Evening rush hour traffic on Kansas Highway 10 is pictured in this file photo from Thursday, Aug. 18, 2011.

Topeka ? The Kansas Department of Transportation is touting that more than 90 percent of the state’s interstate and non-interstate highways are in “good” condition, a number it says exceeds the state’s own benchmarks for road quality.

But the head of the Kansas Contractors Association, a group that lobbies on behalf of construction companies that build and maintain roads, said those numbers only tell part of the story and that the state’s highway program is actually in “critical” condition.

The announcement last week came from interim KDOT Secretary Richard Carlson, who said 96.7 percent of all interstate highway miles and 91.7 percent of non-interstate highway miles were rated in good condition in fiscal year 2016, which ended June 30.

“Over the years, Kansans have come to expect a great highway system and I’m proud the numbers show that’s what we’ve continued to deliver,” Carlson said. “The performance scores are well above the targets for both interstate and non-interstate roads, and we intend to continue to provide a system that protects the health and economic well-being of Kansans.”

The highway program, however, has become a contentious political topic in recent years as Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration has repeatedly dipped into the highway fund for hundreds of millions of dollars to make up for revenue shortfalls in the state general fund.

“There are a lot of facts and figures in KDOT’s report and on the surface it appears to be great news for Kansas and our highway system,” said Bob Totten, executive vice president of the Kansas Contractors Association.

“However,” he said, “the fact remains — and we believe most Kansans would agree — that we are still in a critical state with unsafe roads and bridges, drastic loss of construction jobs, and a continuous depletion of transportation funding, the equivalent of $1 million a day, by our current administration.”

The state’s current highway program, known as T-Works, is a 10-year, $8 billion program established in 2010. It is funded with a combination of state and federal motor fuel taxes, as well as about $500 million a year in general state sales tax revenues.

Among the projects being funded by that program are the South Lawrence Trafficway extension and the Johnson County “Gateway” Project at the junction of Interstates 35 and 435 and Kansas Highway 10.

By law, motor fuel taxes may only be used for transportation projects. But since the enactment of massive tax cuts in 2012, the Brownback administration has routinely swept large amounts of sales tax money out of the fund to shore up the state general fund.

In April, after announcing that another $185 million would be swept out of the highway fund in fiscal years 2016 and 2017, KDOT announced that 25 highway projects, including 15 expansion and modernization projects, that were slated to begin later in the T-Works plan were being delayed.

Also during the 2016 session, the administration proposed repealing the statute that sets aside a certain percentage of sales tax revenue for the highway program so the governor and Legislature could decide each year how much, if any, would be used for highways.

Budget director Shawn Sullivan noted at the time that previous administrations have raided the highway fund as well. He argued that sales taxes are a form of general revenues that belong to the state, and eliminating that law earmarking part of that revenue for highways would eliminate the perception that the state was taking money that didn’t belong to it.

That bill, however, failed to pass out of committee.