HURF Discussions to Continue this Week
House Transportation Chairman Vic Williams has begun the process of introducing a bill that will reimburse the Highway User Revenue (HURF). AZAGC has long supported that HURF money should be used as the voteres intended – for the construction and mainenance of Arizona’s highways and roads.
The intent of this bill is to acknowledge that from time to time the legislature, due to financial constraints, is required to make tough funding decisions and rearrange funding in the short term to balance the budget. This bill seeks to quantify the amount of transportation dollars that have otherwise been shifted reallocated, diverted, or transferred from the normal distribution of HURF funding to transportation maintenance and infrastructure needs. The ledger seeks to provide an accounting of monies diverted since 2000 to establish a base line to return these funds when the economy improves. It is the intent of this legislation that the funding calculations be done as to give a true indication of which cities, towns, counties, COGs, MPOs, and departments would have received under normal circumstances. The intent of this bill is not to dictate a payback schedule of these funds, but rather to provide a mechanism for the fair distribution of reimbursement when the legislature feels that a sufficient surplus exists. Since it is highly unlikely that all diverted funds will be paid back in one lump sum, the bill provides for the payback formula to be proportional to the amount funding a jurisdiction or program has in the ledger. Furthermore, it is the intent of this bill that VLT monies that go directly to the counties before entering the HURF formula shall be accounted for and paid back through this proposed mechanism.
Click here to see the full version of the draft bill.
