Audrey Dutton

House and Senate leaders may soon include a six-month extension of the current transportation law in an omnibus appropriations bill, as the Dec. 18 expiration date of the latest extension approaches, sources said Friday.

House transportation leaders yesterday said they will push for as much as $69 billion of infrastructure grants to states to be included in any job-creation bill that is put forward and approve an extension of the current law.

A coalition of transportation, environmental, and housing groups is asking House and Senate leaders to limit infrastructure programs in any forthcoming jobs bill to just one year and to direct spending toward the rehabilitation and operation of existing infrastructure instead of new construction projects.

WASHINGTON — Tax revenues continued to fall in the July-to-September quarter of 2009 — the fourth consecutive quarter of decline — for all 44 states that reported their third-quarter results to the Rockefeller Institute of Government, according to its preliminary report released yesterday. Surprising revelations in the report include California’s relatively moderate year-over-year declines.

WASHINGTON — As infrastructure increasingly plays a key role in investment decisions nationwide, Minneapolis-based Piper Jaffray & Co. has expanded its transportation banking team and added to its Northeast staff.

WASHINGTON — Senate transportation leaders are in a standoff with their House counterparts over a six-month extension of the current transportation law, as states are experiencing a 30% reduction in their federal highway and bridge funding.

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are pushing for a second economic stimulus bill, and transportation advocates hope it will contain funding for infrastructure without further delaying a multi-year surface transportation reauthorization bill.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Energy is asking governments and development finance authorities to participate in the first stage of a new federal loan guarantee program for alternative energy projects, which is expected to be used in conjunction with municipal bonds and will guarantee at least $50 billion of debt.

State, regional, and local transportation toll authorities will steadily issue debt as the economy recovers in order to pay for infrastructure maintenance and construction projects that cannot be funded from state and federal coffers, Moody’s Investors Service predicted in a report issued late last week.

WASHINGTON — California tops the list of 10 states that have been so severely hit by the recession there could be “potentially damaging consequences for the entire country,” the Pew Center on the States warned in a new report.

WASHINGTON — State budget cuts will cause a drop of nearly one percentage point in the gross domestic product in fiscal year 2011 unless the federal government extends its aid to states beyond Dec. 31, 2010, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act programs expire, economists and budget analysts warned yesterday.

WASHINGTON — Market participants are pushing for states or the federal government to take a “programmatic” rather than a piecemeal or project-by-project approach to financing infrastructure through public-private partnerships.

DALLAS — The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program is likely here to stay, though it is unclear how much funding it will receive in the future, federal officials said here yesterday.

WASHINGTON — The Georgia Department of Transportation is poised to launch a public-private partnership initiative it hopes will encompass 17 projects, including a multimodal passenger terminal in Atlanta, connector highways, toll roads and privatized highway rest stops.

States will struggle with finances in fiscal 2011 just as much as they have this fiscal year and last fiscal year, panelists said at a meeting here Friday sponsored by Tax Analysts.

WASHINGTON — Congress last night was poised to approve a second stopgap measure to fund the federal government, including transportation and bond-related programs, for another seven weeks.

The federal government is expected to forego more than $26 billion in annual revenue each year from fiscal 2008 through fiscal 2012 because of what tax-exempt bond financing of infrastructure projects costs federal coffers, the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation said in a report this week.

Senate transportation leaders are pushing for a six-month extension of programs that provide funding to states and metropolitan areas for highways, bridges, and other surface transportation projects, Environment and Public Works Committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told officials gathered in California over the weekend.

WASHINGTON — The public sector should provide 55% or 65% of high-speed rail costs through gasoline and other taxes, Richard Harnish, executive director of the Chicago-based Midwest High Speed Rail Association, said at a conference here Friday.

WASHINGTON — The development of a 17,000-mile national high-speed rail network would cost $600 billion, or $30 billion per year through 2030, Andy Kunz, president and chief executive officer of the U. S. High Speed Rail Association, said here at a conference yesterday.