***IDOT on Top of Things***Breakdown of Highways and Bridges Stimulus $$$***Some Districts Get the Shaft: Capital Bill a Must***

** IL in general and IDOT specifically have taken some heat this week from the press for not submitting a list of infrastructure projects. From the Tribune:

Illinois still has not officially submitted a list of shovel-ready road and mass transit projects to the federal government for funding under the economic stimulus package, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Tuesday, warning that time is running out.

"The law requires us to get the money out the door very quickly," LaHood said. But "we have not received a list from the state or from Chicago."

** IDOT responded to this criticism in a Daily Herald article on Wednesday:

But Kollias says Illinois still has time and that no federal agency has suggested the state's missed deadlines.

She says Illinois has a window of about four months to complete an involved project-approval process.

That included inviting public comment on a nearly $700 million IDOT project list that emphasizes road repairs. Kollias says that comment period ended only Tuesday.

** On Wednesday, newly appointed Secretary of Transportation Gary Hannig testified before the Appropriations-Public Safety Committee on IDOT's project list and the probable allocation and division of funds. Of course, he addressed the public concerns that IDOT was not on the ball with regard to federal deadlines...

The Trib article misunderstood the situation. We had a list of shovel ready projects ready to go, but we felt it would seem disingenuous to submit a list of projects while were we still accepting and review public suggestions for stimulus projects. That process ended Tuesday, however, and IDOT has submitted a project list to the federal government.

Well that should help relieve those of you out there whom were sweating bullets worrying that IL would again prove inept and fail to collect all available stimulus money.

FYI- Here is the link to the IDOT website where which was where suggestions were submitted and a list of projects can be found...


** So now lets look at two different breakdowns of the stimulus money.

1.) Here is the allocation of stimulus funds divided by type of spending.


These are the federally mandated allocation levels. The state may choose not to use some funds, however any unused funds from one category may not be shifted to another. So IL must accept these ratios if it wishes to maximize the stimulus funds it receives. Basically, the Federal Government is saying take it or leave it, but the state can't change it.

2.) Here are 2 flow charts that show:

A.) How the U.S. government divides the Highway/Bridges Stimulus dollars among the state.

There is an important difference between the State Share and the Local Share of the stimulus money. The State Share must be allocated, for the most part, within 6 months of the bill enactment. (some types of spending have a little longer than this) So IL must allocate all of the $627 million it is eligible to receive by July of this year. This money must not be spent by then, however, the projects they will fund must have gotten under way by the end of the 6 month time span. All projects must be submitted to the U.S Department of Transportation and then must be approved by Federal engineers.

The Local Share works the same way, however, local governments are allotted a whole year (Feb 2010) to allocate their funds and get their projects underway. Both state and local governments are subject to the same federal controls for submission and approval of projects, but the state must work quickly, or else any funds not allocated to a project underway by deadline will be lost to the state. (I will return to this below)

• B.) How IL will divide the funds it receives geographically throughout the state.

This graph is pretty straight forward, but it should be noted that the Large Metropolitan Organizations are divided among the dominant or primary municipality, the county(s), and council of mayors (for suburban municipalities).

Take Chicago for example the $180 million that the Chicago MPO receives. The city of Chicago will receive $86 million, Cook County gets $47 million, and the remaining $57 million is split between the 6 different Council of Mayors that exist within the MPO.

Also, D-1 of the State Share is for the northern region of the state which contains roughly 40% to 45% of the IL's population.

The % split by the state and local is mandated by the federal government, but the sub-division within those categories are done at the state's discretion, and this is where things got interesting during the Appropriations-Public Safety Committee on Wednesday.


** Due to the federal guidelines, mainly the requirement to have the U.S. DOT approve projects and the 6 month deadline (of which 4 months remain), IDOT is not able to distribute project equally throughout the state.

As I mentioned above, the state has to play by the U.S. Government's rules or else lose the funding. The result, of course, was a committee that had some very unhappy members. Naturally, these Representatives wanted to know how the project lists were created. In fact, the vast majority of the committee's business consisted of Representatives asking about the process by which projects were designated as a stimulus funded project . As you can imagine, much of this was questioning was circular, Hannig's response was very consistent however.

(The following three paragraphs are paraphrased very closely from Hannig's testimony - I took notes, but I do not have the exact audio- and so the original meaning remains intact, but they are not exact quotes)

Hannig explained that, for the most part, IDOT simply choose projects that were already in the federal pipeline awaiting funding. These project were already approved and were in fact shovel ready projects that simply needed the funding to get underway, so they were a natural fit with the federal guidelines and rapidly approaching deadline. It was IDOT engineers, not any politician or administrator, that determined which projects were ready enough to be placed on the projects list. Thus, districts with the most shovel ready projects are slotted to receive a larger share of the stimulus money then districts with few ready to go projects. Due to the use it or lose it nature of the deadline, some districts got the shaft.

I understand that there is a great deal of "frustration" regarding division of stimulus funds and that some districts are essentially getting "screwed". Let us remember that the stimulus money is not even equal to one year of IL highway operating budget. So while the stimulus will help, it is certainly not a solution to IL infrastructure problems, and a much greater amount of funds, mainly a capital bill, will be needed to handle state's infrastructure needs.

Thus, I strongly recommend that this committee consider a capital bill. And for those members who did not receive a fair share of stimulus funding, they should look to a capital bill to address those concerns.

** So there you have it. IDOT is on top of the IL Stimulus money and, due to federal time lines, some districts receive relatively meager portions. The real problem is that the stimulus money for infrastructure (highway and bridges) is only a drop in the bucket of what the state really needs, and a capital bill of untold billions of dollars will be needed to deal with the states significant infrastructure demands.


** Related...

* Officials have year to set up projects

* Stimulus money to pave Southland