Alaska Senators Defeat Efforts to End State's Bridge Funding

ALASKA SENATORS DEFEAT EFFORTS TO END STATE'S BRIDGE FUNDING

Amendment Would Have Re-distributed funding for Ketchikan and Knik Arm Bridges

Alaska's Senators Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski today defeated an effort to remove funding for Alaska's bridge construction projects.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced an amendment to H.R. 3058, the Transportation, Treasury, HUD., Judiciary and District of Columbia Appropriations Act, that if passed would have redistributed a portion of the funding designated for the Knik Arm Bridge in Anchorage and the Gravina Island Bridge in Ketchikan, approximately $75 million, to the reconstruction of the Hurricane Katrina damaged Twin Spans bridge in Louisiana. The Coburn amendment was defeated by a vote of 82-15.

Sen. Murkowski argued on the Senate floor that such an effort to take funding away from one specific state, Alaska, was neither fair nor correct. Murkowski pointed out that Alaskans have already given and are happy to keep contributing to hurricane reconstruction efforts, but that it is unfair to ask one state alone to shoulder the burden by having only its projects rescinded

"We deserve to be treated with the same level of respect that all other states are given," Murkowski said. "Alaskans are not hesitant to step up to the plate and help. We do it day in, we do it day out. But when we're singled out and told that our projects are not worthy we can not compromise."

Murkowski then spoke in defense of funding for the Gravina Island Bridge saying that. "while the bridge has been referred to in the Senate and in the media as a ‘bridge to nowhere,' to do so denies the truth and the facts."

"There have been media accounts and what I'm hearing on the floor is a repetition of what we hear in the media - the same tired worn out misrepresentations," Murkowski said. "The inaccuracies and misrepresentations make everything that much more difficult. It is as if we are legislating by the media here, and we're better than that.

"The reference to the bridge in Ketchikan as being a bridge to nowhere is offensive. It is a bridge to the future for the people of Ketchikan, Alaska. The arguments that have been made about a bridge that will connect 50 people does not acknowledge any understanding about Ketchikan and what kind of community it is and what it has to respond to.

"We need the bridge because on the other side of Ketchikan is the potential for the community to grow and thrive. Despite some of the actions of the federal government, such as the end of responsible timber harvesting in the area that has shut down local industry, Ketchikan is coming back. Gravina is wide open and has 20,000 acres of private municipal and state lands that can make a huge difference in providing economic opportunity for this area. We can't grow any other direction in Ketchikan. We've got to go across the narrows."

Murkowski also denied the accusation that a bridge to Gravina would only serve a small regional airport, pointing out that the Ketchikan Airport not only carries regional passenger traffic, but is also the cargo hub for Southeast Alaska.

Sen. Murkowski also defended funding for the Knik Arm crossing. "We've got the fastest growing part of the state in the Mat-Su Valley," Murkowski said. "We have tens of thousands of commuters coming into Anchorage every day that could be aided by a bridge across the water. To suggest that we are somehow helping only a handful of people denies the facts and it is an offense to me. There's even been some suggestion that this is a project that we're taking up because we can. People need to understand that this is something that we've been looking at and studying for a good 30 years.

"Alaska will never achieve its full potential as a state unless we have transportation access. I take very personally the efforts to take these two projects from the State of Alaska and say that these are the only funds we're going to use to help with the reconstruction efforts down in the Gulf. We should not be singled out."

http://murkowski.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=247570