Federal funding for the Albuquerque Rapid Transit project, otherwise known as ART, is in limbo after the Trump Administration released its bare-bones proposed budget plan.
ART’s budget was originally formulated using federal funds totaling $69 million, more than half the total budget. The funds were to come through Obama’s New Starts grant program, but the ART project has not officially secured the grant yet.
President Trump’s proposed budget is for the 2018 fiscal year, and cuts all funding for the project. ART funding is in Obama’s 2017 budget, however, which Congress will deliberate on soon.
“Based off our best understanding today, we are in no different of a situation than we were before,” read a statement from Rhiannon Samuel, director of communications for Mayor Richard Berry. “There is no new information today that leads us to believe that this project won’t be included in the 2017 budget. The professionals have repeatedly reported to us that no time in the history of the small starts grant has a city not been funded, especially if their project is already underway.”
ART Spokesperson Joanie Griffin also confirmed that ART is currently on track to be completed on time.
UNM Civil Engineering assistant professor Gregory Rowangould prepared an analysis of the initial engineering and consulting analysis study for ART, titled “Review of the Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART) Project’s Potential Transportation and Environmental Impacts” in June.
The analysis showed the project is likely to cause more traffic and will not improve the transit service, Rowangould said.
“At this point, the questions are complicated. The thing is about half-built, and obviously they are going to continue to build it,” he said. “But I think the question we have here is what are the options they have to pay for this.”
One such option would be to take money from other programs within the city, and reallocate those to the ART project, Rowangould said.
“Of course that’s a lot of money, and it’s not like there’s extra money. So you’d have to not fund something else to try to fund ART,” he said, adding that another option would be to look to the state.
Although ART is not a state project, the city does get money from the New Mexico Department of Transportation.
That money comes from the state gasoline tax which goes to the DoT and is distributed back to municipalities to spend on projects, Rowangould said.
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The department gives a portion to each city, but that money is already tied to projects for the next couple of years.
Another course of action would be to try borrowing money from other parts of the government, Rowangould said.
“There’s not enough money to pay for most things already, so I think it would be very difficult position the city would find itself in,” he said.
An eye on a divisive president
UNM Political Science professor Timothy Krebs said the options would be: generate money through old sources, outsource revenues and partner with the state or tap into any other kinds of federal money that can allow supplementing for the specific funds needed for the project.
Whether or not the federal grant will not come through is largely unknown, as the president’s budget proposal is just the beginning of a conversation about the direction of federal spending.
“The members of Congress are the ones that actually write the budget appropriately and the president doesn’t have the line of veto authority. The two senators from our state are democrats and they are going to support the project,” Krebs said.
At the moment, federal monies have been spent and the project is midway, he said. Projects the size of ART tend to not get dropped this far into their construction.
“The Congress is independent of the Executive (Branch), so the Congress doesn’t just have to rubber stamp the president’s budget. Much depends on what the final budget looks like, whether it reflects more of Congress’s preference or it reflects more of the Trump Administration’s preferences,” Krebs said.
A lot will depend on the political standing of the president, he said. Right now the political standing of the president is not very high, so members of Congress are going to feel emboldened to not to follow along with what the president wants.
“It’s a very complex thing. You’ve got the congressional delegation and there’s a lot of support for this coming from New Mexico,” Krebs said. “You’ve got a Republican mayor, and this is sort of his signature project. It would be unusual for a project to get started and just get dropped when the locals are depending on these funds coming through.”
New Mexico’s two Democratic senators have a job to protect the interests of the state, he said, and although the ART project has been controversial, to halt it at this point could prove disastrous.
Businesses stuck in limbo with massive construction while waiting for the state, city or county to fund the project would also put businesses in an even tougher spot than they find themselves in currently.
Krebs said the position that ART currently finds itself in is an opportunity for different levels of government to come together on something that is impacting and will continue to impact the lives of Burqueños for the foreseeable future.
“All the economic facts show this is going to beneficial to the city of Albuquerque and...these layers of government have to work together,” he said. “What happens at the state and local level is really, really, important.”
Nichole Harwood is a reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Nolidoli1.
