Transit Money Madness

Last year, the California congressional delegation finally accomplished something that is taken for granted in most other states. Its fractious members showed uncommon unity in pressing for California’s fair share of one of the federal government’s biggest spending programs. That was the multibillion-dollar reauthorization of federal transportation funds for everything from highways to freight movement for the next six years. A big spending pot, indeed.

That renewal of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, known as ISTEA, was tabled late last year, leading some Capitol Hill observers to poke fun at the delegation that finally pulled together but found its efforts left in limbo.

Well, the delegation will just have to close ranks again on a second attempt at ISTEA reauthorization, and this time it will be even harder. California lacks seniority leadership in key House committees. The state might not even qualify to field a member for the House-Senate conference committee that will iron out differences between the bills that emerge.

The legislative climate too has changed. This is an election year, and Congress otherwise lacks an exciting agenda. Moreover, there is a feeling of flush times in both houses and ISTEA has become a vehicle for legislators to win points back home with an ever-growing barrel of transportation pork.

As of Tuesday, for example, the Senate bill under consideration had ballooned to a whopping $206 billion over six years, with Southern states flexing their legislative might. “Mississippi is getting tired of dirt roads; we want some asphalt,” Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said recently. “I also want some more asphalt for my buddies in Florida, Texas and Alabama.” Other powerful senators as well are making sure their constituents get more money.

ISTEA, first authorized in 1991, represented a sea change in federal policy. It rightly pushed the nation away from an almost exclusive interest in highway spending to other forms of transportation, such as mass transit. ISTEA was also good for California, and the current delegation must help preserve that benefit. California receives and then funnels to the rest of the nation more international cargo than any other state. Its roads, ports, rail lines and airports are vital to the United States. The substance of that should not be lost amid the pork feeding frenzy.