Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said Tuesday that UTA and five other bidders around the country vying for a piece of the first-year pool of $158 million set aside in President Bush's 2006 budget request "still have more work to do" before the federal government will ask Congress for a multiyear financial commitment.
Utah is pitted against Dallas, Denver, San Diego, New York and the suburbs of Portland, Ore., for money to begin building a rail line from Salt Lake City to Weber County.
But UTA officials remain confident they will get the federal dollars needed to pay for 80 percent of their project.
UTA claims to be only days away from meeting the remaining requirements sought by Federal Transit Administration (FTA) representatives, who arrived in Utah on Monday night for a final review of plans for the commuter rail project, carrying a total price tag of $581 million over several years. UTA is asking the federal government to pick up $466 million of the tab.
"We are answering their questions and they are taking a look at our final draft environmental impact statement so that we can go out with a record of decision," said Justin Jones, UTA spokesman. "We are going forward with this project and we are excited about being considered with these other five projects in the president's budget."
UTA did not make the federal transit agency's top-tier cut for "anticipated" federal funding commitments in the budget request the Bush administration delivered Monday to Congress. During a briefing Tuesday, FTA Administrator Jennifer Dorn said her staff still needed to see that the Utah project had met all requirements for environmental protection and disabled-persons access.
"As we review projects in the pipeline at an early stage it is not always easy to project 18 months ahead what kind of problems or issues or challenges will be forthcoming," said Dorn. "So over the next month, we will be providing the appropriations committees in Congress information where these six candidate projects are at and whether or not the president would recommend [funding] a specific item amount within that $158 million."
UTA officials are so sure they will get the federal funding commitment that the agency's board has voted to borrow money to begin construction as soon as possible in anticipation of the eventual full-funding grant agreement and federal reimbursement.
"When it comes to steel and concrete products, the longer we delay the higher the prices are," said Jones. "These reimbursements take time so our board is willing to bond if need be to get construction going to meet the completion target of late 2007 and save taxpayers' money."
Utah congressional staffers and transportation lobbyists familiar with the negotiations also expressed confidence that the UTA project would be on a list of recommended appropriations to be delivered early this spring to the House and Senate panels that hold the purse-strings. They contend that Utah's planned commuter rail missed the "anticipated" project list only because of the early deadline for printing the president's budget blueprint.
Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee and has historically fast-tracked Utah rail and freeway funding requests through Congress.
Last year, Bennett persuaded the panel to insert language into the 2005 appropriations bill reducing the amount of local matching funds required for the 43-mile line from Pleasant View to Salt Lake City. The committee agreed, concluding that because Utah taxpayers were already paying for improvements to the Interstate 15 corridor north of Salt Lake City that will include the rail line, UTA should get additional credit in the matching formula.
Dorn called the UTA project a "very rare partnership agreement" with the federal agency.
"Congress has directed that the share for construction of this project to be 80 percent federal, at least, and 20 percent local," she said. "All other projects in the pipeline for approval are less than 60 percent; in fact, the vast majority are less than that."
