Funding follies: Our interstates – I-70 in particular – need a rational funding plan

A little common sense would help address Missouri’s significant transportation needs, but there’s always a catch.

A top official in the Bush administration, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, was in the state Tuesday to make the case for improving Interstate 70. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I-70 is vital to Eastern Jackson County, to Missouri and to the nation’s entire interstate system – and it needs upgrades.

And there’s this: Missouri has had a burst of road work in the last few years, which has helped, but the state’s highway revenues are about to fall off sharply. That will be a huge challenge for the next governor and for the General Assembly.

The White House solution is to get rid of what Congress calls earmarks and instead dole out the money based on objective criteria to measure costs versus benefits. It’s a fine idea, except for a couple of things.

Earmarks – individual representatives or senators tucking specific home state projects into the budget – have come to symbolize all that’s wrong in Washington. The process is secretive, and it’s pure pork-barrel politics. Of course, perceptions of pork often depend on whether the tax money is landing near or far.

So just get rid of it, right? Make the process open and objective, right? That’s easy for any White House to say, but Congress writes the budget, and it is the job of each member of Congress to balance the needs of the country with the needs of his district or state. No one-size-fits-all formula would do that. Wouldn’t we just be trading the evil of earmarks for the evil of distant, unaccountable bureaucrats deciding the fate of community after community?

Meanwhile, I-70 gets more crowded. By the time it gets expanded to six lanes statewide, it’ll need to be eight. It’ll take a lot of earmarks to get where we need to be.