Today (June 19), the House of Representatives began consideration of H.R. 3055, which is a “minibus” appropriations bill that includes the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) Appropriations bill (H.R. 3163) and several other appropriations bills for fiscal year (FY) 2020.

APTA strongly encourages you to contact your Representatives today and urge them to oppose the following amendments:

Perry Amendment #237 (Originally Amendment #51)—Strongly Oppose. 
The Perry Amendment, offered by Representative Scott Perry (R-PA), strikes section 164 of the bill. If the Perry Amendment passes and current law is applied, every public transit agency will face significant cuts in FY 2020. The Perry Amendment will result in an estimated 12 percent cut to all transit formula apportionments in FY 2020. The amendment reapplies the Rostenkowski Test, which will force an estimated $1.2 billion cut to public transit formula funding in FY 2020.

In addition, section 164 of the bill includes several important changes to the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) administration of the Capital Investment Grants (CIG) program. The bill prohibits FTA from:

• requiring or requesting that projects have a CIG share of less than 50 percent;
• determining the CIG share until at least 180 days after the project has entered the Engineering phase; and
• for projects currently in the CIG pipeline, requiring a probability threshold greater than 50 percent when determining the project’s budget and schedule. This provision restores FTA’s Risk Assessment policy to its terms prior to FTA’s new policy announced on June 29, 2018.

The Perry Amendment strikes each of these requirements.

Woodall Amendment #229 (Originally Amendment #121)—Strongly Oppose. 
The Woodall Amendment, offered by Representative Rob Woodall (R-GA), strikes section 193 of the bill. Section 193 of the bill clarifies that, under current law, Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loans repaid with local funds are considered part of the non-Federal share of the project cost. The Woodall Amendment strikes this TIFIA clarification and allows the U.S. Department of Transportation to continue to consider TIFIA loans repaid with local funds “in the context of all Federal funding sources…” See FTA Dear Colleague letter (June 29, 2018).

The House is scheduled to consider a total of 290 amendments to the bill. We expect final passage of the bill later this week or early next week. For more details on the THUD Appropriations bill, please see APTA’s previous Legislative Update.