State spent $3.5 million on cars, trucks, vans after governor's order

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- State agencies spent about $3.5 million on new cars, trucks and vans in the first three months after Gov. Matt Blunt ordered a halt to the purchase of all non-emergency state vehicles.

Most of the vehicles were bought by the Missouri Department of Transportation, which said Tuesday that Blunt's order was not legally binding on the agency but that it nonetheless was voluntarily reducing its vehicle purchases.

Records provided to The Associated Press in response to a Sunshine Law request show that executive departments bought 175 vehicles from Jan. 11, when Blunt issued his order, through April 15.

That included 98 vehicles bought by the transportation department at cost of $2.1 million; 30 by the Missouri State Highway Patrol at a cost of $593,340; and 26 by the Department of Conservation at a cost of $542,568.

The transportation department vehicles include 48 Chevrolet Silverado pick-up trucks, which department spokesman Jeff Briggs said are primarily used by construction inspectors who haul equipment to off-road sites. Also bought were numerous heavy duty Ford pick-up trucks, at least two concrete mixers and several passenger cars.

Most of the passenger cars were bought in the days immediately after Blunt's order, when department officials were still unaware of it, Briggs said.

Since then, the department has quit buying new passenger cars, which primarily are used by administrators and field staff, Briggs said. But the agency will continue to buy trucks.

"We're voluntarily complying with the executive order, but we've also explained to them that we need to continue buying our heavy duty vehicles to keep our construction program going," Briggs said.

The Conservation Department considered the governor's order "advisory in nature," said Denise Garnier, a lawyer and assistant to department director. Although many of its new vehicles are for agents that enforce hunting and fishing laws, some were for non-emergency purposes, she said.

Garnier said the department typically would have bought more than 26 vehicles in the three-month span, but curtailed its purchases partly because of slumping sales tax revenues and partly by reassigning vehicles after employees left the department.

Blunt acknowledges his order "did not have legal force" over the transportation and conservation departments, said spokesman Spence Jackson. But "we believe they would have been well-served by adopting the policies of agencies under the governor's control," he said.

The vehicle spending by the transportation department only bolsters Blunt's belief that the department director should be accountable to the governor, rather than an independent commission, Jackson said. A measure authorizing that chain-of-command change failed to pass in the legislative session that ended last Friday.

"For an agency that has struggled for years with public credibility, we think they should study very carefully any kind of purchase like this to make sure it is in the taxpayers' best interest," Jackson said.

Blunt's order left it to the Office of Administration commissioner to approve any exceptions to the ban on new non-emergency vehicles.

Administration Commissioner Michael Keathley said the 30 highway patrol cars assigned to troopers were considered emergency vehicles, as were 10 police-equipped Chevrolet Impalas assigned to park rangers in the Department of Natural Resources.

Keathley said he approved the purchase of three Agriculture Department vehicles to replace high-mileage vehicles used by pesticide and grain inspectors. Two of those were paid for with a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, he said.

Eight cars bought by the Department of Health and Senior Services from the state's surplus property lot were actually put into use before the executive order, but were included on the list because the bill was paid after that date, Keathley said.