“Is El Paso County getting shortchanged in state transportation spending?” The Gazette
Local officials say 'yes'
September 04, 2011 3:10 PM
Debbie Kelley
The Gazette
Extra federal money soon will flow into state transportation coffers, but local officials aren’t counting on roads in the Pikes Peak region getting top billing when the funds are divvied up.
Politics was cited as a reason at last month’s Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments’ board meeting. As the organization finishes updating long-range plans for the area’s roadways, a long-standing feud over whether El Paso County gets its fair share of federal and state transportation dollars doesn’t look like it’s going to end soon.
Denver and its tentacle jurisdictions frequently receive funding preference, said Robert MacDonald, executive director of PPACG, a metropolitan planning organization made up of 16 counties, cities and towns.
El Paso County has several high-priority projects that have been on hold for years, awaiting state funding. Among those: widening Interstate 25 from North Academy Boulevard to the county line; expanding State Highway 21, or Powers Boulevard, including a new interchange at Peterson Air Force Base’s main gate; and building a new interchange at I-25 and U.S. Highway 24.
“CDOT (the Colorado Department of Transportation) has a particular corridor, I-70, that they want to add two additional tunnels to relieve congestion. There’s no beneficial cost analysis that would put I-70 above our I-25 project, but it has the political cache, and ours doesn’t,” MacDonald said.
Whether local highways that fall under federal and state control get shortchanged has been a pothole of frustration and debate since the 1990s.
Some say who gets what depends on the political affiliation of the state’s governor and whether he plays party politics against the Republican-dominated Pikes Peak region.
Others say the state’s formula for allocating funds is outdated because El Paso County is now the most populous in the state but doesn’t obtain a proportionately larger cut of money.
More cause for local concern: Congress is facing a Sept. 30 expiration of the 18.4-cent federal excise tax on gasoline, and 41 highway construction projects around the state could be impacted by the decision, including numerous new bridges and paving projects in El Paso County.
“We don’t want to see all that newfound wealth given to one project, but the governor has said this is something he wants to do,” MacDonald said, referring to CDOT’s plan to add two new tunnels to the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels on I-70, west of Idaho Springs.
CDOT spokesman Bob Wilson said all communities are complaining.
“There are a lot of needs and limited funds,” he said. “Someone in Lamar thinks Highway 50 should be the highest priority. In the Springs, it’s I-25. In Denver, it tends to be I-70 because it’s the main route to the mountains. It’s a balancing act, and it’s tough to do.”
CDOT expects to receive an additional $138 million in federal funds for the 2011 fiscal year, which ended June 30. Colorado has received similar amounts of what is called overage since 2009, Wilson said. El Paso County’s $3 million share from last year’s excess will repay bonds issued to accelerate construction of a new Baptist Road and I-25 interchange.
Some of this year’s additional money is earmarked for bridge repairs statewide. The state’s 11-member Transportation Commission, whose members are appointed by the governor but who operate independently of the governor’s office, decides where the rest will go.
The extra funds aren’t much, compared to CDOT’s annual budget of $1.1 billion for fiscal year 2011. But for projects like the $50 million revamping of the Peterson Air Force Base interchange, an infusion of unexpected money could go a long way toward getting much-needed improvements underway, local officials say.
Unlike the I-70 tunnel project, which still needs an environmental assessment, “We have projects that are shovel-ready,” said El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams, vice chairman of the state’s Transportation Advisory Committee.
Each of the state’s six regions is allocated about one-sixth of transportation funds the state distributes annually, CDOT’S Wilson said. In fiscal year 2011, the state handed out a total of $655 million. The region that includes El Paso and Teller counties received about $107 million. But the region stretches from Monument Hill south to the New Mexico border, east to the Kansas border and west to Salida.
Craig Casper, transportation director for PPACG, said the allocation formula is faulty because it’s based on lane miles of state roadway, not population. El Paso County has 262 miles of state roadway, compared to Denver County’s 490 and Arapahoe County’s 607.
“El Paso and Teller counties have about 14.5 percent of the state’s population, but we’ve been getting 3.5 to 5 percent of the state and federal transportation funding,” Casper said.
The issue has come to a head several times. Ten years ago, CDOT signed an agreement that the Pikes Peak region would receive 9.48 percent of state and federal money, plus or minus 1 percent, based on performance measures.
“That would get us 75 cents back on every dollar we pay versus the 35 cents we have been getting,” Casper said.
But the agreement has not been followed, he said.
“The document is still theoretically in effect,” Casper said, “but CDOT is blatantly ignoring it because they can and because our commissioner who should be helping us get that is instead agreeing with other representatives around the state who say that because we are paying for roads with our own sales tax that we don’t need state money.”
That state transportation commissioner is Colorado Springs commercial real estate expert Les Gruen, who has represented El Paso, Teller, Park and Fremont counties since 2007.
Gruen said funding is “very scarce across the board,” and that criticism of previous commissions being biased in terms of funding decisions is now unwarranted.
“We’re fortunate to have a commission made up of both parties and there’s a pretty equal balance of people who have the state’s best interests in mind,” he said. “My guess is that every region is making a similar complaint or criticism that they’re not getting a big enough bite of the apple.”
The agreement is up for renewal in December.
“We extended it two years ago over intense discussion. We approved it to ameliorate the concerns of local government,” Gruen said. “I don’t know if we’re inclined to do that now.”
The agreement resulted in I-25 being widened from Circle Drive to North Academy Boulevard, reconstructed interchanges at Bijou Street and I-25 and North Nevada Avenue and Rockrimmon Boulevard, and an expanded State Highway 16 by Fort Carson.
In the past few years, the Transportation Advisory Committee’s vice chair Williams said, the region has “failed pretty significantly” in reaching the agreement’s threshold.
Gruen said the agreement’s conditions are contingent on available funds. And the recession and legislative changes have left little money for new projects. In recent years, the state has siphoned dollars from the transportation budget to other government programs and replaced dedicated funds for strategic highways with a road and bridge replacement program paid for by a hike in vehicle registration fees.
“If you ask if our stuff is being maintained at an equivalent level to the rest of the state, the answer is yes. If you ask if we’re getting enough new construction, the answer is no,” Williams said. “We’re deficient, and we’re now subsidizing the rest of the state.”
Angst grew to the point that local officials brought a one-cent sales tax before voters in unincorporated El Paso County and some of its eight jurisdictions in 2004 to pay for construction and maintenance on local roadways. Voters approved the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority, which expires in 2014 but is expected to reappear on next year’s ballot for reapproval.
“That’s been our saving grace,” said El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark, who chairs the PPACG board. “I don’t know what we would have done without it.”
Part of the bitterness stems from the fact that of 28 strategic projects identified in 1999 under the Gov. Bill Owens administration and approved by voters statewide, two of the seven that have yet to be completed are in El Paso County. Those are the I-25 widening north to the county line and the Powers Boulevard improvements.
“We have needs that were a high priority, and they’re not being addressed,” Williams said. “Our region has been shortchanged, in terms of money. We pay gas tax dollars, and they’re going elsewhere. At least some of the additional federal money ought to go to the capital construction projects that were promised to voters.”
The state owes the Pike Peak region $600 to $800 million for road construction, PPACG’s Casper said, just in widening I-25.
“If you do pure benefit cost analysis, the best bang for the buck is widening I-25 — at least five times better than the I-70 project would be,” he said. “But we’re not a political party.”
Gruen agrees the issue is “a sore spot” and said that Colorado’s entire transportation system has degraded because of decreased financing.
While he acknowledges there has been “tremendous political pressure” to improve traffic along I-70, he said all of the seven unfinished projects require “massive funding that doesn’t exist right now.”
And he disagrees that I-70 is not a priority: “A tremendous amount of the statewide population and tourists use that corridor, especially on the weekends during ski season. And driving home is a huge issue.”
Counters Williams: “We have traffic jams every day north on I-25 and by Peterson (Air Force Base), not just 19 Sundays a year.”