Topeka ? The state’s $13.5 billion transportation program could end up on the budget chopping block, three years into its 10-year lifespan.

House Speaker Kent Glasscock on Thursday named a six-member special committee to review proposals for rewriting and possibly scaling back the plan, enacted in 1999 to improve highways, shortline railroads, airports and public transit systems.

Glasscock noted some worst-case scenarios have the plan falling more than $1.6 billion short of expectations.

“An option is to restructure the program so you bring into line the expectations with the funding stream,” said Glasscock, R-Manhattan.

He added: “Another option would be to fully fund the plan, which would take a huge tax increase  which I see as a remote possibility.”

Transportation Secretary Dean Carlson has warned legislators that the state wasn’t providing enough money for the improvements he outlined for them in 1999.

The same revenue slump bedeviling all of state government has hurt the highway program, and legislators have redirected some sales tax revenue intended for highway projects to other programs.

Gov. Bill Graves has proposed a penny-per-gallon in motor fuel taxes and a 3 percent rise in vehicle registration fees to help raise $22 million a year for the transportation program.

“I think this Legislature’s starting to get a certain perspective on the budget generally, but I don’t think they’ve yet fully come to grips with the challenge we have in transportation,” Graves said during a Statehouse news conference Thursday.

The transportation program accounts for a significant portion of the state’s projected $426 million gap between expected revenues and spending commitments in fiscal 2003, which starts July 1.

In 1999, legislators raised motor fuels taxes and gave the Department of Transportation authority to issue up to $1 billion in bonds to finance improvements.

They also agreed to set aside some sales tax revenues for projects, at increasing amounts until 2005. The set-aside is $95 million this year, and it is scheduled to rise to $147 million in fiscal 2003.

Some legislators want to cancel that increase, while Graves proposed eliminating the sales tax set-aside completely.

Without higher motor fuels taxes and vehicle registration fees, the transportation program would have a shortfall of $539 million.