The administration of President Donald J. Trump has informed the Connecticut Department of Transportation it would, “to the maximum extent permitted by law,” link federal transportation funding to policies on masks, vaccines, tolls and immigration enforcement. The U.S. Supreme Court has held the federal government can impose conditions on federal funding, but those conditions must be germane to the federal interest in the projects for which the money is used and cannot cross the line from enticement to coercion. Lamont said Thursday that DOT was one of at least three state agencies getting directives establishing new ill-defined conditions for federal funding that arrived after a chaotic 48 hours of vague and ultimately conflicting advise regarding a pause in a broad range of federal funding. Federal grants are one of the two chief ways Connecticut pays for this construction, the other being state borrowing – which is repaid using sales and fuel tax receipts in the budget’s Special Transportation Fund.
