In absence of broader deal, House sends ‘status quo’ transportation bill to gov

It was to be the transportation session, with the promise of a comprehensive, long-term funding solution to meet the state’s growing infrastructure needs. Instead, 18 weeks later, all lawmakers could do Monday night was keep the lights on.

Unable in recent weeks to reach a wide-ranging transportation agreement with their Senate counterparts and nearly out of time, the House OKd the conference committee report of a scaled-back package just hours from the end of the 2015 session. The bill includes a modest boost in spending over the next two years and a slew of policy measures. But it would forego the major infusion of new dollars for Minnesota’s roads, bridges and railways that advocates on both sides of the aisle had for months said is needed.

Repassed 76-58, HF1733/SF1647*, sponsored by Rep. Tim Kelly (R-Red Wing) and Sen. D. Scott Dibble (DFL-Mpls), will now head to the governor. The Senate passed the package 65-0 earlier Monday.

Kelly said the bill represents “limited — but strategic — investments in key areas with an eye, really, toward 2016.”

The lights-on funding package would spend $5.5 billion on Minnesota’s transportation system over the next biennium. It proposes to pad the state’s base transportation budget with an additional $30 million in one-time General Fund dollars to pay for a small list of new spending items, including $5 million for Greater Minnesota Transit, $5 million for rail grade crossing safety improvements and $12.5 million in road and bridge aid for the state’s smallest cities.

Republicans, DFLers craved comprehensive plan

House DFLers criticized the bill as a “missed opportunity” and a “failure” that underfunds state road construction, neglects needed rail crossing improvements across the state and ignores investments in transit service.

“We fell way short with this bill,” said Rep. Frank Hornstein (DFL-Mpls). “We can do so much better than this, because transportation demands so much more than the status quo.”

Rep. Clark Johnson speaks in opposition to the so-called lights-on omnibus transportation bill during floor debate. Photo by Paul Battaglia

Both bodies had proposed more ambitious plans in a session that, from the outset, was targeted toward tackling transportation. In HF4, the House had proposed to raise an additional $7 billion over 10 years, redirected existing revenues from vehicle-related sales taxes on things like auto parts, rentals and leases the state’s General Fund to boost funding for roads, bridges and rural transit by roughly $450 million in the next biennium.

The Senate’s plan relied on a proposed new gross receipts fuel tax to be collected on top of the state’s existing gas tax to fund road and bridge work, and an increased metro area transit-dedicated sales tax to invest in expanding Twin Cities rail and bus service.

The two sides remained far apart as the clocked ticked toward Monday night’s adjournment deadline. Kelly and Dibble, though, agreed to leave the conference committee on HF4 open, a move that would allow members to renew negotiations on a broader transportation package when the 2016 session begins next March.

While Hornstein called it a “bleak night for transportation,” Kelly said the compromise contained in SF1647 sets the stage for negotiations to continue.

“I think we have a great base to work from” in 2016 to come up with the comprehensive transportation plan Minnesotans want, he said.

Included in the bill are other fiscal and policy provisions that would:

• appropriate roughly $28 million in unencumbered general fund appropriations for transitway projects to the Metropolitan Council for transit operations;
• spend down an unreserved Department of Transportation fund balance of nearly $182 million over two years, much of it on state road construction;
• exempt portable toilet trucks from spring weight restrictions;
• simplify the county-state aid highway funding distribution forumula;
• increase the fine for a second violation of the state’s texting-while-driving law to $225;
• allow four headlamps on motorcycles;
• require municipalities seeking Safe Routes to School funds to pass complete streets ordinances for new residential developments;
• grant suburban transit providers a seat on the Transportation Advisory Board;
• allow the Department of Public Safety to set a State Patrol vehicle escort fee that covers its costs;
• require a report to the Legislature on the use of constitutionally-dedicated transportation funds; and
• appropriate $2 million for a suburb-to-suburb transit pilot project.