BONDS MAY BE THE ANSWER TO HIGHWAY FUNDING

The muddle over how to pay for highway maintenance and construction in Missouri is showing the first signs of clearing up since the ill-fated 15-year plan bit the dust. The common thread that is starting to appeal to many is the notion of using bonds to raise a lot of money -- and a lot of money is what it will take.

Of course, the state continues to rake in revenue from the 6-sent gasoline tax that was supposed to pay for projects in the Missouri Department of Transportation's 15-year plan. MoDOT has conceded that it misjudged how much all those projects would cost, which is certainly a lot more than the extra fuel tax is likely to generate.

Last year, U.S. Rep. Jim Talent proposed issuing a billion-dollar bond issue each year for the next decade to pay completing the 15-year road program rather than continuing to throw millions of dollars at stopgap repairs and upkeep. He suggested his plan would not require a tax increase. The silence that greeted his proposal was deafening.

The lack of reaction was interesting, because no one said Talent's idea was unsound. Pressed to comment, a few Democrats pooh-poohed the idea. After all, Talent hopes to be the Republican nominee for governor in this November's election. But even those who took mild exception to the concept didn't offer either good reasons or an alternative.

Until this week. Now Democrats in the Legislature are talking about a bond issue. Their idea is much more limited than Talent's. It would be a one-shot $2 billion bond issue that also wouldn't require any tax increase. These Democratic proponents admit $2 billion won't go very far. For the most part, $2 billion would allow MoDOT to do a decent job of maintaining existing roads and bridges, many of which are in desperate need of repair.

Like most bond issues, the idea is to get the money up front and pay it back over a period of time rather than a pay-as-you go program. This is much like consumers who want a big-ticket item such as a home remodeling project. Some home owners do what they can as they can afford it buy furniture, upgrade wiring, replace window treatments as they can afford it. Others borrow the money to do the entire job all at once and then pay back the loan over a period of time while they enjoy the renovations.

Now that both sides are at least talking about bonds, this avenue of funding major -- and critical -- highway projects deserves to be explored further. Missourians can either keep patching highways and bridges while building new roads when the money comes along, or it can commit to a well-thought-out plan and get the money to go full bore through bonds.