JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Gov. Matt Blunt on Wednesday kicked off a two-day, cross-state tour promoting a $158 million spending increase on public school programs as a campaign promise kept.

The Republican governor claimed the state spending -- which comes on top of the $3.6 billion already going to school programs -- represents the largest increase in the past four years.

But detractors such as Democratic lawmakers and the nonprofit fiscal analysis group, The Missouri Budget Project, noted that nearly all the new money comes from the growth of taxes and revenue already earmarked for public schools, meaning it could not have been spent on other government programs.

Blunt is using a series of eight classroom news conferences to perform ceremonial signings of the budget for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for the fiscal year starting July 1. He plans to sign the actual budget bill into law Friday, said Blunt spokesman Spence Jackson.

While campaigning last year, Blunt pledged that schools always would receive an annual state funding increase under his administration and that he would never withhold money appropriated to schools to help balance the budget.

Before a third-grade classroom in Kansas City, Blunt presented an oversized check to Missouri school children for $158 million. He was holding similar events Wednesday in Willard, St. Joseph and St. Louis, and on Thursday in Joplin, Fulton, New London and Cape Girardeau.

Funding priorities

"School districts understand their funding priorities better than policymakers, and they can count on the fact that they will receive this money," Blunt said.

Of the $158 million increase, $113 million comes in the form of basic aid to the state's 524 school districts. That money comes from such dedicated sources as casino taxes and an income tax increase passed in 1993. An additional $42 million comes from a dedicated 1 percent sales tax enacted by voters in 1982.

The money would have gone toward schools regardless of whether Blunt was governor or whether Republicans controlled the legislature, said Tom Kruckemeyer, a former state economist who now is director of fiscal policy for The Missouri Budget Project.

"All or virtually all of this money is from tax sources that are dedicated already to K-12 education, and it is money they had to give them," Kruckemeyer said.

Still, the legislature could have offset all or part of that earmarked increase by lowering the amount of other state revenues appropriated to schools. That has sometimes happened in the past, but not this year.

"This governor and this legislature made a commitment that this money would in fact be spent on classrooms and students, and that it would not be shifted," Jackson said.

The net $158 million increase accounts for the fact that some school programs are being cut. For example, the budget slices $1 million from this year's $4.1 million in state grants to schools that establish alternative education programs for violent and disruptive students.

Budget cutbacks

The budget also cuts $618,460 from this year's $6 million state appropriation for education and literacy programs for people age 16 and older without high school diplomas. The state cut is not expected to affect the $12 million in federal funds for the programs, but it is likely to result in fewer services.

Don Eisinger, the state's adult education coordinator, estimated last month that the state funding reduction would eliminate services for 3,000 of the 37,000 people receiving at least 12 hours of help through the program.

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Associated Press writer Jeff Douglas in Kansas City contributed to this report.

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Education bill is HB2.

On the Net:

Blunt: http://www.gov.mo.gov

Legislature: http://www.moga.state.mo.us