Md., Va. Diverted Bridge Money
Funds Were Used To Widen Roads, Fix Streetlights

By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Virginia and Maryland officials used more than $30 million from the federal government's main bridge repair and replacement fund on projects that weren't bridges, according to interviews and government documents tracking spending over the past four years.

The federal bridge money was transferred to general transportation accounts that funded such things as streetlights in suburban Maryland and the widening of Ox Road in Fairfax County and King Street in Leesburg.

Millions more in federal dollars might have been diverted to projects other than bridges in the two states, but federal and state officials say their accounting systems are not set up to track which projects eventually got the money.

The transfers from the Highway Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Program -- created after the deadly collapse of a span over the Ohio River in 1967 -- are permitted under federal rules.

But as Congress prepares to debate a major infusion of cash for bridge work after the Aug. 1 collapse of the Interstate 35 West span in Minneapolis, the transfers help show the limits of the patchwork of systems in place to track and prioritize federal spending on aging bridges. Nationwide, state officials have transferred $2.1 billion from the highway bridge program to other accounts since fiscal 2002, according to government figures.

More than 175 bridges in the Washington region are listed as structurally deficient by federal standards, meaning they have significant problems and need work to keep them safe in coming years. There are no clear estimates of what it would cost to restore or replace them all.

The money Virginia and Maryland moved to non-bridge projects represented about 5 percent of the more than $650 million government figures show the two states received since 2004 under the main federal bridge program. Although substantial additional federal and state funds are spent on bridges each year, the transferred millions could have benefited some of the local spans with falling concrete or corroding steel, some transportation advocates say.

"It's the way governments, unfortunately, operate," said John B. Townsend II, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic. "These monies are set aside for that purpose because bridges need an infusion of money to make sure they are properly maintained, are up to code and are structurally sound."

The fragility of some area bridges was made clear Friday when chunks of concrete fell from a bridge over the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, closing all lanes while workers cleared debris. An inspection of the Greenbelt Road bridge in 2005 found two of the span's three key structural elements to be "satisfactory," which federal standards define as including "some minor deterioration," according to federal inspection data from 2006. The third key element of the bridge was rated "good," which can include "some minor problems," according to federal standards.

State officials say that they spend large sums to keep bridges safe and that the complex realities of federal funding sometimes require such transfers to solve accounting, timing or other planning problems.

Virginia officials said that moving bridge money in 2004 helped prevent the state from losing other federal funds that year. The state fell short on funding for road projects that were set to receive federal dollars. If the state hadn't come up with the money, it could have lost those funds, the officials said. So, it reached into the bridge account.

But there are also political realities. Given limited funds and seemingly limitless traffic, the expensive and sometimes little-noticed work of upgrading bridges can lose out in funding debates to popular projects such as widening roads, transportation experts said.

Virginia officials said that they are working to segregate bridge funds from the general competitive fray and that they stopped transferring money from the federal bridge fund to other uses after 2004.

Maryland officials said they should be judged by the overall generosity of their bridge spending. They argue that the state compares favorably in paying to fix existing infrastructure, including bridges.

"I have talked to my counterparts in other states where that is not the case," said Neil J. Pedersen, administrator of the Maryland State Highway Administration.

"We fund all of the priority needs that have been identified by the bridge engineers," Pedersen said, adding that sometimes the state will essentially front its own bridge repair money, even when federal funds could be used. That gives engineers the freedom to move quickly and to avoid jumping through some environmental or other federal hoops, he said.

"We make sure they get the funding they need," Pedersen said. "We don't really look at whether it's federal dollars or it's state dollars."

The District made no transfers from the federal bridge fund in the past six years, according to federal and city statistics. Ardeshir Nafici, the District's acting chief transportation engineer, said federal funds are too scarce and bridge needs too great to redirect funds to other uses.

"It doesn't mean if I have money in my left pocket, I can put it in my right pocket," Nafici said.

But that is what happens in many parts of the country.

Congress and the Federal Highway Administration have set loose standards by which bridges and other projects qualify for funding under the main bridge fund, which has averaged $4.7 billion annually for the past six years. Bridges without structural problems qualify for funding, and a state can move half the money it receives through the bridge program to non-bridge projects, according to officials and program documents.

Many state and federal officials applaud this setup, saying it gives state transportation officials the flexibility to decide which spans need fixing. Federal highway officials say Congress has given direction not to meddle.

"Congress has made clear they don't want the federal government telling states which bridges they are going to do first," said Ian Grossman, a spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration. "They've been very clear about federal oversight and how that is to balance with states' rights."

Federal and state officials say they cannot be certain which projects end up with the bridge funds.

"We don't know because we can't track the life of that dollar," Grossman said. "Once they are transferred into the other fund, they become part of that fund."

Officials follow bridge money as it moves from one account to another, but once it reaches a general account, they don't note which specific projects received bridge money.

Maryland and Virginia, for instance, moved about $67.7 million from the main federal bridge program since 2004, records show.

Maryland transferred $32.5 million from its share of the federal bridge program in 2006 to another federal pot, known as the Surface Transportation Program. State highway officials provided a list of $24.1 million worth of Surface Transportation projects that year. It showed $311,382 went to "Cleaning/Painting various bridges in Allegany and Garrett Counties." The other $23.8 million went to a host of resurfacing, traffic control and other projects.

The records provided by the State Highway Administration did not make clear how the more than $8 million in additional transferred bridge funds, which officials said were applied to later years, were spent.

Highway administration officials said they solicited bids for $75.7 million in bridge projects the year the transfer took place. Capital spending on bridge-only projects grew from $54.8 million in 2003 to $86.5 million in 2007, they noted.

Virginia transferred $35.2 million from the Highway Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Program in 2004, also moving it to the Surface Transportation Program. After the move, the surface transportation account for the year totaled $69.5 million, and records show that about $27 million of that was spent on bridges.

The remaining money in the surface transportation account that year funded such things as a road and wetland project in Hampton Roads and widening Centreville Road in Manassas Park, according to state and federal records.