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New bill: $900K less for county
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11th-hour switch will cut stimulus for transportation What the feds giveth, the state taketh away. In a reversal of fortune for the Del Norte Local Transportation Commission, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed legislation that effectively reduced the amount of federal economic stimulus money the agency expects to receive by almost $900,000. The law changes the way $835 million in stimulus money will be distributed from the state to regional transportation agencies, and it now forces local officials to revisit a list of road projects they approved for funding under the previous guidelines just last week. “It’s an incredible waste of resources,” Del Norte Local Transportation Commission Executive Director Tamera Buchanan said Monday. “We throw away our mountain of paperwork and start over.” For the past couple weeks, transportation authorities worked under the assumption they would receive about $1.5 million in stimulus money through the State Transportation Improvement Program. This funding mechanism allowed the California Transportation Commission to adjust the amount each jurisdiction could receive based on merit, meaning Del Norte County could either get more or less than its estimated share.
Officials scrambled to meet a March 27 deadline to submit projects to
the state commission. They even held a couple of special meetings to
ensure they met this target date. But the day after the Local
Transportation Commission approved a resolution with a list of priority
projects, it all changed with the stroke of a pen.
“The $1.5 million was on its way through existing legislation,” Buchanan said. “Then hours before the deadline new legislation passed and the governor signed it into law.” This new legislation is meant to streamline the process for allocating the money California has received for transportation projects under the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to local transportation agencies. “This is about getting the stimulus dollars out to projects quickly and providing jobs as soon as we can,” California Department of Transportation Director Will Kempton said in a statement Friday. “This legislation allows projects to start well ahead of schedule, which will put people back to work sooner.” With the enactment of the new law, regional transportation agencies will now receive more than 60 percent of the $2.57 billion that has been allocated to California, resulting in local jurisdictions receiving approximately $1.6 billion. Of that amount, $771 million has already been distributed to regional agencies through a previous apportionment, in which Del Norte County received around $626,000. The problem, according to Buchanan, is that the new law, while making the paperwork process less burdensome for local agencies, “doesn’t work so well for rural communities” because of the different formula used to allocate money to the various regions. “We’ve just lost $900,000, ballparking, through a paperwork process,” she said. “Most of that loss goes to urban areas.” Del Norte County is now set to receive $671,135 instead of the $1,548,000 that was once believed to be heading here. That amount severely restricts the project list the Local Transportation Commission approved last week, especially considering the top priority was $1 million of work to Fred Haight Drive in Smith River from U.S. Highway 101 to First Street. While the cut in federal funding doesn’t necessarily mean the projects, such as the one on Fred Haight Drive, won’t move forward in the future with funding from the state, Buchanan said, the drastic reduction in money will force officials to juggle their priorities and reconfigure a new list by a June deadline. “We’re happy for the $600,000. We do think it will create jobs and it’s valid work for the economic stimulus,” she said. “It’s just that we expected the $1.5 million.” Buchanan was not the only local official who was upset by the news. The change in legislation blind-sided County Supervisor Mike Sullivan, vice chairman of the Local Transportation Commission. He said Monday he was frustrated with the state legislature for completely changing the process in the twilight hour, and as a result yanking away money that could be well-spent in Del Norte County. “We’re the redheaded stepchild of Sacramento,” Sullivan said. “I really question how many legislators actually know that Del Norte County is in California.” Other local jurisdictions are also seeking money from Obama’s economic stimulus plan, including the Crescent City Harbor and the Del Norte Unified School District. |
