Matt Fritz, Gov. Jodi Rell’s special assistant who has been in charge of sorting out the state’s applications for federal stimulus money, said today that it might have been mistakes on the part of the federal Transportation Department that resulted in Connecticut getting shut out of that TIGER funding last week.
“We put together very comprehensive applications for the TIGER money,” he said during a couple of interviews. “We covered a wide spectrum of transportation initiatives and we sought $329 million for projects throughout CT. Our applications were well put together. It wasn’t just the work of the (state) DOT. They worked in collaboration with DECD (Dept. of Economic and Community development), with private contractors and consultants to put together and develop the best project applications possible.”
Among the projects rejected was $37 million for the nearly $400-million reconstruction of the Moses Wheeler Bridge on I-95 over the Housatonic River. The project will go ahead as scheduled, though.
“I’m not sure where we failed, if we failed at all,” Fritz said. “Certainly it was very competitive. It was only 3 percent of the projects that were awarded. Our applications we thought were strong. We worked pretty hard on them. We’re trying to figure out where we might have fallen short. And we’re looking toward potential funding over the next several months and see what we could do better.”
He said that conversations with federal officials by members of Congress this week could lead to future awards in upcoming rounds.
“We took sort of a wide approach with our first applications, hitting on a variety of transportation areas,” Fritz said. “Maybe we have to be more specific. We’ll have to look at that, see what’s worked in the past, learn from those examples and see what we do going forward.”