Budget Potholes

continued

funding transportation at the current level, by next year it will be unable to match all eligible federal funding, Townsend explains, and $600 million paid by Michigan drivers in gas taxes will be lost.

Mike Nystrom of the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association says that the U.S. House passed a bill in December "which would alleviate the requirement to match in 2011. But so far, there has been no suggestion that the Senate will take it up, and no indication they would pass it if they did." Townsend says that unless the Senate acts--or the state miraculously finds a new source of matching funds--"the tax revenue we pay will go to other states and not to us."   

[Originally published in February, 2010.]