Pat Connick, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, convened a public hearing in Livingston Parish on DOTD's proposed FY26'27 Highway Priority Program and invited DOTD Secretary Glenn Liddett to present the plan.

"This is a $1,200,000,000 investment in infrastructure and transportation infrastructure across our state," Liddett said, stressing an emphasis on streamlining project delivery and ending decade-long delays. He told the committee the package includes $913,000,000 earmarked for projects to be let for construction in FY26'27 and $220,000,000 for preconstruction work to ready projects for later letting.

Eric Dauphine, DOTD assistant secretary for project delivery, described organizational reforms meant to tighten project management and transparency. He said recent cash from the Louisiana Transportation Infrastructure Fund (LTIF) helped advance roughly 100 projects and, by his accounting, supported more than $530,000,000 in roadway preservation work. "We have 62 additional projects delivered on time in 2024 and another 37 projects that are on or ahead of schedule this year," Dauphine said.

Liddett and Dauphine broke the program into familiar categories: preservation (pavement overlays, bridge work), capacity (widening, interchanges), operations and motorist services (signal and ITS investments), safety (roundabouts, guardrail), and a miscellaneous bucket that includes TAP and safe routes programs. Liddett told the committee DOTD manages about 17,000 miles of roadway and roughly 13,000 bridges and that preservation accounts for the single largest share (about $553,000,000 in the presentation).

The presentation included a new delivery tool set officials say will improve schedule reliability: a five-year fiscally constrained highway priority plan, a new project reporting system and clearer task assignments through a project-delivery office. Officials said federal funding buckets and the need to match federal and state sources make categorization necessary when packaging projects for FHWA funding.

The meeting materials show District 62 has 52 projects slated to be let for construction, and Liddett said the department will continue public meetings in each district before submitting a final plan to the legislature next year.

The committee heard questions about timelines, right-of-way and the phase status of specific projects; Liddett and district staff pledged follow-up. The committee will reconvene in Baton Rouge the following day as part of the DOTD roadshow.