GAW URGES STATE KEEP PROMISES

Any new state transportation plan should focus on finishing the road projects promised the public under the Department of Transportation's 15-year plan, Missouri House Speaker Steve Gaw said Friday.

"I think you have to use that as the centerpiece for anything new that is proposed," the Moberly Democrat said during a visit to the Southeast Missourian offices in Cape Girardeau.

Earlier in the day, he spoke to about 100 people at the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce's First Friday Coffee at the Show Me Center.

Gaw said the promises of the 1992 highway plan were calculated on faulty financial assumptions. Still, he said, the state should make every effort to do the construction projects.

"I believe very strongly you can't abandon those promises to do the 15-year projects," he said.

Gaw said he doesn't know what recommendations the Total Transportation Commission will make to Gov. Mel Carnahan this summer to improve transportation in the state. But Gaw predicted lawmakers won't raise the fuel tax on their own as they did in 1992, when they enacted a 6-cent hike that was phased in over several years.

Any tax hike would have to be decided by voters, he said.

Lawmakers aren't prepared to raise taxes, he said. "The public is going to have to want it."

It isn't just sentiment that would put the fate of any tax plan in the hands of voters, Gaw said.

Missouri voters approved a Carnahan-supported measure last year that requires voter approval of any tax hike that would generate at least $50 million or an amount equal to 1 percent of total state revenue.

That restriction, along with provisions of the state's Hancock Amendment, would force the state to go to voters to pass any transportation funding measure, Gaw said.

Gaw said gas-tax money should be spent exclusively on highway projects. Other funding sources would have to be found for any improvements to Missouri's ports, airports and mass transit systems, he said.

He said toll roads could provide one answer to Missouri's road needs. But Gaw said toll roads can't be used everywhere.

"You don't want to let your local traffic be hampered by toll roads," Gaw told the Southeast Missourian.

At the current funding level, all the gas-tax money could be going to maintenance of roads and bridges by 2005, leaving no money for construction, he said.

Gaw said Missouri would be in better position to make road improvements if Congress would return more federal highway money to the state.

Missourians currently pay more in federal gas taxes than the state receives back in Highway Trust Fund money. "We are not treated fairly in Washington," said Gaw.

If Congress improves the ratio for so-called donor states, Missouri would have more money to spend on transportation projects, he said.

Since becoming speaker, Gaw has visited various parts of the state. He made a stop in Cape Girardeau earlier this year.

Gaw said he isn't gearing up for a run for state office, but rather is working to better communicate the actions of the state House to the general public.

He said more information about legislation and state government is being made available to the public via the Internet.

Gaw said that makes government more accessible to the public.

At the First Friday Coffee, Gaw praised the Legislature's approval of a 3-cent cut in the sales tax on groceries. Carnahan signed the measure Thursday.

He said the tax cut would reduce state revenues and bring the state in compliance with the revenue lid imposed by the Hancock Amendment.

The tax cut is a better solution than tax refunds, he said. "It makes more sense to me that we allow Missouri taxpayers to keep their money in the first place."

Gaw said the state must look to classrooms instead of cell blocks in its efforts to address the problems of crime.

Lawmakers approved funding for two additional prisons in the recently completed legislative session.

But Gaw said prisons aren't the ultimate answer. He said many criminals are illiterate, high-school dropouts.

Investing in education could change people's lives and lead them away from a path of crime, he said.

"If there is a chance for a child, it's when they are 5, when they are 6, when they are 7; it's not when they are 21," he said.