When you're getting nowhere, you have to start somewhere.
Recent initiatives to finance Missouri's transportation system have gotten nowhere.
Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) officials warned last year funding eventually would be insufficient to maintain, let alone improve, state roads and bridges. Although a revised forecast - based, in part, on a new federal highway bill - earlier this month brightened the outlook, the funding need has elicited a range of proposed legislation.
Proposals - both legislation and constitutional amendments - include increasing fuel taxes, hiking cigarette taxes and transferring some costs now borne by the highway agency.
Gathering the lion's share of support, including ours, is a proposal to increase the gasoline tax by 1.5 cents per gallon and the diesel tax by 3.5 cents per gallon. The bill is sponsored by Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Doug Libla, R-Popular Bluff.
Missouri's existing fuel tax is 17 cents a gallon for both gasoline and diesel and has remained unchanged since 1996. The nationwide average for both is about 20 cents a gallon, but most states also charge additional fees.
Libla's proposal is expected to raise about $56 million a year. Although the amount be not be sufficient to finance all maintenance as well as necessary and desirable improvements, supporters contend the hike is realistic and attainable, and it can be done without requiring a statewide vote. Among the supporters are Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon and the Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission.
Among other bills:
• Proposals to increase fuel taxes by greater amounts invariably will draw more opposition and, therefore, are riskier - and would require a statewide vote.
• We oppose a constitutional amendment to raise fuel taxes because specific tax policies do not deserve to be elevated to a constitutional provision.
• A proposed cigarette tax to finance transportation is objectionable because a purpose of that tax is to deter smoking, which would diminish tax revenue.
• Shifting other costs - control of some highways to counties, moving the State Highway Patrol budget to general revenue - transfers, rather than solves, funding problems.
Libla's proposal was advanced from committee to the Senate on Wednesday morning. We urge lawmakers to continue momentum to approve this reasonable, realistic financing mechanism for our state's transportation system.