Editorial

Budget heads list of big state issues yet to be resolved

Five weeks to go before the constitutional adjournment date of May 17. As usual, there are plenty of issues hanging. First and most important, in this year of difficult fiscal challenges, is the 2003 budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. On this, we face a deadline of May 10, or four weeks from now. We senators receive the bills that comprise the state budget from the House, which acts on them first. Ordinarily we receive them by the middle of March. This year, owing to dilatory House action, the budget bills didn't arrive in the Senate until last Monday. This followed a busy week of action by the House in which they worked long days and nights, so as to avoid being even later than they were.

Members of our Senate Appropriations Committee have been working overtime to cope with their staggering workload. This now includes even coming in, as today, for Sunday afternoon sessions, and meeting pretty much every day, far into the night and often early the next morning. I can't say enough for all these committee members and especially for Senate appropriations chairman John Russell of Lebanon, who leads this committee in its unenviable task.


No Rainy Day Fund use: One budget issue was laid to rest this week when Gov. Bob Holden's proposal to use the state's Rainy Day Fund to plug budget gaps failed to receive approval in the Democrat-controlled House. You read it here first, back in January, that Rainy Day funding would never fly. Although the measure received a few votes more than a majority in the House, it fell far short of the required two-thirds majority of 109 votes. Only two Republicans out of 75 joined Democrats in voting for it. Approval in the Republican-controlled Senate was never a reasonable prospect.


Missouri State University? There's an Iowa State, an Oklahoma State, a Kansas State and an Illinois State. Should there be a Missouri State University? It hasn't been a big issue in our part of the state, but down Springfield way, there's plenty of support for the name change of Southwest Missouri State University to Missouri State. Attempts were made back in the 1980s to accomplish this, but they proved unsuccessful. This year a bill making the change sailed through the House by about a 2-1 vote. This past week I assigned it to the Senate Education Committee, chaired by Missouri State supporter Roseann Bentley of Springfield.

Opposition is coming, some of it fierce, from the alumni and extended family of the University of Missouri system. These good folks in many parts of the state advance various arguments, many of them sound, others less so. We'll have a chance in extended Senate debate to air many of them, attempting, in the cumbersome manner of representative government everywhere, to sort through them.

This past week I fielded a call from a former MU curator, a thoughtful and respected Democrat, who warned me this change will inevitably mean more spending. "They'll even want a medical school in Springfield before they're done," he argued. He cited figures that Iowa spends $550 million on Iowa State and the University of Iowa, while we spend $200 million on MU.

Others argue persuasively that the name change will be a big step forward in marketing our great state and that it's something our third-largest metropolitan area deserves. It'll be interesting to see whether this one can pass the Senate.

Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.

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