• Home
  • News
    • Business
    • Crime / Courts
    • Health / Medicine
    • Legislature
    • Politics / Govt
  • Sports
    • The Bill Pollock Show
  • Contact Us
    • Reporters
  • Affiliates
    • Affiliate Support

Missourinet

Your source for Missouri News and Sports

You are here: Home / Transportation / Counties worried about new federal highway fund bill

Counties worried about new federal highway fund bill

December 8, 2009 By [email protected]

County officials are anxious about what Congress could do with the new federal highway bill.

A draft of a bill continuing the federal highway funding program eliminates a provision that fifteen percent of federal gas tax money distributed to states be used for county bridge replacement and repair.

That alarms county officials who count almost 14-thousand bridges in their county systems, more than 17-hundred of them obsolete and another 26-hundred structurally deficient. About 47-hundred of those bridges are more than 50 years old.

Executive Director Dick Burke of the Missouri Association of Counties says the loss of those funds would be devastating to counties and cities. “We have a huge road and bridge network, one of the largest in the united states; I believe we’re the seventh largest…and theres’s just no way to generate that money locally. It’s just impossible,” he says.

Cities and counties are getting about 645 million dollars this year from that federal highway aid program.

He says there’s no way the money can be replaced if it’s taken out of the highway bill and that means a lot of bridge will not be built or replaced. He says county commissioners throughout Missouri are “scared” by what could happen in Washington.

Bob Priddy talks to Dick Burke  7:10

ctybridge9

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Filed Under: Transportation

Subscribe to our daily newsletter


Tweets by Missourinet

Sports

Ex-Chiefs coach charged with felony DWI

Former … [Read More...]

Mizzou gets opportunity of a lifetime in 2022 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

Out of … [Read More...]

Marching Mizzou is one of only three universities performing in 2022 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

The … [Read More...]

Missouri State Football earns share of Missouri Valley title–first since 1990

Missouri … [Read More...]

Arenado: “Just an amazing day, very thankful for it,” after his homer leads Cards to victory

Nolan … [Read More...]

More Sports

Tweets by missourisports

Archives

Opinion/Editorials

TwitterFacebook

Copyright © 2021 · Learfield News & Ag, LLC