Omaha shorted on road funds?

Of the first $77 million in stimulus highway dollars allocated by the state, not a dollar went for a project in Douglas or Sarpy County.

Those numbers raised some eyebrows in the metro area and caused the U.S. Conference of Mayors to designate Omaha as one of the nation's most short-changed big cities when it comes to how states dole out federal stimulus cash for roads.

Des Moines was not included in the mayors' report, but an Associated Press analysis similarly indicated much of the stimulus road work in Iowa is happening in areas far from the state's population centers.

So, is Omaha a victim of highway robbery?

No, say Nebraska roads officials. They say the mayors' group and others are judging the allocations prematurely.

The Obama administration required roads projects submitted for stimulus funds to be “shovel-ready'' — a way to speed the injection of the cash into the economy.

The rural roads jobs selected early on, most of them basic repaving projects, were simply the first ones ready to go, said Monty Fredrickson, director of the Nebraska Department of Roads.

The allocation mix will change as the rest of Nebraska's $158 million in highway stimulus cash is doled out, he said.

In fact, on Friday, the state announced the awarding of the first stimulus project in the city of Omaha, a major $16 million rework of Interstate 80 between the Missouri River and 13th Street.

Another, a $20 million-plus project at the interchange of Interstate 480 and the North Freeway, also will ultimately be paid for with stimulus dollars.

“People are judging the distribution of this money too early in the game,'' Fredrickson said. The Omaha projects “are coming. They're just a little more complex.''

Paul Mullen, a metro Omaha highway planner, said he couldn't help noticing the early disparity in allocations.

Even with the $40 million in metro area projects in the state's plans, there are other ones he wishes could have gone forward with stimulus cash. But the state said those projects just weren't ready to go — an assessment Mullen didn't dispute.

“There's some concern,'' said Mullen, of the Metro Area Planning Agency. “But knowing what the rules are, we did about as well as we could. The only way to stimulate is to get the money spent.''

Highway allocations have been a big topic of debate nationally since the mayors group released its study last month.

The study found that 48 percent of the stimulus dollars allocated by states had gone to roads projects in the nation's 85 largest cities, though those cities represent 63 percent of the nation's population, 73 percent of its gross domestic product and 94 percent of the nation's projected economic growth.

The report in particular singled out Omaha as among the most underfunded.

Of the $60 million Nebraska had distributed by early June, only $3 million was for projects in the Omaha metro area. That was a segment of a project near Syracuse, Neb., that crossed over into Cass County, which is considered part of metro Omaha.

With that project, the Omaha metro area had received about 5 percent of Nebraska's stimulus allocation, though it is home to 40 percent of the state's population.

With the I-80 project announced Friday, the Omaha metro area has now received about 20 percent of the Nebraska stimulus allocation to date.

Though Lincoln is not a large enough city to be included in the mayors' report, it hasn't fared any better. A $2 million paving project announced Friday is the only one to date in Lincoln. And the state doesn't expect any more, though the Lincoln metro area accounts for nearly 20 percent of the state's population.

The mayors' report noted that the Omaha metro area had received a bigger share of Iowa's stimulus cash than Nebraska's. About a third of Iowa's stimulus dollars were allocated to highway work in the three western Iowa counties that are part of the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area.

About $320 million in stimulus money is flowing into Iowa for work on roads and bridges. Of the 164 projects getting the federal stimulus money, 11 projects, worth $9 million, are in Polk County, which has about 14 percent of the state's population.

In Iowa's southeast corner, meanwhile, the sparsely populated Lee County — home to roughly 35,000 people, or around 1 percent of the state's population — is getting funding for seven projects worth $14.5 million.

Iowa transportation officials said the county-by-county breakdown could be a bit misleading, because some projects cross county lines. But they acknowledge that rural areas will receive a big chunk of the funding.

State leaders decided decades ago a system based on connecting Iowa's farms with the marketplace demanded a high concentration of roads throughout the state. That means the state had a lot of resurfacing projects ready to go.

Nebraska never has distributed highway dollars based on population, which would make it nearly impossible to maintain a highway system in rural areas. Dollars instead are distributed based on need, with traffic volumes a key consideration.

Mullen said he hopes that because stimulus funds have helped more rural roads projects move forward, it might free up funds within Nebraska's normal highway program for projects in the metro area where traffic volumes exceed capacity.

Those projects include Nebraska Highway 133 between Blair and west Omaha, Highway 370 between Gretna and I-80 and U.S. 75 between Bellevue and Plattsmouth.

Fredrickson said it's possible the stimulus will create a “ripple effect'' within the state program, though those metro projects won't be in the state program for the coming year.

The Roads Department on Friday released the projects in the 2009-10 state program. Combined with the stimulus projects, the state will be spending a record $487 million on road construction this year.

Fredrickson said a better option for funding the three metro projects would be through another stimulus highway program in which states compete for $1.5 billion in supplemental roads funds. He said all three of the metro area projects will be submitted for that program this year.

“They are all very high-priority projects,'' he said.

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

Contact the writer:

444-1130, henry.cordes@owh.com