Defeated U.S. Senator Bob Bennett has helped the Utah Transit Authority obtain about $1.5 billion in funding and officials fear for the future if his likely successor, Republican candidate Mike Lee, is elected. Lee has said he is against one dime of federal funding going to transit projects and believes such projects should be funded by state or local governments or private enterprise. The Cache Valley Transit District also relies on federal funding, which General Manager Todd Beutler says goes mainly for capital projects. On KVNU’s Crosstalk show Tuesday, Beutler said sales tax revenues are down so the CVTD faces financial challenges. “We’ve been fortunate,” Beutler said. “Even with the decrease in revenues, we’ve been able to operate at the same level of service. We’ve had to curtail our capital projects; we’ve cut back the money that we’re setting aside for future capital projects. “Those are ways in which we’ve been able to deal with the decreasing revenues but still provide the same level of service to the citizens that they’re using and obviously it’s growing, the demand.” Beutler says at the end of June ridership on the CVTD was up by 7.6 percent.