MODOT SHOULD KEEP ITS INDEPENDENCE

A bill proposing a series of reforms for the Missouri Highway and Transportation Department will soon be taken up in the Senate for final passage. Senate Bill 883 is sponsored by Sen. Danny Staples, D-Eminence, who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee. It seeks to enforce accountability in the department through a number of changes.

SB 883 would have the highway and transportation commission appoint a chief executive officer to oversee the financial side of the department, while the chief engineer -- currently the agency's top official -- would remain in charge of construction and other operations. The appointment, subject to Senate confirmation, would not have to be filled by a professional engineer, a historic departure from agency management practice.

The department would also be required to report annually to the legislature, the governor and the public. The reports would have to include information such as the sources and spending of all funds, criteria used to select construction projects and a five-year spending plan.

Staples says he has great confidence in the capabilities of our engineers to design and build highways and bridges but questions whether they can best manage finances. The bill has bipartisan support.

Something like this package was probably inevitable following the collapse of the department's 15-year plan, sold to voters in 1992. Over the last two years, officials have had to admit that the plan was underfunded and couldn't be achieved on anything like its planned schedule. Gov. Mel Carnahan responded with a Total Transportation Commission he appointed as a pretext for a large tax increase. That idea was the biggest non-starter of 1997.

For many decades, Missouri has prospered under a highway and transportation commission that enjoyed constitutional independence. Let's hope that lawmakers get this one right and don't, in their rush to achieve so-called accountability, fatally compromise that independence.