A story in the Rochester Post Bulletin reports that Minnesota Department of Transportation Commissioner Charlie Zelle thinks the inability of the Minnesota legislature may be more harmful for Greater Minnesota than for more urbane parts of the state.
Heather Carlson reports in MnDOT commissioner warns of funding shortfall:
Greater Minnesota will suffer the most if lawmakers fail to pass a comprehensive transportation package in the 2016 legislative session, according to Minnesota Department of Transportation Commissioner Charlie Zelle.
Zelle told a crowd of local officials gathered in Rochester on Friday that MnDOT is on the edge a fiscal cliff. Without additional dollars, the state will have 49 percent less funding for road and bridge construction by 2019. The lack of money will hit Greater Minnesota particularly hard because the state will have to focus its resources on the most heavily-traveled roadways in the state to comply with federal requirements. Most of those roads are in the Twin Cities-metro area.
House transportation committee chair Tim Kelly, R-Red Wing, disagrees that the situation is dire, Carlson reports:
House Transportation Policy and Finance Committee Chairman Tim Kelly, R-Red Wing, said in an interview on Friday he is skeptical that the funding situation is as "dire" as Zelle is making it sound.
"In the efforts of getting a transportation package done, it concerns me we are still hung up on trying to create a divide on what the need is," he said.
For a guy whose party flipped the House while claiming DFLers didn't care about rural Minnesota, that's a good one.
Photo: A mudding vehicle, circa 2009. We could all start driving these in rural counties and quit worrying about roads. Who'd need them?
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