HIGHWAY OFFICIALS ADVANCE A PLAN BOTH NEEDED & CREDIBLE

The Missouri General Assembly returned to Jefferson City yesterday for a regular session that will continue well into the month of May. Was there ever a session that did not begin with legislators bemoaning the "tight state budget situation" that made budgetary decisions difficult?

Associated Industries of Missouri (AIM) is a state government watchdog group that tries to put out accurate information on issues of importance to business, and hence, jobs, in our state. AIM has an affiliate called the Taxpayers Research Institute of Missouri (TRIM). Last year, TRIM issued the following statement about our state budgetary situation. It's worth reading, and reflecting on.

"Ever since the state's Budget Stabilization Fund "rainy day" act was passed in 1984, TRIM has been urging the legislature to provide financing for the fund. In periods when state revenues were growing by 6 to 11 percent a year, and particularly when the state received a substantial windfall from the federal Tax Reform Act of 1986, a little set aside each year would have given the state a buffer to the trauma ahead in 1991-92.

"The fund was created by the legislature with only a handful of dissenting votes to set aside moneys in good years to meet the need in bad years.

"The good years came, but no money was set aside.

"The bad years have come and programs are being cut and employees are being laid off. There is no `rainy day' reserve.

"Legislators sometimes forget that the laws of the economic cycle have not been repealed. Let's hope that when times get better, the legislature will remember the lesson. There will be future recessions."

From a recent newsletter of the Taxpayers Research Institute of Missouri (TRIM).

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Readers of this column are aware that this is not ordinarily the place to look for enthusiasm for more and higher taxes. An important exception is the proposed 6-cent fuel tax increase endorsed last week by the Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission.

Let's review some pluses:

When compared with other states, Missouri has a low fuel tax. At 11 cents, Missouri has one of America's lowest fuel tax rates. That low tax must fund:

One of the largest road networks of any state: Missouri has the seventh largest highway network in America.

It'll be phased in over several years, at two cents per year. We'll be able to plan on the money being there, but the cost-increase impact in any one year will be minimal.

The fuel tax is a user fee. This tax is paid by people who are themselves on the highways, or who are sending their products out upon our roads. Fairness is manifest, and universally understood.

The increased state funding is needed to match federal funding that will roughly double under the new federal highway bill.

We'll see an immediate payoff. When we passed Proposition A five years ago, the Commission promised us completed projects, such as a widened Highway 61 between Cape and Jackson. That's done, and the other projects promised under that proposal are either also completed, or are in some advanced stage of planning or execution.

Similar improvements are planned throughout our region this time. (See related news story in today's edition.)

As a nation, we need to get serious about rebuilding and imrpoving our infrastructure our roads, bridges, ports and the like. These are intelligent investments in our future.

This is a competitiveness issue, with international implications, one that will have lots more long-term impact than a dozen trips to the Orient like the current one that made our President sick. I've seen one study that said the building of the interstate highway system during the '50s and '60s had as much as anything to do with the rapid increases in productivity our economy experienced in those years. We can we must do it again.