Pa. roads, bridges to get extra $175M as funding is freed up from state police

An adjustment in Pennsylvania’s state budget will free up an additional $175 million this fiscal year to improve roads and bridges.

For years, a portion of the state’s Motor License Fund — intended to provide money for public transportation and highway infrastructure — was instead allocated to the Pennsylvania State Police. Last year, the fund generated $2.9 billion from license and registration fees, some fines, transportation user fees and the state’s gas tax.

In past budgets, as much as 17% of the Motor License Fund has been given to state police. For the 2022-23 fiscal year that began in July, Wolf and legislators reached an agreement to reduce the state police allocation from the Motor License Fund by $175 million to $500 million.

Elizabeth Rementer, a spokeswoman for Gov. Tom Wolf, said this will free up more money for road and bridge work and should help the state leverage more federal funding for additional work.

She said a similar action was taken in the 2021-22 budget, but the Wolf administration is still looking for additional strategies to address what it says is an $8.1 billion annual bridge and highway funding gap.

“Although this does take a step toward addressing our infrastructure funding needs, the fact is that we need a sustaining long-term solution to our growing infrastructure funding gap,” Rementer said.

State police are still fully funded in the 2022-23 budget. In fact, the agency’s funding grew this year, which the governor’s office said will finance the training of 200 additional cadets.

The state police funding is now also coming from the state’s general fund and a myriad of other sources, said state Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward, R-Hempfield.

Under a 2016 agreement, legislators were tasked with reducing the Motor License Fund’s state police allocation to $500 million by the 2027-28 budget, but legislators were able to meet that goal early. Ward said legislators plan to continue to lower that allocation amount in the future, so that more funds can be freed up for roads and bridges while maintaining funding for state police.

“It means more road projects. Projects that might have been on hold for another five or six years might get done in the next year or two,” Ward said. “It means this money is going to go where it is supposed to go.”

Ward said some Motor License Fund money should still be provided to state police moving forward because the troopers are responsible for patrolling highways.

Ward said negotiations on the Motor License Fund issue were not as difficult this year thanks to the state receiving additional federal funding, as well as legislators agreeing on the increased urgency to pay for roads and bridge improvements and the lawmakers agreeing that the Motor License Fund allocation to state police shouldn’t be as high as it was.

“There are always no votes for the budget, but there were very few in the Senate, only three,” said Ward.

The successful agreement for the reallocated funds appears to have ended a disagreement between elected officials about where exactly funding for state police should come from.

In the past, Gov. Tom Wolf proposed that municipalities which rely on state police coverage but don’t have their own local departments should pay a fee to cover for funds usually meant for roads, bridges and transit. But Republicans, who control both the state House and state Senate, have never advanced this proposal.

Ward said this issue wasn’t even brought up in this year’s budget negotiations. Rementer also said Wolf didn’t include the municipal fee plan in his state budget proposal this year.

That doesn’t mean disagreements over how to fund state roads and bridges are finished.

Rementer said the Wolf administration is welcoming discussions from the Legislature about alternative funding sources that can replace the gas tax, which she said is no longer a dependable source of funding to meet the state’s bridge and highway needs. Pennsylvania’s gas tax supplies about 74% of road and bridge funding, and, like most states that rely on gas taxes for funding, that pool is shrinking as cars get more fuel-efficient and electric vehicles become more popular.

A state court recently struck down one of Wolf’s proposals to fund roads and bridges through tolling certain highway and interstate bridges. The Wolf administration is also exploring the possibility of a instituting a fee based on vehicle miles traveled.

The state House returns to session on Monday, Sept. 12.