ARE WE ABOUT TO MAKE A $2 MILLION BLUNDER

The Missouri Legislature is days from adjournment, and a $2 billion bond issue for highways is likely to be approved. With such an enormous sum of money, it would be reasonable to think all the pertinent questions have been answered.

It will come as no surprise to MoDOT watchers that most of these questions remain unanswered. Quite frankly, the state is about to embark on an expensive road plan that has even fewer details than the ill-fated 15-Year Plan, which went down in flames a couple of years ago. That plan, we are told, was based on faulty financial forecasting that missed the mark by billions of dollars.

Among the questions that ought to be asked:

- How will the $2 billion bond issue be repaid? It isn't just a question of the $2 billion. What about the interest? How much interest? For how long?

Keep in mind that motorists who purchase gasoline in Missouri continue to pay an extra 6-cent fuel tax for each gallon of fuel to pay for the abandoned 15-Year Plan. The tax was added in 2-cent increments in 1992, 1994 and 1996. The fuel tax is slated to drop from 17 cents back to 11 cents in eight years. Where will the money come from to pay off the bonds, much less fund ongoing highway projects?

- How much money does the fuel tax generate? If figures from MoDOT are any indication, this is a multimillion-dollar guessing game. In recent months, the Southeast Missourian has repeatedly requested figures from MoDOT, and no two sets of figures agree. Some annual variations are as much as $7 million in just one category of highway funding.

The latest figures show the 17-cent fuel tax generated $640.2 million in fiscal year 1999. But MoDOT didn't get all that money. It got 75 percent of the first 11 cents of fuel tax and 70 percent of the other 6 cents. The rest went to cities and counties.

And of the portion of fuel tax that went to MoDOT, not all of it stayed there. Which leads to another questions:

- How much of all fuel-tax income does MoDOT pass along to other state agencies?

Again, there seem to be any number of professional guessers in MoDOT's Jefferson City headquarters. The simple answer: "We don't know." But when pressed, figures are provided which don't match up with the last set of figures.

MoDOT's difficulty with these numbers stems, in part, from the fact that various sources of state revenue for highways aren't segregated. Revenue from the fuel tax, from licenses, fees and permits and from sales and use taxes on motor vehicles all goes into one big pot. Out of that, MoDOT gives a whopping 24 percent to other state agencies. But MoDOT can't say how much of what goes to other agencies comes directly from the fuel-tax revenue.

In 1996, when 4 cents of the overall 6-cent-a-gallon fuel-tax increase had been added to the pump price of gasoline, the highway department's share of fuel-tax revenue went up $16 million from the year before. That same year, MoDOT passed along an increase of $22 million to other state agencies. In other words, MoDOT gave away more than it took in from the increase in fuel tax. In 1997, the first full year of the entire 6-cent increase in fuel tax, MoDOT took in $57 million more than the year before from gasoline sales. But the highway department only passed along an overall increase of $4 million to other agencies.

Officials at MoDOT and in the Legislature are at a loss to explain why the figures fluctuate so much. Which leads to the last question:

- So how much state money is being generated for highways, how much is being spent on highways how much is left over to pay off $2 billion of bond debt and how much of the $2 billion in bonds will go to other agencies?

The answer: Nobody knows.

Armed with this shameful lack of data, the Legislature is about to approve the $2 billion bond issue. Yet no one knows what projects would be funded by the bonds. Is this what's best for Missouri?