Road taxes may be transferred to state patrol

    Washington County could be out $200,000 if the Iowa Legislature follows the governor?s proposal to use road use tax dollars to fund the Iowa State Patrol. Jacob Thorius, assistant county engineer, said that the maintenance of county roads would suffer if the proposal were made law.

    The secondary roads budget is approximately $5 million for the current fiscal year, so a reduction of $200,000 is a 4 percent cut. Thorius said that he would be faced with difficult decisions if his budget were slashed by that amount of money.

    ?I will notice the cut right away,? said Thorius. ?Where am I going to make the cuts? Am I going to put less rock down on the gravel roads? Should I delay fixing culverts and bridges for a year??

    Thorius said he and the county use the $5 million budget to lay down gravel, build new roads, repave existing roads and also to pay for snow removal.

    He said that drivers will notice the cuts more and more over time as the county has to reduce services and delay road repairs. At the same time, he said some repairs can be done more cheaply when the roads are simply sub-par as opposed to ruined because waiting for them to deteriorate further can lead to more expensive repairs in the end.

    Historically, the amount of money secondary roads receives is not constant from one year to the next, although the funds have remained fairly steady over the past five years, said Thorius. He said revenue is generated for secondary roads through things like the gas tax and vehicle registration fees.

For the full article, see our Feb. 5 print edition.