(TRENTON) – Assembly Budget Chairman Lou Greenwald sent a letter to the state transportation commissioner Wednesday requesting a prompt detailing of how the department plans to pay for this season’s snow removal.
The letter comes after a story in The Star-Ledger indicated that snow removal costs for this fiscal year have reached $44.4 million, more than double the amount originally appropriated.
The article also indicated that the DOT will wait until the end of the snow season to come to the Legislature to request the additional appropriations authority and in the interim will transfer funds from other accounts to cover costs.
“While understanding the importance of the snow removal operation and the need to respond to every snow event, we are now fully engaged in the budget process and need to be informed promptly of significant expenditures in excess of the budgeted amounts,” Greenwald wrote. “We need to review the most up-to-date data available while recognizing that there is more than a month left in snow season and final revisions may need to be submitted later.”
Greenwald asked for the following information:
· From which DOT accounts and at what level of funding will the state be transferring funds to pay for snow removal?
· What is the impact of these transfers on the Dest accounts?
· Will any of these transfers require Joint Budget Oversight Committee approval?
· How much does the state expect to be reimbursed from the federal government for our request for federal disaster reimbursement to cover damages and costs related to the severe snow storms that impacted 13 New Jersey counties on December 26-27, 2010?
· How much of this funding would go to the state and how much to the municipalities and counties?
