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US transportation official visits Valley
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Porcari
YOUNGSTOWN
The man responsible for day-to-day operations of the U.S. Department of Transportation visited the city Wednesday, meeting with small-business owners for a White House-sponsored round- table discussion at the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber.
As deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Transportation, John D. Porcari serves as the agency’s chief operating officer and focuses on transportation’s role in economic development.
“The transportation network has to support the growth here in Youngstown and employment growth, whether it’s highway, regional air service or some of the other things ... like the natural-gas pipeline network,” Porcari said.
Tony Paglia, vice president of Government Affairs at the Chamber, said about 15 people attended the roundtable and many topics, from highways to rail, were discussed.
“We talked about transportation needs that will emerge with the growth of oil and gas and how we might be prepared for that,” Paglia said.
Porcari also talked about funding and the need for Congress to approve a long-term surface transportation bill. The last long-term surface transportation bill expired in 2009, and since then, Congress has approved nine short-term extensions, the most recent of which was a 90-day extension approved last month.
“You can’t build the long-term multiyear gaming-changing transportation [projects] with short-term extensions. A long-term stable transportation authorization is really a necessary precursor to making progress here and around the country,” he said.
Asked if the upcoming presidential election will make it less likely for a compromise about the transportation bill, Porcari said transportation should be a nonpartisan topic.
“We don’t think this is a partisan issue. There aren’t Democratic and Republican potholes,” Porcari said.
Officials at Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, which is the metropolitan planning organization in the Mahoning Valley, said they are concerned about the transportation bill’s short-term extensions.
One of Eastgate’s roles is to funnel federal dollars to match local funds for transportation projects.
“We would like to see a six-year bill. A two-year bill [as proposed] is not sufficient enough. A lot of the proposals between the House and Senate version have not been reconciled. We are concerned with all of that,” said Kathleen Rodi, Eastgate’s director of transportation.
Eastgate must complete a long-range plan by June 2013 and is still using guidelines from the previous transportation bill that expired in 2009, she said.