RURAL MISSOURIANS SHOULD BE SPEAKING UP

Few voices have been raised in protest of the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission's decision to scrap the state's 15-year highway plan in favor of a five-year plan that puts more money into urban projects in St. Louis and Kansas City.

The commission's action of a month ago came after a long debate on the virtues of the 15-year plan, which was enacted seven years ago under governor John D. Ashcroft after the Legislature approved a phased-in, 6-cent increase in the fuel tax to help fund road and bridge improvements.

The 15-year plan was abandoned after a special committee appointed by Gov. Mel Carnahan studied road and bridge needs around the state and somehow concluded there wouldn't be enough money to carry out the plan. The highway Commission, also Carnahan appointees, agreed and tossed the plan despite arguments from former state highway officials and others that it was workable and would raise more than enough money to be carried out.

The result: The five-year plan calls for 50 percent of the funding to go to Kansas City and St. Louis, and rural areas will get 50 percent. Under the 15-year plan, the funding breakdown would have 59 percent rural and 41 percent urban.

Business leaders, organizations and lawmakers across rural Missouri should be screaming in protest over the commission's blatant disregard for rural Missouri's road and bridge needs in favor of the two metropolitan areas.

Only the Missouri Farm Bureau, which had been opposed from the beginning to the scrapping of the 15-year plan -- insisting it would have been adequately funded -- has spoken up. Its president, Charles Kruse, in describing the commission's reversal, didn't waste any words before 1,600 bureau members last week. "The evidence," he said, "is compelling to support the conclusion the 15-year highway and bridge plan did not fail due to lack of funding but was scrapped due to blatant political maneuvering over where highway funds would be spent."

Again, rural Missouri will take a licking while politics-as-usual is played out in Jefferson City by an administration that wants to keep big-city interests on its side by utterly disregarding a highway plan that would have brought many improvements to outstate.

Isn't it time for more rural Missourians to speak up?