DALLAS - Federal lawmakers jumped the gun Tuesday with a spate of announcements about awards of federal funding for home-state highway, bridge, and port projects a week ahead of the planned unveiling of $600 million of Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grants.
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in May that the 2014 TIGER grants would be announced Sept. 15.
However, most of those allocations have been unveiled in news releases from members of Congress. Slightly more than half of the entire allocation will be awarded to a single interstate highway project in Louisiana.
This sixth round of the grants from the program, first authorized in the 2009 stimulus act, will go to 72 projects. A total of $3.5 billion of grants was distributed in the first five rounds.
The Transportation Department received 797 eligible applications totaling $7.9 billion for the $600 million available in fiscal 2014 for the discretionary grant program known universally as TIGER but which is officially labeled as National Infrastructure Investment grants in federal budget documents.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who is in a tough reelection battle for a fourth term in the Senate, said three Louisiana projects will receive three of the 72 TIGER grants.
Expansion of a bulk terminal at the Port of Lake Charles will get $10 million and the city of Lafayette will get $304 million to design and build a 5.5-mile segment of Interstate 49 through the city, Landrieu said. Baton Rouge will get a $1.8 million TIGER grant for a project to link the city's downtown with the nearby main campus of Louisiana State University, she said.
The Lafayette connector is a vital link in the project to convert U.S. 90 into an interstate-quality roadway and the port project will create 200 permanent jobs at the facility, according to the Senator.
"If you give Louisiana the tools for success, our state will rise to the occasion," Landrieu said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said two projects in his state will receive a total of $29.3 million in TIGER grants.
A $13.3 million grant is dedicated to upgrades along a 14-mile segment of Flamingo Road in southern Nevada, including bike and pedestrian lanes, Reid said. Washoe County's transportation commission will get $16 million to develop a rapid bus transit system between Sparks and Reno.
Other TIGER grants include $15 million for upgrades at Port Newark operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and $20 million for modernizing a container terminal at Port of Seattle in Washington.
Meanwhile, Foxx announced Tuesday at a White House infrastructure summit the closure last week a $950 million Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan for Florida Department of Transportation's I-4 highway project. The Florida loan is the largest completed under the TIFIA program for a project involving a public-private partnership.
While the TIGER program is popular, there is no assurance a potential seventh round of TIGER in fiscal 2015 will equal 2014 funding, or even if the popular program will be renewed in upcoming federal budgets.
A Senate appropriations panel has approved a fiscal 2015 transportation budget that includes $550 million in TIGER funds, but the House adopted a spending plan with a $100 million TIGER allocation.
The House version would ban the use of TIGER grants for projects such as hike and bike trails.
"This legislation limits the use of these grants to projects that will address critical transportation needs, such as road, highway, and bridge construction and improvement, and port and railroad intermodal improvements," Republicans on the House subcommittee said.
The six-year transportation funding bill adopted by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee would make TIGER a permanent program and keep its funding at 2014's $600 million, plus inflation, through 2020.
President Obama's four-year, $302 billion Grow America Act transportation proposal would also make TIGER permanent but would boost its spending to $1.25 billion a year.
