Bush Transportation Plan Starts Heated Debate : Taxes: The emphasis on state and local funding for roads and transit meets immediate criticism. Its backers point to its ‘greater flexibility.’

With its emphasis on state and local funding, the Bush Administration has initiated what is certain to be a contentious debate over the appropriate federal role in maintaining the nation’s transportation structures, congressional leaders and transportation industry officials said Thursday.

“That debate will involve a reexamination of whose responsibility is transportation--the state and local governments or the federal government,” said Gary Brosch, director of the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida in Tampa. “The Administration, by this document, is saying that it’s a local problem, and that states and local governments should find ways to solve it.”

The new transportation policy announced officially Thursday--which contains 169 guidelines and 65 legislative objectives, but offers no specific programs or funding proposals--sends a signal of the Administration’s intention to stick by its decision not to raise taxes. Although the policy describes the need for transportation upgrades, it rejects calls for federal taxes to pay for improvements.

Instead, the policy argues that maintenance of some highways, bridges and airports should become more of a municipal and state responsibility. Moreover, the policy encourages local governments to raise taxes or to seek private-sector financing deals to pay for the repairs.

The policy drew immediate criticism, foreshadowing the expected debates to come between the Republican Administration and the Democratic Congress.

One of the most vocal critics was Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.), who told Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner at a House Public Works and Transportation Committee subcommittee hearing: “I think it’s really vintage George Bush White House material--a Twinkie transportation policy--airy, light, but nothing but fluff at the core . . . .

“At a time when our highways are crumbling, our bridges are collapsing, our airways are becoming overcrowded, dangerously, the Administration’s solution is disengagement, wash your hands of the mess, call it a local problem.”

Other Democrats complained that the Administration has not been moving fast enough to spend uncommitted balances of billions of dollars in aviation, highway and mass transit trust funds. The trust funds are financed with the 9-cent federal gasoline tax and other user fees. Both the Ronald Reagan and Bush Administrations have used trust fund balances to help offset on paper the size of the federal budget deficit. Trust fund money cannot be spent for purposes other than transportation.

“This money has been paid by the American highway users in the expectation that it will be used for transportation purposes,” said Rep. Glenn M. Anderson (D-San Pedro), chairman of the public works committee. “We are deceiving them by not spending the money for highways and transit despite the staggering needs which exist.”

In releasing the report, Skinner said: “The policy provides greater flexibility for state and local governments to raise revenues . . . for example, collecting tolls on highways, and encouraging greater private investment in transportation.”

He said the policy was released in time to be used by the Administration in debates over the reauthorization of aviation, highway and mass transit programs. Those programs will expire over the next 24 months.

“It is not the panacea or the answer to all of the problems in transportation,” Skinner said. “It was never designed to be that. It was designed to be a strategic framework under which we can make the many decisions that we are required to make and that we could use to reauthorize aviation and surface transportation.”

In part, the 129-page policy statement calls for legislation aimed at:

--Aviation--Recovering a higher portion of program costs from user fees, and creating capacity at heavily traveled airports by imposing charges per passenger.

--Highway--Increasing the state and local share of federal-aid projects, allowing greater use of tolls on federal-aid highways, focusing federal aid on highway programs and projects of “national significance.”

--Urban Mass Transit--Eliminating barriers to private sector participation in financing and operating projects, increasing state and local share of financing of federally assisted projects and reducing federal operating assistance for urban transit.

--Railroads--Installing user fees to recover some of federal railroad safety inspection costs, repealing the Federal Employers’ Liability Act to limit federal government exposure to costly worker suits and eliminating federal subsidies for Amtrak while requiring states to pay a greater share of the costs of routes through their areas.

Skinner received some support from Republicans on the subcommittee.

“I think it is an excellent first step,” Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.) said of the policy. “There are those who want to criticize your policy statement before it is even off the press--those who claim, for example, that because it does not propose spending more federal dollars, it must somehow be lacking.”

But Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the federal government should not abandon its prime role in transportation financing or shift the major burden onto the states. “The President says no new taxes, but what he apparently means is no new federal taxes because he’s proposing that the states raise their taxes very substantially,” he said in a statement. “It’s not clear the states can do so.”

Defending his policy at the hearing, Skinner cited California’s reluctance to raise its gasoline tax. “I think we’ve got to do a better job of explaining to people all over the country, but especially to the people of California, (if) they want clean air, they want efficient transportation, they want to eliminate congestion, and they want backups in the case of earthquakes, they are going to have to pay more for fuel than the lowest prices . . . being paid almost anywhere in the country,” he said.

As for the surplus trust fund balances, Skinner told the subcommittee the new transportation policy calls for spending more of the uncommitted money, but does so only in “generic” terms. The policy contains no specific timetable for drawing down the trust fund accounts.

Appearing sensitive to complaints that the federal government was “getting out of the transportation business,” Skinner said the policy doesn’t represent a “shift of responsibility.”

“But it seems to me that . . . starting out by talking about spending more federal dollars is exactly the wrong thing to do.”

“What’s happened over the years is the federal government has assumed almost all of the responsibility over many of these areas,” he said. “We’re trying now to strike a balance.”