By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer
June 12, 2008
WASHINGTON - Big-city mayors told Congress on Thursday that
they are overwhelmed by the infrastructure needs of their regions
and cannot maintain well-functioning water systems, roads and
rail networks without more federal help.
"We're having a quiet collapse of prosperity," said
Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Mark Funkhouser, one of four mayors
to testify before the Senate Banking Committee about the state
of the nation's infrastructure, which they agreed was poor
and getting worse. They blamed much of the decay on shortsighted
thinking by local, state and federal officials.
The issue of the country's deteriorating transportation systems
came under scrutiny last year with the collapse of a bridge
in Minnesota that killed 13 people. While experts believe a
poor design led to that collapse, the mayors sounded an alarm
about decay throughout the system and its long-term effects
on the U.S economy.
Senators on the panel were largely supportive of the mayors'
complaints, but one, Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., reminded them, "At
the end of the day, we've got to figure out how to pay for
this stuff."
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged Congress to abandon
the tradition of earmark spending, where individual lawmakers
often deliver dollops of taxpayer money to small local projects
that don't provide much help for the long-term needs of their
districts.
"We're as guilty as anybody," admitted Bloomberg. "We
ask for money for things that are totally local, and why the
federal government does it, I don't know. They shouldn't be
doing it, although we will continue to ask as long as they
are giving it out. Our senators have the obligation to bring
home the bacon like everybody else does. ... Seems to me the
Senate should get together and say together, 'We're not going
to do it anymore.'"
The American Society of Engineers estimates that bringing
the nation's transportation and resources networks up to a
properly functional level would require $1.6 trillion and five
years of work. Still, the mayors say, even that wouldn't accommodate
the new strains placed on roads in coming years.
Funkhouser said municipalities like Kansas City are unable
to meet infrastructure needs on their own. Kansas City has
a $6 billion backlog of needed improvements to roads, highways
and the city's outdated sewer system. The scale of massive
projects such as expanding access to the I-435 and I-70 interchange
or linking the downtown "loop" with the urban Crossroads
neighborhood to the south requires more help from the federal
government, he said.
John Peyton, the mayor of Jacksonville, Fla., said that a
bigger port under construction in his city will eventually
add a half-million trucks to surrounding roads, which aren't
ready for them.
"Our existing level of transportation infrastructure
simply cannot handle this kind of shift in trade from the West
Coast to the East Coast as it is today. We will need new roads
and rail," said Peyton.
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said she is still struggling
to fix her city's water and sewer systems after decades of
neglect by her predecessors. The issue became more urgent as
the South suffers from a long-running drought pitting state
against state in battles for water supplies.
To answer such demands, Sens. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Chuck
Hagel, R-Neb., are pushing a bill to create a National Infrastructure
Bank that would raise money for major national projects by
issuing up to $60 billion in tax credit bonds, which could
then be leveraged into greater funding.
Dodd, the committee's chairman, said he would bring the bill
before the panel next month, but it's unclear if it would actually
get a vote on the Senate floor this year.
Funkhouser called the bill a good concept funding large construction
projects.
"With this proposed legislation, the federal government
can begin to address infrastructure not as a budgetary cost
but as an investment," he said.
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