Insuring State Transportation Financing Flexibility - Oppose Kennedy Amendment
WASHINGTON, DC,
March 9, 2005
Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose this amendment. Our State department of transportation is very opposed to the language in the Kennedy amendment and would ask that the House defeat this amendment and use the language that is in the main bill.
In Texas, we have such a unique problem because we have such a large geographic footprint, second only to Alaska. Yet at the same time, we receive nowhere near the Federal funding the State of Alaska receives. As a consequence, we are constantly behind and constantly looking for ways to finance necessary and needed road projects in my State.
We have farm-to-market roads and State highways in my State that carry traffic, burdens of traffic they were never intended to carry, and they cannot be financed with the gas tax alone. We need the flexibility to take the money from a toll road and move it to a near neighbor, near-time project, which I understand that this amendment would prohibit.
Finally, we cannot allow the sunsetting of the tolls on a toll project. The prototype for that was the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike 30 years ago. That was a 1960s solution, and we have a 21st-century problem.
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