State Transportation will receive an additional $210 million from the Federal Highway Administration, the most they’ve ever received in redistributed funds. DOTD spokesperson Rodney Mallet said when other states do not spend all of their allocated money it goes back to the FHWA, and then it’s redistributed.
“Every year we receive the redistributed funds in August, but this is by far the most that we’ve ever received and it is so needed because of our backlog and inflation,” said Mallet.
Mallet said several projects that DOTD was already committed to were in limbo due to the lack of funds.
“So, we’re able to move forward on a lot of these projects in parishes across the state that are in dire need and they wouldn’t have been funded without this,” said Mallet.
DOTD receives state funding for maintenance and transportation projects from a fuel tax that is more than three decades old and with inflation, Mallet said the backlog of projects continues to grow, only emphasizing the dependency on federal highway funds.
Mallet credits the hard-working employees at DOTD who manage to push projects through and spend all the federal money that’s allocated for much-needed projects. By doing so DOTD is eligible for additional redistributed funds.
“And I think what this shows is if DOTD had the funding like other states, we could do a lot more because we spend every dime that we get from FHWA,” said Mallet.
Mallet said this is the 15th year in a row that DOTD has received FHWA redistributed funds.
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