Fiscal year 2020 began on October 1, and the Federal Highway Administration was required to apportion $43.4 billion in highway contract authority to states via formula as the final installment of funding under the FAST Act of 2015.

That apportionment notice (N4510.837) was dated October 1 but made its way to states yesterday. Overall funding totals were the same as in the preliminary projections released July 1 (N4510.836) except that Texas had to receive a $208.4 million upwards adjustment to hit its 95 percent return of its latest Highway Trust Fund Highway Account tax payments, so the other 49 states and D.C. had to be reduced pro rata to make up that $208.4 million.

FHWA also sent states a second notice (N4510.838) that immediately took back $37.7 million of that apportioned money. While contract authority that is subject to annual obligation limitations (which is almost all of it) is statutorily exempt from budgetary sequestration procedures, an annual $639 million of National Highway Performance Program funding is exempt from obligation limitations. Being truly mandatory spending, that $639 million is subject to sequestration, and the annual non-defense, non-Medicare sequestration percentage for FY 2020 is 5.9 percent (as determined by the Office of Management and Budget in its March 2019 sequestration report), so each state’s share of the $639 million gets reduced by that percentage, totaling $37.701 million.

Following are two tables. The first is the total FY 2020 contract authority apportionments to each state (and D.C.), for each program, rounded to the million dollars – pre-sequestration. The second table shows the actual dollar amounts for each state of their share of the $639 million in exempt NHPP money and the amount that is being reduced by budget sequestration.