows each State
DOT to decide on its own what programs to take the required dollars
from to meet their required recision total. What this means is that if
they so choose, a State DOT can take ALL of it from CMAQ or
Transportation Enhancements or Safe Routes to School or whatever, and
not touch other programs.
And, would you believe that this is exactly what some State DOTs opted
to do? Shocking.
Now, back to Tom’s question: how have the various DOTs been
distributing their recisions; that is, how many dollars did they take
from each of their various federal programs? Well, this seemed like a
pretty straightforward bit of data and certainly something of
significance, so I spent some time looking for this info on the FHWA’s
web site. Nada. So, I sent John Fegan, USDOT/FHWA bike/ped program
manager, a request for help. John replied, “Let me look into it and
I’ll let you know what I find.”
He did: “I did look into this further. What I found out was that FHWA
does not publish a list of how each State chose to reduce funding to
deal with the recision requirement.” Say what?
Here, in part, is what I wrote back to John: “I wanted to let you know
that I am very bothered about this. Such information is of great
importance to many folks and should be a matter of readily available
public record. For the FHWA to even suggest it is not tracking such
info is a breach of fiscal responsibility, and this is likely not the
case. So, it can only mean that FHWA does not want to share this
information with the public.
“This position isn’t going to stand. If you wish, feel free to let
whomever know that I’m going to bring this to the attention of
Congressman Oberstar and his committee staff. I’ll wait a couple of
weeks, so do let me know if there is any change of heart at FHWA on
this matter. It would be nice to simply have the FHWA do the right
thing — that is, make all such data readily available on its web site
— and avoid all this other bother.”
Update: no further response from John or FHWA. Later this week I plan
to write to Congressman Oberstar, present the issue and problem, and
ask for the Committee’s assistance to get the FHWA to do what they
should have already done. If this is the kind of data that you or your
agency would like to have access to, you might want to let the
Committee know that, too.
Meanwhile, let’s all plan to keep a closer eye on the FHWA, AASHTO, and
the State DOTs. They don’t necessarily share our priorities and
agenda. — BW
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