Scott, traditionally by mid-summer the Commission has to look in its crystal ball and determine what specific major capital spending projects should be pursued two years out and the amount of funding that will be needed equally from the two states for such projects (e.g., in July 2005 proposals are submitted to the Colorado Commission on Higher Education for capital funds that would not become available until July 2006-June 2007, or beyond).
These requests are then vetted by state administrators and prepared for submission in some form or other for the session of the Colorado General Assembly that starts the following January. Roughly the same process occurs in NM, but the lead times are more forgiving and the requests can be more flexible and less project-specific.
The practice has been for the C&TS to be represented before Colorado legislative committees by the Commission's Executive Director and the two Commissioners appointed by the Colorado governor. Essentially the same process is followed in NM, except that for the past 30-some years the railroad has had the benefit of Carl Turner acting as a rather influential pro-bono lobbyist, whether serving as one of the two NM Commissioners or not.
Until the legislative sessions in early 2003, the submissions to the two states had always been contingent upon an equal match from the other state (i.e., in keeping with the Compact), and had always been for capital projects (i.e., no operating subsidies).
As long as both states retained the "equal match" requirement, this arrangement worked reasonably well, but the unintended consequences have been that money has often not been available for urgent needs and the railroad has also ended up being under-maintained. The Commission provided the coordination between the two states, with no other joint entities involved.
Then, in 2002 the railroad was hammered by three regulatory actions which many, including the AG's of both states, felt were unwarranted or excessive: (1) the new FRA locomotive boiler standards were mandated (compliance has since cost about $800,000 per loco), (2) the Forest Service decided the locomotives were unacceptable fire hazards (despite established successful mitigation programs), and (3) the FRA, lacking track standards for narrow gauge, issued closure orders (e.g., Martinez Point, etc.). All this left both the Commission and RGRPC broke at the end of the 2002 season, with RGRPC suffering a million-dollar revenue shortfall.
In addition, having no knowledge of the legal underpinning of the C&TS Compact, the Colorado legislature presumed that the C&TSRR was subject to TABOR. This has effectively meant that the only source of capital funding from Colorado over the past three years has come from special, limited grants.
In view of the Colorado budget impass and the regulatory shocks of 2002, the NM legislature in its 2003 session took the unprecedented steps of (a) waiving the "equal match" requirement and (b) providing a $710,000 operating subsidy for the C&TS.
Since then, NM has continued to waive the matching requirement and has continued to provide operating subsidies. You can well understand that NM legislators are getting fed up with this one-sided arrangement. I am more than a little worried that the C&TS has worn out its welcome in Santa Fe. Fortunately, NM has been running unprecendented surpluses due to extraction taxes on oil, gas, and coal. Stay tuned.
