By Kevin McCarty
September 19, 2011

Conference of Mayors President Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa and mayors throughout the U.S. have been calling on Congress to enact timely and “clean” extensions of the nation’s surface transportation and aviation laws until such time as full authorization bills are enacted. The House and Senate responded by approving legislation providing for these extensions prior to a September 16 deadline.

The mayors’ efforts, and others, have grown more visible and vigorous in the wake of last month’s debacle when Congress adjourned for the August recess without extending programs and activities of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As a result, 4,000 agency employees were furloughed and hundreds of airport projects and the thousands of private sector construction jobs at these sites were suspended.

Seeking to avoid a repeat of this scenario for the much larger and even more economically'significant surface transportation program due to expire September 30, Villaraigosa called on mayors just before Labor Day to join with him and other Conference leaders to urge Congress to provide a timely extension of this important law.

As Congress reconvened after Labor Day, 165 mayors had joined together in writing to the top transportation leaders in Congress. “The clock is ticking. If such an extension is not signed by the President before September 30, the entire program will be suspended – as was the case recently with the FAA bill – threatening the loss of 1.8 million jobs and doing irreparable harm to our already crumbling infrastructure,” the letter states.

In the September 7 letter, the mayors said, “For generations both parties have recognized the need to construct and improve a national transportation network, and we built a world-class system that has moved goods and people efficiently for decades. Today, there is growing anxiety that for the first time in decades Congress could fail to fund our national transportation system.”

These efforts are attracting attention and showing results. President Barack Obama during a recent weekly radio address cited the mayors’ letter when he talked about the need for Congress to act on this transportation legislation. The House of Representatives voted unanimously September 13 to approve legislation (HR 2887) to extend the FAA law for four months until January 31, and the surface transportation law for six months under March 31. In his remarks during the floor debate, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (FL) noted that there was bipartisan and bicameral agreement to move forward with clean extensions of both program, with funding levels that follow current spending. Speaking to his efforts to enact new transportation legislation, Mica said, “So this should give us enough time to complete that (reauthorization) process and get that legislation before us.”

before us.”

Reminding his colleagues that pending House proposals assumed cuts of up to 34 percent in highway and transit funding, the Committee’s Ranking Minority Member Nick Rahall in his remarks during the House debate said, “The funding levels in the pending measure are far more preferable than what we are seeing proposed by Republicans on the Appropriations Committee.” Rahall expressed his hope that the 6-month extension would allow time to “come together and work to develop a long-term, robust surface transportation bill that keeps the nation economically competitive, meets the demands of the 21st century, and creates millions of family-wage American jobs.”

The Senate approved the measure September 15 on a 92-6 vote, sending it to the President for his signature. Senator Tom Coburn (OK) had stalled action on the measure, objecting to certain provisions of current law that have been in effect since 1991. Specifically, Coburn wants to strike the ten percent set-aside of Surface Transportation Program funds (roughly two cents of every federal highway dollar) for Transportation Enhancements, which among its 14 eligibilities allows funds to be expended on bicycling and pedestrian facilities in communities. Mayors with others had championed the creation of this program during debate on the 1991 ISTEA law as a means to promote more transportation alternatives.