Transportation Revenue Lower than Expected

General Assembly:

“Transportation issues slowly are edging their way into the spotlight at the halfway point of this year’s General Assembly session, and from a funding standpoint, the news is not good. Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) officials this past week shared with key legislators, and in separate meetings in Richmond, local transportation planning staff, that updated transportation revenue forecasts are anticipating a nearly half-billion dollar reduction in the preliminary Six-Year Improvement Program for FY15-20 when compared to the current (FY14-19) program. The anticipated drop is driven by lower-than-expected revenues from the sales tax on gasoline and other fuels approved by the General Assembly last year. This development means that the transfer of funds from VDOT’s construction budget to the highway maintenance budget would continue beyond the previously-anticipated end of the transfers in FY17, and that the distribution of funds to localities through the construction formula, suspended since FY10, also will be delayed further. State construction dollars will continue to flow under a 2012 formula that reserves these funding decisions to the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB). Legislative leaders and local officials also have been told that federal funding is down, and at this point, it appears that the Highway Trust Fund will not be able to support any new obligation of federal funding in 2015.”

~Writes David Blount, TJPDC Legislative Liaison