NACo sends coalition letter on surface transportation priorities to congressional leaders

Key Takeaways

On November 5, NACo, in partnership with other members of the Local Officials in Transportation (LOT) Coalition, sent a letter to two key Congressional committees—the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure and the Senate Committee on Environmental & Public Works—outlining and reiterating the coalition’s top priorities for the next surface transportation reauthorization bill.

Collectively, counties and municipalities own approximately 75 percent of public road miles and nearly 50 percent of bridges across the country, including 43 percent of the federal-aid highway system. Despite this, these local governments only receive around 15 percent of federal formula transportation dollars, which falls well short of what counties and cities need to maintain a safe and efficient transportation system.

By increasing the number of discretionary grant opportunities, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) brought the locally accessible share of federal transportation funding from the highway account of the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) to closer to 20 percent. In the next bill, the LOT Coalition requests that “no less than 25% of all HTF highway account dollars should be suballocated or otherwise made directly available to local and regional governments.”

Additionally, the letter requested that Congress:

• Dedicate 25 percent of funding from formula programs focused on bridges, safety and innovation to regions and local governments.
• Direct any funding from a grant program that gets eliminated into the Surface Transportation Block Grant (STBG) program, which requires suballocation.
• Give metropolitan planning organizations additional funding and authorities to ensure they can help counties and municipalities make best use of federal formula funds.
• Fund rural transportation planning so that rural counties and municipalities can benefit from federally funded transportation planning and the opportunities it brings.
• Strengthen the project selection process to ensure that suballocated dollars are used as Congress intended—for locally selected projects led by local governments.

Read the LOT Coalition Letter

The LOT Coalition includes NACo, the National League of Cities (NLC), the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO), the National Association of Regional Councils (NARC) and the National Association of Development Organizations (NADO).