Posted on 05/02/2017 11:52:22 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
As Minnesota leaders debate how much new money to put toward the state’s roads, they’re also fighting about a related issue: who should choose which roads get attention?
Ordinarily, the Legislature appropriates money for roads and bridges, and the Minnesota Department of Transportation decides how to spend the money. But bills in the Legislature this year take a different path: they order the MnDOT to do specific road projects. It’s a process called “earmarking,” and it could spark a showdown over road funding between the Republican-controlled Legislature and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton.
Behind the feud are bad feelings from some lawmakers about how MnDOT has chosen projects recently — as well as normal tensions between the legislative and executive branches and between Democrats and Republicans.
“When I was in the U.S. Senate I was a strong believer in earmarks. Now that I’m in the executive branch, I’m less enthusiastic,” Dayton said recently. He served a single term in the U.S. Senate from 2001 to 2007.
A list prepared by MnDOT identified a $1 million earmark in the House transportation budget and several earmarks worth more than $100 million in the Senate’s transportation budget. The two budgets are in the process of being combined into a single measure.
REPUBLICANS: MNDOT MESSING UP
State Sen. Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson, said MnDOT has been neglecting vital work such as safety upgrades to U.S. 12 in the western metro, which has had a series of safety issues in recent years.
“We in the Legislature have heard more and more from our constituents asking why MnDOT doesn’t get the job done in our particular area of the state,” said Newman, the chair of the Senate’s transportation committee.
Republicans, who control the House and Senate, also cite a review by the Office of the Legislative Auditor which found that “MnDOT’s standard process for selecting highway projects is not transparent” and that its process for non-standard projects can be worse: “inconsistent and subjective.”
Bills working through the House and Senate set aside money for specific projects, including U.S. 12 and U.S. 14 across southern Minnesota.
Newman said that in general, MnDOT should choose which projects get funded. But he said the Legislature needs to step in when the department falls short — as, he argues, it is now in a few very specific cases.
MNDOT: EARMARKS IRRATIONAL, UNFAIR
MnDOT Commissioner Charlie Zelle said the department’s selection process is the best way to select road projects and that the Legislature causes problems when it starts picking.
One problem he cited: road projects take lots of time and coordination to plan, and an earmark can mean a project gets funded years before it’s ready. He said many transportation projects lawmakers earmarked weren’t ready to go, while other shovel-ready projects were ignored.
Zelle acknowledged the audit had criticized MnDOT’s process, but he noted that the bulk of the criticism was directed at special programs, not MnDOT’s normal process for funding roads. He said it’s fairest for everyone when MnDOT picks projects.
“When you take one or two projects and leapfrog others, it creates resentments from those who have been waiting … and maybe have higher scoring projects,” he said.
That same audit that criticized MnDOT’s selection process also said legislative earmarks contribute to the problem.
CLASH LIES AHEAD
Earmarks aren’t new in Minnesota. Lawmakers have regularly directed funding for a range of local projects in periodic infrastructure bills. What Zelle said was newer and worse is directing funding for projects in the state’s trunk highway system.
The question of who should choose transportation projects isn’t just a theoretical debate. Republicans have put earmarks proposals into their transportation budgets — which need Dayton’s signature to become law. The governor has repeatedly criticized the Republican budgets for earmarking projects and could decide to veto the bills because of the earmarks.
On top of the process dispute, Dayton and Republicans have major differences over transportation policy. Both sides believe the state should put lots of new money into roads and bridges, but they disagree about how much new money, where it should come from and whether mass transit should also get funding.
The House and Senate will combine their budgets into single proposals later this month, then send them to Dayton to be signed or vetoed. Should Dayton veto transportation measures, lawmakers will have until the end of June to find a compromise that can satisfy all sides, or the state could go another year without major new funding for roads and bridges.
They’re lucky if the money actually goes to any roads. Usually pols sell the spending as going to roads, but then send the bulk of it to mass transit boondoggles, and people wonder why the roads never get better.
and bike paths.
Jerry Brown (Flush It) bribed CA state congressmen (and I said ‘men’ too) with promised projects in their districts, in return for their votes for the gas tax extortion.
Congressman Fong (R) pointed out that this is a direct, explicit violation of the California Highway Code.
When Fong pressed the point, a state bureaucrat admitted Fong was right, but the bill was ‘part of a larger picture’.
And traffic circles
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