FL House Proposes Huge Sweep of Highway Trust Fund

Bob Burleson gave testimony before before FL House Transportation and Economic Development Committee yesterday. Thanks to Keith Laing with the News Service of Florida for covering this important issue. The following article by The News Service of Florida highlights the testimony on the article below:


STATE CAPITOL BRIEFS – WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 2010
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

"TRANSPORT ADVOCATES UNHAPPY WITH HOUSE TF SWEEPS
Transportation advocates emerged from a meeting of the House Transportation and Economic  Development Committee saying the panel’s plans to sweep millions of dollars from the transportation trust fund would put a roadblock on job growth in the state.  Bob Burleson, president of the Florida Transportation Builders Association, said that the panel’s plan to take $428 million directly from the trust fund, which is used to fund road projects in the state, “dwarfs all the job-creating initiatives Legislature’s been talking about.” Calling it a “job killing initiative,” Burleson said the spending plan “would pretty much ensure DOT won’t be able to bid any new work. Basically all they can do is pay existing contacts.” Burleson said his organization was particularly unhappy that $150 million of the sweep would be in form of reinstituting a surcharge on the transportation fund that was eliminated years ago.  “We hear a lot of talk around the Capitol that everybody has to share in the pain, which I agree with” he said. “Obviously I think entire state has shared in the pain these last few years, but the fact is that transportation kind of has our own automatic pain-giver: the Revenue Estimating Conference. We get automatic cuts, which have come through reductions in collections in gas tax and created a drop in the five year work plan of over $10 billion.” Burleson said the trust fund sweeps would cost the state between 80,000 and 100,000 jobs. "