Denver's brown cloud (Colorado Department of Health and Environment)

Transportation take-backs, or rescissions, are nothing new for states. But in most years, explained Mickey Ferrell, the Colorado Department of Transportation’s federal liaison, the government requires states to save some of their transportation funding in a Washington account, so that a rescission won’t have real impacts.

“Normally what happens in a rescission is that they take money out of our piggy bank in D.C.,” Ferrell said. “But this year, our accounts don’t have enough money, so they took actual dollars.”

Colorado’s total rescission at the end of September was $114.7 million. Nearly $50 million of that was actual, budgeted dollars, Ferrell said.

Due to the complicated nature of this year’s rescission, CDOT has just now figured out what programs have lost real dollars, said Ferrell. He expected to be able to drill down on impacts to actual projects within the next 30 to 60 days. For now, said Ferrell, CDOT knows that three programs have lost money:

The Construction Mitigation and Air Quality program took the most significant hit, by a considerable margin, losing $31.5 million. The program — which pays for transportation programs that will improve air quality — has funded such projects a Denver initiative to re-time traffic lights in order to reduce idling.

Colorado’s Enhancements fund — which pays for community programs such as bike trails, pedestrian paths, sidewalk projects or lighting — lost $10.6 million.

The Surface Transportation Program-Metro lost almost $8 million. The Denver metro area still has an account balance, said Ferrell, but the Northern Front Range gave up $2.8 million and Colorado Springs gave up $4.9 million.

Ferrell said CDOT has started an analysis of every project in these three categories in order to determine where there might already be cost savings — and where cuts might need to be made.

“We literally have to go dollar by dollar,” said Ferrell.

And while U.S. Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado last month vowed to keep working on rescinding the rescission, Ferrell is not hopeful.

“I would find it very unlikely that Congress would be able to go back and redo this,” he said.

Congress wrote the $8.7 billion funding rescission into the transportation law in order to squeeze the act under 2005 budget limits. According to the Associated General Contractors of America, the intent was to eventually find offsets to prevent the payback from taking effect, but Congress never found those offsets.

Critics have argued that the rescission could have been fixed by passing a new version of the federal surface transportation act. Instead, Congress extended the existing legislation, known as SAFETEA-LU, for one month.

Many say that passing a new version of SAFETEA-LU has been a struggle because Congress can’t agree on a new revenue source to pay for it. Currently, it depends on a declining gas tax for much of its funding.

Congress is now trying to decide whether to pass an 18-month extension of SAFETEA-LU — an idea championed by the Obama administration, which would like to put off transportation reform in order to focus on other priorities — or pass a new version much sooner, as U.S. Jim Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, would like to see.

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Officials from the Colorado Department of Transportation said it may still be a few days before they know what projects, if any, will be affected by the take back or “rescission” of federal cash. Though CDOT set aside about $230 million this year to offset state and federal cuts, certain programs could still be affected, depending on how much the federal government took from each of the state’s funds.

“CDOT is awaiting official notification from the Federal Highway Administration as to the exact amounts rescinded, we believe real dollars will be affected in certain programs,” federal liason Mickey Ferrell wrote in an email.

Meantime, there is still a chance the money could be returned, possibly in the new surface transportation act, when it is authorized, according to the Denver Business Journal:

In a statement Thursday, U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said he was “not giving up.”…

He said he and his Colorado colleague, Sen. Michael Bennet, “have been pushing for that agreement for many months, and I was very disappointed when three Republicans blocked it. Because of this obstruction by a few senators, the fiscal year ended without approval of the agreement, which could potentially cost the states billions of dollars in important transportation funding.”

Congress wrote the $8.7 billion rescission into the law in order to squeeze the Act under 2005 budget limits. According to the Associated General Contractors of America, the intent was to eventually find offsets to prevent the payback from taking effect, but Congress never found those offsets.

Members of Colorado’s delegation to the House have also been working to fight the rescission. Earlier this month, six of Colorado’s seven members of Congress signed onto a letter pleading for a repeal of the rescission. Republican Doug Lamborn, CO5, was the exception, and he declined to comment on the matter.

But when a three-month extension of the nation’s surface transportation act, known as SAFETEA-LU, (Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient, and Transportation Equity Act: a Legacy for Users) passed the House, it included the rescission.

Congresswomen Betsy Markey, D-CO4, and Diana DeGette, D-CO1, and Congressmen Ed Perlmutter, D-CO7, Jared Polis, D-CO2, and John Salazar, D-CO3, all voted for a three-month extension of the nation’s surface transportation act, despite concerns over the rescission. They said they would continue to work on the matter, but they argued that the nation couldn’t afford to have all transportation funding screech to a halt on Oct. 1.

Congressman Mike Coffman, R-CO6, voted against the extension, in protest over the House’s failure to write a new surface transportation act. Congressman Lamborn also voted against the extension.

Ultimately, both houses of Congress agreed on a one-month extension which, while it does not repeal the rescission, funds U.S. Department of Transportation dollars through the end of October.

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GOP Reps Lamborn and Coffman

Although Republican Mike Coffman of the 6th Congressional District signed on to the letter, he later joined fellow Republican Doug Lamborn of the 5th District in a vote against the matter.

The state’s five Democratic representatives voted in favor of a three-month extension of the Transportation Equity Act.

Congress wrote the $8.7 billion “rescission” or funding pay-back into the law in order to squeeze the Act under 2005 budget limits. According to the Associated General Contractors of America, the intent was to find offsets to prevent the payback from taking effect, but Congress never found those offsets.

The act is known by the acronym SAFETEA-LU, (Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient, and Transportation Equity Act: a Legacy for Users).

Staff for several of Colorado’s congressional delegation who voted for the bill expressed misgivings about the legislation generally, but pointed out that SAFETEA-LU was set to expire Sept. 30, which required them to act fast.

“Had Congress not extended [the act], all transportation funding would have stopped effective Monday,” Lara Cottingham, spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, a Democrat from the 2nd Congressional District, said in an email.

“The alternative was to let transportation spending be shut down in a few days, Eric Wortman, spokesman for Democratic U.S. Rep. John Salazar of the 3rd district, said in an email. “An extension gives Congress the opportunity to continue working on the issue.”

All of the lawmakers’ offices conceded that the the matter of repayment required by the act would have to be revisited.

“This is still an important issue,” Cottingham said, “and Congressman Polis is working with the rest of the Colorado delegation to further minimize any impact of the rescission.”

“We are working closely with the Delegation on this” said Kristofer Eisenla, a spokesman for Democratic U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette of the 1st Congressional District.

According to Leslie Oliver, spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat from the 7th district, the pay-as-you-go rules passed earlier by the House made “rescinding the rescission” extremely difficult.

“Under the Act, any kind of funding increase on any bill has to be offset by some other funding,” she explained. “Had we rescinded the rescission there wasn’t enough money to offset that. It would have extended the debate longer in order to find the money.”

“It’s not ideal by any stretch of the imagination,” continued Oliver. “We would prefer to have the rescission fixed in the bill, because Colorado stands to lose a lot of money. That being said, we can’t take the risk of shutting down all federal highway transportation for months.”

Although U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey voted for the extension, spokesman Ben Marter said in an email that the Democrat from the 4th congressional district will work to “rescind the rescission” or find the money to pay it back when the extension goes to conference. Markey sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“Obviously to cut off your nose to spite your face doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Marter said.

The coming expiration of the repayment suspension presented the Republican members of the delegation with particular difficulty.

Coffman signed onto sent the lawmakers’ letter, but then voted against the three-month extension, a perplexing course of action.

Coffman spokesman Nathaniel Sillin said the congressman’s vote had more to do with frustration than about policy.

“[The no vote] was out of protest,” said Sillin. Coffman, he explained, believes Congress should be voting on a full-scale reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Act, rather then passing an extension.

In response to Republican opposition to the extension, the office of Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, who chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, pointed out to Streetsblog that the previous transportation bill went through 12 extensions “when the Republicans were in charge.”

Lamborn was the sole member of the Colorado delegation who did not sign the letter in support of rescinding the rescission. He also voted against the extension and declined to comment on the matter.

The letter, sent to House leaders and members of the transportation committee on Wednesday, borrowed language from a letter sent to all members of Congress from John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. It asked leaders to support the repeal the section in SAFETEA-LU that authorizes the rescission.

The legislators point out that Colorado has returned $214 million in “highway contract authority” since the 2005 fiscal year.

They further argue that with only days remaining in the current five-year measure, “most states have very few unobligated dollars remaining. This means that an additional $8.7 billion rescission will result in substantial, real program cuts, not merely a reduction of unused dollars on the books.”

This year’s rescission, according to the letter, would compel Colorado to return $114,683,752.

According to Streetsblog, while the Senate has been favoring an 18-month extension of SAFETEA-LU, its members are now also mulling a three-month extension—and thus a faster turnaround time for a new federal transportation infrastructure law.

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