MISSOURI WATCH: WHEN DOES IT END, AND WILL WE SURVIVE?

As anyone who can still remember when our state government in Jefferson City spent less than $1 billion a year, or when a more recent national recession forced agency budgets to be reduced and hospital beds eliminated, there is never-ceasing wonder at today's multibillion-dollar expenditures for important services provided to Missourians.

How did this vast increase in state spending occur and what made it happen? Where does all the money come from to fund at record levels not only previously existing state services but scores of new ones and programs not even imagined just a few weeks ago? Perhaps, more importantly, what will happen to our state and its citizens if even small reductions occur in revenue collections and what kind of crisis would be created by a major decline in both available funds and what are viewed today as essential services?

These questions are especially pertinent at this moment because this year's General Assembly has just voted a $15.9 billion budget for the 12-month period beginning in July, and because this total raises to ever-increasing levels the per capita expenditures made by Jefferson City on behalf of some 5.5 million citizens in our state. Legislators have approved a budget very similar, and slightly higher, than the one outlined in January when Governor Mel Carnahan delivered his annual State of the State address. At that time, the governor recommended the expenditure of $15.7 billion for Fiscal Year 1999, a figure that was about three-fourths of a billion dollars higher than spending in the current fiscal period that ends June 30.

By the time the budget made it through committee hearings and revisions by committees of the whole, it had increased to $15.9 billion, a figure that doesn't include some emergency appropriations that will have to be made to get some agencies through the current year. So, in round numbers, we're talking about $16 billion in state spending for the next 12-month fiscal period.

As someone who can remember when the governor of our state was paid $5,000 a year, with an allowance for one secretary, and when lawmakers were paid the munificent sum of $5 a day, I find these current figures virtually unbelievable. Maybe unthinkable is a better word, yet Missouri is not alone in funding multibillion-dollar budgets. As a matter of fact, 20 states spend more than we do for services and programs.

During the administration of Mel Carnahan's predecessor, John Ashcroft, state spending was nearly half the amount just recommended by the 1998 General Assembly. Ashcroft inherited, along with all of his other duties, a recession that severely reduced the ability of the state to maintain services and with no prospect of enhancing or increasing them. Unemployment was more than twice the figure it is today, and general revenue collections were usually less than half the totals being reported now. Times were tough, money was scarce and the state tightened its belt, although no one around Jefferson City at that time was happy with the consequences.

Events that had nothing to do with the political party in power brought about an almost mystical change in the economy, which began to bloom as a result of new technology, the end of threats from a crumbling communist world and a loosening of the tight anti-inflationary reins held by federal monetary agencies. As the nation cranked up for a much-anticipated period of domestic prosperity, new jobs were added, industrial productivity took off like a rocket and the dollar became king on markets as distant as the Far East.

When all of this occurred, states began feeling relief from their season of sorrows and began collecting record sums form existing tax levies almost before anyone realize it. Suddenly we found ourselves awash in higher revenue and blessed with inventing new ways to spend it. It didn't take long.

Future state spending will reach and quite possibly exceed $3,000 for every man, woman and child in Missouri. Who would have thought it? More importantly, who's thinking about the day when these huge increases will not be possible? To be perfectly honest, I'm not aware of anyone worrying unduly about that day of judgment, despite almost universal admission that, indeed, it will arrive. As one state fiscal official frankly confided the other day, "I just hope I'm not around when it happens." For his sake, I do too. But most of us will be, and we will again be faced with the morbid task of cutting essential services, ending beneficial programs and conducting midnight raids on the state treasury to keep teachers paid, colleges operating and hospital beds available.

The optimists among us insist that the creation of a rainy-day fund, approved by voters a few years ago, will help Jefferson City weather the storm. Well, that's comforting until we recognize that even during these carnival-cash days, the amount put away has been nothing less than unspectacular. The Budget Stabilization Fund initially received 2.5 percent of the net general revenue collections its first year. The total sum of this fund is less than $150 million, and one does not have to be a rocket scientist to realize that the funds accumulated in this rainy-day account wouldn't even pay for the increase in the state budget, mentioned above, that occurred from the time the governor submitted his annual spending plans to the moment they were increased in the General Assembly.

I'm not suggesting that Jefferson City suddenly reduce its surplus spending spree, for this would run contrary to a long history of political back-scratching that began before any of us were even born, but I would recommend an infusion of a great deal more reluctance to spend every new dollar the state collects on every new program politicians can dream up. Even the squirrels that live in the trees around the Capitol know enough to prepare for winter. Shouldn't we be as prudent?

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.