MoDOT- Urban-rural split unintended

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- As Missouri Department of Transportation officials tell the story, they never intended to distribute road construction funds on a geographic basis.

But after the department's ambitious 15-year plan was finalized in 1992, someone did the math and discovered that 60 percent of MoDOT's spending on road-and-bridge projects would be done in rural Missouri and the remainder in the St. Louis and Kansas City regions.

"That's how it was in 1992," said MoDOT director Henry Hungerbeeler. "We had a list of projects and someone later figured a 60-40 rural-urban split." The list was made up of projects that people at the time thought were important.

Estil Fretwell of the Missouri Farm Bureau, one group that worked for passage of the 1992 plan and its accompanying 6-cent fuel tax, agrees with that version of events.

"There was never any of this discussion on how much St. Louis, Kansas City and rural areas were getting," Fretwell said. "It was not until after 1992 that St. Louis, primarily, complained that they were not getting enough out of the 15-year plan, that their percentage was not high enough. Because of the actions of St. Louis and the comments they made, the whole urban-rural issue was given birth."

Going 50-50

Bowing in part to urban pressure and the realization that the 15-year plan was based on faulty financial projections, the Missouri State Highways and Transportation Commission, MoDOT's governing body, dropped the plan in 1998 and endorsed a 50-50 funding distribution between urban and rural areas.

The decision brought howls of protest from those who felt the commission was abandoning a system based on need in favor of an arbitrary distribution implemented for political purposes.

With the commission looking for a new policy that ignores geography, St. Louis interests are complaining again, claiming the region would be denied its fair share.

The St. Louis Regional Commerce and Growth Association has been highly vocal in trying to influence the area's share of the transportation funding, which at present is roughly one-third of the statewide total. At a recent highways commission meeting, RCGA president and chief executive officer Richard Fleming said reducing the area's share "violates all logic and understanding" as it would hamper St. Louis' economic future and, by extension, that of the state.

MoDOT chief engineer Kevin Keith said the department has been developing new funding distribution proposals for several years.

"For one reason or another, that is one of those areas where we are going to have a very hard time finding consensus without additional money," Keith said. "With new funds, it's a lot easier to change the allocation because no one would be a loser."

After voters rejected a half-billion-dollar transportation tax package in August, the commission was presented with three options for a needs-based distribution formula. It tabled those options at its October meeting in St. Louis County after they were met with fierce opposition from local interests.

MoDOT later developed a fourth option aimed at compromise. The commission intends to choose its preferred option Jan. 10.

In keeping with its goal of ending region-based distribution, MoDOT hasn't calculated what the urban-rural split would be under any of the options. However, any needs-based approach is bound to favor rural areas because that is where most of the state's worst roads and bridges are.

Compromise option

The compromise option before the commission differs from the others in that it sets aside funds for uncompleted projects that were to be funded with a 4-cent fuel tax approved by voters in 1987 with the passage of Proposition A. The bulk of those unfinished efforts are in the St. Louis area.

However, the primary reason they haven't been completed is because of decisions by local leaders to temporarily bypass those 1987 projects in favor of other efforts.

Transportation decisions in the St. Louis and Kansas City areas are made by metropolitan planning organizations based on available funds provided by MoDOT. During the 1990s, the St. Louis MPO decided some projects were of higher priority than those the department committed to in Proposition A, according to MoDOT officials.

That fact is one reason the Farm Bureau has a problem with the compromise distribution option.

"If a decision by any area of the state not to fund Proposition A projects allows them to leverage more funds, that is unfair to the rest of the state," Fretwell said.

Various St. Louis RCGA officials on Friday referred questions concerning the latest proposed funding option to Fleming, who could not be reached for comment.

If the compromise option is adopted on the basis of finishing Proposition A projects, Fretwell said, the St. Louis MPO could again shift its resources to other efforts.

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