(MPRN-East Lansing) State lawmakers may not be done putting more money into road repairs. The Legislature recently sent Gov. Rick Snyder a plan that gradually boosts road funding by $1.2 billion a year by 2021. But those increases don’t start until 2017.
In the meantime, lawmakers could continue putting one-time money into roads.
“If there’s more General Fund money would I put it towards that? Yeah, I probably would,”
said state Senate Majority Leader ArlanMeekhof (R-West Olive) during an appearance on the Michigan Public Television program Off the Record.
“I would have to talk to my caucus members, but I think that would be the direction they’d like to go.”
Recent budgets have included hundreds of millions of dollars in one-time funding for roads. Lawmakers put about $400 million one-time dollars in the current year’s budget for infrastructure repairs.
State lawmakers could also consider cutting taxes sooner than what’s spelled out in the legislation now sitting on the governor’s desk. The plan raises gas taxes and vehicle registration fees to help pay for road repairs. But it also includes a possible rollback in the state’s income tax rate and other tax cuts.
Meekhof says he’d like to implement those cuts sooner, if possible.
“I think we’ll be able to do that in the future. If the economy grows at the rate we hope it grows, we’ll want to make sure that the folks that have generated that revenue for the state get to have it back.”
Gov. Rick Snyder is expected to sign the road funding plan soon.