How Does Transport Funding Look In the Cromnibus?

On Tuesday, President Obama signed the massive $1.1 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill that Congress passed last week. This spending bill will fund government agencies through the end of fiscal year 2015. Many of us were concerned about what the Republican Congress would mean for transportation funding, and now we have a more concrete idea of what changes will be taking place.

It turns out that the federal spending bill will, for the most part, keep funding levels steady for important programs, with modest cuts to a few. One of the programs that many people were most concerned about was TIGER, which provides grants for multimodal transportation on a competitive basis. In May, the GOP threatened to cut TIGER by as much $500 Million. Ultimately, the spending bill has cut $100 million from TIGER, leaving $500 million for the next fiscal year. This isn’t ideal, but it could have been far worse. Unfortunately, the cuts did include money that was intended for planning grants.

The spending bill has also raised some questions about funding for the Southwest LRT project. Originally the Met Council was counting on federal funding to pay for half of the $1.65 Billion extension, but a change in the language for the New Starts program could leave them with a $165 Million deficit. This hasn’t been confirmed yet, as the Met Council will be requesting funding in 2016, after the current omnibus spending bill expires. Still, there’s a chance that the current provisions will stay in place for the next spending bill, and it’s definitely something to consider.

Overall, I think that most of us can breathe a sigh of relief. While there are certainly provisions that can be criticized, the government won’t be shutting down, and any major cuts to key spending programs were avoided.