SIX MONTHS AFTER TALENT PROPOSED ROAD BONDS, LEGISLATORS LOOK LIKELY TO APPROVE SUCH A PLAN

Last summer, GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Talent offered a plan for issuing bonds to finance Missouri's highway building program and begin rebuilding the credibility of the Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission, so tattered since its abandonment of the 15-year plan they committed to back in 1992.

For months after Talent's bold announcement, the reaction of MoDOT officials and most of the media and political establishment was: nothing. We have often decried this debate and discussion vacuum.

Now this has begun to change, and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Talent can take a bow.

The Democrat-controlled Missouri House has given first-round approval to a plan to issue $2 billion in transportation bonds to get a burst of up-front money to build Missouri highways. Another similar bonding bill has been introduced in the Senate with bipartisan backing.

An amendment added in the House by state Rep. Jewell Patek, R-Chillicothe, would speed up the burst of up-front money. Patek sponsored an emergency-clause amendment adopted by the House, the meaning of which is that $500 million would be available as soon as the governor signed the bill, presumably this summer. The House also approved another amendment, sponsored by state Rep. Ken Legan, R-Halfway, which limited the ways MoDOT could spend the money. Legan's amendment requires that the dollars be spent on road and bridge construction, preservation and maintenance and not for engineering or maintenance costs.

Six months or so after Jim Talent made his bold proposal, it looks like just about everyone is backing some form of bonding proposal to build highways.