Rainy Day Fund appears safe -- for now

No one ever hears much about Missouri's $458 million Rainy Day Fund that has been set aside for an emergency. Most folks think of an emergency as a calamity, a tragedy, an event that requires enormous amounts of money to recover from.

This year, Gov. Bob Holden considered attempts to spend way more than the state expects to take in as a calamity, a tragedy, a real emergency. He asked legislators to approve borrowing from the Rainy Day Fund. They said no.

Dipping into the fund means legislators would have been constitutionally required to pay back the money in three years. But what if the legislature had agreed to use the fund and state revenue actually turned out to be much higher than expected? This would have given the governor an opportunity to decide how much and where to spend the extra dollars.

Any plan to spend Rainy Day dollars in the absence of a true emergency should include the requirement to pay back the fund first -- in the same year -- if any surplus materializes. This is something to keep in mind if the topic comes up again.