As the federal government has scaled back its investments in transportation and other infrastructure projects over the years, states and localities have quietly picked up the slack.
And while President Trump pledged to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure during the 2016 campaign, voters across America approved $225 billion for a variety of transportation ballot measures in that same election.
Last year, a record 77 transportation measures made it onto ballots in 23 states, according to the Center for Transportation Excellence. Fifty-five of those were approved for a success rate of 71 percent, a figure in line with recent years, but at a greater scale.
In addition to these voter-driven successful ballot measures, which included Los Angeles voters approving a half-cent sales tax hike that will fund $120 billion in rail and bus expansions over the next few decades, state governments are also approving new funding.
Since 2013, 22 states, including red ones such as Wyoming and Georgia, have raised their gas tax, a concept long anathema on the federal level where the gas tax hasn’t changed since 1993.
“It’s certainly true some states and localities are doing big things on infrastructure because of a lack of action on the federal level,” said Robert Puentes of the Eno Center for Transportation.
“The needs are what the needs are, and because the federal government hasn’t invested as it had in previous years, places are doing all kinds of funding and financing strategies.”
All of this action has transportation experts and lawmakers questioning how the federal government’s role should be defined at a time when states and localities have learned how to address their own needs.
Advocates welcome state and local progress, but say it should not signal to the Trump administration and Congress to back off bipartisan interest in pursuing a major infrastructure project, especially when interest rates are historically low.
“There is a concept out there called devolution, which is that cities and states can do this all by themselves and you don’t need the federal government,” said Joseph Kane, a senior research analyst in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.
“I push back against that,” Kane told the Washington Examiner. “The federal government is a crucial partner in any of these infrastructure efforts. They are not necessarily the leader. I don’t see them driving this from the top down. What I do see is them setting a strategic direction for the country’s infrastructure and giving states and cities [the] needed funding and technological and regulatory support to keep doing what they are already doing.”
After Congress banned earmarks in 2011, the federal government has stopped dictating specific projects for states and localities to build.
But Puentes and Kane say the federal government should be providing a big-picture roadmap for how the country should prioritize its infrastructure needs, and give support to other less-prominent infrastructure areas that ballot measures often ignore, such as water and telecommunications.
They recommend the Trump administration and Congress focus on reinvestment rather than building new infrastructure because many roads, bridges and other systems across the country are reaching the end of their useful life.
“In the 1950s, the federal government’s role when it came to transportation was one of building out a system of connectivity with the interstate highway system,” Kane said. “Now, the federal government has to ask itself: What is our priority moving forward? It shouldn’t be about building new infrastructure. This should be an era of repair and replacement. A big part of the federal role as it relates to states and cities going forward is helping them target investments — and ultimately provide financial support — in trying to modernize and make more sustainable existing systems across the country.”
Kerry O’Hare, a former deputy assistant secretary for governmental affairs at the Department of Transportation in the George W. Bush administration, said states and localities on average fund 75 percent of their infrastructure needs on their own.
She said states, counties and cities have come to see the federal government’s financial contribution, about 25 percent on average, as unreliable. The federal government does not have a long-term funding source for transportation, and has long been resistant to increasing user fees such as the gas tax. Since 1993, the federal tax on gasoline has remained 18.4 cents per gallon, and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel, and has not been indexed to inflation.
This has led to chronic shortfalls in funding for the Highway Trust Fund, the main vehicle to spread money to states to help pay for transportation projects.
“States and localities depend on reliable long-term funding, which Congress has not been able to do in recent years,” said O’Hare, who is now director of policy at Building America’s Future. “One of the great things about the American transportation system is it has been funded by users, and people understand that.”
Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the federal government should take notice of the popularity of user fees in the states.
Barletta, who is a vocal Trump supporter, said he has offered to the administration “some funding ideas that are not all Republican ideas.”
The Trump administration has not said how it plans to fund its $1 trillion infrastructure proposal, other than to say it would offer $200 billion in direct federal spending over 10 years using tax breaks to incentivize private business to pay for the rest.
“I talk about user fees for infrastructure so we have a sustainable funding source,” Barletta told the Washington Examiner. “As long as you promise the American people that the money won’t be used for anything else other than fixing infrastructure, they are OK with it. These one-hit wonders we use to fund infrastructure are nice, but you don’t know when the next one will come, so you can’t plan and invest. We can’t continue to treat infrastructure like that.”
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, agrees Congress and the administration need to serve a leadership role on infrastructure.
While he admits it will be challenging for Democrats and Republicans to agree on a funding source, Meadows predicts the “money will be there.”
Meadows, who is also a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told the Washington Examiner that infrastructure “will be easier to get done” than repealing and replacing Obamacare, and tax reform. He said there’s a “good chance” an infrastructure deal could be reached this year.
“You will see more action on transportation and infrastructure than [any other areas] than perhaps our veterans,” Meadows said. “The fact is, we will spend $1 trillion on infrastructure. It’s going to get done. It won’t all get done by public-private partnerships. Part of it you may see through repatriated earnings, part of it through user fees. The president has laid out his vision, the states are doing their thing, so we just need to get it done.”
