LANSING – These are lean, lean times in Michigan for the highway building industry. And they’re not much better around the country, either.

On June 3, the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association (MITA) delivered bottles to state lawmakers filled with pieces of a pulverized road – the road is now gravel, and was formerly paved – located in Montcalm County. The gravel represented a growing trend in Michigan: due to funding shortfalls, MITA pointed out, counties throughout Michigan have been forced to allow once smoothly paved roads to revert to gravel.

“There will never be a ‘right’ time to invest in our infrastructure; we can’t wait another day, and we can’t wait for another county to turn its roads back to gravel because there isn’t enough funding to maintain them,” said Mike Nystrom, co-chair of the Michigan Transportation Team. “Delivering this message in a bottle draws critical attention to the immediate need for our roads to be fixed.”

MTT is a bipartisan partnership of business, labor, local government, associations and citizens linked with the common goal of improving Michigan’s transportation infrastructure.

The transportation team pointed out that the Michigan legislature is currently exploring a package of bills that would increase road funding over the next five years in Michigan. The plan is expected to yield an additional $1.8 billion in new transportation revenue per year.

The 13-member Michigan Transportation Funding Task Force – a bipartisan group appointed by the governor and legislature that included labor, political and business representatives – last November issued a report recommending our state double the $3.2 billion that was spent on roads in 2008 to create a “good” investment level. As defined by the task force, a “good” spending level would allow the state to match anticipated federal aid, and would preserve 85 percent of state trunk-line pavements and 90 percent of state trunk-line bridges in good condition.

But Michigan is sliding backward. The day after the gravel was delivered to Lansing lawmakers, The Detroit News reported that more than 137 transportation projects across Michigan have been cancelled because the state can’t come up with matching funds that would trigger the spending of $740 million in federal money.

Federal stimulus money will help plug some of the funding gap, but only temporarily. Gov. Jennifer Granholm on March 31 signed legislation authorizing Michigan to spend $873 million in Recovery Act money on state highway work.

While Michigan has its share of road construction woes, so too does the federal government. The AFL-CIO Building Trades Department reports that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, announced that the Federal Highway Trust Fund will run out of money sometime this summer, and will require between $5 billion and $7 billion to stay solvent.

Unlike the State of Michigan, however, the federal government can just print more money, or move it around to plug the gaps.