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H.488 would tie town highway aid increases to T Fund appropriations or CPI‑U, whichever is less
Summary
The Senate Transportation Committee heard that H.488 would put two town highway aid programs on an inflator tied to the lesser of T Fund appropriations growth or the CPI‑U, aligning those programs with the existing Quimby Amendment for state town highway aid.
At a Senate Transportation Committee review of H.488, Damien Leonard explained that section 10 would apply an inflator to two town highway grant programs — state aid for town highway structures and the Class 2 town highway road program — tying the annual increase to the lesser of the percentage increase in T Fund appropriations to the Agency of Transportation or the CPI‑U, mirroring the existing Quimby Amendment that already applies to general state town highway aid.
Leonard said the change will exclude the three aid programs from the base appropriation calculation so the percentage change is calculated consistently across all three programs and their minimum grant amounts will be increased by the same inflator. "So they're all gonna be calculated, so that whatever percentage increase one has, the other two have as well," Leonard said.
Committee members expressed concern that using the CPI‑U and the lesser‑of formula may not reflect construction and materials cost inflation and that the legislature lacks comprehensive data on towns' actual needs. One committee member stated that towns report construction cost inflation on the order of 40 percent on projects and that the state has "no real concept of the need in communities." Leonard and committee members discussed possible statutory language to collect better data on local needs and noted that the inflator calculation includes procedural timing (a June CPI month comparison) that can introduce lag.
Leonard and others described guardrails in the draft to avoid artificially inflating future calculations: appropriations that are one‑time increases can be excluded from the base used to compute the inflator in subsequent years. Committee members asked staff to think about where a statutory data collection mechanism could be placed and said they would consider amendments to capture town need information.
No vote was recorded in the transcript; the committee planned to continue deliberations in a follow‑up meeting and to invite agency and municipal stakeholders to provide data and testimony.
