Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has offered a plan to revive highway projects stalled when road dollars were diverted this past year to help balance the state’s budget.

The governor’s plan relies on issuing $465 million in bonds and earmarking a portion of sales tax revenue for highways in 2005, The Kansas City Star reported.

The current transportation program law calls for 12 percent of state sales tax revenue, about $190 million a year, to be used for highways, but the money has been shifted to other cash-strapped state programs.

For the past two years, no money was transferred to the highway program.

Sebelius’ $10.2 billion budget proposal – HB2728 – for the next fiscal year again diverts sales tax revenue from the Kansas Department of Transportation. That would equate to more money being borrowed to complete all the projects promised in 1999 when the Legislature adopted the $12.8 billion, 10-year Comprehensive Transportation Program.

If approved by legislators, it would be the second time bonding authority was expanded to allow KDOT to make up for lawmakers transferring tax funds out of the agency to serve other purposes.

In 2001, the Legislature increased the department’s bonding authority by $277 million.

However, House Speaker Doug Mays, R-Topeka, told The Star, “I’ve got a problem with all the bonding.”

A better alternative, he said, is a plan House Transportation Committee Chair Gary Hayzlett, R-Lakin, has introduced. Hayzlett’s plan – HB2692 – would allocate 20 percent of sales tax revenue from new and used vehicle sales to the transportation program over five years starting in 2006.

Mays said the law would be written to keep lawmakers from tapping into the fund.