With most of its funding intact for 2014, and a proposed ban on funding for active transportation projects off the table, fans of TIGER grants can take a deep breath.
"The drama is over," writes Tanya Snyder, "the House and Senate have both passed the 'cromnibus' spending bill [PDF] that funds government operations through the end of fiscal year 2015. And the Department of Transportation’s TIGER program survived."
Snyder reports that a Republicans proposal to cut the TIGER program by 83 percent failed to come to fruition: "The final outcome is better than that but worse than 2014. TIGER got trimmed from $600 million in funding this year to $500 million in 2015, while the House didn’t get the ban on funding for active transportation projects that it wanted."
One unfortunate detail of the bill, as noted by Snyder, "the final bill cut $35 million that the Senate wanted to set aside for planning grants."
FULL STORY: Congress Trims TIGER (But Doesn’t Hack It to Pieces) in 2015 Spending Bill
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Harvard University Graduate School of Design
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Journal of the American Planning Association