KENNETT, Mo. -- Some elected officials believe the way to conduct official state business is through enhancement of their own careers, and too often Missourians are treated to nothing more than a replay of the theater of professional wrestling.

Others who have sought office believe the best method of advancing citizens' concerns over mind-numbing governmental mediocrity is to become as separated from it as possible, showing up only to collect their salaries and expense-voucher requests.

It is not difficult to reach such conclusions upon reading the proposed legislation in this year's session of the General Assembly, a listing that for the most part includes few of the long-standing concerns of taxpayers and citizens hoping for enlightened progress rather than mired utopian plans that promise much and deliver little.

It is no accident there are so few proposed programs awaiting legislative attention on the subjects Missourians rate as the most urgent, and most needed, in their state: public education, health care for the needy, economic development and significant improvement of Missouri's highway system.

If, by sheer chance, this year's legislative session centered exclusively on these four areas, it would deserve and earn the undying recognition and appreciation of the 5.6 million men, women and children of Missouri. In a perfect world, this would be the legacy of this year's session, but as even the most optimistic among us will admit, we are hardly living in an idyllic atmosphere.

The initial signs the General Assembly will adjourn May 17 having made significant progress are anything but bright at this moment. One of the first pieces of legislation introduced in the session was offered by a state senator who wanted his colleagues' assistance in declaring an "official soil of Missouri."

The first bill enacted by the House of Representatives was a correction of a correction bill passed last year concerning tinted automobile windows. Last year's correction proved to contain incorrect information and even omitted essential language. This means it will require at least three years to perfect one relatively small aspect of public safety.

Responsive government is built on attention to public need -- but this example is ridiculous. It is also disheartening.

The pervading approach to this year's legislative agenda was first sounded by those in the legislative branch, as well as Gov. Bob Holden, who were familiar with projected declining revenue totals facing the state in the months ahead. Far from being a pejorative note, these warning should have alerted all state officials that certain changes in how they conduct business in the future must be guided by new, but hardly fatal, circumstances.

But the warnings, as unexpected as they were, need not have led to such false conclusions as severe spending reductions for the essential programs listed above: education, health care, economic development and highways. Since the state's general revenue fund has only begun to register the economic slowdown now occurring (but lately giving signs of improving), there is more than enough money to fund needed improvements in all four essential areas. Please note the clause "more than enough," because it is important that, in view of the expected revenue decline, our legislators exercise fiscal restraint when appropriating for other state activities.

It is at this point that the responsibility promised by candidates when they were seeking state office becomes essential. Indeed, it becomes necessary for taxpayers to demand from their elected representatives the kind of responsibility that was promised, and promised, presumably, in good faith. Those who fail to deliver need to be held accountable the next time their names appear on a ballot.

For those officials who protest that the task of sorting out funding for unneeded or unnecessary programs is too difficult or too complex, the response should be that they have failed to study the budget for Fiscal Year 2003 that was handed them in the early part of January. It doesn't take an MBA degree to recognize the froth and frills of politics-as-usual in the proposed budget, starting with the usual request for more and more departmental employees and the askings for new and "more efficient" office equipment as well as items that deal with implementing programs that in previous budgets were touted as "self-supporting" or "federally funded."

Furthermore, legislative officers should instruct those representatives and senators serving on budget and appropriations committees to sharpen their unused red pencils and begin cutting extraneous items that appear each and every year, after having been previously rejected by alert fiscal committee members. To a bureaucrat, a denied appropriation request presents a challenge for passage the next year, ad infinitum, until the unnecessary items are unwittingly approved by inattentive legislators. On a personal note, I am aware of one rejected item that appeared for six consecutive years in the budget requests of one state facility, and I would give odds that the item was eventually approved and is now safely located in the facility -- still unneeded and unnecessary.

To fund the essential four programs, lawmakers must exercise restraint, even voice an unpopular view, even suggest the department reduce its askings to a specific amount. It may be necessary to cut secretarial pools, lower phone bills, reduce travel requests, sell extraneous equipment and forego a new state car for another year. Such steps are considered heresy in the Capitol, but private citizens regularly make such decisions, however painful they may seem, so it should not be asking too much to demand that elected representatives join us.

There's enough state revenue -- if it's spent correctly.

Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News & Editorial Service.