Senate Republicans Present Transportation Funding Plan

Senate Republicans called a press conference at the State Capitol Monday, March 20, to release their transportation funding proposal. According to Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-Nisswa, and Transportation Committee Chair Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson, the plan would provide $3.6 billion dollars in transportation funding over the next ten years without raising the gas tax.

For the next biennium, the proposal would move $400 million dollars from auto-related sales taxes from the general fund to a dedicated transportation fund, rely on $53 million dollars in savings from MNDOT efficiencies, use $117 million from MNDOT flexible spending funds and issue $300 million dollars in trunk highway bonds. The plan also depends on $466 million dollars in federal grants.

Additionally, Newman outlined two new policy changes. One provision would require MNDOT to increase transparency in the selection of trunk highway projects based on a critical report by the Office of the Legislative Auditor issued in March, 2016. The other provision would remove the state’s partial responsibility for paying operating costs of future light rail projects. The state currently pays fifty percent of operating costs for existing light rail transit lines.

“This is what the people in the state of Minnesota are demanding. They want their infrastructure fixed,” said Senator Newman.

Ranking minority member of the Senate Transportation Committee Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, was critical of the Republican proposal. “$117 million dollars. That is the amount of new money that is going into our state trunk highway system. This $3.6 billion dollars over ten years is largely a fiction and is largely money that is already existing and allocated, or being appropriated on a one-time basis or simply borrowing,” he said.