ROAD PLAN FITS WITH CAMPAIGN FOR TAX BOOST

Missouri's new five-year spending plan for transportation shifts more money from highway expansion to road and bridge repairs, which means less new construction through June 2006.

The $6.2 billion plan sets priorities on more than a thousand specific road and bridge projects started from now through the end of the plan. Among those projects is construction of Jackson's East Main Street interchange at Interstate 55 at a cost of $4.75 million, a project Jackson has wanted for many years.

By including the Jackson project, the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission showed it realized the importance of the interchange, which not only will help get traffic in and out of Jackson faster, reducing much of that along U.S. 61, but will offer additional opportunities for Jackson and Cape Girardeau's growth in that largely undeveloped area.

The first two years of the five-year highway plan concentrates on building new roads and bridges and widening existing highways, while the last three years emphasizes repair of roads and bridges. The plan relies on about $1.1 billion in bonds, some of which already have been sold and the rest of which are scheduled for sale in the next two years. But the repayment of those debts will reduce spending during the latter three years. Bond debt repayment is expected to cost $270 million during fiscal years 2002 through 2005.

The commission's Statewide Transportation Improvement Program includes, for the first time, information on aviation, railroads, waterways and public transit funding. Of the $6.2 billion in expected spending over five years, nearly $4.8 billion would go to state roads and bridges, $796 million to other types of transportation and $609 million to special city or county road and bridge projects.

In adopting the plan, the commission said shifting more money toward repairs was a new approach to its five-year plans based on "extensive public input and engineering data."

While the plan may feature a new approach, there was a familiar tone in the words of Missouri Department of Transportation director Henry Hungerbeeler, who said the plan addresses "many of our highest priority needs, but limited funds prevent us from doing more."

Limited funding is nothing new to the highway department, which always has had to work with the money available and has done a good job of bringing Missouri out of the mud. What Missouri doesn't need is the department using the limited-funding issue in its five-year plan as a springboard to a huge tax increase. There's little doubt that if Missourians went along with a tax increase, there still wouldn't be enough money to do everything on everyone's wish list.