CHEYENNE–The Wyoming Legislature agreed to set aside $15 million to inspect and repair I-80 tunnels near Green River after a 26-vehicle crash earlier this month killed three people and left 18 others injured.
The Feb. 14 wreck also caused extensive damage to the westbound tunnel, including charred concrete lining and destroyed lighting and other equipment. Since then, the westbound tunnel has remained closed, forcing the eastbound tunnel to accommodate two-way traffic on part of Wyoming’s busiest interstate highway.
While the speed limit has been reduced to 35 miles per hour, Rock Springs Republican Sen. Stacy Jones said “it’s a bad situation.”
“It’s just a matter of time before we have another accident in there,” Jones said on the Senate floor as the body debated the appropriation.
“It’s created a bottleneck and we need to get this money to [Wyoming Department of Transportation,] so they can expedite the inspection and repairing of the other tunnel,” she said.
Jones alongside Sens. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, and Larry Hicks, R-Baggs, successfully brought the earmarking amendment Wednesday to
House Bill 33, “Vehicles sales and use tax distribution-highway fund.”
The $15 million is expected to be reverted to the state’s rainy day savings account, since the appropriations can only be spent if WYDOT is unable to access federal dollars. Appropriating state dollars was intended to speed up the repair and inspection process.
“So it’s really not an increase in expenditure or anything because we’re using the money that was already going to be moved over,” Rep. J.T. Larson, R-Rock Springs, said on the House floor. “It was a creative way to address the situation.”
Jones’ amendment also largely reverted the bill to its original version, which will divert a portion of vehicles sales and use taxes to the state’s highway fund on an annual basis. Those dollars are to be used for the operation, maintenance, construction and reconstruction of state highways.
For several years, lawmakers have struggled to work out a funding model for WYDOT, leaving the agency in “preservation mode” with a $400 million revenue shortfall.
While HB 33 will start to lessen the squeeze on the department, Senate Transportation, Highways and Military Affairs Committee Chairman Stephan Pappas, R-Cheyenne, said there’s still work to do.
“We will need to work out long-term funding,” Pappas said on the floor.
Driskill echoed him.
“We’re going to be coming back and looking at ways we can find a way to long-term fund our highways, but this is going to get us on the right track,” he said.
After voting for the amendment, but against the bill, Casper Republican Sen. Charles Scott said he supported the prompt funding for the tunnels but has larger concerns about diverting tax revenue that would otherwise go into the general fund to the highway fund.
More specifically, Scott said the Legislature has long resisted taxing “the operations,” such as semitrucks, “that are really tearing up the roads,” and that’s been a “mistake.”
“We need to get a more fair way of funding our highways and allocate the burden of supporting those highways a little more in accordance with groups that are benefiting from it, which I think are largely not even Wyoming citizens,” Scott said.
When the bill went back to the House for concurrence, the lower chamber voted 52-2 with three excused to send it to the governor’s desk.
The Joint Transportation Committee met Thursday to discuss potential topics for the interim, or the off-season months when lawmakers meet to craft committee bills. With the approval of the Legislature’s Management Council, highway funding will be a top priority for the committee.
In both chambers, “it was very clear that funding our roads and infrastructure was a very important topic,” WYDOT Director Darin Westby told the committee. “I’m not 100% sure the Senate was in alignment but felt that the need to keep it moving forward.”
As for the Green River tunnel inspection and repair, cleanup operations have not yet started. WYDOT previously told WyoFile a safety evaluation of the tunnel needed to be completed first.
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