(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa D-O-T is putting the finishing touches on a change in the way road use tax funds are distributed to counties. The D-O-T’s Stuart Anderson says the change was necessitated by the legislature. “The legislature eliminated the Secondary Road Fund Distribution Committee from the Iowa code and empowered the Transportation Commission to determine the formulas for secondary road fund and Farm to Market Road Fund distribution amongst the counties,” Anderson says. Anderson says the Transportation Commission will still get county input.

“We feel like having the Secondary Road Fund Distribution Committee continue as an ad-hoc committee to the commission is vitally important to have that county engineer and county supervisor representation provide that important feedback,” he says. The former committee had members who were county supervisors and county engineers, and they made the rules for distributing the secondary road fund and the farm-to-market road funds in the state’s 99 counties. He says keeping the committee in a new capacity gives them a link to the counties when making decisions.

“And really retains the process that they put in place many years ago for how future changes to the methodology became can be considered, and then also defines what the existing methodology is as it moving forward as it exists today, for how those two funds are distributed,” Anderson says.

The Transportation Commission approved the rules for distributing the county funds at its meeting Tuesday.