Provide Guaranteed, Direct Federal Funding for County Owned Roads and Bridges

Action Needed

Urge your Members of Congress to develop a bipartisan solution that guarantees direct and consistent funding for locally owned roads and bridges in the next surface transportation reauthorization to better support American infrastructure and address the systems in most need.

Background

Counties own and operate 44 percent of public road miles and 38 percent of bridges nationwide. Due to this vast responsibility, counties annually invest more than $146 billion in building and maintaining our nation’s infrastructure, with an additional $60 billion invested in transportation. 

Counties operate with limited fiscal authority, often constrained by state-imposed restrictions, which create persistent funding gaps for critical infrastructure. The federal government is uniquely positioned to help close these gaps through transportation investments and programs. Yet counties struggle to access both federal formula funds—which comprise most federal transportation spending—as well as discretionary grant opportunities.

Historically, more than 90 percent of federal highway funding has been distributed directly to state departments of transportation (DOTs) through the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) various formula programs. Currently, only two of these programs, the Surface Transportation Block Grant (STBG) program and the Carbon Reduction Program (CRP), require suballocation of dollars for regional and local use. As a result, all local governments—not just counties—receive an average of only 14 percent of these formula dollars.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL, P.L. 117 58) sought to expand opportunities for locals to access federal transportation funds by creating dozens of new discretionary grant programs for which counties are directly eligible. However, these programs still rely on complex, resource intensive competitive applications that many counties lack the capital and staffing capacity to prepare. Additionally, NACo analysis has found that counties have routinely underperformed when applying for competitive U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) grant programs, compared with city and state applicants.

This long standing structure has contributed to chronic underinvestment in local infrastructure, leaving billions of dollars in deferred maintenance across the country and undermining safety and efficiency for the millions of Americans who rely on county roads every day. This underinvestment is borne out in the data, which show that locally owned bridges are twice as likely to be in “poor condition” than state-owned bridges and that locally owned roads are more than three times as likely to be in “poor condition” when compared to state-owned roads.

The upcoming surface transportation reauthorization offers Congress a critical opportunity to correct these imbalances, strengthen essential infrastructure programs and work more closely with counties to support the nation’s surface transportation systems.
 

Key Talking Points

• Counties own, operate and maintain 44 percent of public road miles and 38 percent of bridges, making them crucial stakeholders in our nation’s infrastructure.
• Despite our vast infrastructure responsibilities, counties struggle to access federal transportation funding, either through formula programs or discretionary grant opportunities.
• As a result of this underinvestment, locally owned surface transportation infrastructure is more likely to be classified as being in “poor condition” than state-owned infrastructure.
• Often, counties’ inability to access funding is due to capital and capacity constraints. This is felt acutely in rural areas where 70 percent of the nation’s roadways are located, and which have a higher fatality rate on their roads than in urban areas.
• To ensure the safe and efficient operation of our nation’s transportation network, counties need consistent, stable and direct federal funding for roads and bridges, both through access to formula funds and discretionary grant opportunities.