Department chiefs decry new job cuts in Missouri budget

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The proposed elimination of 538 administrative positions at three state departments would have a devastating impact on their ability to provide services to Missourians, department officials told lawmakers Wednesday.

Department of Social Services director Steve Roling said his office would become a one-man shop under the cuts endorsed by the House Budget Committee.

"In the director's office I would be the only one left," Roling said. "I would be the receptionist, the deputy director and the press person."

Roling, who has been on the job two months, heads the state's largest executive branch department.

The Republican-controlled committee's plan calls for eliminating the jobs of mid-level managers at the departments of social services, health and senior services and mental health and using the savings to reinstate funding for programs the Missouri Legislature had previously cut from the budget.

"I don't know how you can argue against cutting bureaucracy to restore services," said state Rep. Carl Bearden, R-St. Charles.

Bearden, the House budget chairman, said the job cuts would remove an unneeded layer of bureaucracy between department decision makers and front-line workers who actually provide state services. Most of the eliminated jobs will be in Jefferson City.

However, after Roling noted that the workers who ensure state compliance with federal regulations related to Medicaid and other programs would lose their jobs, Bearden agreed to restore the six positions who handle such matters.

Adding to earlier cuts

Under the plan approved by the committee, 155 jobs would be eliminated at social services, 259 at mental health and 124 at health and senior services.

Those cuts would be in addition to the combined 262 positions eliminated at the three departments under the original state budget approved by the legislature last month.

Officials at the other two departments echoed Roling's statements that the additional lost jobs would lead to inefficient operations.

"If the cuts go through as written, we would find no infrastructure left in our department at all," said Richard Dunn, director of the Department of Health and Senior Services.

Lawmakers are meeting in a special legislative session to rework key portions of the budget vetoed last month by Gov. Bob Holden, a Democrat. The governor said the legislature's original $19 billion budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 was out of balance and underfunded.

The committee endorsed the two appropriation bills covering the three departments facing additional cuts on party line votes carried by majority Republicans.

Two other spending bills for the departments of elementary and secondary education and higher education passed with the support of some Democratic committee members. Those bills include the restoration of some cuts previously made to education.

The full House of Representatives will debate the four bills today. Bearden said he expects minimal floor changes.

Holden will address an informal joint session of the legislature at noon during which he is expected to urge lawmakers to increase spending by $354 million and to put a tax package before voters to cover the additional funding plus the $516 million he says the GOP plan is out of balance.

Senate President Pro Tem Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau, and House Speaker Catherine Hanaway, R-Warson Woods, will also speak. Both legislative leaders oppose new taxes.

Hanaway hasn't even assigned a Democratic tax proposal to committee. Senate hearings are scheduled for Monday on proposals to increase taxes on smokers, casinos and wealthier Missourians.

The vetoed bills account for $12.4 billion -- nearly two-thirds of the spending originally approved by lawmakers. Holden signed the remaining appropriation measures into law.

The committee actions increased spending in those bills by a total of $90.7 million.

The increases were made possible by up to $398 million in additional federal funding that wasn't available when lawmakers first passed the state budget. The House committee plan would hold more than $300 million of that one-time money in reserve to cover any potential budget shortfall.

mpowers@semissourian.com

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