Lawmakers considering bill to remove transportation spending from tax lid

A joint legislative task force report on transportation has a lot of promising recommendations for the county, the director of Douglas County Public Works says.

The report released in January made recommendations to guide development of a new state transportation plan and reflected findings from a series of hearings the Joint Legislative Transportation Vision Task Force conducted last fall and summer. The task force’s top recommendations are that the state stop raiding the Kansas Department of Transportation’s state highway fund for revenue to cover other state needs and that the state finish the 21 projects outlined in the 2011 state transportation plan.

With the recognition that local needs outpace available revenue, the task force report also makes a number of recommendations about sharing state highway fund revenue with local governments and suggests the Legislature remove any funding obstacle that hinders local government from spending money to make needed improvements.