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Show State Relieves Counties of All U.S. Road Costs After a series of cenferences with Governor George H. Dern, the state road commission Thursday Thurs-day announced adoption of ths policy of relieving the counties of the necessity of sharing in the costs of survey, betterment and construction on the federal hlgh-wya hlgh-wya system in the state. Maintenance on tills system, as of all roads on the state road system, has already been at the expense of the state for several years. Hereafter, so long as thi policy adopted Thursday standi, the counties will have no roacr expense on the 1750 miles of tho federal highway system except that of providing rights of way, a cost which the law requires tha counties to bear and from other funds than the state tax levy, which is fixed by the cunty commissioners. com-missioners. The new policy means in effect the charging against the gasoline sales tax receipts of about $60 0o 00 0 a year for the state's portion por-tion of the cost of federal highway high-way construction. Heretofore tho counties have furnished from $100,000 a year to more than $700,000 a year in state road taxes, tax-es, the vast bulk of which was used on the federal highway system. sys-tem. The state road commission members now believe that the receipts re-ceipts from the sales taxes wlU enable them to take on the added costs, provided there is no diversion diver-sion of those funds to other purposes pur-poses and provided also that there is no marked reduction In the receipts, re-ceipts, such as might occur if the use of taxable gasoline were to fall off sharply. The new policy is made retroactive retro-active sufficiently to cover all construction con-struction contracts signed this year, and will apply to all for which arrangements have already been made by the counties to supply sup-ply state road taxes in the levy of next fall, to meet the state's portion. |