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Highway staff outline motor fuel tax flows, recent increases and local budget impacts
Summary
The county highway engineer presented an overview of Motor Fuel Tax (MFT) and related transportation funding, explaining distribution changes since 1983, the 2019 increase that created a CPI‑indexed transportation renewal fund, and how rising material costs affect maintenance capacity.
Jerry Sokes of the McLean County Highway Department presented a detailed overview of Motor Fuel Tax (MFT) funding, historical distribution changes, recent increases and the program’s implications for county road maintenance and construction.
Sokes described county highway operations across four funds — highway, bridge, matching and MFT — and said the matching fund is restricted to match federal or MFT dollars for construction, engineering and right‑of‑way. He traced major milestones: a 1983 shift to 80,000‑pound truck design on state highways; the addition of a diesel differential in the mid‑1980s; longer periods of stable MFT rates; and the February 2019 increase that added a 19‑cent transportation renewal fee distributed under the same formula as the original MFT and indexed to the Consumer Price Index.
Sokes said McLean County’s average MFT allotment is roughly $340,000 per month (including transportation renewal funds) but noted that increases in materials — oil, aggregate and asphalt — have raised per‑mile preservation costs. He said oil‑and‑chip maintenance costs have climbed and that doing cover‑seal work is now more expensive, which reduces how many miles the county can preserve annually. Using the county’s road inventory (approximately 360 miles, with about 260 miles of hot‑mix pavement), Sokes said the department aims to resurface roughly 10–12 miles per year to maintain pavement lifecycle targets.
Committee members asked about right‑of‑way purchases, heavy‑use truck taxes and electric vehicle registration fees. Sokes explained that some registration and diesel differential components are retained by the state and that local associations (the Illinois County Engineers Association) have raised the issue of recouping registration/EV revenue for local road funding. He also summarized other federal and state funding sources the county uses, including Surface Transportation Program (rural and urban portions), the township bridge program (about $1.2 million annually to the county for township bridge projects), federal bridge replacement funds, the Truck Access Route Program (TARP), Highway Safety Improvement Program and transportation enhancement grants for bike trails.
Sokes concluded that while the transportation renewal fund has increased available revenue (and is CPI‑indexed), higher material and commodity costs mean counties must continue to plan conservatively and pursue federal and state grant programs to meet resurfacing and reconstruction needs.
