Poteau Daily News By Rick West, District 3 State Representative
May 26, 2021
The House this week passed the overall appropriations bill to fund government services for Fiscal Year 2022, which starts in July. I gave a broad overview of the budget last week, but I want to go back and give some additional details.
First, I want to talk about the money transportation will get. During the pandemic, the Legislature set aside some funding from the Oklahoma Department of Transportation’s ROADS Fund to be spent on other core functions of government if needed. We appropriate $17 million more to transportation this year than last to restore that. We are making a $200 million investment in speeding up the department’s eight-year plan through the federal Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act. The County Improvement for Roads and Bridges fund is also made whole with an increase of $20 million.
One great thing in this budget is ODOT has agreed to allow the Legislature to add an authorization section in the General Appropriation bill for the ROADS fund of $575 million. This is money that normally is apportioned off the top and therefore gets little scrutiny in how it’s spent. This gives us greater transparency.
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