After exhausting its borrowing capacity and faced with uncertain federal funding levels, Missouri’s proposed five-year transportation improvement program now calls for about $500 million in annual spending on construction grants, down sharply from the $1.25 billion spent annually under the previous program.
Flat growth in the state’s transportation-related revenues also contributed to the limited size of the new program that finances road and bridge projects and related work.
“This five-year direction requires significant cost-saving strategies like reducing the number of Missouri Department of Transportation’s salaried employees and operating expenditures for mowing and equipment,” Kevin Keith, MoDOT interim director, said in a statement.
“These measures are estimated to save more than $200 million, which will simply allow us to deliver what is proposed in the statewide improvement program,” he added.
The Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission earlier this year sold $185 million of grant anticipation revenue vehicle bonds to complete the financing of its Safe and Sound bridge program and to fund its share of a new span across the Mississippi River.
The deal marked the agency’s last financing until a new revenue stream is identified to finance transportation projects.
After its $600 million Garvee sale last year, the agency issued $300 million of its traditional road bonds secured by transportation revenue to mark the final installment of a $2.2 billion program.
The MHTC began a new legislatively approved borrowing program in 2000 and expanded it after voters in 2004 approved a constitutional amendment to accelerate state road projects by ending the diversion of some road-related taxes to the general fund.
Those funds are now fully tapped and the commission also does not want to over leverage its federal grants.
