Under Governor Haslam, Tennessee Department of Transportation ‘Overhead’ Costs Have Grown 63 Percent, While ‘Highway Infrastructure’ Spending Has Shrunk By 33 Percent

The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) total costs for “Administration” plus “Headquarters Operation,” what would be considered “overhead” in the business world, have grown by 63 percent, from $78.9 to $117 million, in the seven years between Gov. Haslam’s first budget in FY 2011-12 and his  proposed budget for FY 2017-18.

While TDOTs overhead has skyrocketed, spending on one of the main Programs for road improvements, “Highway Infrastructure,” has gone down by more than 30 percent in that same time period.

Table 1 provides the details of TDOT’s “Recommended Budget By Program and Funding Source” obtained from multiple years of budget documents and includes the links to the source documents and the page references.

The table demonstrates that since fiscal year 2010-11, the last year of Governor Bredesen’s administration, there are multiple Programs, including Administration, Headquarters Operation, State Industrial Access, Planning and Research, Interstate System and Highway Infrastructure and TDOT as a whole, for which the funding was reduced by Gov. Haslam’s in his first year and have never recovered.

Referencing just a single section of the budget and compiling it in a table does not tell the whole story.

In January of each year, the sitting Governor proposes a budget for the upcoming fiscal year which runs July 1 through June 30.  Included in the budget document, which has averaged just under 600 pages since 2011-12, is how the current fiscal year is “estimated” to finish as well as the “actual” revenues and expenditures for the prior fiscal year.

Within the Budget Overview section of the budget document, information about TDOT funding appears in two places:  Recommended Budget by Program and Funding Source and, a few pages later, Comparison of Programs.

Initially, the two pages contain the same funding totals.  But, as the data for each fiscal year moves through the three-year publication cycle, not only is the data changed from initial publication, the data no longer aligns between the two appearances in the budget document.

Taking the Total Appropriations line and adjusting it for how fiscal year 2016-17 is “estimated” to finish from the Comparison of Programs page (A-22, sheet 54 of 558), and reducing the Highway Infrastructure funding by the $278,570,000 revenues anticipated from the four state tax increases contained in the IMPROVE Act (gas, diesel, motor vehicle registration and rental car), Table 2 below tells quite a different story.

The two TDOT Programs directly tied to state road improvements are Highway System Maintenance and Highway Infrastructure.

Highway System Maintenance funding for 2017-18 is flat from 2016-17, showing no apparent impact from the additional revenues anticipated from the IMPROVE Act tax increases.

Highway Infrastructure, however, shows a significant increase in funding in 2017-18 over 2016-17.  Table 3 below shows year-over-year funding for and Highway Infrastructure, with and without the IMPROVE Act additional revenues, as well as Highway System Maintenance.

Highway Infrastructure has been decimated under the Haslam administration, and Highway System Maintenance has seen modest growth.

Meanwhile TDOT overhead has increased steadily and disproportionately to actual road work, as Table 4 below shows:

Without the benefit of the IMPROVE Act tax increases to the budget to compensate for the defunding of road projects, TDOT overhead has grown to represent 14 percent, up from 9 percent, while Highway Infrastructure represents just 19 percent, down from 28 percent under Governor Haslam.

NOTE: Links to Source documents referenced in Table 1.

Sign up here to receive morning updates, plus breaking news, and special offers

CONFIRM

You have Successfully Subscribed!