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Gov. Mead will consider additional funding for WYDOT

The Wyoming Department of Transportation may be one of the state agencies that benefits from the better than expected earnings Wyoming brought in this fiscal year. The state’s general fund is about $333 million over what the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group, or CREG, predicted.

 
 
Governor Matt Mead says he’s gone through WYDOT’s budget once, but may review it again.

 
 
“What I’m going to do is after we go through every agency, I’m going to meet again with a couple of agencies, the Department of Transportation being one of them. After I get a general feel of the money available and the exception requests to go back and if there’s money available I may make a request to the legislature to put some money on top of the fuel tax for road construction,” Mead says.
 
 
This summer, a new fuel tax kicked in at the pump. The 10-cent tax increase was passed during the last legislative session but it won't generate enough money to make up the shortfall in WYDOT’s estimated construction and maintenance needs. 

Irina Zhorov is a reporter for Wyoming Public Radio. She earned her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from the University of Wyoming. In between, she worked as a photographer and writer for Philadelphia-area and national publications. Her professional interests revolve around environmental and energy reporting and she's reported on mining issues from Wyoming, Mexico, and Bolivia. She's been supported by the Dick and Lynn Cheney Grant for International Study, the Eleanor K. Kambouris Grant, and the Social Justice Research Center Research Grant for her work on Bolivian mining and Uzbek alpinism. Her work has appeared on Voice of America, National Native News, and in Indian Country Today, among other publications.
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