Over at KansasReporter, Gene Meyer has a report on the impact of state budget cuts as presented by state agencies heads to the Senate Ways and Means Committee Tuesday.

Transportation Secretary Deb Miller said about $80 million in budget cuts since July, plus a drop in motor-fuel and sales-tax revenues have cost the Kansas Department of Transportation $229 million.

Miller says what’s left in DOT’s budget won’t cover an estimated $375 million of construction work needed to preserve Kansas roadways and clear ice and snow as well as taxpayers currently expect. KDOT spent $1.5 billion in 2009.

Miller was one of 10 state executives or other officials who spoke to the Senate’s top budget writing panel about some of the challenges their departments will face this year.

Alan Conroy, director of the Kansas Legislative Research Department, which prepares the official economic projections used to make state budget calculations, told the committee, “A good deal of uncertainty remains for the Kansas economy.”

Read the whole story here at KansasReporter.

Kansas has great roads according to a study by University of North Carolina. It is one of six states with “zero percent poor road conditions for both rural and urban roads” and ranks ninth in the nation in per capita highway spending but 43rd in average daily traffic per lane .

Bob Weeks at Voice for Liberty in Wichita reported last year that increased road spending does not increase economic development.

In 1999, when then-Gov. Bill Graves approved the massive increase in spending on roads, it was paid for by additional taxation, including a 6-cent-per-gallon fuel tax, an increase in sales tax, an increase in the motor vehicle registration fee, and an increase in debt to the tune of $1 billion.

A study by the University of Kansas Center for Applied Economics in May 2005 showed the counterargument to the claim that more roads bring economic development: “Over the last three decades, the presence of more highway capital in a state has not been found to attract more private capital to the economy.”