Testimony of Nancy Smith, CEO of GrowSmart Maine in support of LD 1292 An Act To Codify The Maine Turnpike Authority’s Contributions To The Highway Fund With Regard To The Sensible Transportation Policy Act
April 8, 2025
Senator Nangle, Representative Crafts, and Honorable Members of the Joint Standing Committee on Transportation.
My name is Nancy Smith, I live in Ellsworth, and I am the CEO of GrowSmart Maine. We are a statewide non-partisan non-profit organization helping communities navigate change in alignment with smart growth.
We partner with Build Maine to co-host a transparent crowd-sourcing of policy proposals that has drawn together over a hundred people from across Maine and beyond. Policy Action 2025 follows Policy Action 2023 from the 131st Legislature. Each session we strive, “to address barriers to and create incentives for equitable, sustainable growth and development that strengthens downtowns and villages of all sizes while pulling development pressure away from productive and open natural areas.”
GrowSmart advocates for transportation policy that ties in land use, housing, environmental and economic goals to contribute to a sense of community vitality. This bill presents key strategies to achieve this goal and is a part of Policy Action 2025.
LD 1292 would go a long way towards strengthening the Sensible Transportation Policy Act and the Highway Fund, thus rebalancing transportation policy priorities in the state and offering increased funding for the Department of Transportation to pursue and implement projects that address transportation needs outside of building new highways.
The Sensible Transportation Policy Act requires that transportation planning decisions, capital investment decisions and project decisions (1.) minimize harmful effects of transportation, (2.) be based on an evaluation of the full range of reasonable alternatives, (3.) give preference to transportation system management, demand management, and improvements to the existing system and other modes before increasing highway capacity, and (4.) involve local governmental bodies and the public. This is a good piece of transportation policy that needs to be reasserted.
As it stands today, the Maine Turnpike Authority (MTA) generates an operating surplus of over $40 million a year from toll revenue while the state has a $300+ million deficit in the highway fund. Clarifying and codifying the obligations that MTA has to the highway fund is the first step in closing that gap. Currently there is no process to determine whether the surplus of the Authority is being put to its best-possible use of the State and its transportation needs.
Communities that are in the midst of navigating growth must consider the current and future needs of their residents – from balancing building housing to protecting open space and farmland. Transportation infrastructure is a critical component that shapes development patterns. Smart growth principles advocate for development where it makes sense, funnelling pressure away from open spaces and towards growth areas and preexisting Main Streets. What’s clear is that building new highways leads to one thing: sprawl.