GOVERNOR'S HYSTERICS BELIE SERIOUS BUSINESS TO BE FINISHED

JEFFERSON CITY -- Thursday afternoon, the Senate Transportation Committee passed out a substitute for the governor's transportation bill by a 5-4 vote.

Within 90 minutes, Gov. Bob Holden delivered himself of what is easily the most hysterical statement delivered by any Missouri chief executive in recent history.

Who put the bee under the governor's bonnet?

Well, apparently, the culprit is this writer.

Refusal by the Senate GOP majority to forward his $747 million tax increase, the largest in state history, was enough to send him over the top, gnawing on the carpet in a fulminating rage.

Is this the language a governor uses in a formal, prepared statement on a key policy issue?

You be the judge:

Kinder "has pulled a little procedural hocus-pocus out of his bag of dirty tricks to make the committee reconsider his plan and substitute his version on the Senate floor.

"Earlier today, the Senate Transportation Committee reversed its position on transportation funding and stripped House Bill 924 of its additional transportation funding.

"With this action, Senator Kinder has taken our One Missouri Transportation Plan into his laboratory and is now trying to breathe life into a monster." (Emphasis added.)

Who writes this stuff?

(Speculation centers on one Jerry Nachtigal, the governor's flack and a summa cum laude graduate, one may fairly surmise, of the Jed Clampett School of Journalism and Barber College of Bug Tussle, Ark. Or perhaps a member of the governor's deep-thinking policy staff.)

Of far more pertinence, one must ask:

What sort of governor approves such a statement to be issued in his name, to be represented as his words?

So we Senate Republicans advanced a plan with no new taxes, and this governor just can't stand it, doing his best imitation of a three-year-old tyke, grabbing the seat of his pants and screaming at the top of his lungs.

As we head into the session's final two weeks with the governor's embarrassing hysterics ringing in our ears, the stage is set for high drama on the Senate floor.

Riding in from west-central Missouri is the governor's savior, state Sen. Jim Mathewson of Sedalia, who -- by this writer's prior agreement with the House speaker -- will handle the transportation bill in Senate floor debate.

Mathewson, who will offer a Democrat version scrapping the GOP plan you have heard about since Thursday, is a wily 26-year veteran and a former president pro tem.

Few are the legislative tacticians any shrewder than he.

Mathewson taught me, during the nine sessions I had to observe him, the sort of maneuver that earned me the governor's denunciation.

Now Mathewson will get floor time for the debate the governor is demanding.

Thus the fulfillment of this writer's commitment to the governor and speaker, to Mathewson and the public.

So lawmakers will have a choice:

The largest tax increase in state history.

Or a Republican alternative that begins the re-direction of existing state revenue to the Missouri Department of Transportation with no higher taxes.

Should make for an interesting final two weeks.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.