The House overwhelmingly (387-37) passed legislation (H.R. 6532) to transfer more than $8 billion to the Highway Trust Fund, in part to cover a projected shortfall. The Senate may consider the House proposal, or may develop an alternate approach to address the anticipated deficit. The Bush administration opposes the House bill, and wants to close the gap with a combination of slower payments and borrowing from the fund's Transit Account's cash balance. The administration issued a statement condemning the House bill, saying it is “both a gimmick and a dangerous precedent that shifts costs from users to taxpayers at large. Moreover, the measure would unnecessarily increase the deficit and would place any hope of future, responsible constraints on highway spending in jeopardy.” Supporters of the House bill explain it would replace more than $8 billion in user fees transferred to the General Fund back in 1998.

OBERSTAR MOCKS ADMINISTRATION

House Transportation Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) is not impressed with the Bush administration's ideas to address surface transportation problems. The package lists 25 policy ideas for congressional consideration as legislators begin writing legislation to extend the federal surface transportation programs. The current law expires in September 2009. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters outlined a range of issues including the need to improve the current 13-year average that it takes to design and build new highway and transit projects. Peters said the federal review process should be streamlined to address the same stringent environmental and planning questions, but yield answers more quickly. In addition, she stressed, the key to any transportation reform package is “finding new revenue sources to supplement the unpredictable and unsustainable gas tax, in order to fund maintenance and pay for new needed projects.” Peters called the gas tax “an antiquated mechanism, underscored by the current climate of high gas prices.” Oberstar mocked the proposals. “Mostly, it is a collection of the same uninspired and uninspiring policies that this administration has offered over the past five years: toll it, privatize it, lease it, sell it, or congestion price it,” he said in a statement, noting that the Bush administration will not be around to pursue the proposals beyond the end of this year.

HOUSE LEADERS PROBE WETLAND ENFORCEMENT PROBLEMS

Oberstar has joined Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), House Oversight Committee chairman, in digging more deeply into internal U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents that suggest enforcement of wetlands jurisdictional issues is sputtering due to interpretations of a key Supreme Court decision. An internal letter written by EPA's top enforcement official says: ‘The Rapanos decision and the resulting guidance have created uncertainty about EPA's ability to maintain an effective enforcement program with respect to other [Clean Water Act] obligations.” The EPA documents indicate that 500 clean water enforcement cases were negatively affected in just nine months as a result of the Rapanos decision, and that EPA dropped enforcement action in 300 more cases between July 2006 and December 2007.

EPA EXPANDS BREAKS TO NEW PROPERTY OWNERS FOR SELF-AUDITS

EPA has issued an interim version of a revamped audit policy that includes new incentives for new owners of transferred property to make a “clean start” by self-auditing for environmental problems and then disclosing and correcting those violations. These new owners may receive lower penalties than those that would have been assessed against the prior owners of the property. The interim policy expands EPA's existing policy to encourage self-audits. The policy provides expanded opportunities for penalty reductions for an even wider range of violations. The revamped policy is effective immediately.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Washington Correspondent

Charlotte S. Garvey is a Washington, D.C.-based writer specializing in environmental, natural resources and other public policy issues.