Senate Transportation hears FY26 budget plan that relies on JTOC transfer to close gap

Rich Resman, chair of the Senate Transportation committee, convened a presentation on the Agency of Transportation’s proposed FY26 budget on Tuesday, Feb. 4, where Candace Alquist, the agency’s chief financial officer, outlined how the administration would close a projected operating gap.

Alquist said the administration packaged a mix of one‑time and ongoing measures to balance the Transportation Fund for FY26, including using the JTOC appropriation historically directed to the State Police as an ongoing revenue source. “I was asked to come in and talk about the FY '26 budget,” Alquist said. She told senators the agency had identified $61,500,000 in solutions for FY26 by combining base reductions, forecast upgrades and one‑time transfers.

The nut graf: the proposal would substitute the roughly $20,250,000 JTOC transfer — a longstanding statutory transfer that has historically funded State Police highway patrol costs — as an ongoing revenue source for the transportation fund in FY26, while also relying on several one‑time items to smooth the budget in the near term.

Key numbers and near‑term impacts

Alquist identified three one‑time items that…