JUST CHARGE IT TO THE STATE

Sixty years ago, the public transportation policy in our state could be summed up in six words: Get Missouri Out of the Mud. Translated, this meant Missouri should build as many hard-surfaced highways as possible to replace the mud roads that isolated communities and even entire counties and regions during several months in a year.

Thirty years ago, the state's transportation policy was to participate in and complete the interstate highway system that had been devised by the federal government and which constituted the largest public works project ever undertaken since the beginning of civilization.

Today, there are voices throughout Missouri calling for a new, and much different, transportation policy, one that will take note of urban rapid transit plans and certain outstate transportation requirements, while at the same time continuing the process of improving the state's essential highway system. But these demands for change are less a formulation of policy than proposals to solve certain transportation problems that have only recently emerged in certain areas of Missouri.

Unfortunately, these proposals to solve contingency problems are being passed off as new policy, when in reality they constitute only the method of solving local problems through geographical inclusion and political compromise. Thus, the docket of this year's General Assembly is filled with bills that would alter and impact on present transportation policies, numerous regions of the state is, in effect, a perfect example of contingency legislation that may provide a solution to a single problem but which, in effect, provides no comprehensive benefit to the state as a whole.

Missourians have seen countless other examples of this kind of contingency solving in past sessions. One of the worst examples was the effort in 1989 to provide state funding for a proposed football stadium in St. Louis, enacted under the guise of providing additional tourism and recreational facilities in the state. The sponsors of this legislation were not interested in developing tourism in Missouri; they were concerned with providing enough money, from state sources, to complete the financing of an expensive civic project in St. Louis. To get the votes needed, those seeking to solve a dilemma in downtown St. Louis devised an ersatz "tourism policy" wherein the state would participate in the financing of new convention facilities in Kansas City and help build an athletic stadium for a non-existent minor league baseball team in Springfield.

Urban legislators included enough projects to attract sufficient support to win passage, and then urban civic leaders, having bought their influence with earlier campaign contributions, prevailed upon the then governor to sign the legislation. Voila! A new tourism policy that calls for public investment in local commercial ventures.

This latest attempt to solve a local problem -- the inability of a new federally funded rapid transit system to pay even its bare, basic operating costs -- is being promoted in Jefferson City as a new transportation policy. This policy also calls for another rapid transit system in Kansas City, providing city hall can get federal funding for capital investment, and additional bus services in areas such as Springfield, Columbia and St. Joseph. There is also mention of the need for a rapid transit system between Springfield and Branson, although no one in state government has studied this remote possibility for more than 15 minutes.

But, hey, suddenly, the state needs more local transportation and so the plan includes any population area that can come up with a heavier-than-average traffic count. But the real motive, and indeed the only motive, is to meet the present operating deficit of a rapid transit system that, at this moment, has been fully financed by federal dollars, and has involved only minimal local-user investment. Even the current charges for riding this system are token, based on nothing more than a price the sponsors believe will attract all the riders possible.

Missourians are being asked to finance a transportation system that was conceived, planned and promoted by a local transit authority, with no input by the state or its various agencies. The project was never presented to the General Assembly, which is only now being included because it becomes essential to solving the biggest headache local officials now face: how to make this cost-us-nothing system operate.

This is not public policy. This is solicitation of public funds. It is the domed football stadium all over again.