Missouri looks for new funding as Amendment 3 runs out

The government is exploring ways to maintain good road conditions.

By Greg Young

Published Dec. 11, 2008

With funding from Amendment 3 set to run out in as early as 2009, Missouri, like several other states, is looking for other means of funding infrastructure improvements throughout the state.

Amendment 3, which passed in 2004, required all revenue from the motor vehicle sales tax and most of the revenue from the fuel tax to be put toward Missouri roads. However, all of the revenue that was allocated from the amendment, according to the Missouri Transportation Alliance, will be gone by the end of 2009.

The revenue generated from the amendment has helped to fund massive improvements. According to The Road Information Program, a national transportation research group, Missouri's roads have improved from third worst in the country in 2004 to ninth best in 2007.

"We've done a good job in the last three to four years of bringing (roads) up to the best quality we can," said Sen. Bill Stouffer, R-Napton, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee.

However, with Amendment 3's funding set to expire, Missouri could lose almost all of its revenue for road improvements.

"We've got to stay ahead of the curve," Bill McKenna, chairman of the Missouri Transportation Alliance, said on Wednesday at a meeting of the organization. "The day that the highway department finishes paving a road, it deteriorates the very next day."

The Missouri Transportation Alliance is trying to raise awareness of the state's transportation problems. The group is still in its planning stage, and is holding meetings throughout Missouri to seek input for the transportation issues it should emphasize.

Despite the improvement in numbers, there are still multiple complaints about the state of Missouri's roads, especially the interstates.

"The roads that I travel on that are of the worst state, have to be the interstate," said Jim Herfurth, head of the Lake of the Ozarks Transportation Council. "We have to address that with some sort of user fee."

Jill Stedem, City of Columbia Public Works Department spokeswoman, also said interstate highways, especially in the Columbia area, need major work but said that it could take awhile before the problems are attended.

"It will be many years in the making before those projects will be addressed," Stedem said. "There is a task force that is working on both of those projects."

Last week, during his weekly radio address, President-elect Barack Obama articulated a plan to invest in infrastructure improvements across the nation, a plan that could represent the largest investment infrastructure since Eisenhower's establishment of the interstate highway system.

Maria Spieser, spokeswoman for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said Congress is already working on a stimulus package that could include infrastructure investments.

"I think that Congress is going to try to work quickly but deliberately," Spieser said.

Spieser also said an investment in infrastructure could help the economy by creating new jobs, as well as improving infrastructure throughout the U.S.

"It is a twofer. You are strengthening the economy of our state by improving to our infrastructure and you are putting people to work," Spieser said.

Spence Jackson, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Economic Development, mentioned that construction jobs created by infrastructure investment are typically high quality positions.

"The companies that go out and build the roads, they typically provide very good paying jobs," Jackson said.

But Stouffer was pessimistic about the actual impact that federal investment in infrastructure would have in Missouri. He noted that Missouri has $600 million in infrastructure projects ready to go, but that the federal money would only be temporary.

"This is one time money and it's not going to solve the problem," Stouffer said.