Isaac Wolf

WASHINGTON -- Five years after Congress called for better oversight of the nation's 100,000 missing sex offenders, only seven states have adopted federal standards for tracking the 728,000 Americans convicted of sex crimes.

After blowing deadlines in 2009 and 2010, most states will miss a third one on July 27, the U.S. Justice Department predicts. Linda Baldwin, director of its Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking office, said in an interview that she expects only 10 to 15 states to meet the coming deadline for tracking sex offenders.

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Your pick: potholed roads or pricier petroleum.

Especially in states that have not raised gasoline taxes in years, these revenues

typically spent on transportation -- have dwindled. At the same time, inflation has cut into their purchasing power.

So, even as gasoline prices flirt with the $4.11 per gallon record set in July 2008, a handful of cash-strapped states are taking a look at raising gas taxes.

So far this year, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland and Nebraska introduced legislation hiking their gas taxes and Arkansas might boost its diesel fuel tax, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Tax Foundation. Conversely, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming already have shot down proposed increases this year, NCSL records show.

Four years ago, federal lawmakers thought they had addressed a significant national problem: A hodgepodge of state rules for overseeing convicted sex offenders was helping helps the criminals evade authorities.

Even worse, that patchwork of oversight also was resulting in sex offenders seeking out states to live in based on the jurisdictions' perceived lax rules.

But the federal law passed by Congress in 2006 has hit a major snag: States have blown deadline after deadline to upgrade their sex offender tracking systems.