Multiple media reports indicate the Administration’s effort to plan for a dramatic shortfall in transportation funding – with a slate of proposed cutbacks that will affect services, projects, and local distributions.
As the Governor’s fiscal plan for FY 25 and beyond is in development, stakeholders — including local government leaders — have been placed on notice that a dramatic shortfall in transportation revenues will cause a rapid set of cost-cutting measures across that expansive state agency. Among the areas targeted for reduction are Highway User Revenues, the share of State transportation revenues distributed to local governments to maintain the many roadways under local control. Many programs and services under the Department’s own service modes are expected to see an 8% reduction from last year’s funding levels – surely meaning abridgement and reduction of various services.
Highway User Revenues were slashed dramatically in the summer of 2009 amidst the “great recession” and its accompanying fiscal calamity. Those reductions were made permanent in subsequent legislation, and local transportation funding has yet to regain its proper status in the State budget since then. Two rounds of incremental recovery aimed to bring local funding toward its proper levels, but the latest proposal may thwart even the modest ramp-up for county funding spelled out in current law (passed during the 2022 session).
Restoration of Highway User Revenues has been a full-throated top priority of MACo, the Maryland Municipal League, and Baltimore City for the entire duration of these deep reductions.
The Administration’s plan should become more widely distributed this week, as MACo’s winter conference brings together many local stakeholders.
From coverage on Maryland Matters:
The briefings this week and a more public rollout next week come just as leaders of the state’s 24 major political subdivisions will gather in Cambridge for three days of policy briefings by the Maryland Association of Counties. The three-day conference, named “The Eye of the Storm” was already expected to include discussions of state budget concerns.
Gov. Wes Moore (D) is expected to speak to the group on Thursday.
The Washington Post details the expected effects on major state projects:
The biggest proposed cut is a $1.6 billion hit over six years to highway construction that would “defund all major expansion construction projects” not advertised by Jan. 1 and cut by 30 percent the budget for maintenance projects designed to keep roads and bridges in good condition. Transit construction faces a $652 million cut that similarly targets expansion projects.
See broader coverage of the cutbacks from Maryland Matters and the Washington Post.
See Conduit Street‘s real time breakdown of the last incremental bump in Highway User Revenues (from 2022), and our table-setting history at the start of that political term.
