HIGHWAY INFO CONTINUES TO SET OFF TIME BOMBS

It was something of a shock to read Jack Stapleton's column on the Opinion page last Sunday and the accompanying story on Page 1. We learned that much of the 6-cent increase in the state fuel tax approved by the Missouri Legislature in 1992 doesn't go to the highway department. One state senator who participated in the debate over that increase estimates only 21 percent of the fuel-tax increase goes to highways. The rest is spent on other state agencies.

Emory Melton of Cassville, a state senator at the time, tried to warn legislators that allowing fuel taxes to be used for state programs other than transportation would be a mistake. Others also knew the additional fuel tax was destined for nonhighway programs. The Oil Jobbers of Missouri Association lobbied to prevent the siphoning of fuel-tax revenue for other uses.

But even though there were justified and grave concerns about taking tax revenue from highway users and using it to pay other state expense, little was ever done or said to change the situation.

What is strangest of all is the fact that no one has talked about the diverted fuel-tax revenue, even though the topic would have been crucial to several major discussions recently regarding highway plans.

For example, when the so-called 15-year highway plan collapsed because state officials said there wasn't enough revenue to pay for it, no one said anything about the fuel-tax increase and where the money was going.

And when the Total Transportation Commission, appointed by the governor, met a couple of years ago to devise a highway strategy, it wound up recommending a new, one-cent general state sales tax to fund the costly projects. But it never mentioned the diversion of fuel-tax revenue away from highways.

And as the Legislature has wrestled this year with the idea of a $2 billion highway bond issue to kick-start some much needed projects, those discussions have been accompanied by hints that a new source of revenue that might be needed to pay off the bonds. There even have been suggestions of another increase in the state fuel tax.

If you put all this together, you can see how bizarre state funding for highways has become in just a few years. Motorists pay fuel taxes, but the revenue from a sizable chunk of those taxes don't go to the highways used by motorists.

Would another increase in the fuel tax be needed if all the revenue from the current tax went to transportation? Would Missouri residents have to face an increase in the general sales tax if fuel-tax money went to highways? Would the 15-year plan have been abandoned if all the fuel-tax money had been available to pay for those projects?

It's hard to say what the answers to any of those questions are. Getting solid figures on what the state fuel tax produces each year in revenue or how much of it goes to nonhighway expenses is hard to come by. The Southeast Missourian has made a formal request for this information. Elected officials have turned to legislative research staff members who have sent us on to Missouri Department of Transportation officials who have promised, as a result of our latest request, to have some figures by today. We'll see what those figures are. We've asked before, and the information we've sought in the past has always been kept from us. We've been given information we didn't ask for instead.

Missourians deserve better than this. There is absolutely no confidence in MoDOT. Legislators are losing any credibility they might have when it comes to transportation issues. The governor's office has pitched its tent in la-la land through the whole process. It's time for answers to the questions we're asking -- not the questions state officials want to answer.