States have achieved tremendous success putting to work tens of billions of dollars worth of economic recovery projects in the past year and stand ready to proceed with $80 billion in additional infrastructure investment if Congress provides the money in a job-creation bill this year, the Iowa Department of Transportation's director told a House panel, according to the American Association of State & Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO).
Nancy Richardson, chairwoman of AASHTO's Standing Committee on Finance and Administration, appeared before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee during an oversight hearing on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, the latest in a series of hearings the committee has held to examine how states are spending their recovery dollars.
"The Recovery Act had a March 2 'use it or lose it' deadline, and I am happy to report that every state obligated every highway dollar they were eligible to receive and not one dime was turned back to Washington for redistribution," Richardson testified. "The real story of the Recovery Act is about people: the people whose jobs were saved or who went back to work; the people who were able to make their mortgage payments, put their kids through school and pay for health care."
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee reports this week that as of Feb. 28, 2010, the state reporting data show that of the $38 billion available for highway, transit and wastewater infrastructure formula program projects under the Recovery Act, $33.4 billion has been put out to bid on 16,360 projects. Within this total, 14,475 projects, totaling $29.6 billion, are under contract. Across the nation, work has begun on 12,545 projects totaling $26.7 billion, or 70%. Work has been completed on 4,238 of these projects, totaling $3.6 billion.
According to the committee's data, the 12,545 projects under way or completed have created or sustained nearly 350,000 direct, on-project jobs. This has resulted in $1.8 billion in payroll expenditures. The committee calculates that $296 million in unemployment checks have been avoided as a result of this direct job creation and that these direct jobs have caused nearly $376 million to be paid in federal taxes and that total employment from these projects including direct, indirect and induced jobs reaches approximately 1.2 million jobs.
Committee members received a copy of AASHTO's February report, "Projects and Paychecks," which tracked ARRA through its first year of implementation and includes dozens of examples of state success stories. (See the report at http://recovery.transportation.org.)
More work remains to be done to keep the nation's transportation infrastructure in a state of good repair as well as to expand highway and transit systems to keep up with a growing population and recovering economy, Richardson emphasized to the committee. Additional transportation funds will also spur more job creation, she added.
States have more than 9,800 projects valued at close to $80 billion that could be obligated within 120 days of enactment," she said. "There is clearly a continuing need for such investment in our nation's transportation network. The unemployment rate in the transportation construction industry still exceeds 20%. Commercial construction activity remains very minimal, so it is the transportation sector that has been able to fill part of the void."
Finally, Richardson stressed the critical need for Congress to enact a long-term surface transportation authorization bill by the end of this year.
"Funding the program at the $500 billion level would help to double transit ridership, preserve and modernize the highway system, and enable us to launch a new era of intercity passenger rail," she said.
