ST. LOUIS — The Missouri Department of Transportation is making good on a new policy to get local governments here to spend federal road funds faster, shifting about $20 million that would have gone to county and municipal road projects to state-sponsored jobs.

MoDOT's move follows several years of threatening to yank federal road funds for local projects due to a backlog of unspent money.

St. Louis-area governments and the regional transportation planning organization, the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, managed to hit MoDOT's aggressive target last year, obligating more than 110% of the region's roughly $90 million in annual federal funding for local transportation projects.

This year, however, East-West Gateway is projecting only about three-quarters of the region's federal

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