On November 29, 1999, President Clinton signed into law the Fiscal Year (FY) 2000 Consolidated Appropriations Act (P.L. 106-113). One provision of the Act provides for an across the board, Government-wide reduction in spending of the discretionary budget authority for FY 2000. A second provision, makes available $6 million from the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund for new transit projects.

The FY 2000 Consolidated Appropriations Act requires a government-wide reduction of 0.38 percent. The actual amount of reductions may vary among programs. The Federal transit share of this reduction totals $17.6 million. Since formula programs are the primary source of Federal transit assistance distributed to all states and urbanized areas, and have already been used by grantees to develop plans for FY 2000, no reductions will be assessed against these programs. Since welfare reform is a national priority, no reduction is being assessed against the Job Access and Reverse Commute program. The congressionally mandated $17.6 million reduction is being taken from the New Starts and Bus programs under the Capital Investment Grants account and the National Research program under the Transit Planning and Research account. This results in a net reduction of 1.15 percent in each of these accounts. FTA published a Federal Register Notice dated October 28, 1999 which included the allocations for projects under these programs as contained in the Department of Transportation and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2000 (Pub. L. 106-69). We are providing a Revised FY 2000 Section 5309 New Starts Allocations (Table 8) [PDF] and a Revised FY 2000 Section 5309 Bus Allocations (Table 9) [PDF] reflecting the revised allocations. In addition, we are providing a table entitled, "Revised FY 2000 National Research Program Allocations" [PDF], which displays the project specific adjustments made under the National Research Program.

A  Federal Register Notice published on Thursday, December 16,1999, explains the above changes. For further information, contact Patricia Levine, Director, Office of Resource Management and State Programs, at (202) 366-2053.