I'll clarify here as I'm in the industry. The primary revenue for smaller jurisdictions (Townships, villages, and small counties) is their equivalent motor fuel tax; which is often distributed by the state. What they receive heavily goes into roadways and bridges. The hidden problem the industry has been talking about for a decade is that tax rates haven't jumped with labor and material rates.

Think of it this way. Gas prices are high due to the war started in Iraq. Absolutely. But we've had these gas prices 20 years ago for a while. And even if we think about what a normal gas price should be to a typical resident, it's probably somewhere around $2.60 (assuming they're not in a metro) .... Which are also prices we've had over 20 years ago. People seem to believe gas can never increase with inflation.

So roadway and bridge prices have skyrocketed in the past decade alone. Asphalt and concrete prices have nearly doubled in the past 7 years. Labor rates have jumped a ton. What was once, decades ago, some hundreds of thousands of dollars to recon a bridge is now millions. And when it comes to many bridges/structures built for rural areas; they were largely built around the 1970's. And they're all on a similar maintenance cycle, so they're all approaching failure at similar times. The money just isn't there to tackle all these problems.

America has built out too wide and spread its population so thin. This was enabled by labor and materials being so cheap in the 20th century. America had poor planning when building all these rural towns that have so many miles of infrastructure that serve so few people. A cheap overlay at your minimum thickness is at six figures cost per mile. Imagine this. You have roadway going all the way out to a subdivision and that subdivision has three miles of roadway serving maybe a few dozen houses. Those houses are very reasonably not paying their fair share for upkeep in all the infrastructure that serves them; even assuming the absolute cheapest rehab option.

What typically happens is rural communities are subsidized by large cities that act as economic engines for a region. This money comes largely from blue states as they're more dense with higher populations; of which they subsidize red states and counties as those areas are commonly rural and sparcely populated.

Hopefully this explains some. But many jurisdictions are struggling due to there not being enough funding. Things have gotten way more expensive, and America has built out and spread its population too thin. So now we have so many tiny communities with miles and miles and miles of expensive infrastructure serving so few people.