Sooner or later Missourians will have to confront a problem long ignored throughout much of the state: the economic erosion in the vast majority of our small towns and communities that still serve a sizable portion of our population. I will concede that rural development, or the glaring absence of it, is not at this point a front-burner item in Jefferson City, or much of anywhere else in Missouri for that matter.

Indeed, we have become so embroiled in urban problems that any difficulty being experienced in outstate is accorded only cursory notice and virtually no response from the state Capitol. State government has been so occupied with football stadiums, NFL teams, transit deficits and crime rates in the metropolitan areas that we have no energy, insight or funds for programs that are labeled "country" by city politicians.

From the governor's office on the Capitol's second floor to the legislative chambers on the third floor, the political agenda has been devoted to meeting urban needs and solving city problems. In most offices occupied by elected representatives, whatever programs devoted to rural interests are suggested usually end at the bottom of a session's agenda.

Missouri is currently occupied with correcting a series of problems, almost all of them centering on conditions within the metropolitan regions of St. Louis and Kansas City. The state has become the largest financing source of school districts within both cities, and while we are reaching the $2 billion mark in desegregation payments for both cities, the public schools of outstate Missouri have been forced to make financial sacrifices dictated by irreversible federal court orders. The result has been a growing rate of bankruptcy of these neglected districts and a gradual lessening in the quality of education throughout much of the state.

Even Missouri's highway system has come under question in recent months, primarily because it is seen, erroneously, as a program that primarily benefits outstate regions. There are new demands to expand the system to finance transit systems that are either in operation or planning stages of urban chambers of commerce, and these are accompanied by demands for greater "representation" of cities on the highway commission. Statistics show that St. Louis and Kansas City have received the vast proportion of new road development in the past decade. If commissioners are added from each congressional district, an area that has little connection with a statewide highway program, future outstate projects will either be downsized or eliminated.

Even state programs that seek to develop the entire state, rather than just the urban areas, are increasingly unpopular within the ranks of state legislators. The Department of Economic Development has a tough time getting the attention, much less any money, from St. Louis and Kansas City lawmakers. The cities have long ago given up on attracting large industries, or even small ones, within their corporate limits, simply because these areas have become inhospitable to human life, not to mention the operation of manufacturing facilities.

The truth is that if cities did not exist, none would have to be invented to meet any societal need. The urban areas that once were centers of industry have been consumed by cancers of drug sales and use, violence and decay. Areas surrounding core cities now hold more people, provide more services and meet more of society's needs. Cities are no longer assets; they are liabilities with ills no one knows how to cure.

The decentralization of Missouri has been going on for a number of years, but our state's leaders are either engaged in trying to save what has become hopeless or committed to offering new solutions that are impossible. All the while, state government pays little or no heed to the problems that are common throughout much of the geographical area of Missouri: inadequate commercial development, an absence of business incentive programs, a declining health service industry and the overly simplistic view that as agriculture goes so goes the rural areas of our state.

None of these problems should spell the demise of outstate Missouri. Some social scientists declare that the cyclical nature of economic development is moving toward rejuvenation of rural communities and away from mass production of standard goods. The real key to rural development is knowledge, which has no ties to geography. It is possible to envision a new electronic heartland, bustling with small businesses and industries. Along with football stadiums and rapid transit subsidies, Missouri needs a statewide rural development policy and the plans to go with it. It's time for Jefferson City to look at needs other than those that proliferate our state's decaying, dying core cities.