State Secretary Of Transportation Aims For Flexible Highway Bill

Oklahoma Secretary of Transportation Tim Gatz is upbeat about the impact of the new highway bill, which is part of President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure law, as long as it gives the state some flexibility in how and where the funds are used.

Gatz returned from meetings in Washington D.C. where he and other state transportation officials were briefed on the much-celebrated bill.

“This is my seventh highway bill,” Gatz said in an interview Tuesday, “so not the first time around, but this one’s a little bit unusual because it got rolled up into that bigger infrastructure package.”

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, as the law is formally known, includes approximately $550 billion in new funding.

More than $1 billion of those new dollars will go to Oklahoma and a portion will be incorporated in the state’s eight-year highway construction blueprint.

“We increased the federal funding projection we were using by about 20 percent,” Gatz said. “We did that back in October, so we took a little bit of risk there because the bill had not passed yet. I feel like we hit that pretty close with dollars that are actually going to find their way all the way to the highway system.”

Gatz said it’s still very early in the process of implementing the bill and there is some confusion as to just how the funds will be used.

“And that’s another reason we’re up here right now is to get this policy briefing,” Gatz said. “And really begin to have a better understanding, a more clear understanding of what opportunities we might have.”

Gatz said it’s important to Oklahoma that the law gives states flexibility to use the money, for example, to do road work in rural areas because the highest fatality rates are on rural two-lane highways that don’t have shoulders.

“We want to make sure that there’s room in the infrastructure bill and the focus to continue to do projects like that,” Gatz noted, “to build out the things that are important in Oklahoma.”