Oct 28, 2013, 3:26pm CDT
A proposal to raise a statewide one-cent sales tax to fund transportation projects could be headed to a Missouri ballot in 2014, if supporters of a new initiative petition are able to gather enough citizen support to put it there.
A petition submitted to the Missouri Secretary of State's office in late October by Jefferson City attorney Rodney Gray, an employee of Kansas City firm Polsinelli PC, is reviving the one-cent transportation sales tax proposal that was originally brought up in the Missouri General Assembly in February and was narrowly defeated in the closing days of the 2013 legislative session.
Then, backers of the measure said the tax could raise $8 billion for the state's transportation needs over the next decade. They said that money will be used to rebuild roads, highways and bridges in both urban and rural areas of the Show-Me State, creating blue-collar and white-collar jobs, and helping to resolve the Missouri Department of Transportation's bleak financial situation.
The petition, 2014-052 as it is official known, was open for public comment between Oct. 22 and Oct. 26.
Kevin Flannery, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's office, said that the petition should be certified by the state and ballot language should be approved by the middle of November. After that, petitioners will need a certain number of registered voters to sign the petition before a May 2014 deadline in order to put the question on a statewide ballot in November.
Because the petition would amend the state's constitution to raise the sales tax, 8 percent of the state's legal voters in six of the eight Congressional districts would need to sign the petition. A document from the Secretary of State's office said the petition would need at least 157,800 signatures in total, with more than 24,000 voters from six of eight congressional districts signing in affirmation.
Representatives of Rodney Gray, who submitted the petition, and representatives of state Rep. Dave Hinson, R-St. Clair, and state Sen. Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, who sponsored the bill in each house of the General Assembly, were not immediately available to say if this petition effort will supplant or coincide with legislative efforts to raise a transportation sales tax.
The assembly's next legislative session begins in January.