Rural State Transportation Leaders Prefer Direct Federal Funding

Transportation leaders in sparsely populated states told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Wednesday that direct federal funding, rather than toll-driven public-private partnerships, is critical to addressing their surface transportation needs.Officials from Wyoming, West Virginia and other states echoed the skepticism of Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the committee's chairman, toward President Donald Trump's plan to spend about $1 trillion in infrastructure over ten years, relying primarily on the private sector for the funds. Barrasso noted that Trump's reliance on public-private partnerships to provide the funds would not work for rural states.Their populations are too small to support toll roads or other revenue-generating projects that are likely to attract investors, Barrasso said. "Funding solutions that involve public-private partnerships, as have been discussed by administration officials, may be innovative solutions for crumbling inner-cities, but do not work for rural areas," Barrasso said.Barrasso said direct federal spending is crucial to surface transportation. But he added that former President Barack Obama's "so-called stimulus bill" (PL 111-5) was "a major waste and didn't get anything accomplished" even as it increased the federal debt. Barrasso said he would not support a similar plan that involved increasing the deficit.Wyoming Transportation Director William Panos testified that the most helpful way to build and maintain surface transportation infrastructure in rural areas would be to distribute new money through formulas established in the 2015 highway bill. "P3s (Public-Private Partnerships) and other kinds of borrowing doesn't work in Wyoming, doesn't work in rural states," Panos said. "The formulaic system for delivering dollars to those states works. Yes, there could be improvements... but those systems do work. So enhancing monies to those formulaic delivery systems would be positive."Trump advisers Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, both of whom have been nominated for senior administration jobs, proposed during the campaign about $167 billion in equity to leverage the full $1 trillion. Their plan appears to rely on the private sector for the equity and would attract the money by offering a tax credit.Barrasso's focus on direct federal spending won support from the panel's Democrats, whose caucus introduced its own $1 trillion infrastructure plan last month. Barrasso said he would work with the Senate Finance Committee toward that goal. He mentioned repatriated corporate income held overseas as a potential source of money for an infrastructure package.Ranking member Thomas Carper, D-Del., called repatriation a source of "one-time" money for particular projects. He also promoted the idea of raising fuel taxes, the primary source of revenue for the Highway Trust Fund that disperses highways and transit funding by formula.