TROY, N.Y. — State and local leaders gathered Monday morning in Troy to call for more Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS) funding.
The money, which covers everything not on the state highway system, is determined through the state budget.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican if you’re Democrat, our roads are one of the ways that our services provided by the government that enhances our lives,” said Assemblymember Scott Bendett (R,C-Sand Lake), who helped organize the event. “With the governor’s potential cuts to the CHIPS funding, this can cause a dramatic decrease in these services.”
The event was in tandem with a letter legislature members sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul on Feb. 14 calling for the restoration in the 2025 budget of $60 million in CHIPS capital funding that the Senate won and approved in the executive budget for 2024. They also are asking to increase base funding for the program by $200 million.
In the proposed budget for 2025, Gov. Hochul has listed $577.8 million for both the CHIPS and Marchiselli Program, a state aid matching program for state highway-funded projects. In 2024’s budget, the total for CHIPS alone was $598 million.
The loss of the $60 million will be devastating, argued the gathered leaders, among them Senator Jake Ashby (R,C-Castleton), Schodack Town Supervisor Chuck Peter and Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin. The CHIPS funding as it stands is barely enough, they said, with local governments struggling with issues like inflation and increased costs of everything from vehicles to concrete.
McLaughlin, who is currently planning on finishing paving all the county roads by the end of 2025, said infrastructure is the “absolute backbone of everything.”
Without the CHIPS funding — which McLaughlin remembered fighting for when he was in the state legislature — the money to maintain and fix the infrastructure would have to come out of property or sales tax, with the former being something McLaughlin has fought to keep down and the latter already high.
“Sometimes some of these roads are really expensive to get paved,” McLaughlin said. “We’re lucky that we had pretty substantial economic growth here in the county which allowed us to cut taxes and pave roads and buy new equipment. It allows us to do that, but, you know, the CHIPS money has always been important.
“How much money gets shipped downstate to the MTA?” he continued, echoing a common sentiment among the speakers. “We’re just asking for our piece of what is already taxpayer money. We’re just asking for our piece of that pie so we can provide good services to our citizens.”
The infrastructure and its quality directly impact businesses and people choosing where they move to, said Assemblymember Philip Palmesano (R,C,I–Corning), the Ranking Minority Member of the Energy Committee. In essence, he said, this proposed change will be a 10% cut on local roads.
In addition, the upkeep of these roads directly impacts the costs for motorists using them, he said, citing a TRIP (a national transportation research group) statistic that estimates drivers with deficient, unsafe or congested roads could pay up to $3,697 annually due to traffic congestion, accidents or higher operating costs.
“In some cases in upstate rural New York and rural communities, sometimes CHIPS is the only money they have to fix their local roads, bridges and culverts,” he said. “We understand the MTA is the lifeblood of the downstate transportation network, but CHIPS is the lifeblood of our upstate transportation.”
Some speakers also talked about the danger of leaving roads unfixed concerning emergency services needing to use them. Rensselaer County Sheriff Kyle Bourgeralt added to that saying those roads can be detrimental to public safety.
“Take for instance the Taborton Bridge,” he said, which reopened in Dec. 2023 after going down in flooding in July 2021. “That’s a roundabout way if we have to go to a house there, otherwise those minutes that it takes additionally to get there because the bridge is out. That’s life or death situations in some cases.”
And all emergency vehicles have to deal with upkeep and maintenance costs the same as motorists, he added.
Ashby called the planned cut a “failure of recognition” of both the work going into maintaining the roads, gesturing to the gathered workforce next to him, and of the disparity between the upstate and downstate funding. Population loss is the number one state problem, he said, and if Hochul is serious about combatting that problem, infrastructure needs to be a priority.
“You need to have infrastructure that is going to attract businesses and make them want to stay here,” Ashby said. “You want to have infrastructure that is going to keep families here and give them a reason to stay. This is what we are fighting.”
