Last year, the state Senate took up a proposed sales tax for Missouri transportation on the last day of the session.
A short filibuster killed it.
This year, the House-passed version of the proposed one-cent sales tax increase is set to hit the Senate floor Tuesday - three weeks earlier than last year's debate.
"It's a complicated issue, so I don't think it's going to be anything you would get done quickly," Senate sponsor Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, told reporters Thursday afternoon. "There's a lot of ideas out there. There's a lot of information to talk about when you talk about the size of the transportation system that we have.
"So, I anticipate it will take awhile - and I'm willing to work through issues that other senators have and see if there's a way we can try to get this before the voters."
Because it's a proposed amendment to the state Constitution, Missouri voters would have the final say.
"It also has an agreement in there to freeze the Legislature's ability to raise the gas tax, so I think that's a good piece of consumer protection," Kehoe said. "It would not allow you to toll any existing roads.
"And it has a 10-year sunset, on a very defined list of projects."
Missouri's Transportation department officials are developing that list of projects the state would pay for with money raised from the sales tax - and that list would be publicized weeks before the election, so that voters would know how the money would be used.
Officials estimate an additional one-cent sales tax would raise about $7.8 billion over the 10-year period, with MoDOT getting 90 percent of that - and the other 10 percent would be split evenly between cities and counties.
Kehoe has been studying Missouri's long-range transportation needs since he was a member of the Highways and Transportation Commission more than four years ago - and he knows there's opposition.
"There are a lot of groups on both sides of this issue," he told the News Tribune. "I think the important thing is to try to get the issue out of the building and let these groups air their opinions so Missourians can see what all the different ways to look at transportation, and funding transportation, are."
One of the groups raising questions is Americans For Prosperity, which for years has lobbied lawmakers and Missouri citizens to cut taxes rather than raise them.
In a news release last week, Patrick Werner, the group's Missouri state director, cited a recent Tax Foundation report that Missouri has "the 14th highest combined tax burden in the nation" - and that "the proposed one percent increase in the Sales Tax would vault Missouri from the 14th highest to the 6th highest combined tax rate in the nation."
Werner said passing the statewide transportation sales tax proposal would place Missouri in "the "top ten' of highest tax states in the nation. We will have a higher combined tax rate than notorious high tax states like New York and California.
"It's time for our Senators to stop hiking taxes and instead look for ways to cut spending and let Missourians keep more of their income."
Kehoe agrees some tax cuts help, like the income tax cuts lawmakers have sent Gov. Jay Nixon, who has said the state can't afford the idea.
But the transportation sales tax itself may help improve the state's economy, he said.
"A good transportation system is the backbone to any state's economic development," Kehoe explained.
"It's estimated the sales tax would help create around 270,000 jobs over the 10 year period."
When asked about the AFP arguments, Kehoe said: "I hope that, as Missourians look at the issue - whether it's from Americans For Prosperity or another organization, that's for it - that they vet it fully and make sure they understand what the impact is - and then are able to make a decision in November."
Kehoe also said he's been talking with Senate opponents, like John Lamping, R-Ladue.
"Certainly, it's not going to be easy - they're, obviously, still opposed," he said. "But I think we get it on the floor and start having the debate, there's a little different scenario when you have three weeks left in session than when you have three days."