Holden warns of school cuts as special session continues

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Trying to pressure the Missouri Legislature into passing an education budget he likes, Gov. Bob Holden has released a list of projected cuts to local schools that could occur as soon as next week.

Locally, the Cape Girardeau School District is listed among the 25 least affected districts with 0.4 percent loss from what it spent in the 2001-2002 school year. It shares that percentage with five other districts all out of the area.

Holden, a Democrat, has twice vetoed the budget for public schools and colleges and has called lawmakers into a special legislative session.

With the state fiscal year set to start July 1, Holden has asked lawmakers to pass a three-month appropriation for education, then return in September for another special session on ways to add money to the budget.

Instead, Republicans who control the legislature are planning to push through the same education budget they passed last week, which appropriates money for a full year.

Republican House leaders plan to bypass the committee hearings typically held for bills, instead bringing the education budget bills directly to a chamber vote on Wednesday. Passage would send the bills to the Senate, where a vote is expected Friday.

Holden has refused to say whether he would veto the education bills a third time.

If he were to sign them into law, Holden says the bills would leave state's $19 billion budget $236 million out of balance, forcing him to withhold $190 million in K-12 education spending, $20 million in higher education spending and $30 million from other state agencies.

The list of school cuts released Tuesday projects that the Risco School District in New Madrid County would take the biggest hit as a proportion of what it spends. It would lose 8.4 percent of what it spent in the 2001-2002 school year -- $123,000 out of a $1.5 million budget.

Seven mostly rural school districts would lose more than 6.5 percent of their expenditures. Many of the other schools that stand to lose the most also are in rural areas, although a few are in St. Louis County.

Many of the districts least affected under the projections are in wealthier St. Louis suburbs. The Clayton and Brentwood school districts would lose less than 0.1 percent of their total budgets. That's because the districts depend largely on local funding, rather than state money.

House Speaker Catherine Hanaway, whose district includes several of the least-affected schools, said the projected education cuts express Holden's will -- not the legislature's -- since the governor would be choosing to withhold money that lawmakers appropriated.

"What he's trying to do is put the blame on us for any withholding he makes," Hanaway said.

She said because of the way state aid is distributed, the school districts in her area also were among the least affected by sizable increases in state education spending during the past decade.

Holden wants lawmakers to increase education funding by raising taxes on casinos and ending some "corporate tax loopholes."

On Tuesday, a group called the Missouri Citizen Education Fund released a report calling for the closure of one of those loopholes, which allows corporations to avoid paying some state income taxes by setting up out-of-state holding companies.

Studying 50 corporations that use the loophole, the report found that more than 80 percent of their trackable national political donations went to Republican committees while less than 20 percent went to Democratic committees.

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Education budget bills are HBs102,103.

On the Net

Gov. Bob Holden: www.gov.state.mo.us

Missouri Legislature: www.moga.state.mo.us