State transportation department disguises, downplays mistakes

“The Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF) concludes the 2024 federal fiscal year with the successful delivery of over $1B of transportation related projects,” the department claims.

Well, that’s part of the story.

The department is still not telling the whole truth about the State Transportation Improvement Plan and the August redistribution debacle.

The DOT deception machine is working overtime, trying to conceal failures by pretending they didn’t happen and simply proclaiming victory.

We need a little less spin from the Dunleavy administration and a little more truth.

This press release from the department attempts to gloss over the mistakes by the Dunleavy administration that led to a reduction of tens of millions in highway funds from the so-called August redistribution process.

“Our team successfully obligated $662 million in Federal Highways dollars alone, despite the fact that the August Redistribution amount approved by FHWA was lower than recent years.”

That deceptive sentence, obviously the work of a committee, was placed into the mouth of program management and administration director Dom Pannone.

The state should have said it asked for $71.4 million from the federal government, but various problems with the state submission led to the rejection of $52 million in transportation projects.

The state is trying to bury that $52 million rejection and hopes no one ever brings it up again.

The department also claims that the rejection of 23 projects in the STIP by the Federal Highway Administration is really a success because much of the rest of the plan was approved.

The department again refuses to admit that it inserted projects into the plan that do not meet the federal planning guidelines. There are also serious questions about how expensive projects will be paid for over the years.

The federal agency recommended “significant simplification” of the 1,600-page plan and called out numerous inconsistencies on the tables and charts. It said the state has to do more to cooperate with local planning entities, as required by law, and to make the process easier for the public to understand and comment on.

In terms of funding for future years, the state said it expects federal funds for the Alaska Railroad that “significantly” exceed the amounts the state can realistically anticipate.

One of the most alarming findings is that future levels of road funding assumed by the state in this plan don’t appear realistic.

The letter said the amounts assumed for advance construction “exceed the historic allocation of state funding for transportation projects. The DOT&PF is assuming risk by programming AC (advance construction) at these levels and this risk may impact their ability to deliver the STIP program identified to the public through this document.”

Here is the federal letter that identifies the projects removed from the STIP.

One of the projects removed from the plan is the replacement of the northbound Richardson Highway bridge outside North Pole, a proposal advanced by the department to allow the Kinross ore haul trucks to carry heavier loads.

Another project removed was funding for the Seward Highway Milepost 98.5 to Milepost 118 Bird Flats to Rabbit Creek. One of the projects which has “ineligible elements” for the funding source proposed for it is the West Susitna Access Road.

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