One of the Capital Region delegation’s major wins of the 2019 legislative session was the passage of a bill that dedicates $700 million in BP oil spill settlement dollars to a list of badly needed road and bridge projects around the state—including $125 million to build the Louisiana Highway 415 flyover connecting Interstate 10 and Louisiana Highway 1 in West Baton Rouge Parish.
One of the delegation’s major challenges of the 2020 session will be to make sure the project remains at the top of the state’s priority list and gets funded sooner rather than later.
“I feel good and the governor has committed to it,” says Sen. Rick Ward III, R-Port Allen, who was instrumental in crafting last year’s legislation. “But we want to make sure it gets started. I don’t want it to drag around and three years from now we’re waiting for it to get started, crossing our fingers that the next administration wants it to be a priority.”
Ward and Rep. Tanner Magee, R-Houma, drafted the bill last year that, as originally envisioned, would have dedicated just a portion of the BP funds to two long overdue projects—the La. 415 flyover and the second phase of improvements to La. 1 between Golden Meadow and Leeville.
But the bill was expanded as it made its way through the legislative process to include more funding and more projects in districts around the state. It eventually passed with overwhelming, bipartisan support, making it the first major transportation package to come out of the Legislature in 30 years.
But the nearly $700 million in payments from the BP settlement comes in over a period of time, meaning not all the projects can be done at once, and there’s no priority list in the 2019 law.
“So it has a funding source now but which project gets funded first and how the engineering gets selected is very important,” says Scott Kirkpatrick, executive director of CRISIS, a Capital Region-area group that lobbies for infrastructure funding. “They will get to them all eventually but you don’t want to be last on the list. We don’t want to wait 13 years.”
Ward is confident the La. 415 project will be funded and put out to bid sooner rather than later. But he’s not taking anything for granted.
It’s such a huge deal for the whole region,” he says. “You want to make sure it gets done while people who are committed to it are still here.”
