Although he expects only a slight bump in state highway user revenue this year, Aberdeen's mayor says the state's municipal officials have a commitment from the new governor to eventually fully restore the financial support from Annapolis they depend on to maintain streets and sidewalks.
"Every little bit helps, and every little bit you can put to good use," Mayor Mike Bennett said.
Bennett said during a City Council work session Monday that Gov. Larry Hogan has put $26.1 million in highway user revenue in his 2016 budget, the most since former Gov. Martin O'Malley and state legislators cut the highway user revenue allocations during the height of the recession.
Bennett said Hogan's proposed allocation, of which $4 million will go to the counties, $2 million to Baltimore and $19 million to the other 156 municipalities, amounts to about 57 percent of full funding, according the current formula on which the distribution is based.
Aberdeen, which was getting about $800,000 a year eight years ago, received $426,784 for the current fiscal year, according to the city's budget. City Manager Doug Miller estimated the city could get about $432,000 next year, an increase of $5,216 or 1.18 percent.
Bennett noted the governor plans to introduce legislation to the General Assembly that would fully restore the highway user revenue allocation to municipalities and counties over the next eight years.
"Our administration is committed to restoring the money that was taken from the transportation trust fund, and to making sure that it never happens again," Hogan said in his recent State of the State address.
Bennett said following the work session that municipal officials can use even small increases, which can be put toward sidewalk improvements, repairing potholes or paving one more street than planned.
"There's a lot of ways you can stretch that dollar and move it around and do the things you need to do in the city," he said.
Bennett, who is also chairman of the Maryland Municipal League's legislative committee, said during the work session that the highway user revenue issue has been the MML's "top priority" for six years.
He said the lack of funding "sorely hurts" municipalities' ability to keep up their streets.
"It hurts us in the fact that we can't keep our roads to a level of maintenance that we all need to have here in the state of Maryland," Bennett said.
Miller, who also sits on the MML legislative committee, said Aberdeen officials "were systematically going in and repaving streets" before the recession.
Miller said that, at one point, the allocation was only $32,000 after state officials cut the annual allocations.
"I can't even patch potholes for $32,000," he said.
Until 2010, the state took 30 percent of the revenue it collected through fees for vehicle registrations and the gasoline tax, and officials allocated it to municipalities based on each city or town's total road mileage and number of registered vehicles.
The General Assembly significantly changed the formulas five years ago, however, leaving only 7.5 percent of the revenue for municipalities and 1.7 percent for counties.
"We're not back to where we should be, but we're ahead of where we've been," Miller said of Hogan's proposal for FY2016.
Bennett said the governor has told municipal leaders on several occasions that he will make restoring highway user allocations a priority, but next year's budget situation is "a little bit worse than he thought it would be."
"He is still committed to full restoration, but it's probably going to take him a few years to get that done," Bennett said.
Havre de Grace received $352,400 in highway user revenue for FY2015, according to its budget, and the Town of Bel Air received $339,631, according to town Finance Director Lisa Moody.
Moody said it is "too early to tell" what the town will receive next year, however. The General Assembly must still approve the governor's budget, she noted.
"It's still in the [legislative] session, so anything could happen," she said.