During a Wednesday Senate Environment Committee hearing, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) questioned Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy about the long delays to construction projects.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to Secretary Duffy for being here today. It is great to
00:10have the opportunity to speak to you on the phone yesterday.
00:15I want to start by discussing the review of the competitive grant awards, as we discussed
00:23on the phone, and the guidance issued by the Department of Transportation on March 11th
00:29outlined the process of reviewing projects for grant awards that are not yet finalized.
00:36So this has caused significant disruption for a number of our projects in Arizona, including
00:45the replacement of the 22nd Street Bridge in Tucson. I was on the phone with the mayor
00:51of Tucson yesterday about this, Regina Romero, and this 22nd Street Bridge project replaces
00:59an outdated bridge for cars that are going over Union Pacific's main southern transcon
01:05rail line in Tucson. It needs to be replaced. There are cars or there are certain size trucks
01:12and emergency vehicles that can't go over this bridge, not allowed.
01:18There's also a project in Arizona called it's the widening of U.S. Highway 93, which is
01:23one of the deadliest roadways in Arizona and part of what we call the future Interstate
01:2911 between Phoenix and Las Vegas. Phoenix and Las Vegas are perhaps the two closest
01:34cities in the country, major cities that are not connected by an interstate highway.
01:41There's also the replacement of four bridges on Interstate 40 in northern Arizona that
01:47were not built to current standards. And then a reconfiguration of a three-way interchange
01:54in the West Valley that's outside of Phoenix that also has an at-grade railway crossing
02:00and is one of the most congested intersections in the state.
02:05There's also a project that widens U.S. Highway 95 to address a decades-long problem of traffic
02:13and unsafe roadway conditions between the city of Yuma and the Army's Yuma Proving Grounds
02:20in southern Arizona. And then there's more than a dozen more. I could go on. I'm not
02:25going to do that. I've sent you and your staff a full list of
02:28these priority projects. And I'll note all of these projects were announced before Election
02:35Day, not after. None of them were selected for political reasons. They were selected
02:42because they're important to my State and they meet the purposes of these congressionally
02:48authorized grant programs. They repair bridges. They reduce congestion. They improve safety.
02:55And based on your testimony and our prior conversations, I'm pretty sure we agree those
03:02are the exact types of projects that should receive funding.
03:06And yet, for no fault of their own, these grant recipients in Arizona have had to wait
03:12several months now, not able to move forward on reviews or grant agreements and forced
03:18to delay their construction schedules. I just had a bunch of my constituents in the office
03:23today talking about and asking why are things why have these things stopped.
03:29So, Secretary Duffy, what updates can you give about when the internal review of grants
03:37that was laid out on March 11th will be completed?
03:40So, Senator, again, I agree many of the projects, good projects. I think in total there's 44
03:48awards that you received for $561 million in the State of Arizona. And these they were
03:57started before Election Day. I would note many of these go back two and three years,
04:03these projects. And so I love that you're saying that I can clean up two or three years
04:07of announcements in two months. That's a little bit challenging. But I am committing to you
04:12like I did on the phone. I'm going to work through these projects.
04:17Explain to me what do you mean by clean up? What is required to clean them up? This was
04:24money appropriated by Congress, by Democrats and Republicans, grants that were awarded,
04:31and now things seem to have come to a halt on many of these projects.
04:35So for obligated money, when there's an obligation, a grant agreement is signed or there was an
04:41earmark from Congress, all that money is still going out. There's been no pause. There's
04:46been no hold. There's been money going per the law on those grant agreements. The unobligated
04:54money is the money where there's been an award. Someone did a big announcement. Hey,
04:58you get your project for the 22nd Street, Tucson Bridge or Road. And then it takes time
05:05to do the grant agreement. That's the actual work part of the process.
05:10So the announcement is easy. The grant agreement is the work. There's 3,200 of those projects
05:15that we have sitting at the department where the fun part was done with the announcement.
05:20We have to do the work of doing the grant agreement with the states, and we're going
05:24to work through that quickly, as quickly as possible, but it is a historically large number.
05:31And so I take your point, but you alone have 44 projects that were announced that don't
05:37have grant agreements on them. And a lot of you all have these projects, and you're all,
05:43I think, rightfully annoyed that the money's not coming, but many of them are years old.
05:48And again, if you're annoyed or concerned, I think the focus shouldn't be on me. It should
05:54be elsewhere, because we have been there two months. Someone else was there for four years.
06:00And I'll work on those with you. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it.