ST. LOUIS — The Missouri Department of Transportation is making good on a new policy to get local governments here to spend federal road funds faster, shifting about $20 million that would have gone to county and municipal road projects to state-sponsored jobs.
MoDOT’s move follows several years of threatening to yank federal road funds for local projects due to a backlog of unspent money.
St. Louis-area governments and the regional transportation planning organization, the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, managed to hit MoDOT’s aggressive target last year, obligating more than 110% of the region’s roughly $90 million in annual federal funding for local transportation projects.
This year, however, East-West Gateway is projecting only about three-quarters of the region’s federal dollars will be obligated for local road projects, prompting MoDOT to pull back the $20 million. East-West Gateway staff briefed area leaders on the state’s decision during a monthly board meeting Wednesday.
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“We expect the federal funds to be spent in the correct federal fiscal year,” Tom Blair, MoDOT’s St. Louis District engineer told the Post-Dispatch after the meeting. He declined to comment further.
MoDOT began its recent aggressive policy to maximize federal funding for the state. Backlogs at the local level can hurt Missouri when it applies for federal funding and potentially could mean fewer federal dollars overall coming to the state. At the same time, there has been an influx of federal transportation money from the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress four years ago.
That has meant more money to get out the door to local governments.
Many scheduled projects were delayed by pandemic issues, such as accessing courts to obtain rights-of-way and the ensuing inflation and labor shortages that blew holes in local road project budgets. Projects around the region are behind schedule, with some of the largest in St. Louis and St. Louis County, which have more projects to manage.
The $20 million will remain in the region for MoDOT projects here. Worried it may send the area’s road dollars elsewhere, East-West Gateway earlier this summer sent a resolution to MoDOT leaders in Jefferson City asking them to work with the planning group to keep the region from losing its share of federal dollars.
MoDOT responded with a list of four regional road projects it is overseeing: new signs on Interstates 70 and 170, bridge work over Labadie Creek in Franklin County, pavement and bridgework on Gravois Road near Interstate 270, and resurfacing on Lindbergh Boulevard between I-70 and Page Boulevard.
“It was not presented in a way that left room for negotiation,” East-West Gateway staff said in a memo describing MoDOT’s offer.
Local road projects that were expecting the federal funds will not necessarily be scrapped due to the reallocation, said Marcie Meystrik, East-West Gateway’s director of transportation planning. Those projects must complete right-of-way acquisitions and engineering work and construction plans before the feds release the money and it is considered “obligated” by the state.
East-West Gateway will have another round of federal funding it can allocate to cities and counties after they complete those tasks, so their project budgets, which often include local matches, are not left with holes in them. That could mean fewer local projects get funded, Meystrik said.
“More than likely, there will be less money available to program in the next program cycle because we’ve got to cover that $20 million,” she said in an interview.
The region has made progress spending down its unobligated federal funds. That balance fell from $83 million to $35 million at the end of the federal fiscal year last September. Still, Meystrik said, East-West Gateway may have to change its own policies for allocating transportation dollars to add more pressure on local governments and allow the region to maximize its federal funding.
“It’s just too difficult to operate under our current system and meet those (MoDOT) goals,” she said.
