Blunt's budget not faring as planned

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Gov. Matt Blunt's budget isn't panning out exactly as he had expected.

Some of the savings he assumed have vaporized. And some of his spending proposals have fallen flat in their first appearances before legislators.

But that's often the way governors' budgets go -- an indication that Missouri's new era of all-Republican government still has room for disagreement, and still has an ear for interest groups fighting to protect funding for their causes.

A couple of weeks after taking office, the Republican Blunt proposed a $19.2 billion budget to the Republican-led legislature, whose members rose to applaud 42 times in a 44-minute State of the State speech.

But few lawmakers knew the details of Blunt's budget while listening to his evening speech, because the administration did not distribute its budget books to lawmakers until the next morning.

The first stop for the governor's budget is the various topic-specific House appropriations committees, which make recommendations to the House Budget Committee. As many of those panels began making dollars-and-cents decisions last week, Blunt's budget plan took a few hits.

Blunt himself announced that he now expects to save about $2 million through changes in the First Steps program for developmentally disabled infants and toddlers -- a far cry from his original budget proposal, which would have cut $23 million in state and federal funds.

Additionally, Blunt's budget office acknowledged that it had failed to account for lost federal funds -- and assumed a faster timeline than may be possible -- when calculating an estimated $13.8 million in savings gained largely by closing the Bellefontaine Habilitation Center in St. Louis County. The actual budget savings could be $2.5 million or less, according to figures released last week by the budget office.

As originally proposed, Blunt's cuts to First Steps and Bellefontaine spawned protests by families benefiting from their services. The First Steps families were particularly effective in making their point to the governor and legislators.

The man who crafted Blunt's budget proposal, Office of Administration commissioner Michael Keathley, explained in an interview that First Steps is being revived because Blunt's original budget also was off in its growth estimates for the Medicaid health care program.

Because Medicaid now is expected to grow at a slightly slower rate than Blunt's budget assumed, that freed up $15.5 million for the budget year that starts July 1, Keathley said. That money is being used to continue First Steps.

"Every year you find stuff in the [budget] process," Keathley said. "You pick up savings you didn't think you had, and then find things that are going to cost you."

Indeed, Democratic Gov. Bob Holden encountered the same scenario when dealing with a Republican-led legislature.

For example, Holden proposed last year to close the Chillicothe Correctional Center, assuming that would save about $3 million over two years and avoid the need for $9.7 million in repairs to the prison. But legislators kept the prison open -- and in the budget.

Lawmakers also ignored most of Holden's proposed tax increases, which the governor had assumed as new revenue in his budget.

Republicans roundly criticized Holden for proposing what amounted to an unbalanced budget based on the state's existing revenue. Those same Republicans were far less vocal when Blunt also proposed what could be construed as an unbalanced budget by asking lawmakers to leave him the discretion to make $239 million in spending cuts.

Not wanting to relinquish their power of the purse strings to the executive branch, Republican House members are instead trying to identify those additional cuts themselves.

Because of that, some of Blunt's spending proposals have failed in House appropriation committees. For example, Blunt proposed $6.4 million in state subsidies to keep Amtrak passenger trains running twice daily between St. Louis and Kansas City. A House panel voted to recommend elimination of the money and the trains.

Similarly, Blunt had proposed to spend $194,392 of state and federal money to expand the Agriculture Department's inspection program for meat slaughterhouses and processors. But members of a House appropriations committee so far have been unable to find any state money for the proposal. A suggestion to charge an inspection fee was quickly dismissed by both Blunt's administration and lawmakers as a potential funding source.

Blunt, when asked about how his budget proposal was faring in the Legislature, said he expects lawmakers to make changes. But unlike the past Democratic governor, the new Republican governor said he expects to generally prevail in the Republican-led legislature.

"I think the final product is going to be very similar to what I proposed to the General Assembly," Blunt said.