When it comes to national highway funding, Michigan is a "donor" state, but would rather be on the "recipient" side of the equation.

Congressional lawmakers from Michigan and 14 other states that send more tax money to Washington for national highway funding than they receive are starting to burn a little rubber to get attention.

They have formed a group called SHARE - the States' Highway Alliance for Real Equity - to push for an increase in the rate of return on the tax dollars their states spend on highway and transportation projects. The group calls the current funding set up "excessive and unfair." Separate bills have been introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate to introduce better equality.

"Under our bill," said Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, a sponsor of the legislation, "according to Federal Highway Administration calculations, Michigan would have received an additional $42 million in funding year 2002. That's a critically important difference for Michigan each year, and that would be a significant difference for other donor states that stand to get back millions more of their gas tax dollars to spend on highway improvements in their own states."

Under the current setup for road funding, states receive a minimum of 90.5 cents per dollar they send to Washington. This system was set up in the 1950s as a formula to help Western states with low populations build portions of the nation's interstate highway system.

Now, with every dollar even more valuable in this era of budget cutting, states like Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida are pushing for a formula to equalize the funding to guarantee no less than a 95 percent return.

"For decades, highway funding has been based on antiquated formulas which force some 20 states to subsidize road and bridge projects of other states, " Levin said. "We believe that it is simply unfair to perpetuate this imbalance. Our bill would allow states to get back more of what they contribute in gas taxes to the Highway Trust Fund, which would bring more equity to the process."