Streetsblog New York City

You might still be recuperating from your post-election hangover, but automotive executives are celebrating victory after victory. Auto industry lobbyists are predicting a good couple of years, according to a report by Automotive News.

Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette, left, at a press event with local auto dealers last year. Image: Plain Dealer

They’re betting the Republican majority in the House will “investigate, slow and try to block Obama administration initiatives that it considers detrimental to the auto industry” – initiatives like “safety legislation, the new consumer finance agency’s regulations, fuel economy proposals and the EPA’s new ethanol standard.”

Auto industry lobbyists are looking forward to two years of gridlock. They think their bargaining power is now strong enough to get them a seat at the negotiating table on things like safety legislation, resulting, they hope, in smaller penalties for violators. They’re worried about new standards for brake-override systems and black-box crash data recorders. According to Automotive News:

The auto safety bill crafted in the wake of Toyota’s unintended-acceleration problems is going nowhere as long as Republicans control the House, predicted Dave McCurdy, CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

They’re also glad Republicans will rule as the House oversees the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency chief, Elizabeth Warren. Oh, and “the EPA’s decision last month to let refiners blend as much as 15 percent ethanol into gasoline, up from the current 10 percent” – they’re looking forward to letting House Republicans take care of that one too. Indeed, the auto industry has reason to believe it will have access to politicians in this Congressional session – after all, they bought it.

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Interest groups seeking to influence transportation policy-making have long flooded the capital with campaign cash and lobbyists -- and their numbers are rising at an eye-popping rate. Nearly 1,800 interests are employing at least 2,100 transportation lobbyists to work the system in anticipation of the next federal infrastructure bill, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation unveiled today.

Photo: Pufferfish

The Center's work directly answers a question asked by many attendees at last week's University of Virginia infrastructure conference: How can the public be awakened to the relevance and political importance of transportation as an issue?

Unfortunately for the elite industry players who attended the conference, the answer may be that the public isn't yet aware of just how much waste is built into state and federal transportation spending. From the Center's initial report:

The matter of how and from where the federal money is actually doled out is among the biggest headaches. The majority of federal dollars for these various transportation programs actually get distributed to state and local governments to be spent at their discretion. But that has caused problems.

For one thing, wrote the Government Accountability Office last year, “Rigorous economic analysis does not generally drive the investment decisions of state and local governments.” That was an understatement. Most state transportation agencies surveyed by the GAO in 2004 — 34 out of 43 — called political support and public opinion “very important” when investing federal dollars. Only eight states attributed the same importance to cost-benefit analyses.

With the debate in Congress currently focused not on how to reform the bloated, broken system but how long to delay reform, it's unclear whether the Center's findings can move the needle in the short term.

But that all-but-certain postponement of the next federal transportation bill makes today's report all the more shocking. Anyone who reads it will find no reason to support 12 or 18 more months of federal transportation funding distributed through an unaccountable system of state DOTs.

In case you missed it last week, New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is raising bucket-loads of campaign cash -- lots more than his two opponents, Paul Newell and Luke Henry. Groups that opposed congestion pricing are, no surprise, among some of the most enthusiastic contributors. The Times reported:

Like Mr. Paterson and Mr. Skelos, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver now Albany's longest-serving leader drew heavily from established interest groups, including trial lawyers, the insurance industry, banking interests and an array of labor unions. Mr. Silver also received money from some groups that opposed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan to charge a fee for cars entering parts of Manhattan, including limousine services and rental car companies. Though Mr. Silver said he personally supported the idea, he did not allow it to come up for a vote in the Assembly.

You can add to that partial list car dealers, service stations, parking garages, and private bus companies, which opposed the idea of pricing until an exception was brokered for them late in the game. All told, Silver collected $308,044 from contributors in the latest six-month fundraising period, outpacing challengers Newell and Henry by a (predictably) wide margin.

Here's a rundown of major donations to his campaign from groups who sided against pricing or influenced the proposed legislation.

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The Post finds that Queens City Council Member David Weprin has been raking in campaign contributions from parking garage owners, all the while serving as one of the loudest critics of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan. This ought to sound familiar to Streetsblog readers. Back in May we found that Weprin had taken in at least $20,500 in contributions from the parking lobby. The Post identified an additional twenty grand:

Records show that David Weprin, chairman of the City Council Finance Committee, received 28 contributions totaling $40,650 from garage companies and their owners. Garage operators are worried about losing customers if the city imposes an $8-a-day fee on cars entering Manhattan, and they want to stop the mayor's plan in its tracks.

Austin Shafran, a Weprin spokesman, said the contributions had "absolutely nothing to do with his opposition to congestion pricing."

A survey conducted last week by The Queens Tribune found only two of 27 Queens state legislators who backed the mayor's plan. But one key Queens legislator, Rep. Joseph Crowley, who also serves as the Queens Democratic chairman, is in the mayor's corner. The Metropolitan Parking Association, which represents 800 lots and garages, contributed $5,000 last year to the Queens Democratic Party.

In this May 10 op-ed for the Queens Courier, Weprin argues that his Eastern Queens constituents will be "devastated" by congestion pricing.

Photo: Larry Greenberg, QCLDA