With less than one week until the spring legislative session convenes, lawmakers have filed several bills that would restrict how the state transportation department spends dollars in the Transportation Trust Fund.
Though the trust fund was created to be a lockbox, essentially, that pays for road, highway and bridge construction projects, the cash-strapped Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development has increasingly dipped into the fund over the years to cover basic operating costs.
But with Louisiana’s transportation infrastructure backlog approaching $15 billion—not including $12 billion worth of badly needed new projects on the drawing board—several lawmakers are pushing to wean DOTD off trust fund dollars over the next several years.
Among the measures filed in recent days:
• HB 128 by Rep. Mark Wright, R-Covington, which would limit trust fund money from being used to fund DOTD employee and retiree salaries and benefits. The restrictions would begin in FY 2021-2022 and become increasingly stringent until FY 2027-2028, by which time the department would be totally weaned from the trust fund.
• HB 440 by Rep. John Stefanski, R-Crowledy, which would impose the same restrictions as Wright’s bill but would create the legislation necessary to amend the state constitution to allow the changes.
• HB 298 by Rep. Sherman Mack, R-Albany, which would impose similar restrictions on the department as HB 128 but on a more expedited schedule—within four years, instead of seven.
• SB 285 by Sen. Patrick McMath, R-Covington, which would increase the amount of sales and inventory tax dedicated to the trust fund.
Transportation funding lobbyist Scott Kirkpatrick, who heads the industry-led group CRISIS, says while the number of bills dealing with the subject clearly suggests that lawmakers want to get serious about funding the state’s backlog of road and bridge projects, the trick will be to get Gov. John Bel Edwards’ support.
In 2019, Wright filed a bill similar to the one he’s pushing this year, but the measure never made it out of committee because it lacked support from the administration.
“There’s no question everybody likes the concept behind these bills,” Kirkpatrick says. “The challenge is, if you don’t pay for retirement and staffing from the Transportation Trust Fund you have to pay for it from the general fund and that is what the Legislature will have to grapple with.”
That’s no small thing. According to a fiscal note attached to Wright’s 2019 bill, if DOTD is barred from using TTF dollars to pay for salaries, benefits and legacy costs, it will have to come up with a recurring source of revenue that in FY 2024 will exceed $433 million.
