Municipal engineers in New York are frustrated over Gov. Hochul's proposed budget lacking funds for local roads and bridges, despite rising construction costs. Superintendents argue for increased funding for maintenance and projects, warning of road deterioration and future repair costs.
NYSDOT photo
Asphalt placement for pressure relief joint at northbound Van Wyck Expressway Viaduct.
Town and county highway superintendents across New York State have been expressing their frustration that no new funding for local highways and bridges was included in Gov. Kathy Hochul's proposed 2025-2026 budget.
As a result, they argue that the lack of increased monies comes despite rising construction and supply costs, making it difficult to maintain and improve local infrastructure, Buffalo's WGRZ-TV in Buffalo reported Feb. 6, 2025.
The New York State Association of Town Superintendents of Highways (NYSAOTSOH) recently told lawmakers that inflation in recent years has dramatically increased the costs of asphalt and construction work in general.
"We are just extremely disappointed for the second year in a row," James Dussing said when asked by WKBW-TV, also located in Buffalo, about Hochul's proposals. Dussing is the highway superintendent for the town of Clarence and first vice president of NYSAOTSOH.
Richard Crawford, the highway superintendent for the town of Grand Island, expressed similar concerns.
"It's frustrating," he said. "Certainly, the governor knows what cold weather does to the roads."
Dussing highlighted that while the governor's budget includes a significant increase for roads maintained by the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), there is no increase in funding for the state's Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS), which towns rely on at the local level.
"Municipalities, towns, villages and counties own and maintain 87 percent of the total road mileage in New York State," he said, and noted an imbalance in the funding's distribution.
Crawford warned that without more money, his department might only complete 20 to 40 percent of scheduled road projects this year, leading to faster road deterioration and higher future repair costs.
Associations Outline Their Wants to Legislators
At a Feb. 6, 2025, hearing on the New York State Joint Legislative 2025-2026 budget, Matt Mustico, who serves as NYSAOTSOH's president and is the highway superintendent for the town of Elmira, was joined by his counterparts at the N.Y.S. County Highway Superintendents Association and other municipal road professionals in discussing Hochul's budget proposal and outlining what they see are the conditions and needs of the state's local transportation system.
In a news release, Mustico said that in her submitted budget, Hochul kept N.Y.'s local highway and bridge funding programs flat while adding $800 million for NYSDOT's CORE Road and Bridge Program. She has pointed out the need to restore the purchasing power of the NYSDOT capital plan to address rising construction costs and ensure that projects remain on track, additional funding that Mustico's group acknowledges is necessary to slow asset deterioration.
"We agree state roads need investment, but the governor should have stepped up and also provided increased CHIPS funding for New York's massive locally owned road and bridge system," he said. "Record high inflation rates for highway construction materials have severely increased costs and as a result, local governments are seeing a significant reduction in the real dollar value of local highway maintenance programs.
He also noted the critical need for "an additional $250 million [to] be added to the 2025-26 budget for local highway programs like CHIPS. This will allow us to recoup some of the real funding value lost to inflation since the five-year program was initially adopted in 2022. We are also requesting five of the state's local road assistance programs be combined into two to reduce the administrative burden on recordkeeping at NYSDOT and our municipalities."
The county and town highway superintendents also would like to see the CHIPS competitive bid threshold increase from $350,000 to $1 million, if not eliminated altogether. He believes that by doing so, municipalities in New York will have more flexibility to pursue the most cost-effective option on behalf of taxpayers while still being eligible for state reimbursement, regardless of project size.
"Considering the significant increases in construction inflation over the past three years, the current $350,000 threshold is functionally obsolete," he said.
A continued level of funding, totaling $200 million per year, also is on the superintendents' wish list for the state's local BRIDGE-NY program. The signature initiative directs federal and state funding to local bridge and culvert projects throughout the state. In all four rounds of the program thus far, Mustico told state legislators, the number and value of project applications far exceeded the funding available for each region of New York.
In 2024, for instance, BRIDGE-NY made $483 million available for various projects, $126 million of which was dedicated to work on culverts. Applications from across the state were submitted for 202 bridges and 274 culverts and of those, a total of only 122 bridges and 94 culverts were funded.
Besides being responsible for the safe operation of most public roadways in New York State, Mustico reminded legislators that the professional groups' collective membership and union workforce also maintains "half of its bridges and plowing not only our huge system but over a quarter of the [NYSDOT] roads.
"This massive local system is owned by 1,600 local governments and consists of over 97,000 centerline miles of roadways and 8,600 highway bridges," he said. "Every time there is a weather event – major snow accumulation, freezing temperatures, or severe flooding – the hardworking people on our local crews ensure New York's drivers get to and from work, homes, schools, hospitals and other destinations safely."
New York's Superintendents Have Plenty of Concerns
Local governments, excluding New York City, spent $2 billion on road maintenance and improvement in the 2020 fiscal year, according to the state's comptroller, Mustico said.
Earlier, a 2013 study of local highway and bridge needs published by NYSAOTSOH found that municipalities would need an additional $32 billion over 15 years to restore locally owned roads through repaving and improvements. A decade later, Mustico said that need was updated to just over $2 billion per year as a result of unprecedented inflation of construction materials costs.
"We also remain concerned with the many policy goals of [New York State's] Climate Action Council Final Scoping Plan, which over the next several years will impact local governments and require significant changes to our highway garages, our equipment and vehicles and even the materials we buy to maintain our critical infrastructure systems," he explained.
"New freshwater wetland permitting and expanded state jurisdiction, EV sales mandates for medium and heavy-duty trucks and the necessary charging infrastructure, road salt shortages, price hikes and more severe weather events will likely result in project delays and added costs. These mandates will require planning and significant additional financial investments well beyond what our traditional needs have been. And the true cost will vary depending on where in the state the municipalities are located.
Mustico also told the legislators, "As public officials ourselves, we understand the difficulty in trying to meet all of our constituent's needs with limited resources. We must work together so that all state and local critical infrastructure needs are addressed. Our economy, workers and the traveling public are depending on us."
WKBW-TV reported that Mustico and his industry colleagues plan to travel to Albany in March to advocate for increased funding, emphasizing the need for additional resources to maintain service levels for constituents and taxpayers.
In response to questions from the news desk at WKBW-TV, a spokesperson for Hochul sent a statement reading, "Throughout her tenure, Governor Hochul has made transformative investments in infrastructure projects across New York. In the coming months, the Governor looks forward to working with the legislature to pass much-needed infrastructure funding so the state can continue the work necessary to keep New Yorkers safe on our roads and bridges."
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