Road builders: We get shortchanged in Hochul’s budget
Too much funding going to the MTA and splashy “signature” projects, critics say
ALBANY — Gov. Kathy Hochul this year won’t be known as “Governor Pothole,” at least according to those in the state’s vast road and bridge building and repair industries.
Despite increases on road and bridge projects, they say that, as is often the case, a big chunk goes downstate to the New York City metropolitan area, leaving many upstate communities on their own to struggle with potholes, rusting bridges and decrepit road conditions.
“They’ve got us flatlined,” said David Miller, the Lockport town highway superintendent and this year’s president of the New York State Association of Highway Superintendents.
The Consolidated Local Highway Improvement Program, or CHIPS, is proposed at the same $577.8 million level as last year, Miller said, as is the $150 million for the PAVE NY initiative. It’s a familiar refrain and to some extent it reflects where the bulk of New York’s population lives. Downstate, the MTA, which runs New York City subways and buses as well as suburban trains, has seen an increase this year.
Still, this year’s proposal is particularly troubling for several reasons, they say.
For one, road builders say the state isn’t passing along all of the generous allocation that the federal government, through its infrastructure bill, gave to New York.
And much of the money from an admittedly generous $6.1 billion five-year capital plan that started in 2021 is going to so-called “signature” projects such as improvements in Buffalo’s Kensington Expressway, Route 17 and I-81 through Syracuse.
Much of that money was also front-loaded, meaning they’ll need an additional $2.2 billion to finish the signature projects in the next several years, critics said.
That, along with a major boost to the cash strapped MTA, has left local highway departments struggling to keep roads passable, even as costs of material like asphalt have skyrocketed.
“New York sate’s roads are riddled with potholes. Despite having some of the worst road and bridge conditions in the country, Governor Hochul’s budget proposal fails to provide enough funding to fix our rapidly deteriorating infrastructure,” said Fred Hiffa, of Rebuild NY, a group that supports infrastructure spending. A former state Department of Transportation official, he also lobbies for the town highway su
perintendents. “The words ‘road’ and ‘bridge’ weren’t used in the State of the State and I didn’t hear them today either,” Mike Elmendorf, president and CEO of Associated General Contractors of New York State, said on Wednesday after the budget presentation. His group represents the heavy building and road and bridge construction industry.
Elmendorf said federal funding has risen $4.6 billion but only $2 billion is going to road and bridges uses.
On top of that is the inflation in fuel and asphalt costs, especially in the last year. Miller said overall costs have jumped 22 percent in the last two years.
Elmendorf spearheaded a push last month urging more money, including a letter to the Hochul administration cosigned by more than a dozen business and local government leaders.
The problem has its roots in the Andrew Cuomo administration, Hiffa said.
Local highway departments, where the potholes get filled, get the bulk of their money through the state Department of Transportation. During the Cuomo years, priorities were shifted from the day-to-day needs to the large “signature’’ projects such as reconfiguring I-81 through Syracuse, redoing parts of Route 17 or Buffalo’s Kensington Expressway, Hiffa said. That approach has remained in place to some extent, shifting disproportionate amounts of money to the highprofile large projects, which lead to splashy ribbon-cuttings and newss releases.
Like others, Hiffa also believes upstate roads and bridges are suffering at the expense of the MTA, which provides public transit in the New York City area.
Everyone agrees that the agency is cash strapped and is digging out of the ridership drop-off from COVID. But Hiffa said that even in New York City, the MTA is the major transit mode just for Manhattan, with residents in the other four boroughs still relying heavily on automobiles and the roads.
Debt management is another source of contention.
Comptroller Tom DiNapoli last year concluded in a report that “Highway and bridge projects have been shortchanged because the state continues to use money in the Dedicated Highway and Bridge Trust Fund to pay down debt from past projects and cover the operating costs for state agencies.”
He said the scope of eligible projects under Trust Fund, created in 1991, has steadily expanded over the years. By 2022, transfers to pay for debt surpassed capital projects spending.
Then there is the simple fact that road building and repairs aren’t socially notable, highprofile topics as compared to say, criminal justice reforms, immigrant rights, or climate change, to name a few topics that have in recent years received much attention in the Legislature.
Despite that, local highway superintendents like Miller continue to work where the rubber meets the road, literally.
Their first priority, he says, is plowing roads and filling pot holes. And that is likely to go on regardless of state funding, short of some disastrous unforeseen cut.
And even that will be challenging this year due to a number of deep freeze-thaw cycles. These hot and cold swings exacerbate potholes more than an extended freeze or warm period.
“We’re going to have a horrible pothole season,” said Gary Thorington, the town of Windham highway superintendent and this year’s executive board member of the Superintendents Association who represents Greene, Albany and other eastern New York counties.
Along with inflation Thorington, like countless other employers, has struggled to find employees. Increased licensing requirements for dump truck drivers this year has made that even more difficult, he said.
“We have to do more with less all the time,” he added.