Editorial

MORE HIGHWAY FUNDING MUST BE SOLD TO VOTERS

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Wayne Muri is Missouri's chief of highways and transportation and vigorously makes the point that he is an engineer, not a politician. We both believe and appreciate this admission. Still, despite his candor and single-minded pursuit of better roads for Missouri, his warnings that the state is lagging dangerously behind in highway funding could fall on deaf ears from a public not anxious to add to its tax obligation. His sales pitch is compelling but endangered, possibly facing obliteration in the flood of other revenue requests at the state level.

Muri brought his tough medicine to Cape Girardeau last week and the picture he painted of Missouri highway needs - and the state's ability to pay for them - was not one of optimism.

On a positive note, Muri said that the money raised by Proposition A (1987's four-cent gas tax increase) was going toward projects as promised. That revenue has made an impact. Along with that, the highway department claims a greater than ever efficiency in maintaining its current system of roads. (Some citizen desires, obviously, go unmet for want of funds; a road striping request from an Oran man last week met with a response that inadequate funds stand in the way of the worthwhile undertaking.)

The bad news is that traffic is increasing in Missouri, economic pressures are growing to increase the weight limits on trucks and the Proposition A money is already spoken for. Studies this engineer believes say that Missouri will have at least $5.5 billion in unmet highway needs over the ten years. A one-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase would bring in about $24 million in extra money a year; thus, it would take a 20-cent a gallon gas tax to do the trick. He need not be a politician - only a realist and Missouri taxpayer - to know that won't fly.

A combination of a more modest state gas tax increase and some degree of federal funding, available through a highway bill to be drafted in Congress this year, might provide the proper mathematics. Still, Missouri would have to be in a position to have adequate money available to pay matching amounts for federal assistance or risk seeing those dollars go to other states with a greater ability to pay.

Compounding Muri's problem in selling his plan are the 1990 five-cent federal gas tax increase, which goes for deficit reduction and not road needs, and the fact that other statewide interests are lobbying for tax increases of their own. Education groups, from grade schools up through universities, will be competing for taxpayer attention when seeking more revenues.

If there is an inside track to the hearts of voters, who must approve any tax hikes, Muri may be on it. As taxes go, Proposition A was well accepted; the added payout by citizens went to highly visible projects. Highways are also more easily linked to economic development than are schools. That doesn't mean, however, that highway proponents will breeze through a tax issue. Uncertain economic times don't often produce generous taxpayers.

If Wayne Muri is not a politician, he must at least now be a salesman. The coming months will show how well taxpayers accept his pitch.