The head of the Federal Transit Administration was in Maine today to mend fences and discuss Maine's considerable public transit funding needs with state and local officials. Peter Rogoff visited Portland's Metro Headquarters where he answered questions about a snafu in a recent federal grant application that potentially cost the state millions of dollars in lost funding and new buses.

Lost somewhere in cyberspace is a $21 million application from the Maine Department of Transportation for 43 buses and bus terminal improvements. The grant application filed with the federal State of Good Repair Program was due on June 18th and made through a Web site known as grants.gov.

But, for some unknown reason, all that was received by the Federal Transit Administration was a four-page cover letter.

"There was literally a computer transmittal challenge with the application," says Peter Rogoff, the administrator of the FTA. "There was a cover letter and there were content pieces that were missing and we're obviously implementing procedures to ensure that doesn't happen again, but obviously we can't evaluate an application that is missing pieces, and that was just an unfortunate oversight that we're going to work to rectify going forward."

Maine had been seeking federal funding for 43 buses and bus terminal improvements in Portland, Lewiston, Bangor and other communities. The process is competitive. There were more than 400 applications competing for nearly $800 million worth of grants.

And there's no guarantee that Maine would have received money for all of its requested projects. But Sue Moreau of the Maine DOT says Portland's Metro system was in line to receive the biggest piece of the pie. "We were looking at about $5 million here at Metro alone, so you're looking at about ten buses."

Moreau says under the rules, the FTA does not contact applicants to discuss their applications and whether they are incomplete or not. In fact, Moreau says the DOT received four acknowledgements that the grant application had been received and was being reviewed. So she and her colleagues thought they were in the clear until they saw a copy of the federal register and learned that Maine was not receiving a dime.

"We were surprised. We thought we had a good application with a lot of merit for what we needed, and certainly in the Portland area, Metro needs buses, so they were our top priority," Moreau says.

Moreau says DOT contacted Metro immediately. There's a 20 percent local match included in the grant request. So after the information superhighway failed them, Maine DOT redirected funding to help Metro pay for an additional seven buses.

However, Moreau says there will not be money redirected to help other transit programs across the state this year. Meanwhile, state officials are watching to see how much money Congress allocates for transit needs next year.

Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree had asked the FTA to review the state's application to determine how it stacks up against other states, in case additional funding is made available. She also asked for something else, which her advisor, Jackie Potter acknowledges may be a long shot.

"As they move forward with the second stage of this, all the people who were awarded grants around the country have to come up with the matching funds. And if in fact some communities, unfortunately because of the economy or whatever, can't match, there may be some money left on the table, and we asked that Maine be included in that process if in fact that happens," Potter says.

FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff says Maine was the only state whose grant application was lost in transmission. Both he and Moreau agree that no one is at fault. But to ensure that such a potentially costly snafu never happens again, Rogoff says the FTA is adopting new procedures to double check applications to make sure that they're complete.