Reading between the lines, it’s not hard to see that State Department of Transportation secretary William Ankner wishes he had never heard of Highway 3241.

In fact, while addressing a special senate committee formed to look into the Transportation Infrastructure Model for Economic Development (TIMED) program last week, Ankner told the committee that unless voters change the constitution, the department must finish all 16 TIMED projects.

Funding for Highway 3241, along with 15 other projects, was guaranteed when voters overwhelmingly approved a 1989 constitutional amendment creating TIMED.

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Highway 3241, which is to be a 4-lane highway connecting with Interstate 12 on the south and Highway 21 in Bush on the north, along with the Florida Avenue Bridge in New Orleans, are the only projects remaining on the list. Seven have been completed and seven are under construction.

Louisiana motorists currently pay 20 cents per gallon in taxes. While four cents is designated specifically for TIMED, Ankner told committee members that one-half cent to a penny of the 16-cent gasoline tax that now goes to finance regular highway projects will have to be used as early as next year to supplement the 4-cent gasoline tax that now goes to the TIMED projects.

Michael Bridges, the department’s undersecretary, said the amount that may be diverted could hit 2 cents by 2045 when the bonds financing the program will have to be paid off. Ankner said the average would be 1 cent during the next 35 years, or about $30 million a year for a total of about $1 billion.

Monday night, Washington Parish Council member Kenneth Wheat told the council that because of work he was doing at the time, he knew that Highway 3241 was on the state project bid list when “Sixty (former State Sen. B.B. “Sixty” Rayburn) left office.

“When Sen. Short (Phil, who defeated Rayburn by 546 votes out of nearly 42,000 cast) took office, he kept saying is was on the bid list and it was on the fast track, but when he finally told the truth it was learned he had been taken it off the list because of environmental concerns.

“Because of the representation (Rayburn) we had, people all over the state are benefiting from the TIMED program,” Wheat said. “But because of a lack of representation (Short), there are 14 other projects that have been completed since the time our highway was on the top of the list.”

Wheat also said he had knowledge that right-of-way for the project had been purchased.

“You can go to the St. Tammany records �- the maps show it (right of way).”

Wheat said that unless supporters of the project become aggressive and mobilize the public, “We will sit back and see everything else done, except this project.”

Ankner said Highway 3241 and the Florida Avenue Bridge are not included in the average one cent that the TIMED program may need to finish the work. Neither Ankner nor Bridges would estimate how much more of the 16-cent gas tax may have to be tapped to complete those projects. In 1989, proponents of the TIMED program estimated the 16 projects would cost about $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion. Those 16 projects are now estimated to cost at least $5 billion.

“And that doesn’t have all the projects completed,” said Sen. Jack Donahue, R-Covington, chairman of the committee charged with making a recommendation about how to deal with the problem to the full legislature before the April 27 opening of the regular session.

“At what point do we have the responsibility of saying that things are not going the way we want it to? ” Donahue asked. “Where do we go with this? . . . It goes back to a credibility issue” with taxpayers.

The Florida Avenue Bridge, which started out with a projected cost of $32 million in 1989, is now projected to cost about $475 million, according to DOTD. The Highway 3241 project is guesstimated to cost about $150 million now, up from original 1989 estimates of about $50 million.

Ankner told the panel that the $150 million is a “placeholder number,” because environmental impact studies are still being done and the project may cost more than that.