"A road, in and of itself, is not going to build the economy for them," Craig said, adding that given the choice, his department wouldn't build the Heartland Expressway.

That's an appalling statement for an unelected bureaucrat to be making, given that his boss, Gov. Dave Heineman, has repeatedly said exactly the opposite. But if the governor is a fool for promoting the expressway's benefits, then so are Sens. Ben Nelson, Chuck Hagel, former Rep. Tom Osborne and current Rep. Adrian Smith, all of whom have supported federal funding for the Heartland, as well as senators and congressmen from nine other states who have earmarked hundreds of millions of federal dollars for a related federal high-priority trade corridor running from Canada to Mexico.

Craig, who is apparently oblivious to the intent of the project, seems to regard the Heartland as an expressway to nowhere. To an extent, he's right. Work is going well on South Dakota portions of the Heartland, which is designed to connect Denver to Rapid City, S.D. Loren Schaefer, the South Dakota Department of Transportation's director of planning and engineering, said the state has secured funding for the southern end of the project. The last section from Oelrichs to the Nebraska state line is to be done in 2011. South Dakota will have a four-lane highway to a neighboring state whose highway boss doesn't believe the project is worth completing.

But Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, D-S.D., said lawmakers hope to prepare a proposal for the next highway funding bill. The route is important to western South Dakota's economy, she said, adding that in no way can the Heartland Expressway be classified as pork. Similarly, Texas has spent hundreds of millions developing the Ports-to-Plains Expressway, at the southern end of the route. Completion of the Heartland would create a trade corridor to the booming Front Range, one of the fastest-growing economies in the nation, while Nebraska's governor counts on a corporate welfare program to revive our tax-heavy economy.

The official story is that there's no money to work on the Heartland. But Nebraska's federal lawmakers set aside a $21.5 million earmark for the expressway in a huge 2005 federal highway bill. It requires the state to provide matching funds.

South Dakota officials set aside matching money to capture its $60 million in federal earmarks, but Craig and the governor balk at designating a mere $4.3 million in state matching funds that would free up the federal earmarks for the Heartland while sitting on hundreds of millions of "rainy day" taxpayer dollars.

The message: Western Nebraskans might pay the same gas taxes as everyone else, but they aren't entitled to the same economic development benefits from freeway construction as Lincoln and Omaha, and federal officials apparently aren't qualified to judge how federal highway dollars ought to be spent. Craig's attitude says western Nebraska is not worth the investment of one state dollar to free up four federal dollars. We're so hopeless out here, it seems, that even being part of a cross-continental federal trade corridor wouldn't help us.

Western Nebraskans ought to be outraged, and our elected leaders ought to demand that the Roads Department live up to the governor's commitment to finish the Heartland or at least (for now) the interchange at Kimball that would connect Interstate 80 to the 65 miles of Heartland that's already finished. As far as Craig is concerned, western Nebraska is a nuisance that will eventually dry up and blow away if the state's policy of chronic neglect goes on long enough. It's an attitude that ought to cost him his job.

It's lucky for Nebraska that Heineman and Craig weren't in charge in the 1950s, when Interstate 80 crossed Nebraska and opened up our agricultural markets to the rest of the nation. There wasn't much traffic then. They'd have probably considered it a waste of money.

Scottsbluff Star Herald