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April, 2008, Waterbury Record: “Transportation Bill Passes House”

Last week the Vermont House voted, unanimously, to pass the Transportation Bill – the most important legislation that I have been working on since the legislature convened in January. The adoption of H, 889 (known as the T-bill) sets forth the transportation budget for state fiscal year 2009, and includes several priorities that I have personally initiated within the House Transportation Committee.

The most significant change that the our committee made to the governor’s recommended transportation budget is the increase of transportation funds to town programs. The Governor’s proposed budget had reduced funding for the town bridge program by 20% over last year. When the state reduces funding for town programs, the towns must either delay projects or increase municipal property taxes to make up the difference. This is why we worked very hard to increase funding for towns. The House T-bill brings town bridge program funding back up to last year’s level, and adds funding to other town transportation programs, including: State Aid, the Class 2 Highway program, and the Town Highway Structures grant programs. These are all programs that are critical to the needs of our district, and that I know will make a big difference to our municipal budgets.

A significant policy directive within the T-bill is based on a proposal I initiated around bonding for future bridge maintenance and repair. As I have reviewed transportation budgets each year, along with VTrans reports on the status or our roads and bridges, I have become increasingly concerned that we are not preparing our state for the future. In fact, according to Vtrans data we continue to get farther and farther behind on bridge and road maintenance each year, which is costing taxpayers far more in the future.

Vermont is currently rated among the ten worst states in the nation for our proportion of deficient bridges. Over one-third of our state's more than 2,700 bridges are deemed by federal standards to be either “structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete”, or both. Looking to the future it is clear we are not making substantial progress on reducing the percentage of structurally deficient bridges.

Moreover, looking to the future, our road pavement will continue to get worse, not better. A quarter of our state roads are now rated by the state as being in very poor condition. If we merely continue with current funding levels, the state projects that nearly half of our roads will be rated in very poor condition in three years.

As the state gets further behind, with a growing backlog of projects to be done, and a declining revenue stream into the transportation fund, we are forced to delay projects, year by year – this at a time when construction cost inflation within the transportation sector is rising dramatically (20% last year). Meanwhile, the cost of borrowing money, has rarely been cheaper. Indeed a 30year bond through the municipal bond bank is currently sold with a 5.5% interest rate.

I believe that the current transportation crisis, coupled with the economic rationale for increasing our bonding for transportation, merits consideration and action. And this is why I pushed to have a proposal within the bill to direct the treasurer to contract with Wall Street to develop a significant bonding package for our bridges. This year we are creating the opportunity for advancing a significant financing package in time for the next year’s construction season.

I am very pleased that this proposal received unanimous support in the House. We have made a strong case for the need to address transportation infrastructure, before a tragedy forces us to take action. We now await the Senate’s response to the actions the House took in our T-bill.

As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Sincerely,

Sue Minter
Rep. Sue Minter
900 Maggie’s Way
Waterbury Center, VT 05677
sue@sueminter.com
244-7955

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