MoDOT director visits Cape

On the same day a citizens advisory board report came out scolding the Missouri Department of Transportation, the department's director was in Cape Girardeau speaking to a civic group about MoDOT's direction, operations and funding.

Director Henry Hungerbeeler was the guest speaker for the Cape Girardeau Evening Optimists meeting Thursday evening at Port Cape restaurant.

The report comes from a panel appointed by the state Highways and Transportation Commission after the overwhelming voter defeat last year of a roughly $500 million transportation tax plan.

The report said MoDOT needs to change its management, seek new funding and publicly apologize for dropping a 1992 highway plan as its financial blueprint.

Many state officials interpreted the election as a vote of no confidence in the transportation agency.

Hungerbeeler defended the department, saying the state highway network does not receive a sufficient budget.

"Just to catch up on what people want and have asked for in the past, we would need an additional billion dollars a year for the next 20 years," he told the audience of about 35 members. "But even if our budget was a billion dollars more a year, it would still be below average for DOTs."

He addressed the report's suggestion that the state adopt a toll system.

"I personally don't like toll roads, myself," he said. "But we have enormous needs."

Because voters rejected more road taxes, a toll system may be the only option left to solve MoDOT's budget crunch, he said. But for this to occur, the state's constitution would have to be amended to allow it.

'Don't know what we'll do'

"We tried taxes and that didn't work," he said. "So, we could try tolls and see if that works. If it doesn't, I don't know what we'll do."

A significant cause of MoDOT's credibility problems is the commission's 1998 decision to quit using a 15-year road plan -- just six years after it was adopted along with a tax increase -- because it was underfunded by about $1 billion annually, the panel said.

Hungerbeeler called the 6-cent road tax plan "a committment that we could not keep."

"And when we could not keep it, all hell broke loose," he said.

The report also recommended, as a way to get more money for highways, ending the diversion of highway dollars to other state agencies.

Hungerbeeler appeared agreeable to this.

"We're spending money in a lot of places I would prefer not to spend it," he said.

Panel chairman Jack Magruder of Kirksville said Missouri's competing urban, rural and regional interests must come together to support new transportation funding sources.

"Until we get to the point at which we're willing to provide more resources, we're not going to see tremendous improvement," Magruder said.

"The item associated with that is to increase the credibility, increase the integrity -- at least the perceived integrity -- of the whole operation."

Staff writer Mike Wells contributed to this report.