Contact your Governor today!
Take Action! Visit the League of American Bicyclists action page to send a quick message to Governor Brown:
In the latest budget deal between the Republicans and Democrats, the two parties agreed to rescind (read: take back) $2.5 billion in unspent federal transportation funds. Caltrans has the power to decide which funds they send back. And based upon history we know what happens next. Caltrans may try to empty out the funds that pay for your sidewalks, bike lanes, trails, and education programs. We have seen this before, and it is happening again. Last year, when states had to send back $2.2 billion in transportation funds, almost half of that money came from programs that fund bicycling and walking projects.See our Rescissions FAQs for more information. Please contact Governor Brown today to tell them this is wrong. Funding cuts for the rescission should be fair and proportional across the board. Recission FAQ’s What are rescissions? Periodically, Congress rescinds, or cancels, unspent transportation funds from State DOTs. Rescissions are essentially a bookkeeping measure, which allows the USDOT to take long unspent funds off the books. However, some state DOTs have turned them into an opportunity to gut neglected bicycle and pedestrian funding sources in order to preserve favored programs. What is at stake for bicycle and pedestrian projects? What do we want? We want state DOTs to minimize the impact of this round of rescissions on TE and CMAQ programs. At the very least, rescissions should be fair and proportional. All funding programs should receive equal consideration to others: they should be spent proportionally and rescinded proportionally. Programs favorable to bicycle and pedestrian projects should not be targeted more than others. Bicycling-friendly programs, Transportation Enhancements and CMAQ, received 7.3 percent of DOT apportionments, but were the sources of 44 percent of the 2010 rescissions What you might hear from your DOT “These cuts aren’t real — they don’t touch ‘real’ money?” Congress apportions more funds to states than they are allowed to spend each year. Rescissions are meant to take back the unspent portions. DOTs do not prioritize all programs equally. Since DOTs know that rescissions mean that they’ll lose their unspent funds, they can drag their feet on bicycling and walking programs, while aggressively using highway funds, leaving those with relatively few unspent dollars to return. They can say that no projects were lost because they never planned to spend the money anyway. The Rails to Trails Conservancy uses this helpful analogy to explain: “Imagine that you were asked to plan a meeting and were given a budget with line items for food, drink, meeting space and supplies. Now, your boss tells you to cut back 10 percent of the total budget. You eliminate all drinks from the meeting to cover that 10 percent, instead of trimming from each category. When the thirsty guests ask for drinks, you tell them that you didn’t actually “give up” any money for drinks from the meeting, because in fact you’d never had the funds to begin with (technically true, since the full amount was budgeted but not authorized). And further, no drinks were lost because they were never even ordered in the first place!” Rails to Trails explanation “These rescissions only affect earmarks” Not true. The April 2011 $3.2 billion rescission was a result of the budget deal worked out in Congress. As part of the deal, $700 million will be rescinded from old earmark programs. But that’s only part of it. An additional $2.5 billion is being rescinded from programs at the State DOT’s discretion. How can we avoid being unfairly impacted by future rescissions? The best way to protect bicycling and walking programs from disproportionate rescissions in the long run is to ensure that state departments of transportation are making full use of programs that most often fund bicycle and pedestrian projects. Help programs compete for obligation authority by finding political and agency champions who will make sure these programs are expertly administered. See the Advocacy Advance document, Understanding Rescissions – a Call for Proportionality, and AdvocacyAdance.org for suggestions and resources to increase spending on bicycle and pedestrian projects.