KEEP HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT INDEPENDENT

A key state lawmaker is proposing a constitutional amendment that would revoke part of the independent status of the Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission. If lawmakers agree, the measure would be put before the voters this November. The sponsor is House majority leader Gracia Backer, D-New Bloomfield. Backer's idea is to allow greater financial oversight by lawmakers and the governor over the Missouri Department of Transportation. Gov. Mel Carnahan agrees that more financial oversight is needed and had kind words for Backer's proposal.

Since the 1920s, authority for Missouri's highways and bridges has been vested in a constitutionally independent commission whose members are appointed by the governor, subject to Senate confirmation. As a result, in the main we haven't had Democratic roads or Republican roads in Missouri. Despite the recent troubles, this isn't a legacy to be lightly cast aside.

Backer says she doesn't want to touch the agency's authority over choosing, designing and constructing road and bridge projects. "This mustn't become a political football," she said recently.

Of course, any such proposal runs the risk of doing precisely that. To say that isn't by any means to dismiss the Backer proposal out of hand. It was probably inevitable that something like this proposal would surface, given the fiasco of the collapse of the department's 15-year plan amid arguments over whether there exists a supposed $14 billion shortfall in funding that plan.

Backer notes that the department itself has taken a positive step by hiring its first chief financial officer. She is right: This is an essential step to restoring credibility. Whether lawmakers will want to go the next step and commend to voters something like Rep. Backer's proposed constitutional amendment is one of the most important issues of 1998, and beyond.