State transportation officials are scrambling to work out problems in the State Transportation Improvement Program, which guides all-important federal funding. Federal highway officials sent the plan back to the state for revisions and the deadline is tight for these, so there’s a lot of attention focused on the plan. There’s also a lot of finger-pointing, much of it political. Many of the needed changes appear to be minor but a point of tension is over recommendations by two municipal transportation organizations that were not adopted by the state. To some extent this is a turf issue over who’s in charge, and many of the municipal objections were on projects well outside the municipal boundaries, which has raised eyebrows in the Legislature. (More on this next week.) We expect much of this to be worked out, but it’s a tight deadline.