Second Regular Session
Sixty-first General Assembly
LLS NO. R980859.01 BJA
STATE OF COLORADO
BY REPRESENTATIVES May and Schauer.
TRANSPORTATION & ENERGY
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 98-1017
WHEREAS, A safe and efficient highway system is essential
to the nation's international competitiveness, key to domestic
productivity, and vital to our quality of life; and
WHEREAS, Colorado has critical highway investment
needs that cannot be addressed with current financial resources
as exhibited by the fact that the Federal Highway Administration
rates fortysix percent of nine thousand six hundred twentyfive
miles of Colorado's most important roads in either poor or mediocre
condition and considers twentyone percent of Colorado's
bridges to be deficient; and
WHEREAS, The current level of federal funding for
the nation's highway system is inadequate to meet rehabilitation
needs, maintain the safety of the traveling public, begin solving
congestions and rural access problems, conduct adequate transportation
research, and keep the United States competitive in a global economy;
and
WHEREAS, The federal highway program is financed
by dedicated user fees that are collected from motorists to improve
the highway system and deposited in the federal highway trust
fund; and
WHEREAS, The federal "Taxpayer Relief Act of
1997" transferred all federal motor fuel taxes into the federal
highway trust fund but provided no mechanism to ensure that such
funds are spent; and
WHEREAS, The 1998 congressional budget would constrain
federal highway spending well below the level of tax receipts
credited to the federal highway trust fund, allowing the trust
fund's cash balance to grow from just over twentytwo billion
dollars to more than seventy billion dollars by the year 2003;
and
WHEREAS, Colorado and other states will be prohibited
from obligating any federal highway funds after April 30, 1998,
unless the United States Congress and the President enact new
highway legislation by that date; and
WHEREAS, Without federal highway funds, many states
will be forced to delay lifesaving safety improvements,
congestion relief projects, and other road and bridge improvements;
now, therefore,
Be It Resolved by the House of Representatives
of the Sixtyfirst General Assembly of the State of Colorado,
the Senate concurring herein:
That the United States Congress should enact legislation
reauthorizing the federal highway program by May 1, 1998.
Be It Further Resolved,
That the reauthorization legislation should fund the federal highway
program at the highest level that the revenues in the userfinanced
federal highway trust fund will support.
Be It Further Resolved, That copies of this Joint Resolution be sent to the United States House of Representatives, the Untied States Senate, the President of the United States, and to each member of the Colorado Congressional Delegation.