Omnibus transportation spending, policy bill clears committee

The House Transportation Policy and Finance Committee on Monday approved an amended omnibus transportation bill that would spend more than $6 billion on the state's transportation system over two years, focus Minnesota's transportation priorities on highways and bridges and place new restrictions on planning for new mass transit projects.

HF4 — approved by a 13-8 roll-call vote and now headed to the House Ways and Means Committee — does what the House Republican majority set out to following last fall’s elections, its sponsor, committee chair Rep. Tim Kelly (R-Red Wing) said: Make transportation a priority.

Specifically, it is a bill that gives the state’s road infrastructure precedence, including measures that would increase funding to the Corridors of Commerce program aimed at busy commercial routes in Greater Minnesota; create a program for aid to cities under 5,000 residents that aren’t eligible for municipal state-aid street funds; and transfer $228 million of the state’s budget surplus from the General Fund for local highway and Greater Minnesota transit projects.

Rep. Tim Kelly

“Our chore was to, I believe, elevate transportation to the level that we need to really take some hard looks at the priorities we set,” Kelly said, praising the bill as the foundation for a long-term effort to prioritize transportation.

[READ MORE: What’s in the bill? Session Daily coverage of HF4]

Committee members debated nearly two-dozen amendments during a roughly three-hour hearing.

It adopted 10 amendments, including one that stripped tax provisions that would redirect more than $410 million in revenues from vehicle-related sales taxes on things like motor vehicle rentals and repair parts from the state’s General Fund to be used on road and bridge maintenance across the state. Those measures will now be carried in an omnibus tax bill, Kelly said.

While Gov. Mark Dayton and the Senate DFL majority have proposed a new gas tax and expanding a transit-dedicated metro area sales tax to generate new transportation funding, the House plan raises no new revenue. HF4 has no direct Senate companion.

The bill has earned the support of business groups like the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, as well as heavy trucking, industry and aggregate groups supportive of policy measures that would expand truck weight exemptions on the state’s roads.

Transit advocates, however, have been highly critical. Detractors have said the legislation doesn’t dedicate new funding to transportation, but instead shifts existing state dollars from other funds to transportation, pitting it against other General Fund priorities like education. Metropolitan Council officials say HF4 would force significant cutbacks in Metro Transit service

“This bill is a house of cards,” said Rep. Frank Hornstein (DFL-Mpls). “It’s built on a foundation of gimmicks, shifts and cuts” and ignores the needs of swathes of the state, he continued, specifically transit users in the metro area.

Funding for transit planning and operations would be reined in under fiscal and policy provisions in the bill, including the proposed phasing-out of roughly $20 million in General Fund appropriations to the Metropolitan Council for transit operations; a requirement that would force all light-rail transit operating costs not covered by operating revenue and federal funds to come from non-state sources; and, a requirement that specific planning phases of transitway projects that include express bus or rail components receive legislative assent.