Evansville Courier & Press staff and wire reports
INDIANAPOLIS - The Indiana Department of Transportation is compiling a list of road projects that could be started soon if the federal stimulus bill becomes law and Indiana receives a $4 billion to $5 billion portion of it, as expected.
Gov. Mitch Daniels said INDOT is preparing a priority list of projects that could begin quickly while creating the most jobs.
The agency will invite bids on "a whole host of projects" soon, he said.
"We have some (projects) which have long ago had been vetted with the Legislature and with the people around the state. We have a priority list, and it's based, really, on economic value to Indiana. And my view is, we should just work as far and as fast as we can down that list," Daniels said.
Bruce Childs, INDOT deputy commissioner of communications, said the agency is waiting to see the federal guidelines for projects that can be funded by the stimulus package. He said the INDOT list still is being assembled. "We asked all the metropolitan planning organizations and mayors and county councils to send us their wish list. Those are still coming in," Childs said.
With Indiana expected to receive up to $5 billion, between $1.5 billion to $2 billion would be for capital projects, including roads and bridges, mass transit, renovation, repairs and lab spaces for public schools, and clean water projects.
The version of the federal stimulus package passed Wednesday by the U.S. House of Representatives would provide $30 billion nationwide for federal highways and $6 billion for urban and rural transit.
Time would be of the essence; the bill requires governors to certify projects within 30 days. Priority must be given to projects in which contracts can be awarded within 120 days. Half the money a state receives would have to be designated within 180 says, according to the bill. The $819 billion federal stimulus package next goes to the U.S. Senate, which could make changes.
State officials stressed they were not certain Thursday, but such federal guidelines appear to suggest the stimulus probably could not be used directly for the Evansville-to-Indianapolis extension of Interstate 69, since interstate highway projects involve years of planning and engineering and are built in stages. "Probably not this first round," Daniels said.
With the Daniels administration already making plans on how to allocate federal stimulus money, Democrats in the Legislature still are talking of a state-level economic stimulus bill.
House Bill 1656 would divert $1.5 billion in Major Moves funds away from I-69 construction and other large projects and instead spend it on 25 local and regional projects farther down on INDOT's priority list, INDOT officials have said. Two weeks ago, Daniels called that idea "the worst bill of the session." It's scheduled for a hearing Monday.
State Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson said Senate Democrats next week will offer their own state-level stimulus bill, which could incorporate some of the projects from House Bill 1656. Simpson, D-Bloomington said she thought the Senate Democrats' version would not attempt to address I-69 construction.
"I don't think our (Senate Democratic) caucus all agrees on whether we should even have Interstate 69 or not, so I don't think we'll be dealing with Interstate 69 in our stimulus package. We'll leave that difficult decision to the governor," Simpson said.
INDOT commissioner Karl Browning has criticized the 25 projects in the House Bill 1656 as not being "shovel-ready" - not able to start soon enough to qualify for federal funding or meaningfully provide jobs.
"They take a long time, and so he may very well be right about state projects," Simpson said Thursday. But local governments are in great need of funding for smaller projects that might have a faster turnaround time, she suggested. "So I think there are a lot of places where we can spend money and put people to work - particularly on local roads, local bridges, local dams - where the investments will pay dividends in the future as well as short-term," Simpson said.
Daniels said later he wants to work with legislators and is willing to listen to their ideas, but remained skeptical of the Democrats' approach. "We're not going to touch the Major Moves projects, and we're certainly not going to touch the state surplus now with billions of new (federal) dollars coming. I think those debates - if they were ever real ones - are over," the Republican governor said. "Again, jobs and speed ought to be a touchstone. If they have something that meets those tests, then we'd sure look at them."
Daniels said the federal stimulus package is designed to help states facing far worse fiscal concerns than Indiana, so money sent here should be spent for one-time purposes that do not increase state and local budgets to base levels that cannot be sustained when the payments stop.
"There is an enormous danger of building a cliff if we allow this to come into the ongoing base of state government," he said. "In two years when it's not there anymore, we would have to make massive cuts in order to make ends meet."
According to the Daniels administration, more than $1 billion from economic stimulus money is expected to go directly to schools. He said school officials, too, should look to spend the money for one-time purposes.