8.3.07 - Argall Proposes 50 Million Dollar Shift

Of special note:

In the current state budget signed into law by Rendell on July 17, nearly $500 million from the state Motor License Fund will be used to fund the Pennsylvania State Police. Argall believes that money should be used for road and bridge repairs and the State Police should be funded through the state’s General Fund. He plans to introduce a bill that would reduce the amount of state police funding coming out of the Motor License fund by $50 million each year over the next 10 years until the practice is finally eliminated. Argall proposes to replace the state police funding with General Fund revenues.

“We should be paying for the state police out of our general budget; not a special fund that was established to maintain our transportation infrastructure,” Argall said.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 3, 2007

Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: Could it Happen Here?

Argall says poor condition of PA bridges is reason for concern; plans to introduce legislation to address the lack of funding for repairs

HARRISBURG – Two days after a bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minn., Rep. David G. Argall (R-Berks/Schuylkill) is planning to introduce legislation to help fix more Pennsylvania roads and bridges.

“Nearly one out of every four bridges in Pennsylvania is structurally deficient,” Argall said. “For several years, I have pointed out that Pennsylvania’s roads and bridges are deteriorating. The question is, what will we do to prevent what happened in Minneapolis from happening in our own backyard?”

The Transportation Funding and Reform Commission reported that 23 percent of the 25,313 bridges on the state-maintained system are structurally deficient and Pennsylvania’s state-owned bridges are, on average, 50 years old. The bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis was 40 years old.

According to rideonpa.org, a Web site established by the Rendell administration to highlight the state’s transportation crisis, four bridges in Berks County have been closed due to their poor condition. Another 19 bridges in Berks County and six bridges in Schuylkill County have been weight-restricted due to their deteriorating condition.

While the state recently adopted a new transportation funding plan that will provide an additional $450 million for road and bridge repairs in 2007, Argall said he has been given no guarantee that the new transportation funding will be used to fix the bridges in Berks and Schuylkill counties. While Gov. Ed Rendell has been quoted saying, “There’s a reasonable amount of certainty in crossing every bridge in Pennsylvania,” Argall said the people in Berks and Schuylkill counties deserve better.

“Local drivers are entitled to more than a ‘reasonable amount of certainty’ that the bridge underneath them will not collapse,” Argall said.

In an effort to dedicate more money for road and bridge repairs, Argall is planning to introduce two separate pieces of legislation in the near future. The first would eliminate the process of using money from a state transportation fund to pay for the Pennsylvania State Police. The second would limit the governor’s authority to divert money from road and bridge projects to bail out mass transit authorities.

“We should be paying for the state police out of our general budget; not a special fund that was established to maintain our transportation infrastructure,” Argall said.

Argall also plans to introduce legislation to limit the governor’s ability to use federal highway funds to subsidize mass transit systems. Over the past several years, Rendell has diverted nearly a half-billion dollars in federal highway funds to bail out mass transit systems across the state, with a majority of the money going to Philadelphia’s mass transit system. Argall plans to look at how other states control the flexing of federal highway dollars for ways to control the governor’s propensity to use these funds to bail out mass transit systems.

“We’re going to look at what other states are doing to place limits on the governor’s ability to divert highway dollars to mass transit,” Argall said. “These dollars should be used to fix our roads and bridges; not to pay for a Philadelphian’s bus ride.”