MISSOURI WATCH: CARE TO JOIN ME IN CALAMITY CORNER?

Even when things appear to be going smoothly in the marble palace overlooking the Muddy Missouri in the County of Cole, some of us worry about problems that appear to be hanging around every street corner in a 10-block area from Capitol to McCarthy avenues.

I'm not absolutely certain why this concern is so manifestly troubling since, after all, Missouri's banking account has never been higher and we have it on the word of our governor himself that the state of the state has never been better. Then why worry?

Those of us with long memories can remember when state agencies seemed more like those found in countless courthouses around Missouri than large and efficient service dispensers. Some of us can still remember when the general revenue of the Show Me State went from millions to billions. Certainly we never dreamed it would reach the $14 billion mark in this century. But it did and has. Still others can remember the optimism that surrounded the ability of the state to solve its myriad problems when Kit Bond handed the keys to the executive bathroom to John Ashcroft, who began experiencing the pain of a major recession within a few months of taking office.

These are not reassuring memories and they are made even less so by the realization that nothing stays the same, even in politics and government.

In recent days Jefferson City's attention has been focused on an inauguration, the beginning of a new legislative session, the governor's budget message and a lot of posturing about salary increases. Within days of these events there was general agreement along Capitol Boulevard that things would settle down and that our elected officials would dispense with the problems before them in much the same manner as they have been doing for 175 years.

I hope this is so, but I have some nagging doubts, some of which, you have probably already inferred, I am going to share with you.

First, I can remember no period in recent time when so many state agencies faced so many major problems. It is not that each department faces one, major insurmountable dilemma, but rather because so many of them currently face challenges that dramatically affect their ability to deliver services to some 5.3 million men, women and children within our borders.

Let's start with welfare reform, perhaps the greatest challenge ever thrown in the laps of the Department of Social Services. Missouri's welfare system is being transformed before our very eyes from a branch office of the federal government to an originator, administrator and financier of programs affecting fully 25 percent of our population. Not only are these programs, now in a state of flux, still unclear even in the eyes of those who are writing them but in the minds of one out of every four Missourians. How these programs will evolve will affect every area of the state and their residents.

As if this weren't an entire plateful, consider the work ahead for the state's education agencies, which must not only confront changing conditions within the welfare system but must begin producing results from an expanded school budget that carries with it both an implied and direct message: make our kids smarter. If you know anything at all about education, you have already learned that not all I.Q.'s are the same and not all parental input is even. Some children, under even the best conditions, will never succeed in the academic world for as many reasons as there are failures. But the state has already told school officials they had better produce---or else.

For years and years Missouri had an agency that built more and wider highways, even with gas taxes that ranked on the tail end of the national norm. That the agency did a great job cannot be denied, but suddenly the engineers began to encounter all kinds of detours: federal fund shortfalls, higher costs, inflated promises to secure even slight boosts in user revenue, demands for more highway bucks for alternate systems to solve horrendous urban traffic jams. During all of this the once highly regarded Highway Department lost construction time and the public's confidence, two essential components of an effective delivery system. Solve it, the politicians demand, and the engineers know they mean it. Solve it, they must.

A state with two of the most dangerous cities in America is bound to have corrections problems. And boy we do. Spending millions that could be better spent immunizing children or treating drug addicts on bricks and mortar for new prisons, the state is presently involved in the greatest construction period in its history. One new prison after another rises in the air to house all manner of criminals whose felony time has been greatly expanded in an effort to make our neighborhoods safer. We are building at least two new prisons a year to house young men and women who committed violence against society, which is not only the target of their actions but which must finance their incarceration. Many of these criminals are victims themselves: victims of drug and alcohol abuse. In other words, they pursued the escape offered by cocaine and booze which in turn provided them with the courage of aggression. A brand new Rand Corporation study finds that drug treatment is seven times more cost effective than prison terms---a statistic that may reach Jefferson City by the time we have spent $1 billion in tax funds on prison bars and beds. Welcome to the world of the Department of Corrections.

Unfortunately these are only a few of the dilemmas now facing the state. Space and the glassing over of readers' eyes prevent going on. Believe me, they are out there and they are far too numerous to mention even in a small book. Care to join me in feeling a sense of unease? If so, take a chair in Calamity Corner or Doomsday Den. It's good to have company.

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