Arkansas highway projects undecided for $357 million in stimulus funds

“The two questions everyone wants to know are ‘How much?,’ and ‘Where are you going to spend it?,’” Randy Ort, spokesman for the Arkansas Highway & Transportation Department, said Tuesday when asked the state’s portion of highway funding from the federal stimulus bill. “And right now, we really don’t have the answers.”

Arkansas is slated to get $357.96 million in transportation funds from the $787 billion federal stimulus bill signed into law Tuesday (Feb. 17) by President Barack Obama.

However, it will be about 21 days before the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) delivers funding and project guidelines to the states, Ort said.

“We’ll know more about how this will unfold in the next few weeks,” Ort said. “Until then, we don’t know” what state projects will get federal stimulus money.

Knight Kiplinger, the noted and closely read economist and journalist, wrote in a recent “Kiplinger Report” that a bulk of Arkansas’ portion of the money will be used for interchange work at Interstates 430 and 630 in central Arkansas.

Ort said the stimulus money will come in two categories, with roughly 50% of the $357 million placed in a Tier 1 category that requires obligation to a specific project within 120 days of receiving details from the FHWA. The remaining funds — Tier 2 — are to be obligated within one year, Ort explained.

Once projects are obligated, they are usually contracted shortly thereafter, Ort said.

Also, Ort said, the state has about $1.5 billion in “shovel ready” projects, so the stimulus money won’t have trouble finding qualified contracts. He also said contractors have told the department they have the manpower and equipment ready to handle work from the stimulus funds.

Although the stimulus funds won’t meet all the state’s highway needs, Ort said the department is eager to use them to somewhat shorten the state’s highway to-do list. The state usually spends about $400 million annually on highway projects, meaning the $357 million almost gives the state a one-year boost.

“This is almost like we get funding for three years of projects in about two years,” Ort said.

In 2007, the AHTD identified $19 billion in highway needs in the next 10 years, with only about $4 billion in revenue in that 10-year period to address the needs.

Less than 100% of the $357 million will go to highway work. A small percentage, Ort noted, will go to enhancement projects — signaling, beautification, etc. — and the Little Rock and Memphis-West Memphis metropolitan planning organizations for transportation studies.