LETTERS: SUPPORT NEEDED FOR HIGHWAY PLAN

To the editor:

I was on the Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission from February 1992 through December 1997. In that period of time and since, you have repeatedly mischaracterized the status of the Missouri Highway and Transportation 15-year plan.

In late 1994, Chief Engineer Joe Mickes and I first reported to the public that a shortfall was apparent in a meeting at Jefferson City. You mischarcterized then that the department and the commission had "dumped" the 15-year plan. Let me assure you that neither the highway commission nor the Missouri Department of Transportation has ever dumped the 15-year plan. At that time it appeared that the program was not going to be completed as originally scheduled. It would either take more money to complete it in the same period of time, or the program was going to have to be stretched out. Never was it "dumped." The project list stayed intact.

Since that time, you have continued at irregular intervals to imply to your readers that this plan has been either in "disarray" or that it is a "debacle" or that is has "collapsed." Wrong. It is not a debacle. It has not collapsed. And it is not in disarray.

The concern, if your were keeping your eye on the goal, is how soon the 15-year plan can be completed and how much money it will take to do it. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the highway department was calculating the expected cost over the projected 15-year period, certain assumptions had to be made. These assumptions were based on expected inflation, anticipated construction costs, expected project scope increases and also certain changes in materials, design, computer technology and so on. None of us is able to accurately, without flaw and with absolute certainty and clairvoyance predict the future perfectly, including MoDOT, the highway commission or the Southeast Missourian.

In accordance with those best predictions made by MoDOT and the commission at the time, the 15-year plan was crafted, and project lists were compiled. It was a very aggressive program intended to substantially improve the state, enhancing economic development by making it much easier to transport goods and people throughout Missouri as well as improving our connections with other states. The bridge under construction at Cape Girardeau is an example. The plan was and is still the framework of the future for Missouri's highway and bridge construction.

Projects listed originally are either complete, under construction, being designed or are still to be built. Right-of-way is being purchased. Hearings are being held. There will be certain modifications dictated by the factors listed previously. Most of these will deal with highway or bridge configuration changes and will not deal with inclusion or deletion of projects, except where it is obvious with the passage of time that a given project is no longer necessary, or that another need has become overwhelmingly necessary. An example of an improvement in your area not on the 15-year plan is Route J to the Procter & Gamble Paper Products Co. expansion. Only under these circumstances would modifications be made to the project list. The remaining issue, then, is money: cash flow.

So how much money will be available to MoDOT over the next 10 to 12 years? Will Congress actually obligate all the funds promised in the most recent highway bill? What will happen to inflation? What federal laws might be enacted or repealed over the next 10 to 12 years that could impact the program? Maybe the voters of Missouri will increase their own taxes to speed up the 15-year plan's projects. Does the Southeast Missourian have the answers to all of these questions with absolute clairvoyance?

The bottom line of all this is that the Southeast Missourian has continued to misrepresent the status of 15-year plan. Progress is not as fast as we would like, granted. But the plan is still intact. The commission and the department are still proceeding with it. We never stopped. The list of projects is still good. It would be helpful if the Southeast Missourian would quit carping at the department and the commission and instead do everything in its power to work with the department and commission to improve the infrastructure of the state for economic development reasons, for tourism, for the general better well being for Missourians and for the creation of jobs.

The 15-year plan stays alive. The question is how much federal and state money will flow to it and how fast will it flow. Hopefully, enough to complete it before 2010.

Congress and the president made a good step in enacting this recent highway legislation. Now the money needs to move from authorization to appropriation to obligation. Missourians also need to chip in a little more money, if the plan is to proceed quicker.

C'mon, Southeast Missourian. Get off the negative. Get behind the 15-year plan. Promote it. Get your facts straight. Let's all get the 15-year plan completed ASAP.

TOM BOLAND, Former chairman

Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission

Hannibal

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Southeast Missouri has been a consistent supporter of the 15-year plan for highways. When it was first announced that there wouldn't be enough funding generated for the plan, the Southeast Missourian was among the first newspapers in the state to call for sticking to the plan and completing it. The Southeast Missourian also was the first newspaper to report that the information generated by the highway department regarding a shortfall in funding for the 15-year plan might be overstated. The Southeast Missourian was the first -- and sometimes the only -- newspaper to report serious flaws in the funding estimates of the Total Transportation Commission, which was appointed by the governor after widespread reporting about the "dumping" of the 15-year plan. In its reporting, the Southeast Missourian has used words like "debacle," "dumped" and "disarray" only because those were the terms being used by officials in the highway department, in the Legislature, within the administration of Gov. Mel Carnahan and by critics of the 15-year plan who favored a broader transportation program that would use highway funding for other transportation projects such as railroads, urban transit, airports and bike routes. When it was later shown that these negative assessments were themselves based on faulty research and politically motivated rhetoric, the Southeast Missourian used these same terms to describe the process that has created so much confusion about the highway program and it financial future. As it turns out, much of the misinformation appears to have been generated in Jefferson City in a failed attempt to stir up Missourians so they would support the governor's Total Transportation Commission. This commission sought to take away the planning and goal-setting functions of the highway commission, using the so-called failure of the 15-year plan as an excuse. In addition, the Total Transportation Commission proposed projects costing millions of dollars more than the 15-year plan -- and with no funding mechanism, except a recommendation for an increase in the state sales tax. We agree with Mr. Boland that Missourians should be working together to set the facts straight and to get the projects in the 15-year plan completed. Thanks to a strong economy, an overflowing state treasury and one of the most generous federal highway funding bills in history, most of the projects are likely to move ahead -- without any need for a tax increase.