Compromise reached for rural vs. urban road funding

By Gene Lucht, Iowa Farmer Today
Wednesday, January 2, 2008 2:02 PM CST

DES MOINES --- One of the keys to this year’s discussion of infrastructure is a new idea called Time 21.

In essence, it is a compromise on how to spend any new money appropriated for infrastructure.

That may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but the fact is for years the argument over road improvements turned into a slugging match over whether to change the existing road-use tax formula.

Urban lawmakers argued their roads carried more traffic and thus required more money.

Rural lawmakers argued rural roads were a necessity to the state’s economy and shouldn’t lose money.

So, after years of that battle, lawmakers last year decided to leave the road-use formula alone and develop a new formula for any additional dollars going toward roads.

They called it Time 21 — Transportation Investment Moves the Economy in the 21st Century.

The next step is to appropriate some money for the Time 21 formula, notes Joe Johnson, state policy adviser for the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation.

“That’s what’s going to be out there for this year,” he says.

The Time 21 formula is relatively simple and somewhat vague. If a new fund is created, it would distribute 60 percent of the money to the state, 20 percent to the cities and 20 percent to the counties.

At the county level, most of that money is expected to go toward replacing deficient bridges, according to Department of Transportation officials.

That money would be distributed to counties using a formula based on area, miles of road, vehicle miles of travel, rural population and length of bridges.

State money would go toward primary state and interstate highways. The city money would vary from city to city.

The goal is to fund a total of $200 million a year for the Time 21 formula to meet the basic infrastructure needs of the state.

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