Legislative Update

Published in the Clarion 02-02-98

Hello to everyone! By the time you read this, we will be almost finished with the third week of the legislative session - it's going very fast.

I want to tell you about the two road bills I introduced this week - Senate Bills 263 and 264. SB 263 establishes a funding mechanism for upgrading secondary roads in Alaska and SB 264 establishes a program to provide funding for municipalities for road maintenance.

The idea is to upgrade and pave state maintained secondary gravel roads, by establishing a secondary road standard, similar to county road standards outside. Those gravel roads will be ranked project by project, against other gravel roads - not against the major highway system or other paved roads.

Increased ranking will be given to a road when a local government is interested in transferring the road from the State to them. My bills provide additional funding for those transfers and also increase the amount of money per mile that local governments receive for roads they maintain by 40 percent.

Since I have been a Senator, the only way a secondary road has received funds for upgrading is through federal funding - around $220 million annually. Those funds are allocated by the Governor into three programs: the National Highway System (NHS), the Community Transportation Program (CTP) and the TRAAK. The roads under NHS receive the most funds and are for highways - the primary routes. The TRAAK is for trails and receives about $ 20 million. The CTP receives $80 million each year.

Every road in Alaska which is not a national highway competes for that $80 million under the CTP. Obviously, that's a lot of competition; there are more miles of non-highway roads than there are highway miles, yet there is less money in the CTP by the Governor's allocation.

As an example, Funny River Road (a state maintained road) can only be funded at this time through the CTP, where it competes with many state maintained and local maintained roads, including some paved roads.

The majority of calls I get about terrible road conditions are for the secondary graveled routes - like Funny River Road. The problem is not poor maintenance by DOT; the problem is the poor condition of the road itself. Without any ongoing road improvement program, like the one I've introduced, the problems only get worse.

I am determined to make some headway with this problem - it is critical to the well being of our communities. We can create jobs but it doesn't help the employee trying to get to and from work on a substandard road. We can build more schools, but until the roads are improved, the school buses will still get stuck in the mud. Vehicles take us to our jobs, schools, grocery stores and to our churches - those vehicles need good roads.

I'm committed to improving our roads to a standard which other states have enjoyed for many years and I encourage you to support this concept in whatever manner you can.