BERLIN – Local officials affirmed their support of Maryland Municipal League efforts to restore highway user fees to towns throughout the state with a resolution this week.
On Monday, the Berlin Town Council voted to adopt a resolution formally supporting the Maryland Municipal League’s attempts to encourage the state to return highway user revenues to municipalities. The funding stream has been reduced significantly since 2008.
“We see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Mayor Gee Williams said. “Gov. Hogan has made a commitment to steadily restore these funds over the next few years… The purpose of this resolution is to encourage that restoration of funding.”
For decades, highway user revenues have traditionally been granted to municipalities by the state to help fund the maintenance of local roadways. According to the Maryland Municipal League (MML), cities and towns maintain nearly 3,000 miles of Maryland roads. Since the so called “Great Recession” of 2008, however, municipalities throughout the state have lost $221 million in highway user fees, as the state cut distributions significantly.
“Our cities and towns are simply unable to absorb the costs of maintaining their transportation infrastructure without a fair and stable, state-shared revenue source,” said 2015-16 MML President Spencer Schlosnagle in a news release. “We took a major hit in the loss of this critical funding at the time of the Great Recession and in the years since, as our state budget has been recovering from that devastating period. But we cannot continue to adequately maintain our roads, bridges and sidewalks without full restoration of this critical source of funding, which is so key to the ability of our municipalities to maintain their roads, bridges, sidewalks and other infrastructure.”
In Berlin, prior to the recession, the town received in excess of $200,000 a year in highway user revenues. The 2008 grant from the state was $280,864. That dropped to $247,871 in 2009 and then took a steep plunge in 2010, when the town received just $45,828. By 2013, the town was receiving less than $25,000 in highway user revenues — a 91-percent decrease from 2008.
“It’s just not acceptable anymore,” Williams said.
While the funding has increased during the past two years (Berlin received $125,186 in 2015), town leaders say they’d like to see it restored to pre-2008 levels. If it’s not, Berlin, like municipalities throughout the state, will be forced to make ends meet by doing things like delaying necessary infrastructure improvements and possibly raising taxes.
Council member Lisa Hall pointed out that while Berlin has had the financial resources to make vital road repairs during the past eight years, other towns had not.
“Their roads have really deteriorated,” she said. “Their hands have been tied.”
Williams said consolidated efforts like the one being led by the MML were the best option for bringing about change at the state level.
“For many years it was divide and conquer,” he said. “United we can hopefully not be taken for granted in the future.”
