From the Terre Haute Tribune-Star:
After begging for more infrastructure funding for years, local governments in Indiana are finally getting their wish: Millions of more dollars from the state to repair the crumbling roads and bridges in their communities.
The $30 billion budget deal reached by House and Senate leaders with Gov. Mike Pence earmarks more than $215 million in new road funding annually for the next two fiscal years, with about $100 million of that projected for counties, cities and towns.
It marks the first increase in road funding for local communities in more than a decade.
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The additional road funding is significant, given a decade of decline: Between 2000 and 2010, the major sources of road repair money collected by the state and doled out to local governments dropped by about $100 million.
During that time, good roads went bad and bad roads went to pot. Both Bortoff and Groeller said there are small and rural communities around the state that let their paved roads turn back into gravel because they could no afford to repair them.
In 2009, studies done by Purdue University’s Local Technical Assistance Center and by the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated it would take more $800 million to fix about half of all county paved roads in Indiana that are badly need of repair.
The budget bill only allocates a fraction of that. It projects there will be $136 million more in road funding for counties over the next two fiscal years, and $64 million more for cities and towns.
But the budget bill also makes some changes that could lead to a continuing source of road repair dollars. It rejects the Pence plan to beef up road funding with money now going to pay off the state's pension obligations, and instead takes about $135 million in fuel taxes now going to the Indiana State Police and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and shifts that money into road repair.
It also reallocates 1 percent of the current sales tax into the state's motor vehicle highway fund, from which state and local road repair money is doled out.
The budget bill also sets aside $200 million a year to go into the new Major Moves 2020 Fund to pay for future major road projects, such as expanding Interstate 65 and Interstate 70.
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http://tribstar.com/local/x730862236/Local-Indiana-governments-getting-money-for-roads-bridges
