Measure restoring Sun Road funds passes Senate

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., expects House to approve amendment

Legislation that restores $50 million for Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun Road passed the Senate on Thursday morning.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said his amendment to an emergency supplemental spending bill will break a "bureaucratic logjam" that has held up the funding for several months.

The appropriation originally was part of last year's transportation bill that established a six-year federal highway construction schedule.

Federal Highway Administration officials, however, determined that language in the bill was not clear enough to allocate the $50 million.

Baucus said in a telephone interview Thursday that his amendment "is very simple" in providing "contract authority" for the Federal Highway Administration.

"That means, basically, that it can be spent," Baucus said.

The highway funding bill includes considerable contracting authority that goes unused, Baucus said, and the amendment taps into that.

Baucus predicted that the amendment will pass the House because it does not affect appropriations for highway projects in Montana or other states.

"I think it's quite likely that the House will accept it," he said.

The amendment follows another measure taken by Baucus to secure the funding - the senator placed a "hold" on a Bush administration nominee to lead the Federal Highway Administration. Baucus said he will continue to block Richard Capka's nomination until the agency agrees to fund the Sun Road project.

"One way or another, we're going to get these dollars," Baucus said. "We've come too far not to."

Glacier officials had been banking on the $50 million as an initial installment for an intensive reconstruction of the alpine stretch of Sun Road. The project was expected to take from six to eight years, but park officials have said the project could be protracted by several years without the $50 million.

The reconstruction project gets under way this summer, with $2.5 million in work planned for road sections near the West Side Tunnel and just east and west of Logan Pass.