Like many other states, Missouri is trying to figure out how to pay for future road and bridge repairs and construction.
The basic problem is known pretty well - Missouri charges a 17-cent tax on each gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel sold, no matter the price of that fuel.
Also, the tax has been the same since 1996 - the end of a phased-in 6-cent increase that began in 1992.
Transportation officials also note Missouri's 34,000 miles of roads and 10,400 bridges is the seventh-largest highway system in the nation - but transportation revenues rank 46th in the United States.
Supporters have been looking at various alternatives to fund road and bridge work in the state after voters last August rejected a ¾-cent general sales tax increase. The tax, which failed by a 59-41 percent margin, was estimated to raise MoDOT's revenues by approximately $5 billion throughout a 10-year period to pay for transportation projects - with 30 percent of that money transferred to cities and counties by existing state laws.
A major part of the opposition last year was aimed at big trucks - that trucking companies would not have to pay their "fair share," even though trucks do the most damage to the roads - especially the state highways they use primarily.
At a recent news conference, Gov. Jay Nixon repeated that thought: "The signal that was sent by the public was not that they don't think we have a transportation need - it was that, moving forward, trucks should have to pay something, too."
The Missouri Trucking Association didn't get involved in last year's sales tax campaign debate, nor did it respond to a request for comment for this story.
However, in 2012 when a Missouri Senate committee was looking at the possibility of converting I-70 to a toll road, trucking industry representatives said their members likely would find other ways to cross the state, avoiding tolls as much as possible.
Back in 2008, Tom Crawford, the association's president and CEO, said his industry's studies showed most existing toll roads don't make money.
"Tolls divert traffic off those highways" and onto roads not as well-designed for the traffic - especially truck traffic, Crawford said.
Also, he said in 2008, "Motor-fuel tax is a very efficient way to collect revenue (while) obviously, for our members, tolls are not a very efficient way to collect."
Missouri has one of three permits from the federal government to convert an existing interstate highway to a toll road. And last month, Nixon asked MoDOT to report on how that change might affect transportation work in the state.
At that Feb. 12 news conference, the governor explained: "I think tolls is a way that I could support, clearly, to move forward on I-70 - not only because it would provide a bigger I-70 and, perhaps, different lanes for trucks that would make it safer - but it would also free up a lot of money to pay for maintenance and repairs in other parts of the state."
MoDOT Director Dave Nichols told reporters after the Highways and Transportation Commission's Feb. 3 meeting that the toll road idea is "very controversial. It is a method that's being used all over the country and the cost of reconstruction of a major corridor, like I-70 in Missouri being $2 billion or more, there just isn't enough fuel tax increase that you could do to pay for a major project like that.
"So, at some time we're going to have to have a conversation about a corridor like an I-70, or other interstate reconstruction across Missouri, of how do we pay for something that large?"
Also, Nichols acknowledged I-70 isn't the only Missouri road needing rebuilding work, citing I-44 as growing with traffic volumes the same or higher than I-70. He said even though I-44 is slightly newer than I-70, it will be facing similar challenges.
"The reason I-70 is in the forefront is that because we do have all of those studies completed, and it's ready to start design and construction today, if the revenues were available to start it."
In the 2016-17 state business year, Nichols and other MoDOT officials have told the highway commission the state's income available for new maintenance and repair projects will fall to $325 million a year - but MoDOT needs at least $485 million a year just to maintain the current system in its current condition.
Nichols said each one-cent fuel tax increase raises between $35 million and $40 million a year - so a five- or six-cent increase is needed just to get to the $485 million a year maintenance level (by state law, Missouri's city and county governments share 15 percent each of each tax dollar raised, so MoDOT only gets 70 percent of the money collected).
Missouri's Constitution requires voter approval of major tax increases - but allows the Legislature to increase some taxes by a limited amount, without a popular vote.
"The Legislature can approve smaller revenue growth - a two-cent fuel tax would be under that limit," Nichols explained. "So, they could implement two cents per year, for three consecutive years - that would allow us to be under that limit, per year."
That increase also would allow the state to match whatever money the federal government provides for building and maintaining roads on the federal system - the interstates and the U.S. highways like 50, 54 and 63 in Mid-Missouri.
Currently, that's a match of $1 in state money for every $3 in federal money.
At the $325 million a year-level MoDOT anticipates, the state won't have enough money for that match, which helps the state do more than it can do on its own.
The more than 350-member Missouri Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association also has opposed several major transportation funding improvements in recent years.
Ron Leone, the organization's director and CEO, shared with the News Tribune a draft of the group's current positions on proposals being considered.
The draft says the MPCA supports increasing the state and federal motor fuel excise taxes and the state's sales tax, "taxing all motor fuels (and) motor vehicles equally," increasing license and registration fees that also help pay for MoDOT's work and dedicating some of the state's budget growth.
According to the draft plan, Leone's group would oppose toll roads and bridges, "public-private partnerships" that would allow private companies to build and operate roads before turning them over to the state (often charging a toll to recoup their costs), "commercialization of rest areas," sales taxes on motor fuels at the pump (which Missouri doesn't have today), sales taxes on wholesale motor fuel at the terminal or an automatic cost-of-living adjustment added to fuel costs.
State Senate President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey, R-St. Charles, said last week: "I don't see anything coming forward this year.
"... my guess would be we're a few years away."