‘Powerful’ Trump appointee is delaying Fort Worth’s Panther Island, Kay Granger says
During a Friday visit to the Star-Telegram, U.S. Rep. Kay Granger came prepared to talk about Panther Island. “I have something for y’all,” she said.
Granger picked up a white, four-inch thick binder and dropped it on a table.
The binder was stuffed with a 300-page environmental study prepared in 2006 by the local branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that works on infrastructure projects like Panther Island.
“Why do you need a study on something that has been studied to death and approved and begun?” she asked.
Granger was referring to news from last week: On Monday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a work plan that contained federal funding for water-related infrastructure. Panther Island, which has been authorized by Congress to receive some $500 million in funds for flood control, was allotted just $1.5 million — for a multi-year feasibility study the project’s leaders have long insisted they have already done.
The news marked the latest in a string of setbacks in the years-long effort to redevelop an industrial area north of downtown Fort Worth. A feasibility study could delay the project further — likely by at least three years. But although Granger expressed frustration at the news, she said she wasn’t surprised. The holdup in federal funding is, in part, the result of changes in Washington that have made the White House’s Office of Management and Budget more powerful and thrown Panther Island’s funding plans into disarray.
When plans for Panther Island were originally launched in the early 2000s, Congress could fund local projects through earmarks, line-item budget assignments attached to appropriations bills, sometimes with little oversight. With Granger holding a key seat on the Appropriations Committee, the funding seemed like a shoo-in. But earmarks were banned in 2011.
The path to getting the federal money necessary to complete the flood control portion of Panther Island now relies on approval by the White House and its more stringent Office of Management and Budget, which has cut support for infrastructure investments, often for reasons that perplex lawmakers, and again left Panther Island bereft of the funding its leaders thought was coming.
Granger said one of the main reasons for the holdup is Mick Mulvaney, who has been director of the Office of Management and Budget since being appointed by the Trump White House in 2017. “It has been changed significantly by the person who runs it today,” Granger said. “He’s incredibly powerful and can say no and stop something without a reason.”
Representatives with the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to an interview request.
Earmarking a way forward
When Granger was mayor of Fort Worth in the early 1990s, she remembers giving visitors directions to the Stockyards. She would tell them to drive up North Main. But Granger would often hear back from people saying they got lost halfway, thinking there was nothing north of downtown except dilapidated industrial sites.
The $1.17 billion Panther Island project is supposed to transform that area into another downtown, a bustling area for retail, business and apartments, surrounded by water. Residents have expressed support, evident from passage of a $250 million bond measure in 2018.
As part of the redevelopment for Panther Island, local officials also saw an opportunity to prevent the Trinity River from overflowing. In 1949, the river swelled from 11 inches of rain and submerged entire homes and businesses. Significant flooding has not occurred since. Efforts to investigate and control Trinity River flooding issues began in the 1980s and were combined into the Panther Island plan. The U.S. Corps of Engineers works on flood infrastructure projects, meaning federal dollars could be used for Panther Island. About half of the project’s cost is slated to come from the federal government.
Concern over the reliance on federal dollars dates back to the inception of the project in the early 2000s. At first, the development was called Trinity Uptown. Back then, said Steve Hollern, a former Tarrant County GOP party chairman, the focus was not on flood control. Meetings, news stories and announcements focused on the remaking of downtown, he said.
“This was always about economic development,” Hollern said. “It wasn’t until it became apparent funding wasn’t going to come that it became flood control.”
But in 2004 Congress authorized $110 million in federal funds for the flood work. Two years later, the Corps of Engineers completed the environmental study and gave its approval.
These were still the days when influential Congress members could direct how a federal agency spent money by placing an earmark in an appropriations bill, and Granger planned to get the $110 million delivered to Fort Worth in increments. She told the Star-Telegram in 2005, “It will mean going back every year ... but I’ll be there.” Scott A. Frisch, a political science professor at California State University Channel Islands and author of two books about earmarks, said Granger had a strategic spot on the House Appropriations Committee that helped her pursue getting earmarks.
The funds started coming through, immediately with a $6.78 million allocation in 2006. Washington gave nearly $29 million to the project through 2010. But the cost of the project climbed from $435 million to $1.17 billion and Congress, led by a charge from Granger’s Republican Party, placed a moratorium on earmarks that went into effect in 2011. Funds dried up until a $17.45 million check in 2015.
Granger said funds would’ve been easier to obtain if earmarks were still allowed. To receive federal funding without earmarks, the Panther Island project has had to navigate a political landscape in which Congress, and Granger, no longer hold as much power for discretionary spending.
Trump White House exerts control
Starting in 2014, in response to earmarks drying up, Congress began authorizing funding for local infrastructure projects by passing a Water Resources Development Act every two years. Panther Island was authorized by Congress in the 2016 development act to receive up to $526 million in federal funding. But there was no guarantee this funding would ever be granted.
Although the Water Resources Development Act can accomplish the same result as an earmark, Frisch said there is a power shift: Earmarks were driven by Congress, particularly high-ranking members of the Appropriations Committee like Granger. Congress can try to influence which projects actually get funding, but the legislators lack the official heft they had in the earmarks era. “It’s the Army Corps with input by the president and the Office of Management and Budget that makes all the decisions,” Frisch said.
The normal process for water infrastructure projects, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, involves Congress using a Water Resources Development Act to authorize a Corps-sanctioned economic feasibility study before it authorizes any funding. The study generally takes at least three years, after which the Corps reviews the economic benefits, before handing off the study to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for approval. If the office approves, then Congress would typically authorize funding — after which a project would still have to wait for the money to be appropriated.
When Congress authorized the Panther Island project for $526 million in funding 2016, it cited a University of North Texas study completed in 2014 as sufficient for proving its economic benefits. The UNT study revealed a 1.99 to 1 benefit-to-cost ratio, based on an expected $1.8 billion flood control benefit, compared to $907 million in cost.
Jim Oliver, who is the general manager of the Tarrant Regional Water District, said he believed the congressional approval meant no further studies would be required. “We were very comfortable that we could, through our Texas delegation, not just Kay (Granger), get the money to this area,” Oliver said.
In 2017, at a Tarrant Regional Water District board meeting, former board member Mary Kelleher questioned why Panther Island didn’t have a feasibility study per the standard process. J.D. Granger, executive director of the Trinity River Vision Authority and the son of Kay Granger, said it didn’t have one because the project was originally set up through the old appropriations process.
“That was the world 10 years ago,” J.D. Granger told her, “and now it’s changed. At the time that is how projects were authorized.” Oliver, the water district general manager, added that, “What we did was not atypical of the time.”
But times have changed. The Office of Management and Budget has refused to prioritize Panther Island without a cost-benefit study. In denying funding in 2018 the Trump administration declared Panther Island not “policy compliant for budgeting because of the lack of an economic analysis.”
According to the Congressional Research Service, the Office of Management and Budget has been approving Corps projects that promise a 2.5 to 1 benefit-to-cost return on investment and those with imminent safety concerns. The total amount granted to the Corps for construction in 2020 was $2.6 billion, barely enough to make a dent in the agency’s $98 billion backlog of projects. Casey Dinges, senior managing director for the American Society of Civil Engineers, said the Corps has “never had nearly enough funding to get all of their authorized projects done.” Among the projects given construction funding this year were a $274 million dredging of the Port of Mobile in Alabama and an $85 million effort to deepen the lower Mississippi River around New Orleans to reduce flooding.
Granger said she and Woody Frossard, the project manager of the Trinity River Vision Authority, twice visited the Office of Management and Budget. They offered justification for why the flood control measures were necessary to the office’s acting director, Russell Vought. She said Vought agreed that it was a flood control project.
Granger said she has also met with Mulvaney, who also discussed Panther Island with Mayor Betsy Price and Rep. Roger Williams last summer. Despite the numerous meetings, Granger said she has not received a clear answer why construction funding has stalled or why $1.5 million was allotted for a feasibility study.
Other legislators have expressed similar frustrations with the office. Shelley Moore-Capito, a Republican congresswoman representing West Virginia, described the Corps-OMB process for flood infrastructure as a disappointing maze. “Nothing really happens,” she said during a hearing. “And usually the refrain from the Corps is that the project failed to pass muster under the OMB’s cost-benefit ratio.”
Power vs. power
Granger, who has represented Fort Worth’s 12th Congressional District since 1997, has held a seat on the House Committee on Appropriations since her early days in Congress. She is the committee’s ranking member and has previously been its chair. After initially opposing Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, she has since expressed her support and received his endorsement in her upcoming primary. Asked why she, one of the most powerful leaders in Congress, couldn’t secure funding, Granger alluded to Mulvaney as having unprecedented sway.
“The Office of Management and Budget, the person who runs that is one of the most powerful people in Washington,” she said. “It was never ever used for how it’s been used today.”
Matt Angle, a political strategist with the Democratic-supporting The Lone Star Project, has followed Panther Island’s redevelopment since the early stages. He’s surprised by the lack of funding, noting that Granger has “done all the blocking and tackling,” but questions whether Granger is conservative enough to gain support from fellow Texas politicians who could unify behind her and from the White House. “You’ve got the largest Republican delegation in the country, the state that provided the most votes to Trump in 2016 and two relatively high profile senators and a senior member of the House who is chair of a major sub-committee,” he said. “The fact they can’t get this money tells you there’s something going on.”
Granger sees no reason for Panther Island to undergo the feasibility study it was granted. “First of all the feasibility study will take three years,” she said. “While they’re doing that, nothing can happen, so it sits there for three years. People don’t sit and wait for something like that. They go on to another project.”
Oliver said a feasibility study could take up to seven years and increase the cost of the project. Delays have already plagued Panther Island. It was originally expected to be completed as early as 2024. The groundbreaking for construction of three bridges connecting the area to downtown, which are being funded by the Texas Department of Transportation, took place in 2014, with expected completion dates in 2017 and 2018. Nearly six years later, work on the bridges has not been completed, with no end in sight.
Monday’s news of the underwhelming $1.5 million federal allocation led Mayor Betsy Price to ponder alternative funding options. She told the Star-Telegram Thursday she hoped to convene a group of private investors in the coming weeks to discuss how developing the island area could move forward.
Granger said she — and the Trinity River Vision Authority — aim to continue seeking federal funding. “I started working on this and will continue to work on this until it’s finished,” she said. “Because it has to be done.”
This story was originally published February 16, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "‘Powerful’ Trump appointee is delaying Fort Worth’s Panther Island, Kay Granger says."
