Michigan Road Funding Bill Would Shift Dollars to Local Roads
The 45 cities in Michigan with populations of more than 25,000 people are about to get a break.
That's assuming that Gov. Rick Snyder signs a bill, passed by the Legislature last week, that would change the funding formula for expanding or repairing freeways and state highways.
In Michigan, the formula since 1951 required the larger cities to pay for part of any freeway or major highway project coming through their city limits. Right now, with scores of freeway and state highway miles in Michigan due for costly projects, a fresh round of those costs were due to be extracted from city coffers, especially in Oakland County where a giant $1-billion project on Interstate 75 is set to begin in July.
That could change if Snyder signs the bill that was sponsored by state senators from Troy and Southfield. Lansing lawmakers gave it final approval June 8.
For decades, the larger cities' share of such projects varied — with most of the funding coming from state and federal coffers — but the cities share was as much as 2.5% of a total project's cost, MDOT officials said. That might not sound like much, but in major freeway projects it can amount to millions of dollars for a single city.
If Snyder signs the bill, as expected, the cities' share would end. They could then devote their savings to repairing local roads, under the new law. And the Michigan Department of Transportation would be saddled with paying what the cities had been paying, meaning the ultimate cost would be spread across all state taxpayers.
Although the bill would add to MDOT's cost of funding road work, no one yet knows by just how much, MDOT communications director Jeff Cranson said. But what is clear is that the change flips around a long-standing dynamic in funding. Now, instead of communities complaining about having to fund a freeway that skirts their city, local residents will no longer pay even to maintain a state highway that likely runs right through their downtown. Such highways often constitute the local residents' "main street," and "the argument can be made that they should have a stake" in maintaining such roads, Cranson said.
"The bill will protect cities like Troy, Madison Heights and Detroit from unexpected large bills during freeway projects, but it also means that road users statewide will bear the cost when surface roads like Woodward, Gratiot, Groesbeck, 8 Mile, Ford Road and Michigan Avenue are reconstructed," Cranson said.
Senate Bill 557 was sponsored by state Sen. Marty Knollenberg, a Republican from Troy. Residents there faced a tab projected at more than $9 million as their city's share for the gargantuan I-75 project, expected to take a whopping 15 years when construction crews rebuild and expand 17 miles of I-75 in the south half of Oakland County.
Elsewhere in Knollenberg’s district, Royal Oak was to be charged more than $4 million for its share of the project. Upon passage of the bill by the state House on June 16 — it earlier passed the state Senate — Knollenberg said in a news release: “This bill will mean more taxpayer dollars from home will stay at home, so that the city roads we drive on most often can be repaired.”
The bill’s passage was good news to Royal Oak Mayor Jim Ellison, who for more than a decade has led his city’s official opposition to the long-delayed I-75 project. Royal Oak and its neighboring communities opposed the giant freeway plan because it would add an extra lane each way. People in southeast Oakland County want transportation dollars going to mass transit, not freeway expansions, Ellison said.
Royal Oak has passed resolutions opposing the widening and even considered filing a lawsuit this year to block the project. Now, the lawsuit is shelved and the city is resolved to accepting that I-75 "probably will have another lane" each way, Ellison said last week. That would give the rebuilt stretch four lanes each way in south Oakland County, matching the four lanes of I-75 that run each way from Oakland County to downtown Detroit.
"I'll take anything that gets us off the hook [of] paying for something we didn’t want in the first place," Ellison said.
