AUDITOR: ROAD PLAN POORLY MONITORED

The Missouri Department of Transportation has poorly monitored spending on road projects under the state's 15-year plan, state auditors said Friday.

Deputy State Auditor Chuck Pierce said MoDOT hasn't tracked the actual cost of road projects in the 15-year plan.

The department didn't have any summary information comparing estimated construction costs to actual costs.

"Without such information, it is very difficult for them to tell anybody where they stand as far as completing the 15-year plan," Pierce said.

MoDOT officials agreed that the department needs to improve its financial oversight.

David DeWitt, assistant to the department's chief engineer, said MoDOT intends to do a better job of tracking the plan.

Auditors found plenty of problems with how the department has managed the road plan that was implemented in 1992.

MoDOT couldn't readily provide auditors information on the number of projects that have been completed and what remains to be done, Pierce said in a telephone interview from his Jefferson City office Friday.

The department also couldn't provide reliable cost estimates for remaining projects, the office of State Auditor Margaret Kelly found in its review of the 15-year road improvement plan.

Although state law restricts the use of gas-tax money to projects in the 15-year plan, MoDOT has shifted "substantial construction funds" to projects that aren't listed on the 15-year plan, Pierce said.

Department records tracking the progress in implementing the road improvement plan are inaccurate or incomplete, the auditors found.

At one point, auditors found that as much as 25 percent of the road plan funds were diverted to projects outside the plan.

But MoDOT officials said many of those projects are part of the plan, even though department records didn't designate them that way.

Department officials also said that projects not included in the plan have been added to the construction schedule.

Some were added because of federal mandates in Kansas City and St. Louis. Others were added for other reasons, such as traffic safety, Transportation Department officials said.

Through the first six years of the plan, revenue has been running near the original projection. Auditors found state revenue for road projects increased, but federal funding decreased.

As a result, Missouri had a $57 million shortfall for road projects, or 1.7 percent less revenue than had been originally anticipated, Pierce said.

But from the beginning, the plan had financial potholes.

The plan, as designed, had a $1.5 billion revenue shortfall, Pierce said.

But DeWitt said that shortfall wasn't "widely understood" by the department at the time the plan was drafted.

The plan was to have cost an estimated $14 billion. But revenue was projected at $12.5 billion.

The six-cent, incremental gasoline tax increase that helped fund the projects is scheduled to expire on April 1, 2008. But the department's revenue estimates assumed the tax hike would remain in place through 2010, Pierce said.

In terms of revenue, the plan covered 19 years, he said.

Changes in federal funding could have a major impact on the state's ability to construct all the road improvements, auditors said.

MoDOT currently is operating under the assumption that it won't see an increase in federal funding for the next few years. But Pierce said it is uncertain if that will be the case.

The auditors' report comes at a time when the department is seeking to persuade lawmakers to raise more money to complete the 1992 plan and pay for other transportation projects.