1980 Iowa highway transfer of jurisdiction
Open-knowledge reference entry
Beginning in 1979 and lasting through the early 1980s, a series of agreements between the Iowa Department of Transportation and individual county boards of supervisors led to a mass transfer of jurisdiction of several state highways in Iowa. County boards of supervisors were asked to convene functional classification boards in order to review the classification all of the highway miles within each respective county. Control of roads that were classified as trunk roads or trunk collector roads were transferred to the counties, while roads classified as arteries or arterial collectors were transferred to the state department of transportation. The vast majority of transfers took place in 1980.
Background
The 67th Iowa General Assembly passed a bill in 1978 that changed how the state department of transportation (DOT) classified highways and how they were funded throughout the state. The bill enacted an existing framework for county boards of supervisors to create reclassification boards that could appeal to a state board if certain changes to the road network were not satisfactory. The state's road use tax fund, which is the mechanism for allocating funds to the different levels of government for different levels of road, had both its inputs and outputs modified. The general fuel tax was raised from 7 to 8+1⁄2 cents per US gallon (1.8 to 2.2 ¢/L) for 1978 (equivalent to 35 to 42 cents per US gallon (9.2 to 11.1 ¢/L) in 2025), and to 10 ¢/US gal (2.6 ¢/L) for 1979 (equivalent to 44 ¢/US gal (12 ¢/L) in 2025).
The state was attempting to offset the effects the 1970s energy crisis and the 1973–75 recession which strained state budgets by reducing income due to reduced demand for gasoline and increasing inflation. The idea was for the DOT to save operational money by offloading minor highways to the respective counties.
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