The Director of the Wyoming Department of Transportation is hopeful that a bipartisan attempt in the US Senate to pass a transportation bill will be successful.
Congress has not been able to agree on similar legislation in recent years, but Thursday a Senate committee approved a measure that ensures Wyoming’s share of the distribution will pay for repairs to hundreds of miles of highways across the state. Without a highway bill, Wyoming Department of Transportation Director John Cox says things get put off.
"It has a negative effect on the states because it doesn’t allow us to plan long-term, we don’t have a predictable funding stream, so we are all obviously fans of a bill being approved and enacted that is multi-year," Cox says.
US Senator John Barrasso says the funding formula is important because it provides enough money to maintain highways in a rural state like Wyoming. Another Senate committee is looking into how to pay for the bill. A recent report said the highway trust could go broke by August.