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Transportation
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Additional funding sources for the maintenance of our state and local roadways are essential. With the increase in population, traffic and heavy vehicles traveling our roadways, our roads are rapidly deteriorating and our current transportation funding system is insufficient.
Key Points
- In 1960, a third of the state budget went for transportation. Today, it is closer to 9%.
- The voters’ approval of Prop 1, which redirects half of the oil and natural gas production tax revenue from the Rainy Day Fund to the state highway fund, is a good start, but more work is left to do.
- Counties must maintain existing roads, and there is a demand for new roads, but counties have limited authority to raise funding for road construction and maintenance and limited funding sources to draw on.
- Counties maintain nearly half of all Texas roads, but of the $2.2 billion available for roads from the gas tax, only 0.33% percent ($7.3 million) is divided among the 254 counties of Texas.
- In 2019, the Legislature appropriated $250 million in grants for transportation infrastructure projects in counties affected by oil and gas production. Identifying millions of dollars in need, over 200 hundred counties applied for funding.
- Ending diversions from the State Highway Fund (Fund 6) could improve transportation funding by as much as $1.3 billion per biennium.
Watch: Counties Keep You and the Texas Economy Moving.
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