AUDIT: $2.5 BILLION SHORTFALL IN HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT PROGRAM

JEFFERSON CITY -- A $2.5 billion shortfall in the highway department's 15-year road and bridge program has one area legislator infuriated.

Two years ago, highway officials used the road and bridge projects as enticement for legislators to enact a 6-cent gas tax increase without a public vote.

Highway officials gave "us their word that they would do these things in 15 years," Rep. Larry Thomason, D-Kennett, said.

"Gov. Ashcroft wanted us to do this without a vote of the people and we took them at their word."

The audit, released Monday by the oversight division of the Joint Committee on Legislative Research, found highway officials promised projects that would cost $12.711 billion, but the projected revenues through the year 2007 is $10.257 billion.

"Obviously," Thomason said, "all of these promised projects are not going to happen."

Highway officials don't dispute the audit's findings and agree with a recommendation to consider whether funding is adequate to complete the projections in the 15-year plan.

Highway officials said they are reviewing the 15-year plan and will do so annually through 2007.

Highway department Chief Engineer Joe Mickes, in a news release Monday, said the department will keep an eye on several trends in monitoring the roads plan.

Some 657 highway and bridge projects have been started at $1.62 billion in the past three years instead of the initial estimate of 684 projects at $1.57 billion.

Mickes said the department has delivered what it said it would in the first three years of the plan.

"We're within 4 percent of estimated costs on projects overall, and we're on schedule with improvements for motorists," he said.

And, Mickes said, the department intends to complete the remaining roads and bridges in the plan, but it might require an adjustment in funding.

But the audit said some projects were changed without legislative approval. Highway department officials said they are constitutionally authorized to make such changes.

Thomason criticized the highway department's handling of the plan, charging that it was trying to alter the intent of state law while disregarding the promised it made in 1992.

After the legislature passed the tax increase in exchange for the roads projects, "we find out the people are not going to get what they were promised," Thomason said.

It is "that kind of arrogant attitude that causes all the friction between the highway commission and the General Assembly," he added.

The promise of specific projects led him and many other legislators to back the tax increase without the public vote.

The legislature told the department it wanted a separate accounting of the 6-cent tax increase -- something the department didn't do.

"I think their failure to do so is intentional," Thomason said. "If they wanted accountability, they would have put the money in a segregated account."

Legislators have the option in HB-1247 to put the 6-cent gas tax to a vote of the people in 1996 if they aren't satisfied with how the funds are being spent.

The audit will allow legislators to make those decisions.