HIGHWAY SPENDING PLAN SHOULD FOCUS ON ROADS

Five years after Missourians voted to phase in a 6-cent gas tax increase over five years to carry out a highway improvement program, they find themselves saddled with the added tax and drastically insufficient revenue to fund the program.

The state's Total Transportation Commission was told this month that the state is about $14 billion short of being able to carry out all of the work that was promised in exchange for the gas tax increase. That is a sobering amount considering $14 billion almost equals Missouri's entire operating budget for one year.

The shortfall happened because state projections of federal road revenue were $1.25 billion more then actual receipts, because almost $11.5 billion should have been added for inflation over the life of the plan and inflation wasn't factored in, and because the plan didn't have the flexibility of $343 million in cost adjustments for such things as improved paving materials.

Even before the shortfall was officially announced to the commission, some on the 35-member commission already were talking about higher taxes to fund the plan. That included the chairman of the commission, S. Lee Kling of St. Louis, who also serves on the Missouri Transportation Commission, which oversees all road work in Missouri.

The Total Transportation Commission, which carries no weight but will only make a recommendation to the governor who appointed it, will consider such options as proposing increases in fuel or sales taxes, selling bonds, boosting vehicle registration fees, creating toll roads or setting up a state transportation bank for lending to projects included in the plan.

No one speaks of cutting projects from the plan, which includes everything from upgrading regional airports to expanding mass transit in St. Louis and Kansas City and other non-highway projects. That should be a top consideration of the commission and the governor in any kind of funding proposal Gov. Mel Carnahan may decide upon.

Elimination of more mass-transit funding is a good place to start. Why can't urban areas fund their own transportation projects without subsidies from every Missouri taxpayer? Cape Girardeans, after all, voted themselves a transportation sales tax to take care of needs in the city. St. Louis and Kansas City can do the same.

Any kind of proposal to raise taxes to carry out the plan in its entirety rather than cut it back will be a hard sell to Missourians, who already are paying for broken promises.