Baucus won't give up state highway money

Proposals to re-open the recently passed federal transportation bill to divert money to hurricane relief are getting attention in Washington, D.C., but Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., says the idea is a "nonstarter."

"Absolutely not," said Baucus, a lead architect of the six-year bill. "We will find another way to pay for Katrina relief efforts that doesn't take away good-paying jobs and safe roads for Montanans. This idea is a nonstarter with me."

The spending bill, which was signed into law Aug. 10, has drawn considerable attention from critics who say lawmakers have stuffed it with hundreds of pet "pork" projects. Baucus refutes that claim, saying the $2.3 billion allocated to Montana is for worthy projects that should not be characterized as pork. The idea for diverting "pork" from the transportation bill to hurricane recovery got some momentum after some community leaders in Bozeman suggested that the community forgo transportation funding that was slated for construction of a new parking garage in that city's downtown area.

Bill Kennedy, chairman of the state Highway Commission, agrees with Baucus, saying that many of Montana's transportation projects have been planned for years, most of them to improve safety.

"These are important projects that came from local communities," said Kennedy, who is also a Yellowstone County commissioner. "I don't think a lot of people understand that when a community puts a project forward, we go through a lot of public hearings and get a lot of input. We're looking at an opportunity to reconstruct a road, to redo a bridge, to correct a problem for the safety of people in our community."

Kennedy cited several examples: the Beartooth Highway, which was badly damaged by a dozen slides in the spring; widening and improving Shiloh Road in Billings, a project that has been planned for years; building a bypass around Kalispell to alleviate traffic within the city; rebuilding the alpine portion of Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun Road, a stretch that hasn't been rebuilt in its 70-year history; and widening and improving a stretch of U.S. 93 between Ninepipes and Ronan.

All of those projects will be paid for with the $355 million the state will receive annually, for the next five years, through the federal transportation bill. Those projects and others will be scheduled by the Highway Commission by November, Kennedy said.

Baucus said he supports efforts to rein in spending on unnecessary federal programs and scrutinizing the federal budget, but he "cannot and will not support giving away these hard-fought dollars."

Baucus maintains that the transportation bill's $2.3-billion infusion will effectively create 18,000 jobs in Montana during the next five years.

"In many ways, the highway bill is our economic development program for Montana," he said. "While well-intentioned, I do not support giving back $2.3 billion to pay for Katrina."

As an alternative, Baucus suggests that the federal government can help pay for hurricane recovery by cracking down on uncollected taxes that are owed to the federal government. The so-called "tax gap" amounts to $350 billion in lost federal revenue every year.

"We should be eliminating government waste and cracking down on tax cheats, not cutting good-paying jobs for Montanans," Baucus said.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.