Proposed stimulus could aid Utah roads

President-elect Barack Obama's proposed economic stimulus package could help restore some of Utah's nearly $4 billion in suspended transportation projects, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said Tuesday.

"When all is said and done, I think there will be support in the fiscal stimulus package," Huntsman told the Deseret News in a telephone interview from Philadelphia, where he and other governors met with Obama.

The governor is under pressure from some fellow GOP legislators to call a special session to come up with funding for projects, such as the Mountain View Corridor linking Salt Lake and Utah counties, recently put on hold by the Utah Department of Transportation.

But Huntsman said he's already looking at "ways to creatively bond for a good part of the transportation projects" in the new state budget he'll release Thursday. That includes, the governor said, counting on additional federal help.

Although Huntsman said he was not ready to call for a shift in the way gasoline is taxed, his spokeswoman, Lisa Roskelley, said last week he was considering what would amount to a sales tax on gas. Currently the state gas tax is a flat 24.9 cents a gallon.

Huntsman said the participants in the National Governors Associa-

tion meeting had similar concerns. "There was a lot of talk about infrastructure and the importance of expediting projects already planned," he said, totaling nearly $140 billion.

Obama has been discussing an economic stimulus package that could cost more than $500 billion over two years and provide some 2.5 million jobs in part by investing in the nation's infrastructure.

In addition to transportation, Huntsman said he raised the point at the meeting that intellectual and energy infrastructure also be considered. And he suggested the governors put together a list of the "gratuitous" federal red tape slowing projects.

"As the president-elect left, his comment to me was, 'I look forward to receiving that list.' So clearly, it stuck. It's something that resonated," Huntsman said. "It was very much a can-do atmosphere. It wasn't soaked in partisanship."

Obama said he wanted input from the governors on his proposal and offered the GOP leaders "the hand of friendship, the same commitment to partnership as I do my Democratic colleagues," The Associated Press reported.