ARTBA NEWS: American
Road
& Transportation Builders Association
Phone: 202-289-4434 - www.artba.org/news
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Jeff Solsby
202-289-4434
Transportation Bill Delay Will Impede
Recovery and Create Market Uncertainty, ARTBA Leaders Tell Congressional Committees
Veteran Industry CEO Urges Action on Federal Highway/Transit Bill While
Businessman Outlines Impacts on Small Firms
(Washington,
D.C.) - Proposals to delay the
federal surface transportation program authorization are "mind boggling,"
contrary to lessons "learned the hard way" during previous periods of economic
crisis, and can create market uncertainty that will slow job growth begun under
the recent economic stimulus law. Passage of a multi-year surface
transportation investment bill in the near future will create jobs and speed
economic recovery and begin to remedy the congestion, performance and capacity
consequences of transportation infrastructure under-investment.
Those were the messages of two American Road &
Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) leaders in testimony today before
two House of Representative committees. ARTBA Chairman Charles Potts, CEO of Indianapolis, Ind.-based Heritage Construction and
Materials, anchored a panel before the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of
the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee. ARTBA member Michael
Filipczak, president of Midasco, LLC, an infrastructure contractor in Elkridge,
Md., testified to the House Committee on Small Business.
Potts outlined the importance of action on the
Transportation & Infrastructure Committee's proposed $450 billion surface
transportation authorization bill saying it would "substantially meet the
nation's highway and transit investment needs during the next six years. By
comparison, an 18 month extension of the current law would put the nation even
further behind in addressing its highway and transit needs."
He noted a parallel between the current recession and the
2002-2003 economic downturn, when Congress postponed action on the federal
transportation investment bill 12 times. The uncertainty caused by those
extensions led state and local governments to spend fewer federal highway funds
in 2003 and 2004 than in 2002. Potts noted it was virtually impossible for
state and local transportation agencies to develop effective transportation investment
programs without a long-term funding horizon.
Outlining the impact on U.S. small businesses from
transportation infrastructure investment, Filipczak noted that the
transportation construction industry includes more than 11,000 firms-90 percent
of which have fewer than 100 employees, with an industry average of 40
employees.
"Small businesses depend on the nation's transportation
network to move people and products around town and throughout the country.
Highway congestion has become a major drain on the energy and vitality of small
businesses. When the day is spent dealing with the fall-out of highway
construction-scheduling, routing, late deliveries, missed appointments, unhappy
customers-this takes time away from planning and growing business," Filipczak said.
Filipczak told the committee that the transportation
construction industry as a whole lost jobs in 2008 and today has lost some
40,000 jobs to date - a pattern he noted applied to industry firms as well as
subcontractors and suppliers. He said the surest route to recovery was to not
pass an 18 month extension of current surface transportation programs, but to
enact a multi-year, federal infrastructure investment bill which could create
as many as 150,000 jobs in 2010.
Over the six-year period covered by the transportation
investment bill proposed by the House Transportation & Infrastructure
Committee, Filipczak and Potts each said the increased highway funding would
support an annual average of almost 540,000 more jobs in the U.S. economy than
under the current funding level.
Chairman Potts told the Transportation & Infrastructure
Committee he had "never seen a situation as dire as the one facing the nation's
surface transportation network today," and that physical conditions and
performance on U.S.
highway and transit systems are badly deteriorating because of inadequate
investment. These conditions require action, not procrastination," he said.
Established in 1902, ARTBA represents the U.S.
transportation design and construction industry in the Nation's Capital.
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