Kansas postpones 24 road projects as state budget shortfall looms

Two dozen Kansas road projects are being put on the back burner.

An official with the Kansas Department of Transportation said Tuesday that a resurfacing project in Johnson County was among the $32 million in work put on ice this week in the wake of the state’s budget shortfall.

There’s no timetable for when those projects may be put out to bid. An additional 10 projects, at an estimated cost of $8 million, are still set to move forward.

The move came after state officials said last week that Kansas is facing a nearly $350 million shortfall this fiscal year. The shortfall for the next fiscal year is $582 million. Originally, 34 projects were set to be put out for bid in December.

“There’s a lot of things we just don’t know going forward about our funding,” Transportation Department spokesman Steve Swartz said. “So that’s why we’re going to assess this every month.”

Swartz said the delayed road preservation projects include:

▪ A U.S. 56 resurfacing project in Johnson County costing an estimated $862,000.

▪ A $2.148 million resurfacing of U.S. 56 in Douglas County.

▪ A $2.26 million resurfacing project on Kansas 16 in Jefferson County.

▪ A $973,000 resurfacing project on U.S. 24 in Jefferson County.

▪ A $2.72 million bridge replacement on Montana Road over Interstate 35 in Franklin County.

Swartz said Wyandotte County was not among the areas with a delayed project. A $595,975 intersection improvement project on U.S. 73 in Leavenworth County was among the 10 projects still in the works.

Bob Totten, the executive vice president of the Kansas Contractors Association, said the new delays show how the budget issues in Kansas are hurting people.

“In pleasant terms, they’re discouraged, displeased and disappointed in the leadership of the state Legislature,” Totten said of contractors. “And that goes from the governor on down.... We’re going to have less quality of life. I mean, our roads are not going to be in good shape. We know that. They’re deteriorating as it is now.”

Since the start of the current fiscal year in July, revenue misses had already blown a roughly $75 million hole in the state’s budget. That number grew to almost $350 million after state officials dialed down revenue forecasts last week. Brownback’s administration has said the governor will present a solution to the Kansas Legislature in January. That delayed decision has been criticized by members of both political parties.

Since 2011, the governor’s administration has taken more than $1 billion from transportation. Money from the Transportation Department has been used to help with budget issues as the state’s economy has struggled during the later years of the Brownback administration.

“It makes it difficult for us to plan more than a month out with any certainty,” Swartz said about the state’s budget situation.

Asked about the delays, Sen. Tom Holland, a Douglas County Democrat, said it shows it could take Kansas “years to dig out from this financial mess.”

“They’re in the dark like every other agency,” Holland said. “They’re being told what they’ve got to do. There’s no justification for it. It’s just epic, gross mismanagement on the governor’s part and his administration’s part.”

Sen. Rob Olson, an Olathe Republican, said he was concerned, but wanted to know more about the delays. The governor needs to make some cuts now to address the shortfall, Olson said.

“There’s not a lot I can do as a legislator until I get back in Topeka and we start the session back in January,” he said.

This story was originally published November 15, 2016 at 1:43 PM with the headline "Kansas postpones 24 road projects as state budget shortfall looms."