PLAN CRITICS: ROAD PROJECT HAS POTHOLES

Missouri's revamped highway plan will put urban projects in the driver's seat at the expense of rural areas, a Missouri Farm Bureau official said Wednesday.

Estil Fretwell, director of public affairs for the Farm Bureau, said the $4.2 billion five-year plan is "tragic news" for rural Missouri.

But Jackson Mayor Paul Sander said state road and bridge projects may fare better under a five-year plan.

"A five-year plan makes more sense to me than a 15-year plan," he said.

But Sander said he wants the state to funnel more money to road and bridge projects in Cape Girardeau County, including the City of Jackson.

As the fastest growing county in the region, the area deserves a bigger share of state highway dollars, Sander said.

The Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission scrapped the 15-year highway plan on Tuesday, six years after lawmakers approved a phased-in, 6-cent increase in the fuel tax to fund the road and bridge projects.

Transportation Department officials said the funding was flawed and its timetable unachievable.

Six years into the plan, the state has built or contracted for just 21 percent of the total projects while the price tag for remaining road and bridge work has escalated to $19 billion.

But Fretwell, a vocal critic of efforts to discredit the 15-year plan, accused the Carnahan administration of seeking to funnel more state highway dollars to St. Louis and Kansas City at the expense of rural areas.

"The whole controversy is less about the issue of money and more about the issue of where the money is going to be spent," he said.

Fretwell served on Carnahan's Total Transportation Commission last year and strongly objected to what he saw as the advisory group's efforts to funnel more money to urban mass transit projects.

Fretwell questioned whether the highway commission has the authority to scrap the 15-year plan when it was promised as part of the Legislature's decision to hike the fuel tax.

"It was approved by the Legislature and promised to the public. We really question if this is MoDOT's plan to scrap," said Fretwell.

When the 15-year plan was adopted in 1992, about 55 percent of the state highway money was being spent on projects in rural areas, Fretwell said.

The highway commission voted Tuesday to set up an advisory committee to study the distribution of highway dollars to urban and rural areas.

"In my mind, there is no clearer picture of what drove their decision to scrap the 15-year plan," Fretwell said.

Cape Girardeau Mayor Al Spradling III said the five-year plan of projects isn't set in stone so there isn't any certainty that projects on the list today won't be moved down to accommodate other projects from year to year.

Spradling said a federal lawsuit by environmental groups could push the state to funnel much of the highway money to mass transit projects in St. Louis and Kansas City.

"I can see this five-year plan being an illusion," said Spradling. "We are going to dump all this money into rapid transit."

Environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency Monday in Washington. At issue is the air quality of metropolitan St. Louis, which environmentalists said hasn't met the standards of the federal Clean Air Act.

If the environmental groups succeed with their suit, they could block about $140 million in federal highway funding for the St. Louis area and restrict the growth of factories or other businesses found to pollute the air.

"Basically, it would stop industry coming to Missouri and it would stop highway projects," Spradling said.

If the state commits its highway money to mass transit projects in the urban areas, Southeast Missouri and the rest of the state's rural areas will suffer, Spradling said.

"Rural Missouri will once again be wagging the hind end of the metropolitan areas, which has been our life history,' said Spradling.