Murphy’s Law 2023 | #7
County and Township funding bills

This morning your NDSGA testified on two bills that would help rural road funding.

The first was SB 2275 and it would move a $400 million bucket called the SIIF –Strategic Investment and Improvement Fund- which fills from the Prairie Dog formula (oil tax is the fountain that fills these buckets). City, County and Township Infrastructure are the next bucket if enough money comes to fill it. Last biennium, the crashed oil prices allowed no money to reach our bucket. Because originally there was no SIIF bucket ahead of ours and because there is another SIIF bucket at the very end of the stream, there is wide support to get rid of the SIIF ahead of us. This would provide a more reliable amount of money for our roads and bridges in the country.

The other was SB 2329 which would take a quarter of whatever comes into the North Dakota Department of Transportation from motor vehicle excise tax and send it to the newly formed township highway aid fund created by this bill.

Both bills got a lot of support and no opposition. All of this, if approved eventually by one house, are subject to amendments in the other house and probably will be decided in Conference Committees in late April. But it is a good start.