With Missouri down 400 snowplow operators, state transportation chief defends decision to boost pay

By Grace Zokovitch

Click here for updates on this story

    JEFFERSON CITY, Mssouri (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) — With a winter storm on its way and the state down 400 snowplow operators, the director of the Missouri Department of Transportation on Monday defended staffing decisions to an audience of dubious lawmakers.

MoDOT director Patrick McKenna presented a year-end review of the department’s work and fielded questions at a meeting of the Joint Transportation Oversight Committee on Monday amid ongoing debate about the use of the State Road Fund.

The State Road Fund increased significantly for the first time in years following an influx of federal funds from pandemic relief bills and a 2.5-cent-per-gallon increase in the gas tax last October.

With the funding increase, MoDOT has announced a plan to raise pay and boost staffing, sparking outrage from some lawmakers who insisted the funds had been slated solely for the state’s highest-priority road and bridge projects.

The Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission, which governs MoDOT, in December filed a lawsuit to affirm its “sole discretion” over funding decisions, after using the State Road Fund on pay increases.

Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, this month wrote a letter to the commission calling for the resignation or termination of McKenna and MoDOT Deputy Director Ed Hassinger.

The letter, signed by five other Republican senators, called the personnel funding decision a “bait and switch.”

“We’d given MoDOT the tools they requested to fix the crumbling infrastructure that you keep talking about,” Sen. Justin Brown, R-Rolla, said to McKenna at the meeting. “But all we’re hearing about in this building is pay raises. And then all of a sudden the commission is suing the state.

“For decades, MoDOT directors and the commission have come to the Legislature to seek approval for spending of the tax dollars,” Brown continued. “I want to know why you and the commission feel you’re above this fundamental standard of good government.”

McKenna responded that investing in staffing was a necessary first step to be able to do anything else.

“Frankly, the issue of investing in roads and bridges is intimately tied to the actual people (who) work on the projects, (who) also then come in and maintain those systems,” McKenna said.

Staffing is a major issue for the department, McKenna said. The department pays positions such as engineers, technicians and CDL operators $3 to $9 less per hour than qualified individuals could receive in other similar private and public sectors jobs, leading to high turnover.

Last fiscal year, turnover cost the department $34.5 million, according to MoDOT. In the first half of this fiscal year, the department has lost 444 employees, on pace to beat 2021, McKenna said on Monday.

With staffing down, the department has cut back on services such as trash collection.

“We barely have the people right now to put up signs that have gone down — those are the life safety issues that are being scheduled,” McKenna said. “The level of service that people would like from MoDOT is just not possible in our present staffing circumstance.”

The director noted that with the snowstorm coming later this week, staffing issues are undoubtedly going to delay the state’s road-clearing.

The plow operators are down 400 people, McKenna noted, and COVID-19 has kept 700 MoDOT employees home over the course of the past month.

Senators noted that the gas tax increase passed in 2021 had been sold as a way to fix crumbling roads and bridges. Amid efforts to repeal the tax increase, Brown said, it was important that constituents be able to see results from their investment.

Sen. Steve Butz, D-St. Louis, pushed back on this point, arguing not addressing turnover would only cost taxpayers more money.

McKenna also addressed a concern in O’Laughlin’s letter — that he “NEVER suggested that the money was needed for pay raises or additional staff through the entire legislative debate on last year’s funding increase” — bringing in testimony from prior discussions about pay increases to refute O’Laughlin.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.