State fails to qualify for tens of millions in federal highway funds

The mess created by problems with the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan has had its first clear financial consequence—the state stands to lose tens of millions in federal funds because it didn’t have the paperwork in order for projects to spend it on.

The federal highway department holds an annual redistribution of billions of federal highway dollars every August to the 50 states, allocating the money based upon the level of preparation in each state to move forward on qualified projects.

The redistribution system requires that the states show “they have met 100 percent of their federal allocation and have further, unfunded, federally eligible transportation needs,” as a 2022 state press release put it.

The states routinely ask for millions more in funding than is available and some have their allocations reduced to balance things out. It’s not clear how much Alaska asked for, but some officials say that $50 million in Alaska projects did not make the cut.

The federal agency has just released a plan to redistribute $8.7 billion, which is $800 million more than a year ago.

In 2023, when $7.9 billion was redistributed to the states, Alaska received $108.2 million, more than five times as much as this year.

This year Alaska will only receive about $19.2 million, the lowest amount of any state. The next lowest state is Rhode Island, which is to get $19.4 million.

In 2022, the state received $87 million from the redistribution program.

I have asked the Department of Transportation for a list of the projects it had hoped to pay for with redistributed funds and the total cost.