Government Affairs Update
January 2020
FEDERAL UPDATE
Trump administration proposes NEPA Rollback – Last week President Trump staged a press event, surrounded by Cabinet secretaries, industry leaders and workers in hard hats to announce a major regulatory rollback of NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, which was signed into law by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970.
Some of the proposed changes would include limiting the NEPA process only for federally-funded projects, and not privately-funded and managed projects; and capping the federal agency review process at two years. Details will be releases by federal agencies in coming days, after which a 60-day public comment period will open.
Alongside the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act in the 1970s, NEPA was signed into law to tackle the rampant air and water pollution in almost every community across America. The focus of NEPA has been to mandate that federal agencies go through a process to weigh the potential of projects to harm the air, land, water, wildlife, or the public. It is part of the day-to-day processes for transportation engineers across the nation, who must perform the NEPA-mandated analyses at the beginning of each infrastructrure project, and get approvals, which might take years to get resolved for larger projects.
Draft of New House Transportation Reauthorization Bill expected in next two months – The current transportation authorization bill, Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST Act) expires Sept 30. Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), the panel’s ranking member, recently announced that a draft is being worked on in collaboration with the Democratic Party’s majority in the House. It will, he said, be released in the next couple of months and serve as the basis for the start of discussions.
LOCAL UPDATE
PIDC has new Leader – The Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC)< which manages public redevelopment of vacant or underperforming industrial land, manages the Navy Yard, and provides incentives for local businesses, has a new Leader: Anne Nevins. She was formerly the Chief Strategy and Communications Officer for PIDC, and managed the city’s bid for the Amazon 2 headquarters. She becomes the first woman to become President of PIDC.
Spring 2019
The Commonwealth faces a potentially catastrophic crisis in transportation and turnpike funding. Every year, the Turnpike Commission pays $450 million from toll revenue to PennDOT for transit projects.
The Turnpike Commission is more than $11 billion in debt, of which $6 billion is related to the commission's obligations for transit funding. The obligation of payments to the state will sunset in 2022 and drop to $50 million, but turnpike tolls will continue to increase through 2044 to cover debt service.
At the core of the financial crisis, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is facing a major lawsuit, first filed last March from national trucking groups and a motorist association arguing that the practice of allocation of funds to PennDOT to fund transit projects around the state is unconstitutional and that tolls may only be used for turnpike-related projects. The plaintiffs are seeking a refund of $6 billion of PA Turnpike tolls collected since 2007, when the initial legislation authorizing the transfer of turnpike revenue was enacted.
Due to the lawsuit, the Turnpike has missed three scheduled payments to PennDOT in 2019 and the April payment will likely be missed as well. The suit also prevents the Commission from raising bond funding over the past year needed to make the payments to the state.
The suit against the Turnpike Commission has already led to $63 million in cuts for SEPTA's capital budget in this fiscal year and forced delays in 37 capital and system improvement projects.
At the House Appropriations budget hearing last month, PennDOT Secretary Leslie Richards testified that if the payments are not resumed, or if a decision in the ongoing court case is unfavorable to PennDOT, significant budget cuts would be necessary at the start of the new fiscal year July 1. Those cuts would impact subsidies to regional transit agencies across the Commonwealth, as well as programs serving transportation needs of the disabled and the elderly (Source).
On April 1, 2019, the Southeast Mobility group (consisting of leaders from infrastructure owners and businesses) released their recommendations to allow localities to increase revenue.
ASCE will continue to monitor activity at the state and federal level that might impact our profession, the projects we work on, and the communities where we live.