By U.S Conference of Mayors Transportation and Communications Chair Fort Worth Mayor Kenneth L. Barr
April 28, 2003

As Congress prepares to renew the nation's TEA-21 law, mayors are stepping forward to demand that more of their communities' gas tax dollars return to their local areas where local decision-makers can address the transportation needs of the future. We want more say over the use of TEA-21 dollars because we are in a better position to deliver what taxpayers' want — expanded transportation options within our communities and regions, particularly improved public transit and other investments that combat traffic congestion more efficiently and more immediately.

This is not your typical state vs. local power struggle. This is about what level of decision-makers — state transportation bureaucracies or local elected officials — are best positioned to respond to what the public is seeking. Mayors believe it is time to recognize the limitations of states to effectively engage the public on needed transportation investments, and to move on. Increasing resource commitments to local decision-makers is simply another step in the continuum of what ISTEA started in 1991. It is a step federal policy must take if we are to make progress on the many local transportation challenges before this nation.

Historically, we know that the federal government has invested most of its federal resources in state transportation departments, a level of government that, for the most part, owns and operates the smaller share of our nation's transportation assets, largely state highway facilities and mostly larger highways at that. This approach has limitations because too often it simply encourages state DOTs to operate out of self-interest — invest in what you already own. In effect, states generally chose to hold closely the many billions of federal transportation dollars that have been allocated to them, more than $200 billion over the last ten years, and thus too often choke off opportunities for the funds to be used by local decision-makers who can visualize more readily and execute more effectively transportation solutions for an area.

Contrast this with my reality as a mayor of Fort Worth and chair of the Conference's Transportation and Communications Committee. Fort Worth, as most local governments, directly or through specialized regional providers, own and operate virtually all other transportation assets — highways as well as local roads and streets, rail transit and bus systems, sidewalks, trails, bikeways, and even train stations, port and airport facilities. In addition, local officials are the best equipped to make sense out of development patterns and the land uses that make the best use of taxpayers' dollars. So it is local officials who are responsible for most of the transportation systems and who must integrate these systems with future development.

As mayors, we have come to realize that federal law heaps billions upon billions of dollars on state transportation departments who are not in touch with local transportation issues. Continuing with this approach will not move us to the transportation solutions that the public expects and needs. Mayors from around the country want to change this in the next legislation.

We start the debate with a federal program structure that today delivers only a modest amount of resources to local areas. Currently, TEA-21 provides funding certainty only to metropolitan areas with a population of 200,000 or more. The process is known as "suballocation" of funding to these areas. This allocation directly to local areas represents about 6 cents of every federal highway dollar, a woefully modest allocation of resources to areas that represent more than one-half of the nation's population and an even bigger share of the nation's jobs, personal income and overall economic output. To put it in its simplest terms, U.S. metropolitan areas get to make decisions only on about ten cents on every transportation dollar they generate.

In my own local area, the suballocated funds to the Forth Worth/Dallas metropolitan area are about two and one-half cents on a dollar. This level of commitment is to a region of Texas that in recent years has accounted for about 40 percent of all of the state's new jobs. If we look at the core programs and subprograms of TEA-21, there is not one area where the nation's metropolitan areas receive funding commitments from the states that exceed the population shares of these areas, including the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) areas. In most areas, the share they receive is less than what they generate.

For these reasons and others, mayors believe that TEA-21 must dramatically improve the flow of gas tax dollars their citizens send to Washington directly and return these resources to local decision-makers who with the public are in the best position to combat effectively the many transportation challenges before us — traffic congestion, improved transit services, expanded rail transit, air quality problems or improvements to intercity passenger and freight needs. We can, and will, make more progress on these concerns when we pursue an agenda in Congress that further empowers local officials.

Let's begin by including strong suballocation provisions in TEA-21 that give back the gas tax dollars to local entities who know best the local transportation problems and solutions.