Larry Bivins reports when the much maligned House of Representatives highway bill came up for a vote in the transportation committee, Rep. Tom Petri was the only Republican to vote against it, joining all 24 Democrats rejecting the measure.
Petri, R-Fond du Lac, the senior Republican on the committee, explained recently he could not bring himself to support a measure he deemed bad for Wisconsin, even at the risk of once again irking party leadership.
Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Sherwood, also a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, voted for the measure on Feb. 2. The freshman said he was concerned about the loss of funding for Wisconsin but believed there was time to restore it.
When lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week from their President’s Day recess, they will have to digest and sort through the latest maneuverings to come up with a multi-year plan for surface transportation funding to replace the five-year bill that was passed in 2005 and expired in September 2009.
Since then, a series of temporary extensions have kept transportation money flowing to states. The latest extension expires at the end of March.
Under the $260 billion bill put forth by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Wisconsin would lose $61.5 million in funding for highway projects in the current fiscal year compared with the previous one, an 8 percent drop.
Wisconsin would lose an additional $62.6 million in funding for fiscal year 2013 and is one of just five states — the others are Alaska, Idaho, Montana and West Virginia — that would not see an increase in annual funding for 2013-16.
