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TCC Fly-In Next Week; Are You Going?
OCA members and staff are headed to Washington, D.C. next week to meet with members of the Ohio congressional delegation as part of the Transportation Construction Coalition’s 16th annual industry fly-in. Our goal is to ensure that members of Congress realize the upcoming Congressional infrastructure proposal must address the long term solvency of the Highway Trust Fund. There’s still time to sign up and attend the conference, which starts with briefings by our national association staff and members of Congress on Wednesday, with a full day of lobbying Ohio’s members of Congress on Thursday. At Wednesday afternoon’s legislative briefing, you will receive information about what policy and funding proposals are being considered. You will hear from key policy makers from Capitol Hill and the Administration and receive educational briefing materials on key industry priorities for your use in meeting with your congressional delegation. The Fly-In's reception will also provide you an opportunity to network with your industry peers and members of Congress and their staff.
Details about the event and on-line registration are availablehere.
For more information, please contact OCA’s Legislative Director, Angela Van Fossen at [email protected].
Budget Issues For OCA Members Multiplying As Bill Passes The House And Starts Through The Senate
The state’s budget bill (House Bill 49) contains much more than funding to run state agencies for the next two years – it is a policy juggernaut that grows to more than 5000 pages by the end of the budget process. A great deal of time and effort is put into following committee hearings, reading budget language and analysis, and meeting with legislators in an effort to keep out or remove language that could have a negative effect on our membership.
The budget passed the House on May 2nd by a vote of 58-26 and is now officially in the Senate Finance Committee and in Finance subcommittees for hearings.
The House Finance Committee amended the budget bill to include items of concern for OCA. Sometimes “stand-alone” bills – bills introduced by House or Senate members – are added in their entirety to the budget bill in order to help persuade the stand-alone bill’s sponsor to vote for the budget. That was the case with language added to the budget to require the amount of the state and federal gas tax to be posted on gas pumps. We are attempting to have that language removed in the Senate.
The House Finance Committee also added an amendment to increase the competitive bidding threshold for Port Authorities from $100,000 to $250,000. OCA quickly organized a coalition of construction employer groups and labor to oppose that change, and OCA testified in opposition in the House Finance Committee. Copies of all of the testimony discussed in this article are available here.
OCA continues to work as part of another coalition (testimony attached) that includes AGC of Ohio to support the Governor’s budget proposal to require centralized collection of business’ net profits tax by the state. Instead of your business filing separate forms and submitting payment for each municipality your company worked in during the year, under the Governor’s proposal, you’d just file one form and make one payment through the Ohio Business Gateway that the state would then distribute to each municipality. This proposal was heavily opposed by municipalities and the House removed the language. We are working to get the language added back in the Senate, and we’ll soon be asking you to send letters to members of the Senate Finance Committee to let them know how important this is to your company. To read this article in its entirety, click here.
Trump Opens Door to Increase Federal Gas Tax
President Trump, in a wide ranging interview with Bloomberg news, left open the possibility of increasing the federal motor fuel taxes to help fund his proposed infrastructure investment initiative. The president said he has not made a commitment on that issue, but noted that he had met with trucking industry officials who raised the issue with him. Trump reported that officials from the American Trucking Associations, which represents trucking fleet owners, visited with him earlier in week and asked him to consider raising fuel taxes if the money would be spent on improving roads. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer later expanded on the comment and said the President, "did not express support for it. He expressed that a group that had met with him expressed support with it, and that he, out of respect, would consider their request. That's it. There was no endorsement of it or support for it." Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao also said this week that President Trump is pressing his staff for an infrastructure proposal, “sooner rather than later.”
Congress Completes Action on FY 2017 Funding Measure FAST Act Fully Funded
This week, the House and Senate agreed to a funding bill at an annualized spending rate of $1.165 trillion for the remainder of fiscal year 2017, which ends Sept. 30. The House passed the bill by a vote of 309-118 with 178 Democrats and 131 Republicans voting in support of the bill. The Senate passed the bill by a 79-18 vote. The bill funds the Federal-aid highway program at $43.266 billion, the level set for the program in the Fixing America’s Surface transportation (FAST), an increase of $905 million over FY16 levels. In addition, appropriators agreed to provide $500 million extra for discretionary TIGER grants, the same level as last year. The agreement also funds the transit formula program at the FAST Act level of $9.734 billion. Transit Capital grants (new starts) would receive $2.413 billion, an 11 percent increase over last year. The Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Improvement Program (AIP) grants were funded at $3.35 billion the level it has been at for the past several years. The bill also appropriates an extra $528 million from the general fund for the highway emergency relief program.
Since October 1st, states were receiving portions of their highway budgets at the annualized FY16 levels under the terms of the short term "continuing resolutions". Numerous state Departments of Transportation indicated they were holding back construction projects from their spring lettings because of the uncertainty about the federal funding. With the funding agreement in place, budget distributions already provided to the states back to October 1st, 2016 will be adjusted upwards to the new, higher FY17 levels and the full budget through September 30, 2017 will be available. There was some concern that a final agreement would be in the form of a continuing resolution, funding all programs at FY 2016 levels thereby not fulfilling FAST Act authorizations. In approving the measure the negotiators chose to ignore recommendations from the Trump Administration to not fund the TIGER grant program in FY 2017 and to limit the transit capital grants to ongoing projects.
Retiree-Employee Ratios Are Dooming the Multiemployer Pension
A record number of multiemployer pension plans are receiving financial assistance from the federal government this year as the burgeoning ranks of retirees dwarf the number of employees paying into the plans. Multiemployer pension plans--which are plans in unionized industries where employers group together and contribute to a single plan on their workers’ behalf--have become the biggest drain on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the federal agency that insures pension plans. The agency has said that its multiemployer program could be insolvent as early as 2025.
Even as Congress has taken steps to solve the multiemployer pension problem, the plans continue to face a death spiral. In fiscal year 2016, 10 multiemployer plans went insolvent and requested financial assistance from the PBGC. The federal agency is now giving financial assistance to a record-high 71 multiemployer plans. About $112 million of financial assistance went to troubled multiemployer plans in FY 2016, the highest amount in history, according to data Bloomberg BNA obtained from the PBGC. These 10 plans became increasingly dominated by retired and separated vested participants from plan year 2001 to 2015, Bloomberg BNA found after an analysis of Employee Benefits Security Administration Form 5500 raw dataset.
As the number of active employees in each plan dwindled, the amount of money contributing employers made to the plans shrunk, ultimately leading to their insolvency. Seven of the 10 plans had no active participants since 2013, although five of the seven had more than 20 percent active participants in plan year 2001. NMU Great Lakes had no active members throughout the 15 years reviewed by Bloomberg BNA. Click here to read more.
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