Topeka ? An organization that represents highway construction companies is launching a campaign to discourage any more raids on the state Highway Fund to make up for revenue shortfalls that pay for other government programs.

“Our message basically is that we’re not taking care of the quality of life,” said Bob Totten, executive vice president of the Kansas Contractors Association. “We have seen a deterioration in the amount of money that is being put into the whole state budget.”

Since Kansas lawmakers approved the current 10-year, $8 billion highway program known as T-Works in 2010, Totten said, governors and legislators have continually raided the fund to make up for revenue shortfalls in other areas. Just within the past year, he said, about $300 million has been transferred to the general fund, or nearly $1 million per day.

The result, he said, is that the state will only do a small fraction of the “preservation” projects that were originally planned, which he said will eventually force the state to spend money on more costly repairs in the future.

Those include such routine things as repaving roads and bridges, filling potholes and repairing shoulders along the roughly 140,000 miles of roadway in the state highway system.

“It’s not the gigantic South Lawrence Trafficway projects. It’s the minor preservation work that has to be done or the roads are going to fall apart,” Totten said.

He said the original T-Works plan called for doing an average of 1,200 miles of preservation work each year. Instead, he said, “KDOT is doing 200 miles for the next two years.”

“We were scheduled to (repair) or fix 115 bridges a year. That’s an average. We have about 18 percent of our bridges structurally deficient,” he said. “We’re going to do 58. That doesn’t work, and our contention, as the pros who know the work, is that in three or four years, or five years, we’re going to have to do substantially more.”

But Kansas Department of Transportation Secretary Mike King disagreed that the transfers out of the highway fund will have a negative impact on the program or on the highways themselves.

“Our Interstate is system is No. 1 in the nation in terms of the quality of our interstate,” he said. “We’re in the top five or top 10 in the nation in our state routes and bridges. We’re meeting our targets.”

King said the state could afford to take money out of the highway program in large part because the projects have ended up costing substantially less than expected when the 2010 legislation was approved.

He pointed to three factors that have held those costs down: record-low petroleum prices, which have reduced the cost of asphalt, operating trucks and other equipment; record-low interest rates that have reduced the cost of borrowing money; and a new federal highway bill he said will bring an estimated $30 million a year in additional federal highway funds to Kansas.

He also said that while some preservation projects are being delayed due to the fund transfers, that won’t result in excessive deterioration of those roads.

“A lot of this too is, the asphalt industry is helping us develop a better product,” he said. “We’re asking that road to get another year of life, and we’re still beating our performance measures.”

Totten said the construction industry is concerned that additional transfers out of the highway fund are being planned, noting that KDOT recently issued another $400 million in highway bonds, putting the total amount of bonds issued under the project at about $1.8 billion, more than was originally authorized under the T-Works program.

But lawmakers raised that cap during the 2015 session, and King said KDOT’s financial advisers strongly urged the agency to issue more bonds before the anticipated interest rate hike announced by the Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday.

Totten said he has heard that Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration may ask for as much as $50 million in highway fund transfers during the upcoming session. But King said he has heard no such suggestion.

Nevertheless, Totten said, the contractors association plans to lobby hard in 2016 against any additional transfers out of the highway fund. And, he said, the group plans to work “big time” in next year’s legislative elections on behalf of candidates who vow to protect highway funding.