The House Environment and Transportation Committee has voted down several bills that would have restored funding for local roads and bridges. These bills, HB 837, HB 899, and HB 1003, would have provided additional local revenue by either phasing-in the previous distribution of local highway user revenues or allowing a local share of transportation revenues generated through recent changes to motor fuel taxes.

MACo strongly supported this legislation as “Transportation Funding Restoration” is one of MACo’s priorities for the 2015 General Assembly Session. MACo believes this legislation and HB 484, introduced on behalf of the Administration, offer viable approaches for restoring locally funded roadways and urged the Committee to give any combination of this legislation a favorable report.

The Committee has taken no action on HB 484, nor has a Senate Committee taken action on its crossfile, SB 591. However, the Governor issued a supplemental budget early in session to provide an additional $25 million for local roadways in FY 2016 -$4 million counties; $19 million municipalities; and $2 million Baltimore City . The House and Senate have approved this allocation as part of the FY 2016 budget.

MACo’s written testimony can be found here. For more on MACo’s 2015 legislation, visit the Legislative Database.