Advocate Summary

Issue:  Smart Growth and Transportation Reauthorization
Advocate:  House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure - Subcommittee 		        on Highways and Transit – Majority Office - Levon Boyagian
Date of Interview: 7/15/02

Basic Background
There’s going to be opposition from the conservative members on Smart Growth, in terms of planning how cities and towns are going to grow, I know my chairman, Mr. Petri’s philosophy to let the local communities and states determine how they are going to grow, not have congress force down their throat any sort of particular plan or any particular way these communities should grow. The census was just conducted and they’ve re-tooled some of the major urban areas, in terms of who is now considered to be part of an urban zone, and that’s causing problems in the transit area for us that we will hopefully deal with and remedy by the time this year is over. I don’t know how it’s going to show up in the re-authorization, we’re at a point right now where were just having hearings. Mr. Young wants to introduce a reauthorization bill early next year. In terms of what I think are going to be a major issue, I don’t know if this is going to be a major issue, but for my guys, my Republican guys, I don’t know where the Democrats are going to come from, but the thing that is going to be the most challenging for us right now I trying to figure out where we are going to get more money for the programs. Everybody wants a new program nobody wants to give up an old program, or an existing program, the needs of infrastructure in this country have been calculated to be around 50 to 60 billion dollars annually and we’re only up around thirty right now, so that’s 20 billion dollars per year that I’m going to have to find over the next six years, and it’s going to be really challenging. So one of the issues is going to be do we raise the gas tax, do we index the gas tax do we do some sort of innovating financing that leverages federal dollars, there’s the ethanol question, are they going to continue to get the subsidy that they get, the tax break that they get right now, they don’t pay their full share of fuel taxes right now. Some of the other issues that are going to be on the table is streamlining, whether it’s going to focus primarily on the environmental permitting process, whether we’re going to get into the planning system on how MPOS which are metropolitan planning organizations as well as rural areas – are they going to stream line the planning process right now there are some federal requirements that are too cumbersome and they add delay, and when you add delay you add cost. So there’s going to be a streamlining provision. It’s going to be a matter of how far the members want to go with that. There’s going to be member projects, there always are. There’s going to be a lot of issues as well that are unknown at this point because members are going to have new ideas. And Amtrak is always going to try to get a piece of the highway trust fund but it’s been resisted in the past and I think it will continue to be resisted, they’re getting loans to keep them going for a few months at a time these days. Basically though, like I said, this bill revolves around money, and if there’s enough of it to go around then members can have their new projects and new programs. And there will be give and take on this bill. It is a very big bill, you’re going to have the conservatives way out on the right and the liberals way out on the left and we’re going to have to find a place in between. The members that are more conservative are gong to have to take some of the stuff, what the folks out on the left want. But this bill is a big bill, and it has a lot of momentum behind it and we’ll see where it goes.  Hopefully we’ll have this thing passed before the end of the fiscal year next year. The other big issue, aside from the money, is the way that money is treated. 

Prior Activity on the Issue 
Not applicable. 

Advocacy Activities Undertaken
Not applicable. 

Future Advocacy Activities Planned
Not applicable. 

Key Congressional Contact(s)/Champions
Mr. Petri is a big fan of roads, and most of the members like to build roads, their constituents all drive on them, some member just more than others, but some members are more prone to – Mr. Oberstar is a big fan of transit, not that Mr. Young’s not, it’s just that transit systems aren’t cheap, they do not contribute to the highway trust fund. I don’t think there’s a member of congress that does not like roads, I think it’s just personally, if they have a philosophy that differs from others, some want to focus on roads, some want to focus on transit. I wouldn’t say there’s a member of congress that hates transit, they realize in many cases it’s the price of doing business around here you have to give some money to transit and if you’re a champion of highways then obviously you fall more on the side of wanting more money for highways but a lot of their constituents ride the bus and ride the transit systems. So I don’t think you’re ever going to find a member of congress that’s trying to kill transit all together, it’s just that some lean a bit more toward roads, I’d have to do more research on it to name names though. 

Targets of Direct Lobbying
Not applicable. 

Targets of Grassroots Lobbying
Not applicable. 

Coalition Partners: Names/Participants
But the states love it, all the state DoTs love it, the mayors, the governors, because they know how much money they are going to have and they know over a six month period to plan their projects. The American Road Transportation Building Association loves it, the building trades, the labor groups love it, because obviously there’s a guaranteed amount of money coming out, states know they can plan for it, both union and non-union shops know that there’s going to be work out in the future. And for a lot of these groups the more money out on the street building highways and bridges and roads, those folks will have jobs, they’ll be employed.

Other Participants in the Issue Debate
You have ASHTO which is the state highway departments, it’s basically all the DoTs at the state level, you have the electrical vehicle folks, the American Asphalt companies, you got the Highway Users Alliance which is an umbrella association of truckers, and you have your environmental groups as well that are out there, that want to make sure that any construction projects that are gong to be done in the future are going to have a proper environmental study done behind them, you have to comply with NEPA when you do a project. So all the environmental groups from way out left to some of the more moderate groups have a stake in this. You have each individual county and city, they all have lobbyists and representation here in town, because these projects are going to go into those areas so they have people that come and lobby on behalf whether it’s a small county in Alaska or the city of New York, so you’ve got a large contingency of state and local governments as well as the associated groups out there that have to do with transportation. You have the railroads in here because there’s a railroad title in reauthorization. It cuts across a lot of areas.  

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence
in terms of planning how cities and towns are going to grow, I know my chairman, Mr. Petri’s philosophy to let the local communities and states determine how they are going to grow, not have congress force down their throat any sort of particular plan or any particular way these communities should grow.

Right now highway dollars go into a trust fund and in T21 they provided special budgetary treatment for them, which basically put a fire wall around transportation spending and basically said this much is guaranteed, so the appropriators’ hands were tied to an extent. But the states love it, all the state DoTs love it, the mayors, the governors, because they know how much money they are going to have and they know over a six month period to plan their projects. The American Road Transportation Building Association loves it, the building trades, the labor groups love it, because obviously there’s a guaranteed amount of money coming out, states know they can plan for it, both union and non-union shops know that there’s going to be work out in the future. And for a lot of these groups the more money out on the street building highways and bridges and roads, those folks will have jobs, they’ll be employed. 

The worse thing that was done this year is the administration sent us a budget that slashed over 8 billion dollars, from this year’s level and I’ve heard that for every billion dollars it’s about 40,000 jobs, so you do the math, that’s a lot of people out of work. And it also effects the stock market because there are suppliers, concrete, steel, they have to have their orders ready to build the roads and the rails and transit as well as buses, if you wanted to order ten buses and then you all of the sudden found out that you wouldn’t get as much money, you might cut that to eight buses and that effects the people that make the buses, so it’s a trickle down effect. We had folks from Wall Street calling us up about it, you know “what’s gong to happen with the highway in 2003. 

We’re coming out of a recession, the stock market’s in the tank, transportation is a key cost of doing business. It’s all passed on to the consumer at the end of the day, you and I are paying transportation costs on anything you buy, because it’s produced someplace, it has to be shipped someplace and then shipped to the grocery store or the retail outlet and all through those phases, it’s moving on the roads. And it’s going to cost that guy to send something, and it all just gets passed on to us and if it’s more expensive to ship things, it’s going to be more expensive on the consumer to purchase things. And we’re living in a just-in-time economy right now where businesses no longer have these huge inventories, they don’ stock pile things anymore, some do, but the majority of them, you get an order, you get it on the truck or rail, you get it out there just in time to be sold or to be put into a car in Detroit or something like that. And if you don’t have the infrastructure to continue a just-in-time type of economy, it’s going to hurt. So transportation may not be the sexiest thing to talk about but it underlies the way that the economy grows or shrinks. You have to have a healthy transportation system. 

All the unions that are represented in the transit system are active, you’ve got the unions that do construction, the building trades, from the carpenters to the iron workers and fitters, the AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization of most of the labor groups is interested in this because the more projects that are being built, the more money that’s out on the street which means their guys have work. You’re always going to have debates about Davis-Bacon, the minimum wage issue. Currently most of the programs we do have a federal wage component on it. You’re going to have folks on the conservative side that say it makes the costs hire, and then you have liberal groups and the majority of Democrats, and actually a lot of the Republicans are pro-union republicans and feel that Davis-Bacon provides a good family-living wage for folks that do those sorts of jobs. So the AFL-CIO is active and the building trades, the ones out there pouring concrete for bridges and laying track and then you also have the rail employees too, the engineers and the state unions that are represented in a lot of the transit systems. Like folks in New York city, the bus drivers have a contract with the city so they have a vested interest in this. But it’s primarily an infrastructure bill so the building trades are the largest, the ones that really sit at the table and work with us in putting together the bill. 

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence
The transit system, as I understand it, I mean a lot of people use buses and metros and that sort of thing, they are a great way to move, however the American public have a love of the car. We have congestion reports every year, they don’t get any better and they’ve been doing this for a long time. Everybody hates congestion but they get in their cars and they use them, so that’s why you have the argument for more roads, people won’t get out of their cars. And many of the transit systems are at capacity right now. The metro here in Washington DC, even though their ridership is down, during peak hours they’re full of people, their jammin’. And buses obviously carry a lot of people as well. Expanding those systems will inevitably happen, you’re going to have your APTA American…(American Public Transit Association?) the Transit association I can’t think of what it stands for, but they want to grow their program, but the thing about transit, is that transit is paid for by highways. When you pay your taxes at the pump for a gallon of gas, it goes into the highway trust fund, a section of the highway trust fund is used for transit. Transit systems are fully subsidized, they have fares, but the majority if not all of those fares go into the daily operating costs, for new capital programs, people that drive their cars pay for it. So there’s the argument between the folks that like roads and the folks that like transit, there arguments on both sides but the roads and bridge folks make the argument they’re subsidizing, to the tune of twenty percent out of the highway trust fund for transit. If it wants to grow…at the end of the day, everything done up here is what the majority of members of congress want to do. If the majority of the members of congress want to grow it to thirty percent, if the votes are there, the votes are there. The transit system get some of the money from the highway trust fund and some of it’s money from the general fund, and you could come up with innovative financing where state and local governments can issue bonds to leverage federal dollars – issue bonds to raise the capital you need in the immediate future and then repay the bonds with federal dollars, so there are a lot of ideas about innovative financing, some of them are very complicated, some of them aren’t, there’s a lot of innovative financing on the roads right now. But at the end of the day, if you grow the program to fifty or sixty billion dollars a year, all boats rise. The big success of T21 was because the way the money was treated under the budgetary mechanisms, they released an addition 40 percent on highway spending in 1998, so that’s why a lot of states received a lot more money, a lot of programs were put into place. But like I said in the beginning I don’t know where I’m going to find even 40 percent more at this point and that will come back down to the members in terms of what they want to vote for, if they vote for a penny gas tax increase, ten cents. The states right now are doing a lot, there’s been a lot of state initiatives to raise the state gas tax, the state of California raises billions of dollars through the local sales tax initiatives. So the states, I think, at least a lot of the states, are doing their part. But the federal system, the interstate system, that’s a national system of roads that everybody uses. You’ll hear the arguments from some of the more conservative members of congress, “we shouldn’t be doing this, let’s let the states do it, let’s end the federal gas tax and let the states raise their state gas taxes and let them set the priorities.” What you’ll have then though is a disjointed system, you may have one state that wants to spend a lot of money on the interstate that goes through their state, but then the neighboring state doesn’t, then that starts to deteriorate and then you have this patchwork of roads, and some are well kept and others aren’t and so that’s why you have the national system. Right now 90.5 percent of the money that comes to the federal government goes back to the states for them to make their decisions, and then there’s a 9.5 percent that congress and the administration spend. A lot of the regulatory framework was obviously set up by congress and the Department of Transportation of how those funds can be used, who’s eligible for those funds. Eligibility might be a big issue, some of the environmental groups want more of the highway funds to be spent on bike trails and pull outs and rest areas, and then you have the Highway Users Alliance and they are dedicated to building more roads, they hate transit, they want to build roads. So you have a very diverse group of folks out there. It’s a big bill and you try to make everybody happy. The key to the last bill was the money, because you could pay for everything, you could make just about everybody happy. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do that this time around, that’s one of the challenges my staff has over here and our Senate counterparts. 

Targeted Arguments, Targets, and Evidence
None mentioned.

Nature of the Opposition
[The environmental groups are opposed to increased funding of highway expansion]

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition 
The environmentalists clean air, and they want clean water and I don’t think you’re going to find a member of congress that doesn’t want the same thing, but you’re also not going to be able to tell a community that their no longer going to be able to drive their cars and that they have to ride some sort of commuter rail or light rail system. The economy of our country doesn’t run on our transit system. You need roads to move trucks, trucks move goods. Ninety percent of all goods are on trucks. Railroad carries a lot of the bulk products, agriculture products, wheat, corn, that sort of stuff, but trucks move food and household goods, all the stuff that you and I find at the grocery store so you need roads. Their going to come with the agenda that they want to put more transit systems in, more buses in, they want more of a federal rule on how communities are going to be planned. And I know that Mr. Young and Mr. Petri don’t feel that that’s the role of congress. We set eligibility rules, it is a very, very flexible program, we’re not going to tell the states “all right the census indicates that you have half a million people and you’re going to have to build X amount of transit systems to accommodate those folks” – we just don’t do that and we’re not going to do that, we’re going to let the state and local folks make those decisions. But you know maybe there’s a demonstration project that comes into the bill, I don’t know, at this point it’s still a bit of the unknown. 

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition
None mentioned.

Targeted Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition (and Targets)
None mentioned.

Described as a Partisan Issue
Yes.

Venue(s) of Activity
House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation 

Action Pending or Taken by Relevant Decision Makers
We’re getting ideas and putting them together and we’ll start drafting the bill toward the end of this year. We have not actively sought out input by members of the committee yet, we will do that next year. We have heard from some of them. A lot of members of congress have district issues they want to take care of, whether it’s rehabilitating a bridge, or dangerous roads – widening them or getting more signage, that type of thing. In terms of a nationwide plan for smart growth, I don’t believe Mr. Young is going to take the initiative on that, in fact I can say 100 percent he’s not going to do that and neither is Mr. Petri. But it remains to be seen which member will. And maybe I don’t know smart growth as well as I should yet, but the government is not going to tell communities how to grow, they make those decisions on their own. When they plan these things they are required to put together a twenty year long range plan, that’s a requirement we give them and they also have to put together a five year plan. Those are reviewed by the secretary, but again there’s wide discretion what the secretary may approve and not approve. It remains to be seen if there’s going to be an initiative. And then there’s the politics of it, the House right now is in the majority, the Republicans are in the majority, the Senate is a toss up right now. If the Democrats are in charge of the Senate, if they are in charge here, if they are in charge in both, it’s going to be a different bill. If the Republicans maintain the majority in the House and they regain the majority in the Senate, it’s going to be a different bill. A lot of it is going to depend on who’s leading the charge on it. Mr. Young and Mr. Petri I hope, knock on wood, will be back here to chair the committee and we’ll get, and I’m only speaking for myself, but that we get a Republican majority in the Senate. But we’ll see what happens. 

Policy Objective(s) and Support for/Opposition to the Status Quo
This is the majority office of the subcommittee, the conservative members will generally be opposed to smart growth and federally regulating the growth of communities, they will also generally be for increased funding for highways. 

Advocate’s Experience: Tenure in Current Job/Previous Experience
I graduated in ’90 started working for Chairman Young in his personal office right out of college and then when he became chairman of Infrastructure I came over last year and then there were some staff changes and now I’m down here (Transit & Highway subcommittee).

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