* The development of Congressional debate over ISTEA-2 this year may depend heavily on the House of Representatives’ budget resolution, usually voted on in spring. House Transportation Chair Bud Shuster’s ISTEA-2 bill is premised on big expansion of federal transportation spending (at almost $30 billion over transportation’s share of last year’s balanced budget agreement). If new funds are not found, the sectional peace bought by Shuster’s high funding levels could collapse, leading to a renewed House fight between different parts of the country over allocation of federal transportation funds. The House leadership opposes legislation that would break the balanced budget agreement. Last year, Shuster led an amendment to the budget resolution that came close to adding large new funding to transportation. Variables that could shape debate this year include the size of any projected federal budget surplus and the influence of various interests vying for a piece of it.

House Budget Committee members from this region are CT’s Chris Shays and NJ’s Bob Franks. The seat formerly held by Susan Molinari remains open.

* As the country prepared to remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s commitment to a more egalitarian, just society, the State of Georgia approved a Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) for the Atlanta region that is being being challenged on civil rights and environmental grounds. Opponents are broad-based, including environmentalists, civil rights activists, suburban homeowner groups, Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, U.S. Representatives John Lewis and Cynthia McKinney, the EPA and the FTA. Atlanta is shaping up as a test for enforcement of federal environmental and civil rights laws.

The fight is over air pollution that will be generated by sprawl-inducing new roads (the region admits it is falling far short on its clean air plan), and over urban and inner suburban accessibility to new jobs being pushed to the region’s outer edges by ill-planned transportation investments. A large share of the $900 million in road projects that GA DOT says are "exempt" from federal environmental laws are in outer areas that have no or very poor public transportation. Many say Atlanta transportation discriminates against blacks and the poor and is an emerging front for civil rights enforcement.

Dr. King had recognized in 1968 that "Urban transit systems in most American cities [are] a genuine civil rights issue...because the layout of rapid-transit systems determines the accessibility of jobs to the black community...A good example of this problem is my home city of Atlanta, where the rapid-transit system has been laid out for the convenience of the white upper-middle class suburbanites who commute to their jobs downtown. The system has virtually no consideration for connecting the poor people with their jobs."