PROVIDENCE — The Department of Transportation may take up to $4.1 million in federal money that the state’s transit agency planned to spend on new buses and other items, to cover a shortfall in the DOT’s Wickford Junction railroad station project.

Rhode Island Public Transit Authority officials went along with the idea in a meeting Tuesday. Before the meeting, however, Alfred J. Moscola, RIPTA general manager, called the situation “painful, painful.”

“We could be parochial,” said RIPTA board Chairman John Rupp, “but there is a need for rail service in Rhode Island.” He said afterward, “I think there’s a good chance that this will all be worked out” without RIPTA losing the money because the DOT might not need it.

It was a rarely visible tussle within the government, which officials insisted was no tussle at all, over money coming to the state under the federal economic stimulus program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Officials from both agencies went to great lengths yesterday to say that nobody will lose –– that both DOT’s and RIPTA’s projects can be paid for.

At the meeting, Transportation Director Michael P. Lewis had made it clear immediately who controls the situation, saying, “The governor’s office needs to approve all the funds.” RIPTA, Lewis observed, “has a very extensive list of projects” for stimulus money.

RIPTA runs the bus system, while the DOT is expanding the commuter rail service that operates between Providence and Boston. The DOT also handles the state’s relations with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which operates the rail service. Lewis reports to Governor Carcieri, who hired him last year. Moscola reports to RIPTA’s board of directors, who are appointed by the governor.

RIPTA had mapped out uses for all of the $37 million it expects from the Federal Transit Administration through the stimulus program. The money can also be used for rail facilities.

The $4.1 million is in addition to what had been budgeted for the Wickford Junction station, DOT spokeswoman Dana Alexander Nolfe said, and the estimated cost is $55.7 million. (The estimated cost of the DOT’s other rail station project, under construction at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, is $267 million, she said.)

Stephen M. Devine, the DOT’s chief of intermodal planning, said the extra $4.1 million is needed “to make up the shortfall” caused by two, roughly equal cost increases on the Wickford project. He said that Amtrak, which controls the rail line and will do some of the construction, has higher labor costs because of a new union contract, and that the estimated construction cost of a parking garage at the Wickford station has risen.

The station is being designed now, and Devine said the DOT expects to have it built and operating late next year.

RIPTA had planned to spend most of the $37 million on new, hybrid buses that transit officials say would be quieter, save fuel and pollute less. Moscola said that RIPTA needs new buses soon because some of its older ones are almost beyond repair, and that the authority may have to fall back on buying cheaper conventional diesel buses.

Lewis created a new Committee to Evaluate Federal Transit Administration-Funded Projects Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, composed mostly of DOT, RIPTA and state planning officials. The committee met Tuesday in what Lewis described as “a brainstorming session.” Near the end, Moscola promised not to spend the $4.1 millon “so we’ll have the money available for you.”

A previous dispute over allocating stimulus money involved municipal officials who objected to the DOT’s getting all $138 million available for road and bridge construction from the Federal Highway Administration. After they complained that their roads, many of them not eligible for federal highway aid, were crumbling, too, Carcieri said he would shift $20 million in state and federal money to help resurface local roads.

blandis@projo.com