A Senate hearing scheduled this week to question Mississippi Department of Transportation Executive Director Butch Brown before a vote to confirm him for a new four-year term provides significant opportunity for questions about the leadership, priorities and focus of MDOT.

Brown, who once was dismissed from MDOT in an uproar within the three-member, elected transportation commission, was rehired when the commission's political complexion changed.

Even now, he reportedly is at odds with Central District Commissioner Dick Hall, and is in the good graces of Northern District Commissioner Bill Minor and Southern District Commissioner Wayne Brown.

Intra-departmental politics and intrigue aside, plenty of issues about highway construction and expenditure of public funds are on the table for discussion.

First, almost everybody stays interested in highways because we are a state of highway users. Public transit is limited statewide, so personal cars and trucks are a virtual essential for everyone every day.

Second, MDOT has a budget in excess of $1 billion - construction, maintenance, salaries, interest and all the incidental expenses included in a huge bureaucracy.

MDOT operates out of an imposing building in downtown Jackson often derisvely called the "DOT-majal" because it is monumental in proportion and, some would say, extravagantly if not tastefully appointed. It dominates the cityscape on the west side of the Capitol.

Its politics consume resources, time and an enormous amount of civic energy because it seldom accomplishes - within expectations - what the public needs or what legislators intend.

Brown is the chief executive who sits at the top of the organizational chart - the man who is supposed to implement policy dictated by both the commission and legislatively funded programs.

The Vision 21 Highway program, a 1,500-mile extension of the 1987 Highway Program, was passed in 2002, but there's little to show for the $200 million per year minimum authorized for Vision 21's prioritized construction mandate.

Restless legislators requested a PEER (performance evaluation and expenditure review) Committee analysis of Vision 21 spending and decisions, and a critical report was issued Jan. 30. Although it did not find evidence of criminality, it did cite MDOT and the commission for not adhering to the statewide prioritizing of construction projects mandated in law. MDOT changed its practices late last year in response to an early viewing of the investigative findings.

More information is needed.

We suggest several areas for further questions:

- Has MDOT explored, with legislators and the private sector, innovative methods of financing highways statewide, including widely used public-private partnerships?

- Have MDOT and the commission considered initiating a broadly based public discussion of additional highway financing - especially in light of the PEER Committee's finding that at current rates the Vision 21 program will take more than 100 years to complete?

- How do MDOT and the commission justify lavish and expensive trips abroad to transportation meetings? What was learned at those meetings that helps build highways in Mississippi?

- Why is an elected transportation commission - the only one in the nation - more efficient than appointed commissions and hired executives?

The chief liability in MDOT and the commission is that it thinks and acts like a separate state government. It uses its political status to ignore cooperation, brush aside civic interest advocacy, and shun, when it can find a way, mandates for highway construction.

Brown is the point man for answering those questions, and he should be pressed hard by legislators to justify how MDOT operates and the results it achieves.

MDOT seldom faces its funding-source leaders. The Senate Transportation Committee should make the most of a a too-rare opportunity.

Then, it can decide if Brown deserves confirmation to another term.