FAIRBANKS - The state Department of Transportation has ignored Interior Alaska road needs in favor of Southcentral communities, elected officials told the agency this week.

Interior legislators and local officials on Wednesday lambasted DOT Commissioner Mike Barton, charging that the Interior continues to get shorted when it comes to receiving federal road money distributed by the state.

"(You) have a terrible record of unfulfilled promises and obligations to the northern region," said North Pole Mayor Jeff Jacobson. "We're frustrated."

A focus of the meeting was news that a proposed $16.1 million Richardson Highway interchange project had been shoved back half a decade.

The project, which would create a new traffic overpass between the Richardson and downtown North Pole, was to be paid for out of a $102 million bond package approved by voters last year.

Issuing of those bonds was supposed to be spread over six years, but as a money-saving measure, Gov. Frank Murkowski did it over three instead. The caveat was that all eight projects financed by the bonds must be 85 percent finished in the three years for the federal government to reimburse the state for the bonds.

The DOT has concluded that the interchange cannot be completed quickly enough. The agency has distributed almost all of its bond money to the other seven projects on the list. None are in the Interior.

The North Pole interchange will now be paid for out of normal federal highway dollars and is scheduled to begin in 2008.

Rep. Jim Whitaker, a Fairbanks Republican, was livid at the delay.

"That, along with Fairbanks street improvements, is what we in the Legislature agreed to bring to voters for their approval," he said. "And now you're pulling back on that."

Rep. Jim Holm, also a Fairbanks Republican, said he would seek a legal opinion as to whether the DOT has the right to divert bond funds from the interchange project.