FORMER OFFICIALS SEE PLENTY OF ROAD FUNDS

Missouri Department of Transportation officials continue to insist that the state's 15-year highway plan is underfunded despite claims by many others, including two former highway officials, that it is healthy financially.

The department, it appears, has been listening for too long to the gloom-and-doom assessment of the plan coming out of the state's Total Transportation Commission, a group appointed by the governor to study the state's highway needs and to find other ways to spend highway money. The TTC repeatedly has turned deaf ears to those who don't believe the plan is in jeopardy.

Wayne Muri, former department chief engineer -- the top official in the highway agency, and Jim Toft, a former assistant chief engineer, say there will be plenty of money to fund the projects in the plan. Toft calculates as much as $8.4 billion for projects in the plan will be available. Yet the Total Transportation Commission estimated a $14 billion shortfall, and highway department deputy chief engineer J.T. Yarnell estimates the shortfall at a wide-ranging $2 billion to $13 billion over the life of the plan.

Muri says Missouri is on a path to receive an estimated $8.4 billion more in state and federal gas-tax money over the life of the plan than was originally anticipated. The state's gas-tax revenue has grown at about 5 percent a year, and if revenue continues to grow at 4 percent, the tax should generate about $19 billion over the life of the plan, Muri said. That would be about $3 billion more than projected. The state could end up with $5.4 more in federal gas-tax money than the state projected for the plan when it was established in 1992.

Muri, who headed the department when the plan was implemented, insists that the shortfall calculations are wrong because they underestimate projected revenue and overestimate the cost of highway projects to be funded through the plan.

The state raised the 11-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax by 6 cents to fund the plan, and Missouri will come out better than expected in the new federal highway bill. That will make even more money available than originally projected. Construction costs have remained fairly constant in recent years, and should that trend continue, costs of the projects should not increase significantly through the light of the plan.

One wonders if all the pessimistic calculations on the plan's underfunding that are coming out of Jefferson City isn't a ploy to prepare Missourians for another proposal to increase the fuel tax. If that is the case, it will be a hard sell, because all signs point to healthy highway funding for Missouri in the years ahead. It is time for someone in state government to set up and take notice of that fact.