Photography by Sarah Fenske
St. Louis streets remained blanketed by snow on Monday, January 13, 2025, seven days after a snowstorm blanketed the city.
As snow buried the region last week, money to shore up the workforce tasked with plowing many local streets remains tied up in court as part of a legal battle in which the state has been fighting itself.
The Missouri Department of Transportation is responsible for plowing interstates and major thoroughfares like Gravois Road and Lindbergh Boulevard. They also had more than 700 vacant positions last year.
The agency has been pushing to address those vacancies, but for the past three years has been held up in court by the Office of Administration, an arm of state government that answers to the governor.
In December 2021, attorneys for the entity that controls MoDOT filed a lawsuit stating that the agency is facing “urgent workforce challenges,” brought upon by high turnover, which they alleged stems from hundreds of employees making below the threshold to qualify for food assistance and hundreds more earning so little that they have to work second jobs. MoDOT wants to raise pay—under what the agency called a "market competitive pay plan”—which would cost about $60 million a year.
Jim Layton, an attorney with Tueth Keeney representing the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission, which controls MoDOT, wrote that the $60 million cost should be no problem because there is sufficient money in the State Road Fund, which is collected specifically for the maintenance of roads and funds MoDOT. Layton wrote in court filings that the Road Fund is designated to be “appropriated without legislative action to be used and expended by the highways and transportation commission.”
Not everyone in Jefferson City sees it that way. Lawyers for the Office of Administration have argued against MoDOT appropriating the additional Road Fund money in both circuit court and the appeals court—losing both times. Last Wednesday, the state appealed the case for a second time, asking the Missouri Supreme Court to get involved.
MoDOT’s communications director Linda Horn says that as the case has remained tied up in courts, MoDOT has been able to give pay increases to some positions, which has slowed the tide of turnover. However, the raises had to remain within the limits of the money approved by the legislature.
Horn tells SLM that during winter emergencies, the agency recruits part-time, hourly employees. Those emergency workers, in the St. Louis area, are paid between $22 and $28 an hour. “These positions have been difficult to fill in the current hiring environment,” she says, saying that of the 300 emergency employees the agency has on the books, MODOT “typically only sees a third of that total show up to assist.
“We need to hire more,” says Horn. “But we have made great strides.” Horn says MODOT is asking for money for an additional 250 maintenance workers in its 2026 budget.
Courtesy of city of St. Louis
The city of St. Louis was able to save up road salt after two warm winters.
As for the city of St. Louis, where residents have also complained about the lack of attention given to many streets designated for plowing, City Hall spokesman Conner Kerrigan says that this past week a variety of people in the Streets Department worked on snow removal. “The department is not fully staffed,” he says. “But we had enough snow plow operators for this storm.”
Over the weekend, KSDK’s Mark Maxwell tweeted out budget documents showing that the city planned to cut by half the money allocated for snow removal and flood control, from about $1 million to $500,000. City Hall says that this has nothing to do with plowing and everything to do with several years without a serious snowstorm leaving the city with a huge surplus of salt and no need to buy more.
As proof, Kerrigan sent SLM a photo of the city’s stockpile of sodium chloride.
