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Politics & Government

Villaraigosa Applauds Senate Approval of Transportation Bill

The bill would speed up funding and construction for big ticket local projects including the extension of the Green Line to LAX.


Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa yesterday hailed the U.S. Senate's approval of a transportation bill that could help accelerate a dozen local transportation projects in Los Angeles County, including a subway extension to Westwood and an extension of the Green Line to LAX.

The Senate voted 74-22 to approve a two-year, $109 billion transportation bill that includes a significant boost in funding for a federal loan program called America Fast Forward. Villaraigosa has said access to the money would help the county build 12 transit projects in 10 years instead of the scheduled 30 years.

"The bipartisan effort to create jobs and speed expansion of our transportation systems took a major step forward today with Senate passage of a surface transportation bill that includes America Fast Forward," the mayor said.

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He said Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., "showed remarkable bipartisan leadership on this bill."

The bill still needs approval from the U.S. House of Representatives, which is working on its own five-year version that would require an expansion of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and off the East Coast. That version was approved by the House Transportation Committee in February and is awaiting a vote by the full House.

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"Progress is being made, despite efforts to declare the House bill dead," Transportation Committee spokesman Justin Harclerode said.

If the House gives final approval to its version, a reconciliation committee would be formed to iron out the differences between the House and Senate bills.

Congress is under a March 31 deadline to get a bill to President Barack Obama. If the deadline passes, transportation projects funded by the government's highway trust fund would grind to a halt, similar to when Congress failed to re-authorize the Federal Aviation Administration last July.

The bill would increase annual funding for federal loans and loan guarantees to significant transportation projects from $110 million to $1 billion. The so-called Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, or TIFIA, funding is part of the section of the bill called America Fast Forward, a name Villaraigosa coined.

"If the House passes a transportation bill with America Fast Forward, local transit agencies will be able to compete for $2 billion in low-interest TIFIA loans," Villaraigosa said. "In Los Angeles, this will allow us to create 166,000 jobs now by accelerating bus and rail projects.'

As president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Villaraigosa garnered support from business groups, labor and more than 100 Republican and Democratic mayors in the conference. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO both support the bill.

Boxer urged House Republicans to pass the bill during a news conference following the vote. She told reporters that failing to meet the end-of-the- month deadline would cause "chaos" and immediately halt projects that employ about 1.8 million people.

"It's their job to get this done." Boxer said. "There is not one earmark in this bill. This is a reform bill. This is a compromise bill. This is a fully paid-for bill. There is nothing here that should upset them."

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