(WSAU) Nearly 10 Republican Senators are banding together to propose a one-time payment of $133.6 million for local road projects. The proposal calls for $1 million to each County and $1,000 per mile of road for each Town.
Senator Tom Tiffany of Hazelhurst says that would allow those governments to determine where the money is best spent. "I talked to a highway commissioner that said they have a couple of highly-traveled bridges on county roads that they really need to get fixed, so they were thinking they could use it for that," he said. Tiffany added that the money would be in addition to all funds those Counties and Towns would already receive as part of the current budget cycle.
Funding for the one-time payments would be made possible through a recent influx of cash into the state's coffers, which Tiffany says comes from the recent Trump tax cuts. "I call it the 'Trump bump,' those tax reductions at the Federal level have a lot to do with this additional revenue that's coming in. It's really put the economy in overdrive." Tiffany also credits good budgeting on the state's part for the added revenue.
Back in January forecasters were calling for as much as $1.8 billion in additional funding was projected to hit the state's coffers in the current budget cycle. Others behind the push include Jerry Petrowski, Devin LeMahieu, and Alberta Darling. Tiffany emphasizes that the measure isn't set in stone and no formal debate is scheduled, but it is a way of getting people to talk and share ideas. "We wanted the issue to get out there now, we think it's timely and if we are successful maybe it could get inserted into the transportation budget. "It's good to have it out there publicly so that people can talk about it," he added.
Leaders of the League of Municipalities are already criticizing the plan because it does not include funding for Villages or Cities. Jerry Deschane told the Wisconsin Radio Network that Towns receive about 40% of their road funding from the state while the others receive about 16% from Madison. "Fair is somewhere in between there, I'm not saying you need to resolve that inequity, but to ignore where 70% of the population lives is a problem." Tiffany says they chose to focus on Towns because of the federal funding options that are available to Cities and Villages. "This isn't a case of trying to elbow them out or anything like that, it's just that they have a lot more sources of revenue that Town governments [don't get]."
