Sen. Cloud seeks clearer aviation-fuel estimates; SB436 reported as amended

Senator Cloud on May 5 told the House Ways and Means Committee that Senate Bill 436 would remove statutory constraints that keep the Aviation Trust Fund’s aviation-fuel estimates from reflecting current collections and other data sources.

Cloud said the Aviation Trust Fund, a dedicated stream within the state transportation fund administered through DOTD’s Office of Multimodal Commerce, is critical because it provides the state match needed to draw down federal airport infrastructure dollars at a 90-to-10 rate. "Without it, Louisiana airports risk losing major federal funding," Cloud said. He said the fund has been "historically set at $29,800,000" and that appropriators have backfilled the fund with roughly $10 million to $12 million a year from the state general fund when collections have not matched needs.

Committee staff presented a three-amendment package that Mr. Murray said would let the Office of Multimodal Commerce use federal and other public data sources to estimate aviation-fuel volumes, require the Department of Revenue to provide an annual report of aviation fuel sales-tax collections to DOTD, and make a technical fix. "Amendment number 1 authorizes the Office of Multimodal Commerce to utilize data from certain federal agencies and other public sources," Murray said.

After brief questions about an existing requirement for airports to publicly indicate certain information, and with no objection from the panel, the chair moved and the committee adopted the amendment set and agreed to report SB436 as amended. The chair read several witness cards filed in support of the measure.

The committee reported SB436 as amended; no roll-call vote tally was recorded in the transcript. The bill will proceed to the next stage of the legislative process with the adopted technical and data-reporting changes.