BASICS Act would expand county access to federal formula funds

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Deep down in Louisiana — about three hours from New Orleans —Rapides Parish is a sportsman’s paradise that also boasts impressive cultural amenities. 

“We have a really nice theater downtown,” said Matt Johns, long-time Rapides Parish resident. “The Coughlin Saunders Performing Arts Center. And you can get into some stuff there that is as good as what you would see in other larger cities.”

Johns isn’t just proud of his home parish — he’s working every day to plan for its future and make it an even better place to live and work. Johns leads the Rapides Area Planning Commission (RAPC), the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) that coordinates transportation planning and development for a major portion of Rapides Parish.

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Johns serves both as the organization’s CEO and as a commissioner on its board appointed by the Rapides Parish Police Jury. RAPC also plans for economic development, which Johns says goes hand in hand with the transportation work that RAPC does.

However, Johns notes that there is often difficulty managing economic development priorities with other transportation needs. 

“We have to spend money on necessities before we can do amenities,” Johns cautioned. 

That can create tradeoffs for the parish transportation network and stretch RAPC’s capacity. Even when they know projects will spur economic development, RAPC must put upkeep at the top of their priority list. 

“We can’t let the existing network crumble to spend some money on potential economic development,” he said.

That means projects like extending Sugarhouse Road in Rapides Parish, which Johns says has been on RAPC’s planning radar for more than two decades, must wait. 

“If we had the funding to do it, we could have programmed it, paid for it and been done with it, rather than chasing this unicorn that keeps getting more and more expensive the longer we wait,” he said. 

This feedback loop of expensive projects leading to delays, which in turn drives prices up even further, is a constant issue facing local leaders. Johns also noted that this situation is exacerbated by significant cost increases in the transportation space. 

“In the 1980s, you could build a good amount of roadway for $3.5 million,” he said. “Now $3.5 million might get us one mile of overlay and a couple of intersections, maybe a piece of the sidewalk.” 

In facing these challenges, Rapides Parish is far from alone. Local and regional transportation planners map out projects years in advance, but without adequate funding, they often must sit on the shelf. Nationwide, counties own 44% of public road miles and 38% of bridges, but, under current transportation funding programs, local governments receive a much smaller share of federal formula funding – just 14%. 

New legislation in Washington could change that and give counties nationwide more access to federal formula funding. In February, Reps. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Mich.) and Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) introduced the Bridges And Safety Infrastructure for Community Success (BASICS) Act (H.R. 7437). 

This bipartisan legislation would grow the share of overall formula transportation funding that is “sub-allocated,” or made available for organizations like RAPC to use for locally selected projects. This would include new access to formula funding for bridges and safety infrastructure.

This increase in capital funding would help move county-led projects forward in places across the country. The BASICS Act also includes process reforms to ensure that local governments — in conjunction with transportation planning organizations like MPOs — can better handle and implement federal dollars. 

Johns says that his board of directors likes to call this process “[beating] the snakes out of the weeds,” ensuring that projects have gone through all the necessary steps to proceed quickly with construction.

The BASICS Act has a clear, albeit steep, path forward: Being included in the next surface transportation reauthorization bill. Every five years, Congress passes a bill to reauthorize surface transportation programs through the Department of Transportation. 

This bill not only sets topline spending levels for roads, bridges and more, but it also dictates how that money gets spent and by whom. The current surface transportation law, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is set to expire at the end of September, meaning Congress is actively working to draft and pass the next bill.

NACo and many of its peer organizations have made the BASICS Act their top priority for that bill. In February, more than 70 organizations representing local governments in all 50 states sent a letter to committee leaders in the House and Senate asking them to include the BASICS Act in their respective reauthorization proposals.

As Congress moves forward with developing the next surface transportation reauthorization bill, NACo is encouraging counties to weigh in with their representatives.

“Members of Congress want to know that the bills they support in Washington will benefit their communities back home, said Ben Gilsdorf, NACo Associate Legislative Director for Transportation. “County leaders should tell their representatives that supporting the BASICS Act is how to ensure that the next bill works for their district and their residents.”