Although Sherburne County fared relatively well from this year’s Legislative session, the state will suffer from a lack of transportation funding for road improvements.

That was the message from former MICA Executive Director Keith Carlson to the Sherburne County Board of Commissioners Tuesday.

Each year, MICA - the Minnesota Inter-Counties Association, compiles a report based on the decisions state lawmakers made, or didn’t make. The report offers conclusions about how those decisions will affect counties and their citizens.

“This was a pretty good years for counties, especially Sherburne County,” said Carlson. “You’re looking at a $426,000 increase in county program aid for 2020.”

He said there will be   reduced cost-shares to the county for those receiving chemical dependency treatment and the counties dodged a new payroll tax when a bill to start a state-paid sick leave program didn’t pass.

Carlson said the counties avoided any potential cost shifts in the area of medical assistance or MNCare  because the 2% provider tax that was scheduled to sunset in December was repealed.

He said commercial and industrial properties can look forward to a 1.6% decrease in property taxes due to a state reduction in the state property tax levy.

But he said the bad news was no new transportation funding.

“There was no increase in the gas tax. No increase in registration fees. No sales tax increase in the Metro area for transit and unfortunately, no new funding in Greater Minnesota for transit.

MICA Transportation representative Steve Novak said lawmakers couldn’t agree on transportation funding, so the status quo is pretty much what Minnesota will see.

“In the end, transportation was allocated $93.5 million for general fund appropriations,” he said. “Unfortunately, none of it went to building roads and bridges.”

 The bulk of the money went to resolving the ongoing issue with the state’s vehicle licensing and registration system known as MNLARS.

Novak said Gov. Tim Walz agreed with the Republican Senate to try get a get a private contractor to resolve the issue.

“So the biggest portion of the transportation money, $55 million, will go towards that contract,” he said, “along with $13 million for reimbursement to various deputy registrars who suffered loses because of the inability of the system to respond.”

The rest of the money went to a dedicated revenue flow for Metro mobility in the Twin Cities.

Novak said the failure of the legislature to increase transportation funding is the result of partisanship. He said the new governor and Democratic House passed a proposal that included increases in the gas tax, license tab fees and sales tax.

“If that had become law, it would have been one of the most significant  increases in traditional funding for roads and bridges in the history of the state,” he said. “However, that proposal was countered by the Republican Senate, who based their proposal on the work they had done 2017 when they controlled the legislature.”

Their proposal relies on auto parts sales tax, which will provide about $114 million in additional revenue in the coming year, said Novak.

“Leased vehicle sales tax revenue will provide some modest increases and a new small bridge fund will have an increase of $13 million,” he said.

Under the Corridors of Commerce Program within the trunk highway category, there will be a $25 million per year increase over two years.

“That’s it for transportation funding,” said Novak. “As was mentioned by Keith, all of the major categories of historical funding gas tax, sales tax, etc., did not prevail.”