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Minnesota roads may face bumpy future Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Agri News staff writer
Mike Hanson didn't find it funny when Gov. Tim Pawlenty joked that transportation funding supporters will be back next year.
Pawlenty made the remark May 22, the day after the Legislature failed to override his veto of the transportation bill that contained a maximum 7.5 cent increase in the state's gas tax, a $20 excise tax on motor vehicles and $1.5 billion in trunk highway bonding.
"It's kind of sad because we're watching our systems fall apart before our eyes," said Hanson, Mower County's highway engineer.
Mower County, like other counties throughout Minnesota, receives state-aid money for road improvements to its 360 miles of county state-aid roads. Counties get 29 percent of the money collected through the state gas tax, which has remained the same since 1988.
That money hasn't kept pace with costs.
The cost of one ton of bituminous mixture, otherwise known as blacktop, has jumped from $25 per ton to $45 per ton in the last two years, Hanson said. The cost of rebuilding 1 mile of road and paving it has increased from $400,000 a mile to more than $500,000. And that's in his county, which is relatively flat.
Counties to the east that have hilly terrain have higher costs, Hanson said.
"We're doing the best we can with the money that we have available, but we're going to reach a point soon, in fact very soon, that there's not going to be enough to maintain the system in the shape it's in," he said.
Mower County is also hurting because there was no bonding for bridge replacement this session, Hanson said. This year, Mower County is receiving $1.5 million in bond funds to replace two bridges that needed replacement.
The county is heavily dependent on bond funds, he said. It has 375 bridges. About 100 of them have been replaced over the last 10 years.
Hanson spent six hours on the computer May 21 watching the Legislature. When it came time to vote on the override of the transportation funding bill, there was anger, he said. The Republicans who supported it the initial time dropped off. At one point, there were 89 votes in support of the bill in the House, one shy of the 90 needed to override the governor's veto.
When it became clear the override was going to fail, legislators began changing their votes.
"It's just too bad things didn't come through for us," Hanson said. |
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