KINDER'S COMMENTARY: CARNAHAN PLACES HIGHWAY BET: WELCOME TO BLAME GAME 2000

How about Gov. Mel Carnahan's timing? One week after an election deciding control of the General Assembly, so nearly evenly divided between majority Democrats and minority Republicans, a Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission appointed entirely by Carnahan announces the scrapping of the 15-year road plan adopted back in 1992. Welcome to the opening act in what Carnahan seems determined to set up as Blame Game 2000. That would be the race for seat in the U.S. Senate currently held by John Ashcroft.

Ashcroft was in his last year in the governor's mansion in 1992 when he joined with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to enact the three-step (two-cent, two-cent, two-cent) phased-in fuel tax increase for transportation. Close Ashcroft associate Woody Cozad, the current GOP state chairman, was then a highway commissioner, as was Democratic appointee John L. Oliver of Cape Girardeau.

Blame games go both ways. Ominously, for Carnahan and Co., are these words from a former Democratic lawmaker now at the Missouri Farm Bureau. "This administration," said former House member Estill Fretwell, "seems determined to make lemons out of lemonade. This is tragic news for Missouri taxpayers and motorists." Ouch.

None of this is to slander current commissioners. Chairman Lee Kling, a St. Louis banker and big-time Democratic fund raiser of national repute, is a friend, as is respected Republican member Barry Orscheln of the Moberly company that bears his family name. But then, my side didn't start this blame game.

Fretwell is a trusted and respected figure in the Capitol. He is that rare commodity: An honest man who deals in facts and follows them wherever they lead. Fretwell was most inconvenient for those bent on higher taxes. It is he who deserves credit for uncovering facts challenging the assumptions of those who brought us to this unhappy result on the 15-year plan and for making darn well sure those facts couldn't be ignored.

Inconvenient Fact #1: According to the MODoT audit, 25 percent of the projects done over the last five years or so weren't in the 15-year plan they now say can't be done. Query: Did this crew begin scrapping the 15-year plan years ago?

Back in 1994, Carnahan began putting together an elaborate scheme to push for another big transportation tax increase. Key parts of the scheme, opposed by this writer: Issuing bonds for roads, when Missouri had been a pay-as-you-go state for 70 years. A plan to pack the highway commission, increasing its numbers, with FDR's 1937 attempted packing of the Supreme Court as the model. Lining up the big road contractors, with huge donations to Carnahan and Democratic campaign committees, unmatched by similar gifts to the GOP. Then House Speaker Bob Griffin, now doing four years in the federal pen, was greasing the skids for favored bond lawyers. Soon, waiting in the wings, were ex-Carnahan chiefs of staff Marc Farinella and Roy Temple, late of the campaign consulting trade, who recognize a big payday when it stares them in the face.

"Beware what you wish for," goes the old adage, "'cause you just might get it." Governor Carnahan wants scrutiny of the 15-year plan?

Fine. Then before this is over, one way or another, let's turn over every rock in the garden. Every last, dirty one of them.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.