Editorial

Highway plan will need public support

Missouri Department of Transportation director Henry Hungerbeeler continues to say MoDOT needs $1 billion annually in more revenue.

Few lawmakers believe the number is one that can realistically gain required public approval.

The facts are tough. Raise the fuel tax by a penny and you produce about $28 million annually. The real money is in a sales tax. By increasing the sales tax a penny you produce about $620 million a year.

House Transportation Committee chairman Don Koller of Summersville, Mo., says he will introduce a bill with this one-cent sales-tax increase as the centerpiece of a plan to produce $700 million in new revenue.

Even this would be a huge amount for Missouri voters to swallow in the required public vote. Sen. Wayne Goode of Normandy, Mo., who backs more funding and some higher taxes, pointed to the current recession as reason to doubt that the public would endorse it.

Goode urged Hungerbeeler to get behind a plan that would have some reasonable chance of success instead of blindly repeating the pipe dream of $1 billion in higher funding.

Good advice, that.

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