If Congress does not renew the federal gas tax by the end of the month, Maryland could lose millions in federal funds and as many as 700 jobs could be at risk, according to state transportation experts.

The gas tax, which along with the federal transportation authorization bill, is set to expire at the end of September, is critical to Maryland’s transportation program, experts told the General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Federal Relations on Wednesday.

If Congress does not renew the tax or extend transportation authorization funds at existing levels, Maryland might need to make program cuts and scale back scheduled projects, said Caitlin Hughes Rayman, assistant secretary for transportation policy and freight for the Maryland Department of Transportation.

Federal funds pay for about 50 percent of all Maryland transportation projects. Under the current funding authorization levels, Maryland receives $750 million per year from the federal government for highways and mass transit projects.

“The entire state is going to need to decide, if there is a significant reduction in federal funds, are we going to try and carry through with our existing programs and find a way to do that on our own backs, or are we going to need to make some adjustments in where we put these limited dollars?” Hughes Rayman said.

Instability in Congress and the potential for the typically nonpartisan issue of transportation to become a political football make it difficult to predict how the tax and authorization bill will be handled, she said.

A partisan debate could affect funding for big Maryland transit projects, including the Red and Purple rail lines in Baltimore and the Washington, D.C., area as well as the Corridor Cities Transitway, a transit line proposed to run along Interstate 270, Hughes Rayman said.

Hughes Rayman and other experts who spoke to the committee also said it is highly unlikely political leaders would get behind an increase to the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax and that some of the federal government’s more than 100 individual transportation programs are likely to be consolidated or eliminated.

“[Cuts in federal allocations] will come at the expense of advancing some projects and making some shifts in out years,” Hughes Rayman said.

Donald C. Fry, a former state delegate and member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Maryland Transportation Funding, said the possibility of losing federal funding is a real threat.

“I think it’s certainly something that we should be worried about,” Fry said. “I would certainly think that Congress is going to recognize that this is not the time to be playing political games or leverage political positions by risking jobs in this very fragile economy.”

Fry said the Blue Ribbon group, which met Thursday, isn’t prepared to make specific recommendations on alternative funding methods, but it received presentations on concepts including tax increment financing and developer impact fees.

Earlier this year, the commission recommended the legislature find a way to raise $800 million to replenish the state’s languishing Transportation Trust Fund and alter the state’s constitution to prevent future funding shifts that move money from the fund to other state government operations.

A bill to increase the state’s 23.5 cents-per-gallon gas tax by 10 cents and lock the trust fund died in the legislature, but is expected to be resurrected in 2012.

Losing federal funding, which covers about 50 percent of the cost of Maryland transportation programs, would force the legislature to consider additional methods of securing revenue for transportation projects, Fry said.

“We still have a transportation funding crisis in Maryland to begin with,” Fry said. “Certainly, that’s going to exacerbate the problem.”

Should major cuts be made to federal funding or the gas tax is allowed to expire, the state will have to make immediate alterations to its transportation program, Hughes Rayman said.

“We’ve got some ideas that we’ve been floating depending on when a reduction might occur or a lapse in federal funds to carry us through certain scenarios,” Hughes Rayman told the committee.

sbreitenbach@gazette.net