Virginia last on list of road projects ready for stimulus money

Virginia is again at the bottom of a list of states when it comes to spending federal stimulus money for transportation improvements.

The American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials recently published a list showing how many highway projects each state had ready to build if additional federal dollars became available, and Virginia was dead last.

Virginia has just six "ready to go" projects, valued at $106 million. The other states' lists ranged from 26 to 1,178 projects with prices up to $4 billion.

"We're not just last, we're last by a long way," said Newport News Del. Glenn Oder, vice chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

In October, Virginia trailed all states for spending its allocated transportation stimulus money and was admonished for the performance by U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. At the time, nearly 43 percent of highway stimulus funding had been spent nationwide while Virginia had spent just 16.5 percent of its federal award.

"I am continually disappointed at how poorly we are performing," Oder said. "The AASHTO report is another confirmation we have not kept up with other states in our planning and our programming of transportation projects."

Oder has submitted a bill calling for a performance audit of the Virginia Department of Transportation.

VDOT chief engineer Malcolm Kerley said he believes states reported their numbers differently to the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials, resulting in misleading comparisons. "This report does not tell the whole story of what's happening in Virginia," he said. "I reported the numbers correctly for Virginia. I find some of the other numbers interesting."

Kerley said, for example, that Virginia did not send to the association $150 million worth of projects in transportation technology and sent only projects that were ready to be put out for bid.

In fact, he said, two of the six projects in line for future stimulus money are now out for bid and will be funded by the current stimulus money because other contracts came in under budget.

"We have considerably more projects than this shows," Kerley said.

He added that VDOT will spend all of its current stimulus allocation of $694 million by the March 2 deadline.

Meanwhile, Dwight Farmer, executive director of the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization, has warned that VDOT's practice of steering limited resources toward construction at the expense of planning would catch up to the agency because stimulus money can be spent only to build projects.

"It all goes back to the fact that we cannot afford to let a number of projects lie dormant, otherwise we'll never get them ready to go," Farmer said.

He added that a lack of ready-to-go projects "presents a bigger challenge to get money on the street sooner rather than later."

Tony Dorsey, spokesman for the state highway officials' association, said the trade group wanted to demonstrate the need for another stimulus or jobs bill. The report shows 9,800 transportation projects, valued at more than $79 billion, are waiting for funding nationwide.

"The message we want to send is our state transportation departments are ready to put people to work," Dorsey said.

He said he could not explain Virginia's numbers.

"I don't even begin to understand," Dorsey said. "Your state has been hit particularly hard."

Debbie Messina, (757) 446-2588, debbie.messina@pilotonline.com