LITTLE PROGRESS MADE IN JEFF CITY

JEFFERSON CITY -- With less than a week remaining before Friday's mandatory adjournment, this year's first session of the 88th Missouri General Assembly has a long way to go to reach even a modest achievement record.

As legislators returned to the Capitol Monday for the final five days, they had approved only 90 bills. By the end of last week, Gov. Mel Carnahan had signed 18 of them and vetoed one. Much of the chief executive's agenda for the 1995 session, outlined in January, remained in limbo awaiting approval by one of the two chambers or resolution by conference committees.

In recent sessions, with only a week left, the finally-agreed-to measures numbered at least 125 to 150. But this year's partisan battles, filibusters and general lack of resolution have made progress seem at times virtually non-existent.

Although some lawmakers have stoutly defended this year's session, the fact is that one-fifth of the 90 bills approved thus far deal with appropriations, which means they had to be completed under constitutional requirement by last Friday. Many of the other measures on the completed list deal with insignificant or innocuous measures that always dot a legislative calendar.

Many of Carnahan's State of the State recommendations still are on the pending list, including major revisions in the juvenile criminal code, a tax limitation formula that would limit increases to about $50 million without voter referendum, expansion of children's services, tax breaks for health insurance, and new technology plans outlined by the state's Commission on Management and Productivity.

Among the 90 approved bills is a major banking overhaul permitting the state to participate in interstate branch banking. Introduced by Sen. Ed Quick, D-Kansas City, the measure had the full support of most of the state's largest banking institutions. The bill, S.B. 178, puts Missouri in compliance with a federal interstate branch-banking law passed earlier by Congress.

On the other hand, many of the 90 measures enacted by the start of this week had relatively little significance to the state. For example, there is H.B. 421, which empowers capitol police to enforce parking regulations. And lawmakers found time to approve a bill authorizing a special license plate for motorists contributing to the Children's Trust Fund.

Nor should Missourians forget legislative approval of S.B. 24, which mandates that your next driver's license provide a space for the name and address of a lawyer who can make health-care decisions for you. The bill doesn't say whether the lawyer's telephone number is to be included as well.

Finally, there's S.B. 125, labeled the Intractable Pain Treatment Act, introduced by Sen. Mike Lybyer. Since it can't go into effect without an emergency clause, its benefits probably won't reach Missourians as they contemplate the achievement record of this year's General Assembly.