Lawmakers Thursday heard yet another description of a state agency that is struggling to promptly spend its federal grant money, with Transportation Director Ford Fuchigami detailing challenges the state Airports Division faces as it tries to spend about $40 million a year it receives from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Fuchigami told the Senate Ways and Means Committee on Thursday the FAA allows the state only four years to spend the money it provides for airport improvements, and the FAA expects the state to draw down 60 percent of that money within the first year after the grant award.

“Under the state system this is physically — I hate to use the word ‘impossible,’ but it’s very, very difficult for us to achieve that goal because of many challenges that we have,” Fuchigami said. Part of the problem is a notice to proceed must be issued to contractors before the federal money can be drawn down, and that alone takes about seven months under the state system.

When Fuchigami was deputy director for the Airports Division in 2011, he recalled the division was repeatedly failing to meet the FAA benchmarks, and an FAA official warned him that “if you want to get more money, then what you need to do is to get this thing going.”

The department then launched an intensive and successful effort to meet the federal goals for most years of the four-year grant process, Fuchigami said. However, the state has not been able to meet the FAA requirements for the first year of the grants, and Fuchigami said he plans to finally resolve that by using state money to finance the airports projects and then seeking reimbursements from the FAA.

That plan to use state cash for airport improvement projects and seek federal reimbursements later will be part of Gov. David Ige’s new budget to be unveiled in December, Fuchigami said.

The Ways and Means Committee also heard testimony on three other state bottlenecks that have delayed the use of federal funding for construction of Hawaii highways, housing projects and drinking water infrastructure.

The largest of the backlogs in unspent federal money involves highways. The Federal Highway Administration has warned the state Department of Transportation that Hawaii could lose out on federal funding unless the state processes its highway projects more quickly and reduces the backlog of unspent federal transportation money.

That problem peaked in 2010 when the federal government had earmarked $940 million for Hawaii in highway projects, but the money remained unspent because the state was unable to move the projects forward.

Since then the state has reduced that to $656.5 million, according to an Oct. 2 letter from FHWA Hawaii Division Administrator Mayela Sosa. Hawaii receives about $160 million in new federal highway funding each year, and the federal government wants the backlog reduced to no more than $450 million over the next three years.

The state is on track to reach that goal by 2018, Fuchigami said.

The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands also has a backlog of more than $55 million in unspent federal housing funds for Native Hawaiians, and President Barack Obama’s administration suspended the flow of additional housing funding into Hawaii under the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant program.

The state had been receiving $13 million a year in federal funding under the Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act of 1996 for housing for Native Hawaiians on Hawaiian homelands.

That funding was reduced to $9 million in federal fiscal year 2015 and was wiped out entirely in the current fiscal year, according to records provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Ways and Means Chairwoman Jill Tokuda (D, Kailua-Kaneohe) said she has been told HUD interrupted the funding for the block grant program because the state wasn’t able to spend down the federal funds that have already been set aside for Hawaii.

The department had a $75 million backlog in 2012, and has reduced that amount by spending money on infrastructure to prepare for the construction of 117 homes in Kealakehe in North Kona on Hawaii island, and about 100 homes in Kapolei. HUD money will also be used to install infrastructure for 40 lots in Kula, Maui.

Those projects are expected to account for nearly $30 million, and additional NAHASDA money will soon be spent on actual home construction at those sites, according to Niniau Simmons, NAHASDA manager for DHHL.

The federal government also announced it is withholding $8 million that was earmarked for repairing Hawaii’s drinking water infrastructure because the Hawaii Department of Health has been too slow to spend federal funds, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The annual allotment is usually deposited into the Health Department’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and lent out to the counties to fix water mains and leaking pipes or to clean contaminants from drinking water.