Group Studies Options on Highway Commission

The Arkansas Trucking Association is not backing away from its desire to have members of the Arkansas Highway Commission elected rather than appointed.

Plan A, which was to get the General Assembly to make the truckers’ plan one of its three recommended amendments to the state Constitution, was unsuccessful. Now the association is actively considering its options, according to president Lane Kidd.

“Obviously, one of the options is a petition drive,” Kidd said.

Bill Vickery, the political consultant with the Gordian Group who spearheaded the group pushing for the election of highway commissioners, is working on a budget proposal to see if a petition drive is feasible, Kidd said.

“We’re looking at working on a petition drive internally, within the industry,” Kidd said. There are 90,000 involved in the trucking industry in the state, he said. “We could designate signature gatherers.”

If the association decides to go the petition route, it will need to make a decision by June or July, Kidd said. That would give it a year to collect the needed signatures to place the issue on the ballot.

“The public opinion survey we took was very clear,” Kidd said. “The people are very supportive of change.”

Another option, Kidd said, would be to wait until the next legislative session in two years and lobby to get the legislators to put it on the ballot.

Arkansas is the only state where the Highway Commission has no committee or agency overseeing it.

Arkansas trucking industry officials are calling for the election of state highway commissioners to take the place of the current system in which the commissioners are appointed by the governor.

The five highway commissioners now are appointed to 10-year terms, and they don’t have to answer to a government-supported committee on how funds are appropriated. The trucking plan would increase the number of commissioners to eight, two from each congressional district, and limit the length and number of terms.

There’s no one to watch what’s going on behind the curtains, Kidd said.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, a system of electing highway commissioners similar to the one pushed by the ATA has been under fire in its legislature.

In March, the Mississippi Transportation Commission and the Mississippi Department of Transportation shelled out $749,000 to hire TransTech Management Inc., consultants specializing in transportation management, to “conduct an in-depth study of MDOT to closely examine its methods and processes” over the next 16 months.

The TransTech team will look at MDOT’s day-to-day operations and determine the efficiency of its procedures by comparing them to other agencies that have similar goals and objectives.

The Arkansas legislature failed to pass a similar measure that would have provided for studying Arkansas’ highway system.