As the upcoming legislative session grows near, Capital Region lawmakers are increasingly focused on finding ways to fund badly needed road, highway and bridge projects in the area.
To that end, Sen. Rick Ward, R-Port Allen, is planning to file a measure that would send surplus dollars generated by the state severance tax back to local governments to spend on transportation infrastructure projects.
Ward cannot say exactly how much the bill would send back to parish and municipal governments. But he says local governments deserve to receive a greater share of severance tax revenues generated in their area, provided the dollars are restricted to uses like transportation infrastructure.
“At the state level, $1 million may not seem like much,” Ward says. “But if you send that money to a local parish and specified it has to be used for roads, bridges and infrastructure, that is a windfall for them.”
The measure will likely be proposed as a constitutional amendment, meaning it will require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature and a vote of the people later this year.
Ward and other lawmakers on the Joint Highway Priority Construction Committee recently completed a “road show” around the state, whereby local governments weighed in on state transportation department projects in line to receive funding this year.
“One thing we heard a lot these past two weeks was a lot of local concerns about parish roads,” he says. “It all needs to be addressed so we need to give them resources to directly address their needs.”
Another idea that’s been discussed is to restrict money in the state’s transportation trust fund to infrastructure spending only, instead of allowing DOTD to use some of it to cover their operating expenses. Such a bill was proposed last year in the Legislature but never made it out of committee, due to opposition from the department and Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Ward says he’s intrigued by the concept but doesn’t think such a measure has much practical chance of passing.
“It sounds great and would give us $250 million more we can spend on roads and bridges but what are we cutting in the general budget to make that work?” he says. “It sounds wonderful and I support the concept but I’m a little skeptical about how it can get done. I need to see where the money would come from.”
Ward expects to file his bill by the end of this week. The Legislature convenes March 9.
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