University of California Transportation Center
UCTC Dissertation No. 166
Planners and the Pork Barrel: Metropolitan Engagement in and
Resistance to Congressional Transportation Earmarking
Gian- Claudia Sciara
University of California, Berkeley
2009
Planners and the Pork Barrel:
Metropolitan Engagement in and Resistance to
Congressional Transportation Earmarking
by
Gian- Claudia Sciara
B. A. ( Columbia University) 1993
M. A. ( University of California, Los Angeles) 2000
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
City and Regional Planning
in the
Graduate Division
of the
University of California, Berkeley
Committee in Charge:
Professor Emeritus Martin Wachs, Chair
Professor Karen Christensen
Professor Robin Einhorn
Professor John Ellwood
Fall 2009
Planners and the Pork Barrel:
Metropolitan Engagement in and Resistance to
Congressional Transportation Earmarking
© 2009
by Gian- Claudia Sciara
1
Abstract
Planners and the Pork Barrel:
Metropolitan Engagement in and Resistance to
Congressional Transportation Earmarking
by
Gian- Claudia Sciara
Doctor of Philosophy in City and Regional Planning
University of California, Berkeley
Professor Emeritus Martin Wachs, Chair
Since passage of the 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act
( ISTEA), U. S. transportation policy has gradually strengthened metropolitan authority
over federal transportation investments. Federal law requires metropolitan planning
organizations ( MPOs)— composed of local elected officials, transportation agency
leaders, and public stakeholders— to plan and program federally funded improvements in
urban regions. Yet members of the U. S. Congress have increasingly used funding bills to
“ earmark” funds to specific transportation projects. Derogatively called pork barreling,
the practice can transfer discretion over transportation finance from metropolitan officials
to members of Congress, who may hand- pick projects for funding whether or not they
reflect regional transportation needs or priorities articulated in their MPOs’ long range
plans ( LRPs) or transportation improvement programs ( TIPs).
This dissertation maps how Congressional earmarking of federal funds interacts
with the metropolitan transportation planning process for programming federal
investments. It examines what happens to metropolitan planning and the MPOs
2
responsible for that process when Congress earmarks projects. The study draws on 90
original interviews of representatives of metropolitan, state, and federal transportation
organizations; national groups and policy organizations; Congressional committee staff;
and other transportation experts. The study also reviews transportation authorization and
appropriation bills, government reports, industry and policy newsletters, as well as
statistical data about earmarks from government agencies and public interest
organizations. Finally, to evaluate two different MPOs’ experiences with earmarking, the
dissertation presents cases studies of the Dallas- Fort Worth and New York MPOs.
This study shows that planning relevant information can come quite close to the
selection process for earmarks. It also documents the organizational routines and
strategies, many rooted in ISTEA provisions like fiscal constraint, that MPOs and state
transportation departments have established to influence earmarks beforehand or to
manage earmarks post hoc when they threaten to disrupt regional commitments. Despite
these measures, Congressional earmarking often overrides the very planning processes
that Congress itself requires of metropolitan areas and states seeking federal
transportation funds. By redistributing federal transportation dollars and unsettling
planning expectations, earmarking undercuts MPOs and their institutionalization in
metropolitan areas precisely when federal policy may further expand MPOs’
responsibilities.
i
Acknowledgments
Standard guides advise students beginning a dissertation to prepare for a lonely
and isolating endeavor. My experience with this research has been different, thanks to
the generosity and support from study participants, faculty, colleagues, family, and
friends. I could never have completed this project were it not for the many intellectual,
financial, and personal contributions made by others to my research.
First and foremost, this research would have been impossible without the scores
of transportation professionals, Congressional staff, policymakers, agency leaders,
elected officials, and administrators who gave their time, expertise, and insights to this
project. My interviews and conversations with these highly knowledgeable people form
the backbone of this project. Study participants took serious interest in my research and
made themselves available, tirelessly and with good will and cheer. They taught me an
enormous amount about the Congressional process and transportation earmarking, federal
and state transportation finance, metropolitan and state planning, and the many
organizations and institutions involved in these arenas. Many interviewees agreed to be
listed at the end of this document; others requested to remain anonymous. All of these
individuals share a stake in the results of this work. While some may disagree with the
choices I made in my research and analysis, it is my sincere hope that they find fair
consideration of the information and insights they shared with me in the past few years.
Generous financial support from several institutions made my doctoral studies and
this work in their culmination possible. My studies, research, and writing were assisted
tremendously by the U. S. Department of Transportation Eisenhower Graduate
Transportation Fellowship. The University of California Transportation Center
ii
generously awarded me a Dissertation Fellowship for this project, as well as a Graduate
Student Fellowship to support preliminary studies. Additional financial support came
through the Graduate Block Grant from Berkeley's Department of City and Regional
Planning; the University of California Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship; the Helene
M. Overly Memorial Scholarship of the Women's Transportation Seminar ( Bay Area
Chapter); and a Doctoral Travel Grant from the University of California, Berkeley,
Graduate Division.
By granting me library access as an alumna, Columbia University made the
resources of its Butler and Avery libraries available to me as I completed this work in
New York. Butler Library was the oasis of quiet and calm where I could research and
write. The University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Transportation Studies lent
logistical and technical assistance to this project.
Two esteemed colleagues, Idalina Baptista and Anuradha Mukherji, read drafts of
the dissertation as I produced it and provided much encouragement. Our regular
discussions provided fresh perspectives on my evidence and helped me to give my
findings coherent written expression. Posthumously, I acknowledge Kaye Bock, in the
Department of City and Regional Planning, whose sound advice enabled me to start this
work on the right foot.
A top- notch dissertation committee has remained highly engaged in this work
throughout. Professor Karen Christensen nurtured this project from the start. Her
thoughtful input along the way consistently shed light on connections I had overlooked.
Exchanges with Professor Robin Einhorn helped me to appreciate the evidence before me
and to see the forest for the trees. I value the unique energy she brought to this
iii
undertaking. Professor John Ellwood joined this project with enthusiasm. I thank him
for pointing me toward resources and insights from related fields of essential relevance to
this subject.
Above all, I wish to thank my adviser Professor Martin Wachs, an exceptional
mentor and teacher to me from my first days in Berkeley. This work, and I as its author,
have benefited enormously from his contributions. As the manuscript’s earliest and
closest reader, his feedback was instrumental as I chose next steps for the research and
developed draft chapters. He responded to my questions with alacrity, freely sharing his
breadth of knowledge and contacts. His suggestions at various moments to reevaluate
evidence always strengthened my assessments without suggesting where they should
land. Further, his encouragement of what seemed small increments of progress
repeatedly restored my faith that I would complete the project. His concern for my
wellbeing and that of my family brought a dimension to this process that few students
experience, and I take his grace and humanity in life as an example.
In spite of the solid counsel I received throughout this process, I am responsible
for the content of this work. Any omissions, errors, and shortcomings are my own. In
finalizing this manuscript, I have reviewed the many choices I made concerning this
project and believe the judgment I have exercised along the way was sound.
Many supportive friends provided all manner of assistance to this effort. Special
gratitude is due Anne Moss. Her steady friendship to me, Kevin, and our daughter
Violet, and her boundless encouragement for this project provided much light along the
way. Sweet Charlotte was a true companion during this endeavor and passed away just
as it was completed.
iv
My sisters Carla and Camilla, and their husbands Lester Hilbert and Brian Levine,
supported me throughout this process. Camilla and Brian helped on more occasions than
I can count; I offer them my deep thanks. Though long deceased, my parents would be
pleased to see this dissertation. I am indebted to my mother, Sylvana, who instilled an
early passion for learning and my father, Charles, who encouraged me to pursue my
dreams, even those with which he happened to disagree.
Finally, there is no one who is more deserving of my deepest appreciation and
humblest gratitude than my husband Kevin. With love and good humor, he lent his
patience and support to a project that expanded beyond original estimations and
consumed more of our common life than either of us imagined. Additionally, during the
course of this project, we welcomed Violet into the world, who has brought endless good
cheer into our home. I am deeply conscious of the many sacrifices this undertaking has
demanded of my dearest ones. Thank you, Kevin and Violet. I cannot imagine having
reached this point without you.
v
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. i
Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. v
Chapter 1: The Earmarking Conundrum..................................................................... 1
1.1. A Congressional Practice and its Challenges for Planning................................. 2
1.2. Whither MPOs? .................................................................................................. 9
1.3. The Evidence, in Brief ...................................................................................... 12
1.4. A Drive Down Coconut Road........................................................................... 17
1.5. Dissertation Guide ............................................................................................ 21
1.5.1. Chapters .................................................................................................... 21
1.5.2. Methods..................................................................................................... 24
Chapter 2: Metropolitan Planning in Institutional Perspective................................ 32
2.1. Metropolitan Transportation: The Institutional Environment.......................... 35
2.1.1. Regional Ideology and the Search for Vehicles to Realize It ................... 36
2.1.2. Legal Roots of Metropolitan Transportation Planning ............................. 44
2.1.2.1. Early 20th Century: State Organizations Construct and Plan........... 46
2.1.2.2. Mid- Century: Transportation Studies Precede MPOs ...................... 47
2.1.2.3. Late 20th Century: MPOs Are Formalized and Slowly Bolstered ... 50
2.1.3. Power Struggles: State- Metro and Technical- Political Tensions ............. 55
2.1.4. Epistemology: Empiricism and Political Pragmatism .............................. 58
2.2. Organizational Actors ....................................................................................... 60
2.2.1. State Departments of Transportation ( DOTs)........................................... 61
2.2.2. Public Transit Operators ........................................................................... 66
2.2.3. Metropolitan Planning Organizations ( MPOs) ......................................... 69
2.2.4. Federal Agencies....................................................................................... 73
2.2.5. Other Players............................................................................................. 74
Chapter 3: Peering Inside the Pork Barrel ................................................................. 78
3.1. Vehicles for Congressional Earmarks: Authorization and Appropriation Bills 82
3.2. Types of Congressional Earmarks: Ad hoc, Programmatic, and Stand Alone.. 86
3.3. Attaching Legal Significance to Earmarks ....................................................... 93
3.4. Dissecting the Disreputable Scramble ............................................................ 101
3.4.1. Paperwork: Earmark Requests Forms and Formalization ...................... 103
3.4.2. Congressional Power: Cardinals and Other Big Dogs............................ 112
3.4.3. Member Priorities ................................................................................... 114
3.5. Transparency and Congressional Earmarking ................................................ 117
3.6. The Earmark Exception: Transit New Starts .................................................. 120
Chapter 4: The Earmark Shuffle: Following the Money......................................... 127
4.1. Earmarks’ Effects: Unsettled Expectations, Deflected Discretion ................. 129
4.1.1. Earmarks Redistribute Funds and Discretion ......................................... 129
4.1.2. Uneven Impacts and Unsettled Expectations.......................................... 131
4.1.3. Oblique Maneuvers Elude Precise Accounting ...................................... 132
4.2. The Budgetary Mechanics of Earmarking ...................................................... 133
4.2.1. Reallocating Discretionary Money ......................................................... 135
4.2.2. Taking a Cut of Formula Funds .............................................................. 142
4.2.3. Ad hoc Earmarks Below- the- Line........................................................... 152
vi
4.2.4. Ad hoc Earmarks Above- the- Line .......................................................... 157
4.2.5. Reshuffling Surplus Revenue: The RABA Bonus.................................. 158
4.2.6. Recycling Budget Authority: Rescissions .............................................. 168
4.2.7. Tapping the General Fund ...................................................................... 179
Chapter 5: On the Sidelines: MPOs and Earmark Seeking ..................................... 183
5.1. Observations about MPOs and Earmark Seeking........................................... 186
5.1.1. Increasing Engagement in Earmarking................................................... 186
5.1.2. Formalizing Organizational Routines ..................................................... 188
5.1.3. Organizational Relationships Bypass MPOs .......................................... 190
5.2. Getting into the Game: Strategies for Influencing Earmarks.......................... 193
5.2.1. It Never Hurts to Ask: Proactive Model ................................................. 195
5.2.2. Don’t Ask, Do Tell: Passive Influence Model........................................ 199
5.2.3. Earmarking as Spectator Sport: On- the- Sideline Model ........................ 204
5.3. To Ask or Not to Ask...................................................................................... 210
5.3.1. The Delegation as Action Channel ......................................................... 210
5.3.2. Expected Benefits of Earmarks............................................................... 213
5.4. Designing the Ask........................................................................................... 215
5.4.1. Following Precedent ............................................................................... 216
5.4.2. Pitching Projects in the Plan ................................................................... 219
5.4.3. Observing Congressional Preferences .................................................... 221
5.5 Summary......................................................................................................... 224
Chapter 6: TIP Turbulence and Protecting Planning post hoc ................................ 227
6.1. Local Power and Transportation Improvement Plans ( TIPs) ......................... 229
6.2. The Attraction of Earmarking outside the TIP ............................................... 232
6.3. Non- TIP Earmarks: Cracks in Planning’s Pavement...................................... 235
6.3.1. Planning Derailments.............................................................................. 236
6.3.2. Fissures in the Financial Program........................................................... 237
6.3.3. Bureaucratic Entanglements ................................................................... 241
6.4. Managing Earmarks post hoc: TIP- Based Resistance .................................... 246
6.4.1. Accommodation...................................................................................... 247
6.4.2. Playing Hardball ..................................................................................... 250
6.4.3. Responses in Between............................................................................. 251
6.4.3.1. Quids pro quo for TIP Inclusion..................................................... 252
6.4.3.2. Conservative Budgeting to Minimize Disruption........................... 255
6.4.3.3. Recalibrating the TIP ...................................................................... 257
6.5. Managing Earmarks post hoc: Other Practices............................................... 259
6.5.1. Deducting Administrative Costs ............................................................. 260
6.5.2. Transferring Earmarks to Another Agency............................................. 261
6.6. Evaluating post hoc Options ........................................................................... 263
6.7. Reflections on post hoc Earmark Practices..................................................... 268
Chapter 7: Dallas Barbecue: Planning for Pork in DFW........................................ 274
7.1. Silence to Strategy: The Evolution of DFW Earmarking Practice ................. 277
7.1.1. Pre- ISTEA............................................................................................... 278
7.1.2. Post- ISTEA............................................................................................. 282
7.2. MPO Institutionalization Fosters Earmarking Engagement ........................... 291
7.2.1. Organizational History and the Urgency of Regional Needs.................. 292
vii
7.2.2. The Internal Environment: Fosters Earmarking Engagement ................ 297
7.2.2.1. Member Satisfaction with Decisonmaking...................................... 297
7.2.2.2. Leadership Cultivates MPO Cooperation and Role Expansion........ 300
7.2.2.3. Unusual MPO Discretion to Modify the TIP.................................... 304
7.2.3. The External Environment: Smooths Earmark Management ................. 305
7.2.3.1. Restructured State Allocation System Favors Texas MPOs............. 306
7.2.3.2. Regional Infrastructure Fund Put DFW MPO in Driver’s Seat........ 309
7.2.3.3. MPO Positions Itself as Expert Player.............................................. 310
7.4. Coda: A Signature Bridge to Somewhere....................................................... 311
7.4.1. A Signature Vision for the Trinity River ................................................ 313
7.4.2. The I- 30 Bridge....................................................................................... 315
Chapter 8: Pork for New York: The Metropolitan Motivator................................ 321
8.1. Propelling Regionalism: The Pitfalls and Promise of Earmarks .................... 321
8.1.1. I Did It My Way: Planning for the Pork Barrel ...................................... 324
8.1.2. Earmark Accommodation post hoc......................................................... 331
8.1.3. Shifting Regional Practice: The Earmark that Broke the Camel’s Back 335
8.2. A Freighted Past: Weakly Institutionalized Metropolitan Planning............... 339
8.2.1. Ambivalent Regionalism: The Tri- State Legacy ( 1956- 1982) ............... 342
8.2.2. Lethargic Legitimacy: The Single State MPO ( since 1982)................... 348
8.2.2.1. The State as Institutional Alpha Dog.............................................. 352
8.2.2.2. The State Holds the Purse Strings................................................... 354
8.2.2.3. MPO Structure Emphasizes Subregionalism .................................. 356
8.2.2.4. Consensus Voting Hampers Deliberation....................................... 359
8.2.2.5. Absentee Board Signals MPO Inconsequence................................ 360
8.3. 21st Century Reinvention: From Rubber Stamp to Regional Player? ............. 362
8.3.1. Self- Interest Motivates Collective Action .............................................. 363
8.3.2. Regional Planning Redirected................................................................. 370
Chapter 9: Conclusion................................................................................................. 376
Appendices..................................................................................................................... 394
A. 1. Calculation of Committee Representation Score ............................................... 394
A. 2. Authorization Earmark Solicitation, 2005 ......................................................... 395
A. 3. Authorization Earmark Questionnaire, 2005 ..................................................... 396
A. 4. Authorization Earmark Solicitation, 2005 ......................................................... 397
A. 5. Authorization Earmark Questionnaire, 2005 ..................................................... 398
A. 6. Appropriation Earmark Solicitation, 2006......................................................... 401
A. 7. Research Participants ......................................................................................... 402
1
Chapter 1: The Earmarking Conundrum
You can tell the difference between a good earmark and a bad earmark.
A bad earmark is kind of like pornography. It's hard to define
in regular terms, but you know what it is. 1
U. S. Rep. John Mica ( R- Fla.)
In September 2007, the county commissioners and local mayors of Florida’s Lee
County together voted to reject $ 10 million in federal funds earmarked for a new
interchange on I- 75. Allegedly gifted by Alaska Congressman Don Young to the region
in 2005, when Congress reauthorized federal transportation funding, the earmark was
designated specifically for an interstate connection at Coconut Road. Yet, the region’s
transportation planning body, or Metropolitan Planning Organization ( MPO), comprised
of local officials, had voted twice against linking Coconut Road to the interstate.
Environmentally sensitive adjacent wetlands would make for a complicated project, and
competing transportation needs, like the widening of I- 75 itself, were more pressing.
The unexpected millions earmarked in the SAFTEA- LU authorization nonetheless
created pressure to advance the Coconut Road interchange, at minimum with initial
planning studies. In the months after the earmark was announced, that pressure
snowballed as the MPO in Lee County deliberated whether to accept the funds for the
controversial project. Ultimately, local officials on the MPO voted in 2007 to send back
to Washington the $ 10 million for the project that one local newspaper dubbed the
“ Interchange to Nowhere.” Less than a year later, the U. S. House and Senate would vote
to begin a federal investigation of Representative Young’s role in Congressional
influence peddling: it had been alleged that Young manipulated the authorization bill
1 Quoted in National Association of Regional Councils, “ Water Infrastructure: ‘ The Sleeper Issue of the
Decade,’” NARC Washington, D. C. Update, http:// narc. org/ news/ 194/ 292. html ( accessed October 30,
2008).
2
illegally to insert language earmarking funds for the interchange in order to repay a Lee
County land developer who had contributed to a local fundraiser for the Congressman.
The Coconut Road earmark and how its dubious pedigree thrust a little known
type of public body called an “ MPO” into the spotlight provide a useful story for
launching this dissertation. This study examines the relationship between the
Congressional practice of earmarking federal transportation funds and the practice of
metropolitan planning for transportation in the U. S. When the $ 10 million was
designated for the Coconut Road interchange, the project was listed nowhere in either the
region’s federally required capital program, called the “ TIP,” 2 or its long range plan. The
earmark illustrates how Congressional earmarks for projects may circumvent federally
required processes for transportation planning and programming; how Congressional
earmarking practices can derail plans, confuse transportation budgets, and create
bureaucratic entanglements for the MPOs responsible for these processes in urban areas,
unraveling federal transportation policy for a whole set of urban actors; and how, in spite
of their limited authority, MPOs sometimes respond in surprisingly strong fashion to the
conundrum that earmarking presents to them.
1.1. A Congressional Practice and its Challenges for Planning
Earmarking is the process whereby members of Congress designate federal funds
for discrete purposes by inserting special language into federal authorization and
appropriation acts or accompanying Congressional reports and statements. Such
earmarks direct federal funds to specific places for discrete projects that may involve
physical construction or improvement of a transportation facility or related structure;
2 Transportation Improvement Program.
3
capital acquisition for transportation services or facilities, such as a bus or rail- car
purchase; or research or planning studies or analyses that would examine such projects.
Earmarks direct how, where, or by whom certain funds may be spent. They may range
from designations of $ 100,000 for modest streetscape improvements to upwards of $ 100
million for mega- projects costing billions.
Earmarking is a longstanding Congressional behavior, and for centuries critics
have decried earmarked projects as wasteful. However, the sharply expanding scale of
this practice is something new. Over the last 15 years, the extent of earmarking in federal
transportation spending has expanded markedly. Earmarks in the multi- year
authorization bills that establish federal transportation spending levels grew from 10 in
1982 to over 500 in 1991 to more than 6,000 in the 2005 authorization, called SAFTEA-LU.
3 Expressed in constant 2006 dollars, the value of authorization earmarks swelled
from less than $ 1 billion in 1982, to over $ 12 billion in 1991, to almost $ 30 billion in
2005. Annual appropriation earmarking has grown as well. ( See Figures 1a. and 1b.)
Earmarking has also expanded in scope, as Congress has earmarked an increasing
number of federal transportation programs over time.
3 Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users.
4
Figure 1a. Increasing Scale of Earmarking: Authorizations
Transportation Authorization Earmarks
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
7,000
1982 1987 1991 1998 2005
Year
Number of Earmarks
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Earmarked Funds ( billions),
2006 dollars
Number Value
5
Figure 1b. Increasing Scale of Earmarking: Appropriations4
Transportation Appropriation Earmarks
0.00%
1.00%
2.00%
3.00%
4.00%
5.00%
6.00%
1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004* 2005* 2006
Fiscal Year ( FY)
Percent of Total Appropriation
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
Number of Earmarks
Earmarks as % of Total Appropriation Number of Earmarks
4 In FY2003, the Coast Guard and Transportation Security Administration were transferred from the DOT to the newly- created Department of Homeland
Security. Thus, the FY2004 and FY2005 figures are not directly comparable to those of previous years.
6
Because they narrowly dictate the terms of federal expenditure, earmarks
eliminate much discretion that local elected officials and transportation agency leaders
otherwise exercise over how to spend federal funds in metropolitan areas and what such
investments should accomplish. Earmarks create inevitable tension between the acts of
Congress and the transportation planning and programming decisions of local leaders in
metropolitan areas. They establish a clear conundrum for metropolitan transportation
planning and the organizations and elected officials responsible for it.
On one hand, federal law requires a specific process for planning transportation
investments in metropolitan areas and programming federal dollars to fund them. The
MPO process is designed to involve local elected officials, agency leaders, and the public
in such decisions, making them more transparent. Without earmarks, in order to tap
federal transportation funds, local government and agency leaders, participating in the
MPO, must vote on and approve investments outlined in a near term capital program, or
Transportation Improvement Program ( TIP), and in a more general long range plan
( LRP). This process encourages, albeit imperfectly, competitive, technically informed,
and openly deliberated goal setting and project selection.
Without earmarks, federal transportation funds are available for metropolitan
areas and states to spend on near- and long- term transportation priorities that they
identify. These federal funds are made available through transportation authorization and
appropriation laws, passed in the U. S. Congress. Multi- year authorization laws5 define
federal transportation policy and eligible uses of federal funds, such as bridge
maintenance or bus replacement, and they set federal spending ceilings and specify the
criteria and formulae by which federal grants are to be distributed among states, regions,
5 For example, ISTEA, TEA- 21, and SAFTEA- LU are pronounced “ ice tea,” “ tea 21,” and “ safety loo.”
7
and transportation agencies. Annual appropriation bills in turn make those authorized
funds available to state and metropolitan agencies, allowing them to enter into contracts
to spend, or obligate, the money. 6
With earmarks, on the other hand, members of Congress may hand- pick
transportation projects for funding that do or do not reflect metropolitan planning
priorities. Earmarks may circumvent and even undermine the metropolitan processes.
Virtually no safeguards exist within Congressional practice to ensure that a member’s
decision to earmark funds for specific projects are informed by metropolitan capital
programs ( i. e. TIPs); by long range plans ( LRPs); by consultation with local elected
officials or the public; or by analysis of a project’s technical merits. Members of
Congress may use earmarks just as easily to fund valued transportation projects as to
distribute favors among key constituencies or political intimates, or even to trade with
other representatives for votes on other unrelated issues. 7 Further, earmarking practices
are themselves largely opaque, a fact well illustrated by the absolute confusion among
Lee County government officials over where the earmark for the Coconut Road
interchange actually originated.
This apparent disconnect between earmarking and planning processes has not
been addressed by scholars. In fact, most scholarly interest in earmarking comes from
the political science community. Some studies address earmarking within a broader
6 A subtle but important expansion is that the appropriation itself does not create specific obligation
authority for a transportation department. Instead, after Congress has appropriated funds, the implementing
entity must seek Federal Highway Administration approval for the project agreement, plan specifications,
and cost estimate. This approval creates the obligation of federal highway funds, which can remain in
place until the bidding process and contractor selection are complete.
7 A U. S. House rule passed in 2008 prohibits members from using earmarks as leverage in this fashion,
although it is unclear whether alleged violations would be discernible. See Sandy Streeter, Earmark
Reform: Comparison of New House and Senate Procedural Rules, Congressional Research Report
( Washington, D. C.: Congressional Research Service, 2008), 11.
8
focus on the federal budgeting process; 8 others seek to understand through earmarks the
larger motives behind Congressional behavior; 9 and others examine norms of distribution
in federal spending bills, positing various logics under which Congress distributes such
benefits as earmarks. 10 Several works in the planning field discuss earmarking
specifically in transportation, with regard either to evidence of a waning or unclear
federal role in transportation, 11 or to earmarks’ effects on specific federal activities like
transportation research12 or funding for low income workers’ transportation. 13 Yet, no
research has sought to assess whether earmarking and planning processes work together
or at cross purposes, or— in either case— under what circumstances, or how metropolitan
organizations charged explicitly with planning and programming funds for transportation
investments behave in an environment of increased earmarking.
To understand what earmarking means for metropolitan areas, metropolitan
transportation systems, and the planning and decisionmaking institutions and processes
8 Aaron Wildavsky, The Politics of the Budgetary Process ( Boston: Little, Brown, 1964); Richard F.
Fenno, Jr., The Power of the Purse: Appropriations Politics in Congress ( Boston: Little, Brown , 1966);
and Aaron Wildavsky and Naomi Caiden, The New Politics of the Budgetary Process, 5th ed. ( New York:
Pearson Education, 2004).
9 David R. Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection ( New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974);
John W. Ellwood and Eric M. Patashnik, " In Praise of Pork," The Public Interest 110 ( Winter 1993): 19- 33;
Douglas R. Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action ( New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990);
and Diana Evans, Greasing the Wheels: Using Pork Barrel Projects to Build Majority Coalitions in
Congress ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
10 John A. Ferejohn, Pork Barrel Politics: River and Harbors Legislation, 1947- 1968 ( Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1974); William A. Niskanen, Jr., Bureaucracy and Representative Government,
( Chicago: Adeline Atherton, 1971); James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent:
Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy ( Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962);
David R. Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection ( New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974);
Kenneth A. Shepsle and Barry R. Weingast, " Political Preferences for the Pork Barrel," American Journal
of Political Science 25, no. 1 ( 1981): 96- 111; Diana Evans, Greasing the Wheels: Using Pork Barrel
Projects to Build Majority Coalitions in Congress ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
11 David E. Luberoff, " The Triumph of Pork over Purpose," Blueprint: Ideas for a New Century
( September/ October 2001): 31- 34.
12 Ann Brach and Martin Wachs, " Earmarking in the U. S. Department of Transportation Research
Programs," Transportation Research. Part A: Policy and Practice 39, no. 6 ( 2005): 501- 21.
13 Evelyn Blumenberg and Lisa Schweitzer, " Devolution and Transport Policy for the Working Poor: The
Case of the U. S. Job Access and Reverse Commute Program," Planning Theory and Practice 7, no. 1
( 2006): 7- 25.
9
that support them, we must understand the interaction between these Congressional and
metropolitan processes. For example, are metropolitan planning organizations ( MPOs)
involved in earmarking? If so, how? Earmarking can enable MPO members to secure
funds for projects independently from the MPO process. Does earmarking thus alter an
MPO’s ability to build consensus on transportation investments in urban regions? How
do earmarks change the expectations and behaviors of MPO players? Where
metropolitan transportation projects benefit from earmarks, do those projects align with
established MPO plans and spending priorities? Alternatively, to what extent if at all do
members of Congress consult with metropolitan planning organizations and their
members when choosing earmark candidates? How planners interpret and respond to the
practice of Congressional earmarking depends on answers to these questions, addressed
in this study.
1.2. Whither MPOs?
This dissertation begins with the premise that it is in the interest of metropolitan
regions and their transportation systems to be served by robust MPOs. That is, the local
elected officials and transportation agencies which comprise the MPO board use that
regional body as a serious forum for deliberating and establishing regional transportation
goals, plans and priorities. Yet, largely because MPOs are advisory bodies without the
powers of formal government, many do not live up to this ideal. As one lobbyist
commented in this study,
My general experience with most MPOs is that they are extremely weak. Few
MPOs play a very strong role in regional planning. Most of them become a
rubber stamp on whatever deals that members have negotiated separately. I see
few MPOs playing as strong a role as envisioned in the statute.... There are more
places where it’s not working.
10
Further, many interview respondents consulted for this dissertation observed that MPOs
seldom play a central role in seeking earmarks for the metropolitan region.
The tropes that MPOs are rubber stamps and merely staple together parochial
plans of their members are familiar, but they are not reason enough to discount these
bodies as important objects of inquiry. Few MPOs operate so simplistically, particularly
in large regions. Further, the trend in federal policy, extending back to the early 1970s
and intensified after the landmark transportation law ISTEA14 in 1991, has been to bolster
the role of local officials and transportation agencies in metropolitan areas by expanding
MPOs’ roles. For instance, ISTEA and successor laws have established a new pattern in
transportation finance, by allowing MPOs in large urban areas more direct control over
certain federal funds than they had previously. 15 Further, ISTEA era fiscal constraint
requirements, the cost of implementing projects listed an MPO’s near- term capital plan,
or “ Transportation Improvement Program” ( TIPs), must align with anticipated funding,
making MPO commitments to desired projects more rigorous.
Current indicators suggest that Federal transportation policy will continue in this
direction, asking more rather than less of MPOs in the future. Thus, the need to
understand how MPOs operate in the present, particularly in the face of a phenomenon as
potentially challenging to these planning bodies as Congressional earmarking, becomes
more urgent. Transportation provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
of 2009, passed recently to stimulate the U. S. economy, 16 distribute funds in a way that
enables MPOs to directly program a much larger share of highway funding than has
14 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act.
15 Gian- Claudia Sciara and Martin Wachs, " Metropolitan Transportation Funding: Prospects, Progress, and
Practical Considerations," Public Works Management and Policy 12, no. 1 ( 2007): 378- 94.
16 American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 111th Congress, 1st sess., Congressional Record
( January 6, 2009): Title XII, 92- 93.
11
historically been the case with federal highway fund apportionments. The act makes a
full 50- percent of its $ 27.5 billion highway stimulus available through the metropolitan-friendly
Surface Transportation Program ( STP), and suballocates 50 percent of that—
nearly $ 7 billion, or 25 percent of total highway stimulus— directly to large MPOs as the
so- called STP “ urban share.” 17 In contrast, the STP urban share represented only 6
percent of all highway apportionments from 1998 to 2003.18
Further, several proposals circulating in mid- 2009 for the transportation
authorization law due this year would increase the responsibilities carried out by MPOs. 19
An outline for the law drafted by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
leadership makes the STP program one of the four major Federal funding categories
retained under a dramatically streamlined federal program, suggesting MPOs’ discretion
would grow as more funds are distributed through that program. The proposal also
provides $ 50 billion ( over 10 percent of total funding) for major metropolitan areas under
a new Metropolitan Mobility and Access program, in which MPOs could play a
significant role drafting plans for investment. 20 This proposal is the first formal thrust of
17 In areas with populations over 200,000, the STP “ urban share” or metropolitan suballocation is
programmed by MPOs with state approval.
18 Robert Puentes and Linda Bailey, " Improving Metropolitan Decision Making in Transportation: Greater
Funding and Devolution for Greater Accountability," Transportation Reform Series ( Washington, D. C.:
The Brookings Institution, 2003). See Figure 1, p. 5.
19 House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, " The Surface Transportation
Authorization Act of 2009: A Blueprint for Investment and Reform, Executive Summary, 2009, report
presented by James L. Obestar, et al.
20 Other prominent federal authorization proposals encourage significant metropolitan funds that would
bypass the states. These include Transportation for Tomorrow ( Washington, D. C.: National Surface
Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, 2007), Vol. I; Paying Our Way: A New
Framework for Transportation Finance ( Washington, D. C.: National Surface Transportation Infrastructure
Financing Commission, 2009); and National Transportation Policy Project, Performance Driven: A New
Vision for Transportation Policy, Executive Summary ( Washington, D. C.: Bipartisan Policy Center, 2009),
5.
12
the authorization process, but it strongly emphasizes the transportation problems of
metropolitan regions, putting MPOs in the spotlight.
Thus, while it is important to acknowledge that MPOs— including some consulted
for this research— often fall short of what federal law envisions for them, they remain an
important institutional form for transportation in metropolitan areas. They are the only
organizational structure in place that marries the planning process with a deliberative
political forum, and that is obliged to make the process transparent. MPOs also bring
different modal interests together, increasing opportunities for coordination among transit
providers, highway and road departments. They also represent multiple geographic
jurisdictions, blend governments and bureaucracies, and in essence, are more broadly
constituted than any single transportation entity, whether agency, special district, or town,
or county government. The earmarking behavior of MPOs provides a window on how
these organizations and their members operate, their planning practices, and what might
produce more robust MPOs in the future.
1.3. The Evidence, in Brief
The evidence in this dissertation suggests that Congressional earmarking upsets
and undermines more commonly than supports the decisions and decisionmaking
intuitions of metropolitan regions. Although the dissertation uncovers some surprises
about how Congressional earmarking can sometimes serve planning ends, it
predominantly shows that earmarking, when used to supplant established metropolitan
processes for allocating federal transportation resources, diminishes MPOs precisely at a
time when federal law would increase their responsibilities. Earmarking holds obvious
appeal for project proponents who are dissatisfied, impatient with, or ignorant of that
13
metropolitan process, as a way to secure funds for the project in spite of it. Further, for
members of Congress, earmarks provide a way to claim credit for transportation
improvements that may appeal to a wide variety of constituents.
While some earmarking detractors dwell exclusively on the troubles associated
with earmarks, it is important to highlight the surprises that emerge in this dissertation
about earmarking and about the interaction between earmarking and planning. Such
surprises provide limited cause for optimism, but they do provide a fuller picture of how
earmarking works and of the ways in which transportation planning and implementing
organizations work to improve the outcomes that earmarks deliver.
The study looks deep into the Congressional pork barrel to analyze the process for
designating federal transportation funds. In doing so, it discredits the absoluteness of
popular notions that the earmarking process is an utter black box, shrouded in secrecy
and overrun with corrupt lobbyists. Instead, this study shows that legitimate public
organizations responsible for transportation do in fact participate in the earmarking
process, including MPOs, their member governments, and particularly state DOTs.
Communication between members of Congress and planning organizations can bring
relevant planning information— such as the status of a candidate project in the TIP— into
the earmarking process. Further, dissertation evidence indicates that, as Congressional
earmarking has increased in scale and scope in recent decades, the Congressional process
itself has also grown more formalized and, in part, more transparent. When preparing
drafts of spending bills, Congressional committees circulate earmark request forms to
members. Compelled by the need to complete the forms, members of Congress may turn
to state DOTs or, less typically, to MPOs, to secure planning details about the projects
14
they propose for earmarks. Congress’ use of these forms and other routines to process
earmark requests has made local governments and transportation agencies within MPOs
increasingly aware of the earmarking cycle, its rules, and procedures. And while it still is
more common for MPOs to remain on earmarking’s sideline, they are more likely than
they were two decades ago to participate in the process.
The dissertation presents some evidence that, where planning organizations and
members of Congress work effectively together, they may create earmarks that serve as
what I call “ plork,” a planning- pork hybrid. Plork projects can harmonize a Congress
member’s credit claiming ambitions with regional needs outlined in established plans and
capital programs. But such projects may still represent investments that are not urgent
priorities.
If problematic earmarks have an upside, the dissertation reveals it is because they
can provoke improvements to regional planning, by mobilizing regional organizations
and state agencies to bolster their processes and commitments. Earmarking has catalyzed
MPO members in some places to adopt practices and policies that better protect their
planning decisions when earmarks threaten to derail regional planning and programming
commitments. Additionally, where an MPO’s member agencies and local government
have traditionally acted atomistically, the study uncovers some hopeful signs that the
specter of large, unwanted earmarks may spur regional dialogue.
These bright spots aside, I contend that earmarking is more deleterious to than
supportive of metropolitan transportation planning. Although some MPOs adopt
planning- supportive practices in the face of earmarking, such responses appear to be in
the minority. Palpable disincentives discourage MPOs from proactively engaging in the
15
earmarking process and from refusing earmarks after the fact, even earmarks for
unsought or problematic projects. Further, where members of an MPO are active in
earmarking, they may engage more typically on behalf of parochial wants, rather than as
a group for regionally desired projects. And, even where the MPO may coordinate
effectively to influence earmarks, perverse incentives may still lead the MPO to
accommodate projects that represent questionable investments of federal dollars.
For MPOs that actively encourage earmarks that support projects from the
regional TIP or high priorities from the long range plan, there are no guarantees that
Congress will abide by their wishes. Once passed in law, earmarks that are inconsistent
with planned capital investments and not in the TIP can derail plans and create
bureaucratic entanglements and financial fissures for the agencies and governments that
will execute the projects. Earmarked projects funded “ below- the- line,” at the expense of
funds anticipated and committed for other projects, are particularly detrimental. Such
earmarks can produce tremendous inefficiencies, among them the duplication of effort by
the federally funded metropolitan planning process and by the earmarking process that
effectively nullifies the former’s results. Further, earmarks must be retrofitted into the
planning process, post hoc, if the funds are to be spent, and this can require significant
supplemental effort. Thus, Congressional earmarking creates a truly ironic suite of
problems: its proponents commonly defend earmarking by suggesting that it reduces
bureaucracy, reclaiming important decisions from the hands of nameless, faceless civil
servants and returning important choices to the hands of responsive U. S. elected
representatives. However, earmarks in fact increase red tape.
16
This dissertation also challenges conventional wisdom about transportation
earmarking finance by documenting that transportation earmarks typically do not add to
federal transportation spending, but rather redistribute resources already made available.
This news may please federal budget hawks, but it is terrible news for transportation
agencies whose resources are diminished because earmarks have reshuffled federal funds.
Even more troubling, the highly oblique budgetary maneuvers used to create earmarks
obscure such serious reshufflings, hiding earmarks’ financial consequences from all but
the most astute experts in federal transportation finance. Such redistributive
consequences can upend the expectations around which regional and state transportation
plans and capital programs are built. In the face of such turbulence in their TIPs, MPOs
and their members may have to reshuffle projects and priorities, recalibrating the TIP, to
restore the integrity of original geopolitical agreements embodied in the existing TIP.
Finally, the institutional consequences of earmarks, while less visible, are perhaps
more serious, especially as they erode metropolitan institutions precisely when prevailing
winds in federal policy suggest MPOs may be asked to do more. It is fundamentally
irrational that Congress should stipulate the metropolitan planning process in law and
then allow members of Congress to summarily ignore that process when selecting
projects for earmarks. If metropolitan planning processes are not functioning to the
satisfaction of local constituencies in specific places, as earmarking defenders argue, the
constructive feedback and correctives should come through the metropolitan planning
process, by votes to reject long range plans or TIPs, or by pressure on state and local
governments to reconstitute an unresponsive MPO. The use of earmarks to secure federal
funds for projects by bypassing the metropolitan process both undermines this process
17
and its institutionalization in an urban region, and deprives it of feedback needed to
improve it.
1.4. A Drive Down Coconut Road
Although subsequent chapters depart for other metropolitan regions in the U. S. in
search of for evidence, I introduce the dissertation with a drive down Coconut Road. The
Coconut Road earmark and the dilemma it created for the Lee County MPO illustrate
many of the concerns addressed in this dissertation and also help to convey my findings.
Given the aims of this dissertation, the story of Coconut Road hinges on a single
important detail: At the time that Congress designated $ 10 million for the Coconut
interchange, 21 the project existed neither in the region’s approved long range
transportation plan ( LRP) nor its near term capital program, or TIP. Like all federal
transportation funds, Congressional earmarks can be used for projects only if those
projects are listed in required state and metropolitan plans. Lee County’s long range
plans, which discuss the year 2020 and 2030 vision for regional transportation, featured
an overpass joining Coconut Road on the west of I- 75 to another road to the east, but not
a full highway interchange. As this research emphasizes, earmarks for projects that are
not included in metropolitan TIPs or long range plans are most problematic.
As echoed by many respondents in this research, earmarks are often of an
unknown pedigree. In early August 2005, shortly after Congress approved the long
awaited transportation reauthorization bill, SAFTEA- LU, Florida congressman Connie
Mack issued a celebratory press release. On top of the $ 81.1 million earmarked for I-
75’ s expansion in Southwest Florida, Mack announced that an additional $ 10 million for
21 A U. S. Department of Justice investigation undertaken into the matter in 2009 may show that Rep. Don
Young or congressional staff under his direction inserted the text earmarking the $ 10 million specifically
for the Coconut interchange.
18
the corridor had been found “ buried in a different section of the bill.” 22 Typically,
Senators and House members readily advertise funds won for their states and districts,
but Senator Mel Martinez had not mentioned the $ 10 million when he announced the
other I- 75 earmarks a week earlier. Neither did Mack claim credit for the $ 10 million.
“ At the end of the day, this thing got stuck in there unbeknownst to us and having nothing
to do with us, other than it is our district,” a Mack spokesperson later told the New York
Times. 23 A Lee County MPO board member said, “ It just came out of the sky.” 24
When Congress earmarks funds for projects outside of regional plans and capital
programs, MPOs are left to manage the earmark post hoc. No local officials
acknowledged requesting the funds to build the Coconut Road interchange, and it was not
in approved regional plans. Still, the sudden availability of funds opened contentious
debate on the project, and pressure to use the money came from many directions. The
business community, realtor groups, a local university, and some area residents supported
the project, on one hand. The Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce called on the MPO
“ to support this interchange and encourage Representative Mack to go back to
Washington and bring back the rest of the bacon to pay for this study.” To reject the
funds would “ be short- sighted,” the Chamber maintained. 25 The city of Bonita Springs
argued the interchange would provide needed traffic relief on a main Bonita
thoroughfare. Interchange detractors, including local residents and environmentalists,
argued on the other hand that the project should be stopped, leaving Coconut Road
22 Larry Wheeler, " Mack Finds $ 10 Million for I- 75," News- Press, August 11, 2005; Office of
Congressman Connie Mack, Mack, Diaz- Balart: Additional $ 10 Million Approved for I- 75 Expansion;
Total Funding Now Stands at $ 91.1 Million, news release, August 10, 2005, http:// mack. house. gov
( accessed November 12, 2007).
23 David D. Kirkpatrick, " Alaskan Gets Campaign Cash; Florida Road Gets U. S. Funds," New York Times,
June 7, 2007.
24 Phil Davis, " Florida Road Leads to Alaska Congressman," Associated Press, June 16, 2007.
25 Lee County, Minutes of Meetings of Metropolitan Planning Organization, Meeting of March, 2006.
19
disconnected from the interstate. A new interchange would attract development to
adjacent sensitive wetlands east of I- 75 and bring more traffic to nearby neighborhoods.
Earmarks like Coconut Road can also leave fissures in a region’s financial plan.
The $ 10 million could pay for a project study, but it would never suffice to actually build
the Coconut Road interchange. If feasibility studies favored the project, would the
money for its construction come at the expense of other needed projects?
Nonetheless, the Coconut Road earmark represented “ above- the- line” funds that would
come in addition to rather than at the expense of federal highway funds anticipated by the
state. If the MPO did not amend its long range plan and short- range TIP to accommodate
the project post hoc, Lee County would lose the $ 10 million. One MPO member
suggested as an administrative remedy seeking to retain the funds but apply them to a
different project, like widening I- 75. However, Congressmen Young and Mack explicitly
told the MPO that earmark could not be used flexibly. 26 Faced with this choice, some
interests in the region were reluctant to let go of the money. A representative of the
Southwest Florida Transportation Initiative ( SWFTI), a private group composed largely
of bankers, real estate developers, builders and other businesses that lobby for
transportation investment in the region, 27 spoke before the MPO:
SWFTI goes three or four times each year to the legislature to beg for money into
Washington walking the halls of Congress talking about the university, airport,
and the poor conditions of the interstate. We received... one of the top earmarks in
the country... Why are we fighting this?... There are cities and counties that would
beg for the $ 10 million. Let’s see what the study says.
26 Ibid., Meeting Minutes, March 2006. Also, Section 1934 of SAFTEA- LU which designates the earmark
explicitly states that the funds cannot be applied to other projects. Ultimately, however, this is precisely
what happened after the earmark was amended in a 2008 technical corrections bill.
27Larry Hannan, “ SWFTI Helps Raise $ 1 Billion for Roads,” SWFTI News, Southwest Florida
Transportation Initiative, June 16, 2004, http:// www. swfti. org/ news_ detail. php? id= 13.
20
These issues were discussed at the table over and over as the MPO considered whether to
accept the money.
MPOs operate in a larger political environment that can make it difficult to refuse
earmarked funds, even if a project is low priority or clearly unwanted. In the Coconut
Road case, refusing the earmark would be an affront to Congress, particularly Chairman
Young, and could cause political problems for getting future funds, as highlighted by a
local transportation commissioner: “ The next time we try to get funding from
Congress.... we will have to apologize before we can go forward and ask for more money.
We want to do this from a position of strength... Let’s do the study and see if it makes
sense.” 28
In the two years following news of the earmark, the Coconut Road interchange
appeared on the MPO’s meeting agenda several times. In September 2005, shortly after
the $ 10 million earmark was announced, the MPO board rejected the funds by voting
eight to three against including the project in the regional long range transportation plan.
Three months later, the MPO again refused to amend its long range plan. 29 After
significant efforts by proponents of the study, the MPO considered the project again in
March 2006. This time, with Florida Department of Transportation ( FDOT) assurances
that the MPO would retain control of the study, direct the study scope to reflect concerns
over developing wetlands, and limit the diversion of funds from other needed projects,
the board voted 11 to 4 to accept the project in the long range plan. 30 Yet, once the New
York Times reported that the earmarked funds were likely political payoff from Don
28 Lee County, Minutes of Meetings of Metropolitan Planning Organization, Meeting of March, 2006.
29 Naples Daily News, " Coconut Road," December 15, 2005.
30 Lee County, Minutes of Meetings of Metropolitan Planning Organization, Meeting of March, 2006.
21
Young to a local developer, a connection some members had suggested from the
beginning, the board again reversed course and squashed the project for good. 31
There is more one could say about Coconut Road, how it earned the nickname
“ The Interchange to Nowhere,” 32 and how the earmark became grist for the mill in calls
for a House ethics investigation. 33 But the story outlines conveyed here amply illustrate
the questions that motivate this study. Ultimately, the MPO’s resistance coupled with
scrutiny of the seeming illicit manipulation of the bill that included it led to the earmark’s
reversal. The SAFTEA- LU Technical Corrections Act of 2008 amended the original
earmark language to make the $ 10 million available for the widening of I- 75 in Lee and
Collier Counties, rather than for the unwanted I- 75/ Coconut Road interchange. 34
1.5. Dissertation Guide
1.5.1. Chapters
This study is organized into nine chapters. Chapter one introduces the
dissertation research, defining both earmarking and planning, and tracing earmarking’s
increase in federal transportation authorization and appropriation bills. It makes the case
that the relationship between Congressional earmarking and metropolitan planning is
important, as these are competing processes for allocating federal funds, but little studied.
Chapter 2 provides historical perspective on the practice of transportation
planning in U. S. metropolitan areas and on the organizations involved in it. It shows how
metropolitan planning organizations ( MPOs) are comparatively new organizations in
31 Charlie Whitehead, " Coconut Road Earmark Rejected Again, after Heavy Debate at MPO," Bonita Daily
News, September 28, 2007.
32 Sarasota Herald- Tribune, " Interchange to Nowhere; Fort Meyers Controversy Shows an Earmark
Process out of Control," June 17, 2007.
33 New York Times, " The Mystery of the Coconut Interchange," October 7, 2007; Anchorage Daily News,
" Coconut Road," September 29, 2007.
34 Lee County, Minutes of Meetings of Metropolitan Planning Organization, Meeting of June 20, 2008.
22
transportation, and how they represent an accretion over the twentieth century of
professional ideologies, legislative action, political struggles, and conflicting decision-making
styles. The institutionalization of metropolitan level transportation planning,
through MPOs, has been highly incremental and strongly influenced by federal law that
has gradually enhanced the metropolitan position.
Chapters 3 and 4 peer inside the pork barrel to analyze how earmarking works
both within the Congressional process and as a series of financial mechanisms employed
by Congress. Importantly, these chapters suggest that the process by which Congress
creates earmarks has grown more formal as earmarking has increased and now includes
the collection of planning- relevant information about projects; still, the process remains
opaque in important ways. The chapters reveal that Congressional strategies for creating
earmarks and paying for them evolve its over time, as Congress responds to its own
perception of its discretion, and to internal and external environments, such as authorizer-appropriator
struggles, or federal agency efforts to thwart earmarks. Chapter 3
distinguishes earmarks based on whether Congress links them to existing funding
programs directly, as with programmatic earmarks, or not at all, as ad hoc or stand alone
earmarks. Chapter 4 dissects the primary budgetary maneuvers which Congress uses to
fund earmarks, revealing that earmarks do far more to redistribute existing transportation
resources than to add to transportation spending and that by reshuffling federal
transportation funds, they can disrupt the near- and long- term planning and programming
efforts of metropolitan and state transportation agencies.
Chapters 5 and 6 together describe and analyze organizational practices in
metropolitan areas surrounding earmarking. Chapter 5 explores practices employed by
23
metropolitan planning organizations ( MPOs), state departments of transportation ( DOTs),
and local governments to enter into the earmarking game before a bill is passed. In brief,
the chapter finds on one hand that opportunities for MPOs to engage in earmarking have
increased and become more visible. Because the earmarking process is itself more open,
earmarking may be seen as a legitimate route to getting projects. On the other hand, the
predominant patterns of and organizational relationships in earmarking seem more likely
to undercut metropolitan planning, either directly by inviting project requests that are not
regional priorities or indirectly by negating the MPO as a regional decisionmaking forum.
Chapter 6 explores the challenges earmarking can pose for MPOs and state DOTs when
Congress designates projects outside regional and state priorities as reflected in TIPs and
LRPs. For challenging earmarks, MPOs can minimize disruption to existing programs
post hoc by employing defensive policies. Such responses have legal tooth; they are
rooted in federal requirements that TIPs be fiscally constrained and related to long- term
plans. Still, few metropolitan or state organizations have the wherewithal to play
hardball with Congress members or local project supporters to thwart unwanted
earmarks.
Chapters 7 and 8 present case studies of two metropolitan planning organizations
( MPOs), serving the Dallas- Fort Worth region of Texas and the New York metropolitan
area, to explore in detail how Congressional earmarking and metropolitan planning and
decisionmaking processes interact, and how planning practices have evolved in an
environment of increased Congressional earmarking. The Dallas- Fort Worth MPO is
known actively to coordinate earmarking activity in its region, while the latter is known
to be largely uninvolved in earmarking. Chapter 7 reveals the institutional factors that
24
have helped the DFW MPO establish itself as a well- used passive consultant on
Congressional earmarks. At the same time, it is not clear that the MPO’s seemingly
successful strategies for influencing earmarks beforehand and for earmark management
post hoc actually lead to better planning of transportation investments. Earmarks for the
I- 30 Trinity River Bridge illustrate this point. Chapter 8 traces how, for seeking or
managing transportation earmarks for New York area projects, as with for transportation
decisionmaking in general, the MPO has been a largely irrelevant forum. Agencies, local
governments, and other stakeholders have typically not worked across jurisdictional or
agency boundaries to pursue or respond to earmarks. However, earmarking’s rapid
increase, along with a hefty $ 100 million earmark in SAFTEA- LU for a theretofore low
priority project, have spurred members of the New York MPO to reconsider the potential
in general for strengthened regional decisionmaking and in earmarking in particular for
regional action in the Congressional earmarking process.
Finally, Chapter 9 concludes the dissertation with overarching observations,
including a reappraisal of ISTEA based on the study findings, and with suggestions for
future research.
1.5.2. Methods
Methodologically, this dissertation draws in large part on original interview data
collected by the author, with approval from and in accordance with the protocols of the
Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects of the University of California,
Berkeley, the university’s institutional review board. I completed a total of ninety
qualitative interviews, representing over 80 interview hours, for this study. In addition to
collecting and analyzing the interview data, the study also reviewed federal transportation
25
authorization and appropriation legislation, government reports, transportation industry
and policy newsletters, as well as earmark data provided by government agencies and
outside organizations.
Chapters 3 through 6 draw on interviews and document research conducted in the
study’s first phase, which sought to understand how earmarking in general works and
MPOs’ role in it. During Phase One, I collected 55 semi- structured interviews with
representatives of metropolitan, state, and federal transportation organizations, national
groups and policy organizations active in transportation, Congressional committee staff,
and other transportation experts. All participants were asked to describe observations
about and experiences with federal earmarks over their tenure at their current
organization, and at previous organizations if relevant. In particular, respondents were
asked whether and how their current organization works with earmarks, and what
interactions they observed between the processes for earmarking federal transportation
funds and for planning and prioritizing metropolitan transportation investments. Follow-up
questions were tailored to respondents, probing their particular expertise.
Respondents were identified using emergent sampling, or identifying interview
respondents during the course of the research, and snowballing, 35 whereby interview
respondents themselves were asked to suggest candidate participants in the study. When
the data collected in these interviews reached the point of redundancy, suggesting I had
sketched the universe of existing practice, I ceased interviewing people for Phase I.
Of 55 separate interview sessions, most interviews were of a single respondent.
Two sessions included two respondents, typically when the primary respondent wished to
35 Norman Y. Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd ed. ( Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage, 2000).
26
include a staff member. In total, 44 individual respondents participated, and several were
interviewed twice. The primary, current affiliations of respondents are summarized
below. ( See Table 1.1.) Because it was not uncommon to interview people with two or
three decades of experience at their current or affiliated organizations, many respondents
reflected on experiences with a secondary organizational affiliation in a different
category. For example, a congressional staffer later became a lobbyist, and a DOT
administrator later joined a national policy group. I conducted one third of the interviews
in person and the remainder by telephone. Discussions typically lasted from 50 to 75
minutes, and in total 56 hours of interview material were collected in Phase I. Most
respondents permitted me to audiotape the interview, and I completed all interview
transcriptions and notes myself.
Table 1.1. Organizational Affiliations of Interview Respondents
Organizational Affiliation Number of
Respondents
Metropolitan Planning Organizations ( MPOs) 9
U. S. Department of Transportation ( FTA, FHWA, OIG) 36 9
D. C. Based Policy Groups and Associations 9
State Departments of Transportation 6
Congressional Staff ( Committees, Research Services) 6
Transportation Consultants & Lobbyists 5
Total 4437
The value in these interviews is the rich picture they provide of earmarking
practices employed by different organizations. The analysis of this material takes some
inspiration from Schattschneider’s study of such institutions in lawmaking as rules,
36 Federal Transit Administration ( FTA), Federal Highway Administration ( FHWA), and the Office of the
Inspector General ( OIG) are units within the U. S. DOT.
37 Multiple interviews were conducted with several respondents, making for 55 interview sessions in total.
27
procedures, and conventions and of their influence on policy outcomes. 38 It uses the
concept of “ action channels,” developed by organizational theorist Allison, to focus
attention on regularized means of taking action within the earmarking process, the major
players in that process, and their points of entry into it. 39 It uses direct quotes from
interview respondents to describe in their own words the practices used to influence
earmarks, the action channels available to them, and the deliberations that underlie
different levels of earmarking engagement. The interview data cannot be used to infer
precisely how frequently or under what circumstances any one approach is used. Instead,
they demarcate the universe of earmarking practices by its perimeters, giving shape to
behavior heretofore unexplored.
Phase I also relies on primary data of earmarks, systematic study of transportation
funding bills and legislative reports, academic and government reports on earmarking,
and other secondary sources. This is particularly true of Chapters 3 and 4, the outlines of
which were guided by interviews but which required extensive examination of funding
bills and supporting documents.
Phase II of the dissertation research design included richly descriptive case
studies highlighting specific MPOs’ experiences with earmarking. The case approach
was used to illuminate in- depth how different MPOs and their members have experienced
earmarking and why MPOs may develop different earmarking practices. Yin
recommends use of the case study when a “ how or why question is being asked about a
38 Eric Elmer Schattschneider, Politics, Pressures and the Tariff: A Study of Free Private Enterprise in
Pressure Politics, as Shown in the 1929- 1930 Revision of the Tariff ( New York: Prentice- Hall, 1935).
39 Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis ( Boston: Little, Brown,
1971).
28
contemporary set of events, over which the investigator has little or no control,” 40 a set of
conditions that describes this inquiry.
I picked two cases representing MPOs in large and complex metropolitan regions,
that had roughly equivalent opportunities to secure earmarks through well positioned
Congressional representatives, but that were known to behave differently with regard to
earmarking. To do so, I consulted three categories of information: 1) reputational data
from peer and expert organizations about MPOs’ relative engagement in earmarking; 2)
information about MPO size, and 3) data assessing representation on key Congressional
committees by members of the region’s delegation.
Phase I interview data from representatives of MPOs and related organizations
were used to identify two types of candidate MPOs: those known actively to coordinate
regional requests for earmarks, and those known to be uninvolved in earmarking. On one
hand, the Dallas- Fort Worth MPO was recognized by peer organizations and experts in
metropolitan transportation planning as an MPO that successfully coordinates a regional
approach to federal transportation earmarks. Case study evidence presented in Chapter 7
expands this picture, showing that the MPO in fact plays a more consultative role in
earmark seeking, encouraging MPO members and Congress members to seek earmarks
favorable for the region. Interview respondents frequently cited New York, on the other
hand, as a region where the MPO played no coordinative role, and where individual
member agencies and governments acted more independently. The second case confirms
this picture too, but it also shows how, in the first few years of the 21st century, MPO
40 Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Vol. 5, Applied Social Science Research
Series ( Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003), 9.
29
leadership has worked to reinvigorate the MPO broadly as a forum for regional planning
and specifically for coordinating action with regard to earmarks.
Both MPOs serve regions of at least 1 million. The majority of the U. S.
urbanized population lives in such metropolitan areas. Transportation earmarks directed
toward these regions have potential to impact the mobility of significantly more people
than in smaller regions. Additionally, MPOs in larger regions have had more opportunity
than smaller region MPOs to develop their transportation decisionmaking capacity,
potentially making interactions between earmarking and those decision- making practices
more visible in larger regions than smaller ones. This is so because the 1991 federal
transportation law, ISTEA, gave MPOs in urban areas of at least 200,000 more discretion
over federal funds than MPOs in smaller regions. Finally, size is a good proxy for
regional complexity where we can observe whether or how the MPO is able to aggregate
interests via earmarking.
To ask what role a specific MPO plays in earmarking, one must consider what
opportunities the MPO and its members have to do so. States and the Congressional
districts within them have greater opportunities to seek earmarks when their Senators and
House members sit on key committees. Both cases selected are metropolitan regions in
states that over the last 10 years have had fairly good Congressional representation on the
key House and Senate committees for transportation authorizations and appropriations.
Drawing on the Almanac of American Politics, 41 I applied a scoring system, described in
detail in Appendix 7- A, to evaluate the strength of a state’s Congressional delegation as
represented on the committees of interest. The score is intended as a simple proxy for a
41 Almanac of American Politics, Washington, D. C.: National Journal Group, 2006, 2004, 2002, 2000,
1998, http:// nationaljournal. com/ pubs/ almanac/ ( accessed October 1, 2007).
30
state’s expected ability to receive earmarks, given the committee positions occupied by
its delegation. The score treats a state’s delegation – its house members and two senators
– as a resource available to all regions in the state. While this approach admittedly
oversimplifies how delegations work, 42 the score suffices to distinguish states with lower
delegation resource levels from those with more.
The cases consult primary and secondary sources, including such planning
documents as Long Range Plans ( LRPs), also called Regional Transportation Plans
( RTPs), and Transportation Improvement Plans ( TIPs); Federal certification reviews
completed by the U. S. DOT; local news coverage; and region- specific earmark data,
where available from the MPOs or other sources.
Interviews were conducted with members of the MPO staff and board; federal,
state, and local transportation agency representatives; as well as members of Congress. 43
All respondents were asked a common set of key questions. Semi- structured interviews
allowed respondents to speak most fully on their areas of expertise and on matters to
which they were closest. Interviewees were identified through emergent sampling, as the
field investigation was underway. Although respondents were asked to identify further
participants, I also sought out participants who would identify themselves as outside the
planning process, who had no formal connection to the MPO, or who had been critical of
the MPO in the past.
42 House members are more likely to use political capital for benefits to their own district rather than
elsewhere in the state. However, within a state’s delegation, members may trade favors to get things each
wants, treating as a statewide resource the political capital derived from individual members’ committee
assignments. Further, the scoring does not account for the fact that more populous states have larger
delegations. Nor does it reflect other factors enhancing a delegation’s strength for securing earmarks, such
as members who chair other powerful committees, serve in party leadership, have seniority, or face tough
re- election races.
43 Interviews with members of Congress were the most difficult for me to secure. Several Congress
members from each metropolitan area were invited to participate in the study, but only one member in each
area agreed to be interviewed.
31
INTENTIONALY BLANK.
32
Chapter 2: Metropolitan Planning in Institutional Perspective
[ Like r] egional councils, [ MPOs] resemble more the advisory and
intergovernmental ‘ twilight- zone agencies’ than they do governmental
organizations, per se. 44
Metropolitan planning organizations ( MPOs) and the transportation plans and
decisions they craft are central to this study of Congressional transportation earmarking.
Drawing on the metropolitan planning literature, this chapter explores the institutional
environment in which MPOs and metropolitan transportation planning are embedded. In
its first half, the chapter traces the ideological, epistemological, legislative, and political
underpinnings of metropolitan planning from the early twentieth century to the present.
In its second half, it introduces the organizations and institutions involved— the public
agencies, administrative units, and political actors that are the agents of metropolitan
transportation planning. The chapter discusses the values and world- views of MPOs and
their member organizations, factors that, I later contend, influence their behavior vis- à- vis
earmarking.
The chapter develops four key observations about MPOs and the institutional
environment in which they operate. First, metropolitan planning and MPOs have
historically faced inherent structural limits; the U. S.’ three- tiered government vests
authority at federal, state and local levels, but leaves regions in a twilight zone. 45
Planning practice is thus caught between regional visions and the limited institutional
mechanisms available for their pursuit. Providing transportation in metropolitan areas
44 Robert W. Gage, " Sector Alignments for Regional Councils: Implications for Intergovernmental
Relations in the 1990s," American Review of Public Administration 22, no. 3 ( 1992): 207- 25.
45 Edward C. Banfield and Morton Grodzins, Government and Housing in Metropolitan Areas ( New York:
McGraw- Hill, 1958); Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Multistate Regionalism
( Washington, D. C., 1972).
33
has long been recognized as a regional- scale task, and regional theories recognize regions
as the desired units for problem- solving. However, there has been little agreement
regarding the basis by which to identify regions and the preferred mechanism for action
in the regional interest. 46
Second, metropolitan planning’s legislative history shows how MPOs have
evolved in an interdependent and negotiated external environment, involving state DOTs,
governors and legislatures; federal transportation and environmental agencies;
metropolitan elected officials; local governments; and civic groups. Successive laws
( Highway Acts of 1962 and 1973, and later surface transportation laws ISTEA in 1991,
TEA- 21 in 1998 and SAFETEA- LU 2005) have produced the MPO process in place
today, allocating and reallocating authority among state and metropolitan interests, and
increasingly specifying the structure and function of MPOs. Metropolitan interests have
relied on legislation to formalize state- urban coordination in transportation planning,
reflecting the failure of states and metropolitan regions to reach acceptable agreements on
federal transportation expenditures in urban areas, and the ongoing challenge of building
working partnerships in complex political arenas.
Third, recent studies emphasize measures in ISTEA and successor laws to
enhance MPO decision authority, but scholars debate their impact. Some suggest MPOs
are still troubled by ambiguous legal authority and by competition from states and
46 Edward C. Banfield and Morton Grodzins, Government and Housing in Metropolitan Areas ( New York:
McGraw- Hill, 1958); Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Multistate Regionalism
( Washington, D. C., 1972); Robert Fishman, " The Death and Life of American Regional Planning," and
Margaret Weir, " Coalition Building for Regionalism," Coalition Building for Regionalism, Reflections on
Regionalism, ed. Bruce Katz ( Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution, 2000).
34
counties over spending decisions, 47 and that MPOs directly program only a small
proportion of transportation funds, 48 even though state programming decisions must, in
theory, accommodate MPO plans.
Finally, conflicting views on appropriate decisionmaking modes also characterize
the field. On the one hand, metropolitan transportation planning is strongly influenced by
Enlightenment rationality. 49 Early efforts to manage traffic emphasized such empirical
approaches as traffic counting; systems analysis; and inventorying highways and road
conditions. 50 This paradigm suggests that, armed with adequate data and analyses,
engineers and planners can formulate proper solutions. It retains traction today;
metropolitan transportation plans typically identify goals and needs and evaluate
alternatives’ costs and benefits. 51 On the other hand, critics counter that transportation
investments are guided not by rational wisdom or by full public participation, but by raw
political maneuvering. 52 Others conclude that a priori rationality is a fiction and is
47 Todd Goldman and Elizabeth Deakin, " Regionalism through Partnerships? Metropolitan Planning since
ISTEA," Berkeley Planning Journal 14 ( 2000): 46- 75; Paul G. Lewis and Mary Sprague, Federal
Transportation Policy and the Role of Metropolitan Planning Organizations in California ( San Francisco,
CA: Public Policy Institute of California, 1997); Bruce McDowell, Improving Regional Transportation
Decisions: MPOs and Certification ( Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution, 1999); Bruce
McDowell, MPO Capacity: Improving the Capacity of Metropolitan Planning Organizations to Help
Implement National Transportation Policies ( Washington, D. C.: U. S. Advisory Commission on
Intergovernmental Relations, 1995).
48 Robert Puentes and Linda Bailey, " Increasing Funding and Accountability for Metropolitan
Transportation Decisions," Taking the High Road: A Metropolitan Agenda for Transportation Reform, ed.
Bruce Katz and Robert Puentes ( Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution Press, 2005), 139- 68.
49 Martin Wachs, " Planning, Organizations and Decision- Making: A Research Agenda," Transportation
Research A 19A, no. 5/ 6 ( 1985): 521- 31.
50 Edward Weiner, Urban Transportation Planning in the United States, 5th ed. ( Washington, D. C.: U. S.
Department of Transportation, 1997).
51 Kristina E. Younger and David G. Murray, " Developing a Method of Multimodal Priority Setting for
Transportation Projects in the San Francisco Bay Area in Response to Opportunities in ISTEA,"
Transportation Research Record, no. 1429 ( 1994): 1- 6.
52 Edward C. Banfield, Political Influence: A New Theory of Urban Politics ( New York: The Free Press,
1961); Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York ( New York: Knopf,
1974); David E. Luberoff, David E, " The Triumph of Pork over Purpose," Blueprint: Ideas for a New
Century, ( September/ October 2001): 31- 34.
35
instead defined by power; 53 that politically motivated promoters portray technical
analyses of project costs and benefits more favorably than is realistic; 54 and that bad
decisions result from cognitive limits, or how the mind “ perceives, simplifies, and acts on
complex phenomena.” 55 Further still, Innes and Gruber find different models of action
( i. e. technical/ bureaucratic, political influence, social movement, and collaborative) at
work simultaneously in the MPO arena, producing distrust and conflict among MPO
actors. 56
2.1. Metropolitan Transportation: The Institutional Environment
Taking cues from organization and institutional theory, this section describes key
elements of the institutional environment in which metropolitan transportation planning is
embedded. Organization theory enhances our understanding of organizational
environments by naming and conceptualizing the elements of organizational worlds. As
Scott notes, “ it is not very helpful simply to regard the external environment of an
organization simply as ‘ everything else.’ We need ideas as to... how to identify and assess
their relevant features.” 57 Here, I identify as the relevant features of metropolitan
transportation planning its ideological, legal, political, and epistemological
underpinnings.
53 Bent Flyvbjerg, Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1998).
54 Bent Flyvbjerg, Mette K. Skamris Holm, and Soren L. Buhl, " Underestimating Costs in Public Works
Projects: Error or Lie?" Journal of the American Planning Association 68, no. 3 ( 2002): 279- 95; Bent
Flyvbjerg, Bent, Mette K. Skamris Holm, and Soren L. Buhl, " How ( in) Accurate Are Demand Forecasts in
Public Works Projects? The Case of Transportation," Journal of the American Planning Association 71, no.
2 ( 2005): 131- 46.
55 Jonathan Richmond, " The Mythical Conception of Rail Transit in Los Angeles," Journal of Architectural
and Planning Research 15, no. 4 ( 1998): 294- 320.
56 Judith Innes and Judith Gruber, " Planning Styles in Conflict: The Metropolitan Transportation
Commission," Journal of the American Planning Association 71, no. 2 ( 2005): 177- 88.
57W. Richard Scott, Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems. 5th ed. ( Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 2003), 125.
36
2.1.1. Regional Ideology and the Search for Vehicles to Realize It
The provision of transportation in metropolitan areas has long been recognized as
an explicitly regional- scale task, distinguishing it from transportation activities in smaller
urban and rural areas. Problems and solutions relevant to metropolitan- level planning are
often too large to be addressed successfully by a single local government or agency, and
they are too remote from the state- level to be addressed by state agencies.
Regionalism, defined here as any framework that explicitly identifies the region
as an appropriate unit or scale for planning or organizational action, is implicit in the
practice of metropolitan transportation planning. While regional theories commonly
recognize the region as the desired unit for problem- solving, the basis upon which
regions are identified and the mechanism preferred for action in the regional interest have
been interpreted variously over time. Tables 2.1 and 2.2 summarize some of these
distinctions. 58 This section discusses regionalism’s evolution during the twentieth
century as a frame for problem definition and organizational action.
Table 2.1. Bases of Regionalism
Basis for Distinguishing a Region Example
Geographic
Regionalism
Homogenous natural characteristics or shared
resources make the region an appropriate
planning unit.
River basin commissions ( e. g.
Colorado River Basin Compact,
1929);
Air basin districts.
Economic
Regionalism
Regions are either a specialized node in a larger
economy or a functionally integrated economic
unit.
Silicon Valley;
Southeastern textile industry;
Tennessee Valley Authority.
Social
Regionalism
The region shares cultural identity, like
mindedness, or political or social objectives.
Early- American sectionalism;
Southern regionalism in early 20th c.;
Pacific Northwest political culture.
58 Edward C. Banfield and Morton Grodzins, Government and Housing in Metropolitan Areas ( New York:
McGraw- Hill, 1958); Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, " Multistate Regionalism"
( Washington, D. C., 1972); Robert Fishman, " The Death and Life of American Regional Planning" and
Margaret Weir, " Coalition Building for Regionalism," Reflections on Regionalism, ed. Bruce Katz
( Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution, 2000).
37
Table 2.2. Governance Mechanisms for Regionalism
Approach Application
Administrative
Regionalism
Administrative regions are a tool of
decentralization for federal
administrations.
Federal agencies with multistate
regional offices ( e. g. FTA).
Procedural
Regionalism
Federal requirements for
intergovernmental cooperation.
The 3- C process in metropolitan
transportation planning.
Functional / Sectoral
Regionalism
An entity for formal government action
is created and organized around a
single purpose or service.
Special districts; special authorities;
e. g. Delaware Basin ( 1960s);
Appalachian Regional Development
Commission ( 1965).
Political / Structural
Regionalism
(“ Metropolitanism”)
Formal government consolidation to
achieve metropolitan- / regional- scaled
government jurisdiction with purview
over multiple functions and services.
Territorial annexations by cities;
City- county consolidations;
Elected regional governments.
Informal/
Collaborative
Regionalism; “ New
Regionalism”
Regional interests are pursued not
through top- down, unitary or formal
government but via informal,
collaborative efforts of government
agencies, the private sector, citizens
groups and NGOs.
Water resources collaboratives;
Collaborative regional initiatives.
As an ideological frame for planning and governance, regionalism has defined the
field for organizational action in metropolitan transportation planning. Theorists Dutton
and Dukerich argue that “ organizational context affects patterns of change through its
effect on how issues are interpreted” and that “ inconsistency between various conditions
in an organization and its context... precipitates action.” 59 This dynamic is visible in the
history of metropolitan transportation planning and its agents, particularly in the
persistent incongruence between regional visions and the institutional mechanisms
available for their pursuit. Repeatedly, metropolitan transportation planning has
encountered the structural limits of the U. S.’ three- tiered government, which vests
authority at federal, state and local levels, but leaves regions in a twilight zone. 60
59 Jane E. Dutton and Janet M. Dukerich, " Keeping an Eye on the Mirror: Image and Identity in
Organizational Adaptation," Academy of Management Journal 34, no. 3 ( 1991): 517- 54, 550.
60 Edward C. Banfield and Morton Grodzins, Government and Housing in Metropolitan Areas ( New York:
McGraw- Hill, 1958); Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Multistate Regionalism
( Washington, D. C., 1972).
38
As cities expanded in population and in size in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, urban planners asserted the need for a regional approach to such
metropolitan- level problems as overcrowding, sanitation, traffic congestion, water
management, and goods movement. Scottsman Patrick Geddes and his followers in the
U. S. – Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein, Benton MacKaye, Stuart Chase and others –
articulated a new vision: the antidote to urban ills lay not in city- centered solutions but in
deliberate planning for the wider region. Informed by a comprehensive regional survey,
planning could achieve “ ‘ the more panoramic view of a definite geographic region,... as
lies beneath us upon a mountain holiday.’” 61 Geddes’ disciples formed the Regional
Planning Association of America ( RPAA) in 1923. Through it, they advocated for
regional surveys in key areas like the Tennessee Valley basin, for garden- city style
regional plans to weave city and hinterland into one harmonious unit, and for economic
and social interventions to remedy inefficiency, congestion and deterioration in industrial
cities.
As regionalist visions emerged, professional planners and engineers infused with
enthusiasm for “ systems thinking” sought to develop the organizations that could support
them. 62 The search for metropolitan- scale institutions matched efforts by Progressive Era
political reformers, or goo- goos, early in the century to break the influence of central city
political machines and to limit harmful city- suburb economic competition. For goo-goos63,
formal city- suburb annexations and territorial mergers – in other words, the
61 Peter Geoffrey Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the
Twentieth Century ( Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 140.
62 Keith D. Revell, Building Gotham: Civic Culture and Public Policy in New York City, 1898- 1938
( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
63 From the term “ good government.”
39
structural expansion of urban government jurisdictions – were the means to crack
machine corruption. Boston, Baltimore, St. Louis and Denver all reflected such efforts.
Regionalist visions for transportation frequently anticipated a metropolitan
environment knit together by ‘ motor ways,’ a concept visible in early metropolitan
freeway plans of 1920s and 1930s and in the platform of the RPAA. Regionalists also
aspired to more seamless passenger and freight networks. 64 Metropolitanism, a sub-species
of regionalism, emphasized downtown as the regional centerpiece; rail networks
linking region to core; preservation of outer green belts and open space; and active
metropolitan elites, vested in regional competitiveness. In the metropolitanist vision,
exemplified by Daniel Burnham's Plan for Chicago ( 1909) and The Regional Plan of
New York and Its Environs ( 1928) 65, city and suburb would be more complementary than
integrated, and consolidated metropolitan government would play a strong, top down
role. 66
Progressive Era regionalists did create institutions for more integrated planning
and government, but the resulting organizations were less far reaching than they had
envisioned. Revell documents progress in the development of a regional transportation
system for New York; new institutions such as the Port Authority and the Board of
Estimate lessened parochialism, centralized decisionmaking, and achieved modest
improvements, respectively, in goods movement and in development of the subway
64Peter Geoffrey Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the
Twentieth Century ( Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); Keith D. Revell, Building Gotham: Civic Culture and Public
Policy in New York City, 1898- 1938 ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
65 The Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs was produced by the Regional Plan Association, a
business group, not Mumford’s idealistic RPAA. Mumford criticized the plan as doing more to preserve
the city- centered status quo than to create a socially and economically integrated region.
66 Peter Geoffrey Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the
Twentieth Century ( Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); Robert Fishman, " The Death and Life of American Regional
Planning" and Margaret Weir, " Coalition Building for Regionalism," Reflections on Regionalism, ed.
Bruce Katz ( Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution, 2000).
40
system. Nonetheless, hindered by borough autonomy, competition, and fear of the power
redistribution implied by centralized planning proposals, these institutions fell short of
the mark planners intended for them. 67
During the Depression and World War II, ad hoc commissions and associations
composed largely of downtown business and civic elites became the carriers of regional
and metropolitan visions. Groups like the Regional Plan Association ( RPA) in New
York, and the Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council founded in 1934 in Chicago
produced bold physical plans, but lacked financial means to implement them. Regionalist
visions also found expression in New Deal proposals for regional economic development
commissions and in institutions like the Tennessee Valley Authority and Works Progress
Administration; these federal initiatives bolstered regional thinking and research, but
many proposals went unrealized. Also, the New Deal era resulted in few metropolitan-level
governments or institutions for urban transportation planning.
In the postwar period, rapid suburbanization, deindustrialization in the Rust Belt,
and the growing chasm in economic and social profiles between central city and suburb
provoked renewed regional visions in urban planning. 68 While planners reasserted the
need for formal metropolitan reorganization, postwar government consolidations were
few in number. Instead, postwar suburban communities deliberately resisted municipal
annexation and sought to establish independent political control, assisted by new state
laws that prohibited 1920s- style city- suburb annexations.
67 Keith D. Revell, Building Gotham: Civic Culture and Public Policy in New York City, 1898- 1938
( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
68 Robert Fishman, " The Death and Life of American Regional Planning," Reflections on Regionalism, ed.
Bruce Katz ( Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution, 2000).
41
Then and now, the structural regionalism proposed in the 1950s and 1960s was
considered naive by some. Banfield and Grodzins observed the discrepancy between
prolific research and discussion of metropolitan reorganization at the time and the limited
action to advance integration schemes. Calls for metropolitan integration, they argued,
rested on the single dimension of economical and effective administration and ignored
such metropolitan political realities as city- suburban cleavages around class and race. 69
These realities were concealed by what historian Kenneth Jackson calls the ‘ gentleman’s
agreement’ of the United States: “ the shared willingness to ignore or to attribute to
natural causes the misdistribution of wealth among local governmental jurisdictions.” 70
Transportation, however, was one sector where regionalism was encouraged with
formal, albeit nascent, institutional capacity. Federal funds ( from the Department of
Housing and Urban Development and the Bureau of Public Roads) along with money
from state and urban county and city governments supported the first transportation
studies in the 1950s, such as the Chicago Area Transportation Study ( CATS) launched in
1956, the Twin Cities Area Transportation Study in 1958, and the Penn Jersey
Transportation Study in 1959.71 Ad hoc in arrangement and not directly connected to any
unit of government, these regional transportation studies involved state and local
governments and transportation and public works agencies. While several of the urban
transportation studies of the late 1950s resulted in proposals for massive highway systems
that were received negatively by local residents, transportation studies in the 1960s
69 Edward C. Banfield and Morton Grodzins, Government and Housing in Metropolitan Areas ( New York:
McGraw- Hill, 1958), 49.
70 Kenneth T. Jackson, " Gentleman's Agreement in Metropolitan America," Reflections on Regionalism, ed.
Bruce Katz ( Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution, 2000), 212.
71 David E. Boyce,, Norman D. Day, and Chris McDonald, Metropolitan Plan Making: An Analysis of
Experience with the Preparation and Evaluation of Alternative Land Use and Transportation Plans,
Monograph Series ( Philadelphia: Regional Science Research Institute, 1970).
42
adopted a more comprehensive approach that considered alternative scenarios of
metropolitan land development and paid more attention to transit. 72
Motivations for a more comprehensive regional approach varied. For Wilfred
Owen, regionalism was rational; a unified and effective transportation system required
coordinated administrative machinery. “ The continuing outward expansion of the city
beyond its original municipal limits and the consequent growth of the area to be supplied
with transportation services have made a regional approach increasingly necessary,”
Owen observed. 73 For others, regionalism was a politically expedient way to increase
access to federal urban transportation dollars. In any case, transportation studies
represented one of the first formal commitments to regional institutions in transportation
planning, and they offered a template for metropolitan planning organizations which
would develop later.
In contrast to the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s were a time when the federal
government withdrew support for metropolitan planning in general. 74 Yet, regionalism in
transportation was nurtured by specific pieces of federal legislation, discussed later, and
since then it has continued to fare better than attempts to achieve metropolitan- level
general purpose government. 75 On the whole, however, the ideology of regionalism
assumed a new cast in the late twentieth century, emphasizing informal, cooperative and
72 David E. Boyce, Norman D. Day, and Chris McDonald, Metropolitan Plan Making: An Analysis of
Experience with the Preparation and Evaluation of Alternative Land Use and Transportation Plans,
Monograph Series ( Philadelphia: Regional Science Research Institute, 1970), 20; Edward Weiner, Urban
Transportation Planning in the United States, 5th ed. ( Washington, D. C.: U. S. Department of
Transportation, 1997), 30.
73 Wilfred Owen, The Metropolitan Transportation Problem, rev. ed. ( Washington, D. C.: The Brookings
Institution, 1966), 170.
74 Bruce McDowell, " The Metropolitan Planning Organization Role in the 1980s," Journal of Advanced
Transportation 18, no. 2 ( 1984): 125- 33.
75Margaret Weir, " Coalition Building for Regionalism," Reflections on Regionalism, ed. Bruce Katz
( Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution, 2000).
43
incremental governance approaches to metropolitan scale problems rather than formal or
hierarchical metropolitan- scale government structures. 76 This approach, dubbed the “ new
regionalism,” reflects a more cautious, conservative view of government’s role in and
capacity for solving urban problems.
Urban and regional planners who espouse new regionalist solutions seldom frame
it this way, but new regionalism resembles the new public management ( NPM)
perspective that has gained prominence in political science since in the 1980s. Advocates
of the NPM emphasize diminishing faith in the performance and effectiveness of formal
government and support the injection of market principles into public management,
including decentralized decisionmaking and flexible government. 77 New regionalism in
metropolitan transportation planning is evident in the increasing popularity of local
option sales taxes and in the birth of regional mobility authorities as ad hoc, often sub-regional
mechanisms for financing transportation projects outside the framework of
established regional planning bodies. As one researcher has observed, the focus on
collaborative, incremental and ad hoc “ intergovernmental relationships marks a shift
away from using regional agencies to address interjurisdictional challenges.” 78 In some
respects, the pursuit of earmarks by a region’s transportation players could be of a piece
with this approach.
76 Donald Phares, Metropolitan Governance without Metropolitan Government? ( Hants, UK: Ashgate,
2004).
77 Robert Behn, Rethinking Democratic Accountability ( Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution Press,
2001).
78 Bruce Schaller, " The Changing Face of Intergovernmental Relations," Building Effective Relationships
between Central Cities and Regional, State and Federal Agencies ( Washington, D. C.: National
Cooperative Highway Research Program, 2001), 7.
44
2.1.2. Legal Roots of Metropolitan Transportation Planning
The law and legal processes are recognized across organization theory as an
important component of the organizational environmental. 79 To rationalists
organizations’ rule- bound internal structures follow Weberian notions of modernity.
Organizations reflect the progression of rationality in society, and their internal rules and
procedures, particularly in large and long- standing bureaucracies, reflect the broad,
historic transformation of authority from personalistic or charismatic grounds to
impersonal rational- legal ones. To open systems or behavioralist theorists, law is an
external constraint in the organizational environment; they study how organizations
respond to legal requirements and how organizations use the law in authority struggles.
New institutional theories consider how law constitutes organizational identities and, in
turn, how organizations shape the law through the procedures they adopt to satisfy its
requirements. 80
The legislative history of metropolitan transportation planning shows how laws
yielded the process which metropolitan planning organizations, or MPOs, are now
expected to deliver. Today, federal transportation law requires that urban areas with
populations over 50,000 have state- designated metropolitan planning organizations
( MPOs) to coordinate transportation planning and spending for the regions. The MPO is
usually governed by an appointed board, many members of which hold elected office in
counties or cities in the metropolitan region. To receive federal transportation dollars, the
MPO must submit a fiscally constrained short- range Transportation Improvement Plan,
or TIP, that identifies all regional projects to be supported by federal money. It indicates
79 Jane E. Dutton and Janet M. Dukerich, " Keeping an Eye on the Mirror: Image and Identity in
Organizational Adaptation," Academy of Management Journal 34, no. 3 ( 1991): 517- 54.
80 L. B. Edelman, C. Uggen, and H. S. Erlanger, " The Endogeneity of Legal Regulation: Grievance
Procedures as Rational Myth," American Journal of Sociology 105, no. 2 ( 1999): 406- 54.
45
which agency ( e. g. state or city transportation department, or transit operator) will
sponsor the project and which moneys will pay for it. Federal law requires that the TIP,
as well as the long- range plan ( LRP) that is its inspiration, be developed cooperatively by
state DOTs, local agencies and governments, and public stakeholders, and the MPO is
expected to be the seat of coordination. Yet historically metropolitan transportation
planning has not been a cooperative processes with the MPO at its center of gravity, and
in practice today it seldom bears strong resemblance to this ideal.
Federal laws have established this process over time and in doing so have shaped
not only the formal practice of metropolitan transportation planning but also the claims to
legitimacy available to participating organizations and their inter- organizational
dynamics. Specifically, federal law has allocated and reallocated authority among state
and metropolitan interests over time. Two prominent institutional dynamics in
metropolitan transportation planning originate in federal legislation. First, the
relationship between the state DOT and MPOs can be fraught with tension, as these
organizations compete for the power to allocate transportation dollars. This tension is
visible in the legal history. Second, federal legislation has established a tradition of
robust state- level transportation organizations. State DOTs are typically stronger
institutions than MPOs; they possess more staff, larger budgets, and greater technical
capacities than their metropolitan planning counterparts. Federal transportation
legislation is one source of this imbalance; it began supporting state DOTs earlier on and,
over time, has directed more resources to state DOTs than to metropolitan planning
organizations. Created later than state DOTs, MPOs have had to play catch- up with the
46
states. The following paragraphs trace how the practice and dynamics of metropolitan
transportation planning have evolved in the law.
2.1.2.1. Early 20th Century: State Organizations Construct and Plan
The earliest laws defining federal involvement in improving U. S. roads
established the federalist tradition in U. S. highway transportation. Following this
tradition, states own the roads and decide where to place them, but construct them to
federal standards and, in part, using federal funds. 81 Additionally, state- level highway
departments82 have the foremost role in planning, design, funding, and execution of road
projects. With the Federal Aid Road Act signed by Woodrow Wilson in 1916, the U. S.
government began actively to encourage and finance state- initiated road improvements.
In 1925, federal law designated a nationwide system of ‘ primary roads’ intended to end
the isolation of rural areas, and committed the federal government to matching half the
cost of state investments in this system. 83 These early laws required each state to have a
highway department in order to be eligible for federal funds, a condition that has
remained in place.
In need of organizations eligible to receive federal dollars and equipped to
construct and improve roads, states established highway departments or commissions.
The 1934 Federal Aid Highway Act allowed federal money to be used not simply for
road construction but also for state- level transportation planning.
Congress authorized that 1.5 percent of the amount apportioned to the any state
annually for construction could be used for surveys, plans engineering and
81Paul G. Lewis, Shaping Suburbia: How Political Institutions Organize Urban Development ( Pittsburgh,
PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996); Madeleine S. Bloom and Nancy Bennett, " U. S. Highway
Financing: Historical Perspective and National Priorities," TR News ( 1998).
82 Now called Transportation Departments.
83 This pertains to major facilities. Local governments own, operate, and maintain urban streets and county
rural roads.
47
economic analyses for future highway construction projects. The act created the
cooperative arrangement between the U. S. Bureau of Public Roads ( now the U. S.
Federal Highway Administration) and the state highway departments, known as
the statewide highway planning surveys. By 1940, all states were participating in
this program. 84
Federal funds for metropolitan- level transportation planning or for mass transit, however,
would not materialize for another thirty years.
Urban interests saw a pattern of inequity in the federal transportation finance
system and in states’ highway spending practices. The federal government sent the bulk
of federal transportation dollars to state highway departments, and the states spent those
dollars mostly in rural areas. Yet, urban areas – not rural ones – faced severe congestion
problems due to the automobile’s rapid adoption in the 1920s. Still, it was not until the
1944 Federal- Aid Highway Act that federal dollars could be used on urban extensions to
the largely rural Federal- Aid primary system and to state- designated secondary- highway
systems. This law was a first step in redressing the imbalance in expenditure between
rural and urban areas. However, it left control over federal dollars in the hands of state
highway departments and did nothing to enhance metropolitan- level transportation
planning capacity.
2.1.2.2. Mid- Century: Transportation Studies Precede MPOs
After hefty lobbying by urban interests, 85 the early 1960s marked a turning point:
federal law began to institutionalize metropolitan transportation planning. The 1961
Housing Act was the first legislation to make federal money available explicitly for
urban transportation surveys; these urban surveys were meant to resemble state- level
84 Edward Weiner, Urban Transportation Planning in the United States, 5th ed. ( Washington, D. C.: U. S.
Department of Transportation, 1997), 8.
85 Ibid.; National Committee on Urban Transportation, Better Transportation for Your City ( Chicago:
Public Administration Service, 1958).
48
ones supported by federal dollars since the early 1930s. Second, the Federal Aid
Highway Act of 1962 conditioned the expenditure of transportation funds in urban areas
on a continuing, cooperative and comprehensive planning process that involved state and
local communities. Section 134 of the Act defined the “ 3- C process” for “ Transportation
Planning in Certain Urban Areas”; this process is still required today.
It is declared to be in the national interest to encourage and promote the
development of transportation systems, embracing various modes of transport in a
manner that will serve the States and local communities efficiently and
effectively. To accomplish this objective the Secretary shall cooperate with the
States... in the development of long- range highway plans and programs which are
properly coordinated with plans for improvements in other affected forms of
transportation and which are formulated with due consideration to their probable
effect on the future development of urban areas of more than fifty thousand
population. After July 1, 1965, the Secretary shall not approve... any program for
projects in any urban area of more than fifty thousand population unless he finds
that such projects are based on a continuing comprehensive transportation
planning process carried on cooperatively by States and local communities in
conformance with the objectives stated in this section.
The two laws changed the institutional context for transportation planning in
urban areas. Whereas earlier housing legislation had established regional planning bodies
and councils of government to encourage area- wide approaches to urban growth,
resources explicitly for metropolitan- level transportation planning had heretofore been
absent. Thus, these laws transferred some power from state highway departments to
urban communities. Most significantly, the 1962 law noted the absence of formal entities
for metropolitan transportation planning and required their creation:
Because qualified planning agencies to mount such a [ cooperative, continuing,
and comprehensive] transportation planning effort were lacking in many urban
areas, the BPR [ Bureau of Public Roads] required the creation of planning
agencies or organizational arrangements that would be capable of carrying out the
required planning process. 86
86 Edward Weiner, Urban Transportation Planning in the United States, 5th ed. ( Washington, D. C.: U. S.
Department of Transportation, 1997), 38.
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Motivated by the dollars at stake, substantially increased by the 1956 Interstate
Program, and by mounting strains surrounding urban revolts against state- sponsored
freeways, 87 states and urban interests quickly established planning organizations to meet
the 3- C requirements. According to Weiner, 224 existing urban areas fell under this 1962
Act, and by the July 1965 deadline all had established an urban transportation planning
process .88 Tapping funds from the Housing and Home Finance Agency ( HHFA) and the
BPR, metropolitan areas tasked ad hoc Transportation Studies, existing Councils of
Government or Regional Planning Commissions, or other quasi- official regional bodies
with executing the new 3- C process. 89
Additionally, the National Committee on Urban Transportation ( NCUT), via their
seminal guidebook Better Transportation for Your City ( 1958), diffused a specific, highly
rational model for metropolitan transportation planning. The committee comprised
leading urban officials who recognized that without urban transportation surveys, metro
areas were handicapped in state and federal funding allocations. They promoted “ a
practical system of fact collection and transportation planning adaptable to communities
of all sizes.” 90 Their guidebook disseminated to elected officials and agency leaders the
urban “ Transportation Study” as pioneered in places like San Diego, Detroit and Chicago
in the 1950s.
87 Alan Lupo, Frank Colcord, and Edmund P. Fowler, Rites of Way: The Politics of Transportation in
Boston and the U. S. City ( Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).
88 Edward Weiner, Urban Transportation Planning in the United States, 5th ed. ( Washington, D. C.: U. S.
Department of Transportation, 1997), 42;. E. H. Holmes, " The State- of- the- Art in Urban Transportation
Planning, or How We Got Here," Transportation I, no. 4 ( 1973): 379- 401.
89 Mark Solof, " The History of MPOs," NJTPA Quarterly, ( Newark, NJ: North Jersey Transportation
Planning Authority, 1996- 1997).
90 National Committee on Urban Transportation, Better Transportation for Your City ( Chicago, IL: Public
Administration Service, 1958), 2.
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Although the 1962 Act was a turning point in the evolution of regional
transportation planning, its effect was not as far reaching as urban interests had hoped.
First, only very limited Federal highway planning funds could be used to support transit
study. When federal assistance for transit did materialize with the 1964 Urban Mass
Transportation Act, it was far less generous than Federal aid to highways. Thus, so-called
“ comprehensive” planning by default meant “ full coverage of the familiar
technical elements of urban traffic analysis and forecasting needed for highway network
development.” 91 Further, enforcement of the 3- C provisions fell to the federal Bureau of
Public Roads, which traditionally enjoyed a close relationship with state highway
departments. 92 Also, federal project funds flowed to the states. Thus, state DOTs
continued to dominate urban highway decision- making, particularly in smaller urban
areas where regional transportation planning bodies typically were weak. 93 To the
chagrin of anti- highway urban interests, metropolitan planning agencies played a minor
advisory role through the 1960s and early 1970s.
2.1.2.3. Late 20th Century: MPOs Are Formalized and Slowly Bolstered
The 1973 Highway Act changed this somewhat. It provided funds for and
required states officially to designate “ Metropolitan Planning Organizations” ( MPOs) for
urban areas exceeding 50,000 residents. Pressured by urban and environmental coalitions
dissatisfied with state- directed urban freeway building, federal officials passed the 1973
law to create the “ legal mandate and financing... to transform the hodgepodge of regional
91 Thomas A. Morehouse, " The 1962 Highway Act: A Study in Artful Interpretation," Journal of the
American Institute of Planners 35, no. 3 ( 1969): 164.
92 Ibid., 161.
93 Mark Solof, " The History of MPOs," ( Newark, NJ: North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority,
1996- 1997).
51
bodies across the country into effective, multimodal planning agencies.” 94 Previously,
the state was required only to consult and cooperate with metropolitan area governments
when considering state- directed projects in urban areas. But the 1973 law and the 1975
regulations operationalizing it specified that MPOs must include “ principal elected
officials” in the region and that MPOs themselves compile and approve a transportation
funding plan, known as the TIP.
At least in theory, the U. S. government had shifted some transportation power
from state to metropolitan players and from the technical experts directing urban
transportation studies to local elected officials. The move reflected competing views of
transportation planning: Was it an enterprise for expert technical staff or for politicians?
And, should it be oriented toward transit planning, favored by urban interests, or highway
planning, traditionally performed by the state? It also exposed the state– metropolitan
power struggle. Many state and county officials complained bitterly of MPOs’ new
status, calling them “ a federally- imposed level of regional government that impinges on
the lawful authority of local and state governments.” 95 As anticipated by Christensen’s
work on intergovernmental systems, moves to bolster metropolitan institutions were
viewed as a strain on the federal system. 96 Today, MPOs continue to be characterized by
ambiguous legal authority and competition from state and county governments over
spending decisions. 97
94 Ibid., 21.
95 Ibid., 24.
96 Karen Stromme Christensen, Cities and Complexity: Making Inter