A Missouri group pushing a transportation sales and use tax for the November ballot has suspended signature gathering in hopes that the Legislature will put the tax to voters.
Bill McKenna, a former member of the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission and treasurer of the Missourians for Safe Transportation and New Jobs, said the legislative route would be less costly and time consuming.
“It’s not completely dead but it is not as enthusiastic as it was when we first filed it,” McKenna said in an interview.
McKenna added that a legal challenge by the Missouri Association for Social Welfare to the proposed ballot language could negate any signatures gathered before the court rules on it.
Should transportation funding bills begin to bog down in the Missouri Legislature, McKenna said, the group is prepared to resume its work to qualify the measure for the November 2014 ballot.
People are also reading…
The group must gather at least 170,000 signatures by May 4 in order for the measure to appear on the November ballot.
Missouri Department of Transportation chief Dave Nichols warned last month that the agency’s construction budget would begin dropping to $585 million next budget year from this year’s $685 million.
He said funding in 2017 would drop to $325 million — a level that falls short of maintaining the state’s vast highway and bridge network.
Highway commissioners voted last month against adding any new transportation projects to the state’s five-year spending plan, and suspended a cost-share program that helped local agencies fund their transportation needs.
During a meeting in downtown St. Louis, regional leaders agreed last week that the loss of transportation dollars was a cause for concern. Those leaders, meeting as the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, will come up with a priority list of projects for the region.
“This is a big opportunity for us as a region to let our voice be known in terms of what we want out of it,” St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said. “We have a pretty diverse group of people that we represent here.”
St. Louis County Executive Charlie A. Dooley voiced concern that the populous regions — St. Louis and Kansas City — would be shortchanged when the proposed sales tax proceeds were divided for highway projects.
The St. Louis County Municipal League added that increasing the sales tax would drive people to buy goods on the Internet to avoid paying local sales taxes, which in turn would hurt merchants.
The timing of a statewide tax vote already is having ripple effects.
Jefferson County Executive Ken Waller said a tax that generated $10 million a year in that county was winding down in 2016 and must be put to voters. He said the county was reluctant to put it on the ballot at the same time as a statewide sales tax.
State Rep. Dave Hinson, R-St. Clair, has introduced a bill that would allow Missouri voters to decide whether to temporarily increase the state’s sales and use tax by 1 cent for highway projects and other transportation needs. The bill is scheduled to be heard on Tuesday.
A similar measure stalled in the Legislature last year.
“There are plenty of votes in the Legislature to do this,” McKenna said. “We aren’t asking them to raise taxes. We are asking them to let the people decide.”
St. Louis Alderman Scott Ogilvie challenged those who characterize Missouri’s transportation funding situation as a crisis.
“It is not a crisis,” Ogilvie said. “It is a slowdown in highway construction. That’s what it is. Because MoDOT has the money to maintain the system it has.”
Ogilvie said the focus should shift to spending more on public transportation in the state’s major population centers.
St. Louis and Kansas City, he said, have “been buying rural Missouri its roads” through its share of taxes, he said. Meantime, the state of Missouri spends very little on mass transit.
Ogilvie said the freight and highway construction industries were behind the push for more transportation dollars. Further, he contends the funding gap is a man-made problem.
The state borrowed heavily to increase transportation spending in recent years under Amendment 3 and also received federal stimulus funding, Ogilvie said. Now the bills are starting to come due on the Amendment 3 debt, producing the stark drop in available funds.
MoDOT officials confirmed that debt service totaled about $300 million a year. But they add that there has been a loss of buying power from Missouri’s share of the state and federal gasoline tax, and the escalating cost of construction materials.
Ken Leiser is the transportation writer at the Post-Dispatch. Read his Along for the Ride column online and every Sunday in the newspaper.
