MODOT’s First Public Meeting On Deep Cuts

The Missouri Department of Transportation began a series of public meetings Monday to fill the public in on the huge budget cuts MO-DOT is facing. The cuts will force MO-DOT to lay off 1,200 workers, selling 746 pieces of heavy equipment, and eliminate any new road construction anywhere in the state for the foreseeable future.

“There won’t be any more projects like the Dorsett Road interchange, the I-64 re-construction, or anything like that anywhere in the state from now until who know when,” said Ed Hassinger, chief engineer for the St. Louis district of MO-DOT. “Our funding is being cut from one point two billion dollars to a little over 600 million dollars. Besides our layoffs, we anticipate this will cost about 17,000 jobs in the state.”

Rick Toman, who runs a company that paints dividing lanes on pavement, agrees. “It’s not a good position for us to be in, any os us in this industry,” said Toman, whose Park-Mark pavement marking company employees 50 people. “There will be dramatic drops in business at the engineering level, all the infrastructure people, the people who make all the products and materials that are used will be devastated.”

 

Professor Jack Strauss, who heads the Simon Center for Regional Economic Forecasting at St. Louis University, says the economic impact will be far broader than just the construction trades. “The thousands of jobs lost in Missouri will affect all of us,” said Strauss. “Missouri is going to lose business because of it.”

Strauss said the crisis could have been avoided if Missouri had raised its gasoline tax from the current 17 cents a gallon. “We’re not talking about raising the gas tax a dollar,” he said. “We would be talking about raising it to a slightly higher level to pay for what we need, good roads and bridges.”