The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials recently sent a letter to Congressional leadership urging them to “take the necessary steps” to complete work on the fiscal year 2025 Transportation-Housing and Urban Development or THUD appropriations bill as a Continuing Resolution or CR is set to expire on March 14.
[Above image by AASHTO]
“Passing a full year appropriations bill is critical to the work that state departments of transportation do every day to improve transportation and mobility across the country,” noted Jim Tymon, AASHTO’s executive director, in the organization’s letter.
“A key feature of the federal surface transportation program is the stability and certainty that is provided through multiyear authorization legislation,” he said. “The Appropriations Committees play a critical role in this process by providing the obligation limitation necessary to obligate or spend federal transportation funds. Any disruption from a lapse in appropriations or a series of additional short-term CRs will impede the ability of state DOTs to translate crucial formula funding into tangible surface transportation projects.”
Tymon added that, if an agreement can be reached on a full year appropriations bill, AASHTO continues to strongly support the inclusion of the Senate’s FY 2025 THUD Section 120 legislative fix that would modernize how obligation limitation is provided for Highway Trust Fund contract authority programs.
That section 120 fix is critical as, under the current process of providing state-apportioned highway formula dollars for the federal fiscal year, FHWA waits until each August to ask state DOTs to obligate a significant share – anticipated to be $7.6 billion or 14 percent of the total federal highway funding they receive in FY2025 – in just one month via what is called the August Redistribution process.
However, if Congress does decide to rely on a full-year CR in place of passing appropriations legislation that simply extends FY 2024 funding through the entirety of FY 2025, AASHTO requests the inclusion of the appropriate language—or an “anomaly”—to ensure that state DOTs receive the obligation limitation from the Highway Trust Fund for the federal-aid highway program for FY 2025 as set forth in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, expected to be some $61.3 billion.
“Failure to provide the full amount of obligation limitation will restrict the funding available for state DOTs to utilize in the upcoming construction season and will prevent states and local governments from being able to meet their unique [transportation] infrastructure investment needs,” Tymon said.
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