MISSOURI VOTERS TO DECIDE FATE OF SEMO BUSINESS BUILDING

JEFFERSON CITY -- Missouri voters will get to decide on issuing $250 million in bonds to pay for prisons and higher education projects.

The Senate voted 22-9 on Thursday to send the House-approved package to voters.

The bond package would finance, among other projects, a $12.3 million business administration and classroom building at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau.

Gov. Mel Carnahan, who supports the package, told reporters he will decide on an election date after the legislative session ends May 13.

The package was a top legislative priority for the governor, who said providing funding for prisons was consistent with this year's bills to make violent criminals serve more time behind bars.

"This is a great way for us to fight crime," Carnahan said.

He said it would also help Missouri's public colleges and universities with long-delayed building and renovation projects.

"This is really, in the long term, an economic development measure for the state," Carnahan said.

The governor said he will work for voter passage of the bonds. Senate President Pro Tem James Mathewson, D-Sedalia and handler of the package in his chamber, also said he expected an organized push for the bonds.

This would be Missouri's first bond package in a dozen years. The last, approved in 1982, provided $650 million in bonds for a variety of projects.

This week, the Senate approved a state capital improvements budget which laid out the projects bond money would support.

Those projects include:

- Building a $56 million, 1,200-bed women's prison to replace Renz Correctional Center at Jefferson City, which was destroyed by last summer's Missouri River flooding.

- Nearly $7.3 million for a new phase of an honor-center prison in Kansas City.

- About $20 million for new beds for youth services in the Department of Social Services.

- Designing, renovating and building community colleges, about $5.5 million.

- Seventeen higher education projects accounting for the balance of the bonds.

The Senate rejected by voice vote an attempt by Sen. Mike Reid, R-Hazelwood, to divide the prison and higher education bonds into two separate issues for voters to decide.

The chamber's Republican leader, Franc Flotron of Creve Couer, said he didn't think the bonds would get voter approval. But Carnahan said he was "optimistic" about voter passage of the bonds.

All nine "no" votes were from GOP senators, although four Republicans joined 18 Democrats in approving the package.

Sen. Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau, was one of the four Republicans supporting the package.

"The Senate action today sets the bond issue before the voters," Kinder said. "It will be up to voters in November to decide whether or not this package goes through."

One opponent, Sen. Emory Melton, R-Cassville, told reporters he doesn't like the amount of long-term debt the state is accumulating.

"If there's not enough money in the treasury when they (bonds) come due, you're either going to have to cut government services or ask for a tax increase. Let's be real -- we're going to get a tax increase," Melton said.

These latest bonds would be paid off from state general revenues. Mathewson said the higher education portion might also be paid from gambling revenues, since those proceeds are earmarked already for education.

In the Missouri House Thursday, the Ways and Means Committee recommended for passage a reworked Senate bill dealing with various aspects of riverboat gambling, including what games of chance can be played aboard the floating casinos.

The action sends the bill to the full chamber, where it awaits its turn for debate next week.

Among the permitted games noted in the legislation are poker, black jack, craps, Caribbean stud, pai gow poker, Texas hold'em, double down stud and any video representation of such games.

It also says that legislators, or their relatives as distant as nephews and uncles, can't have a direct ownership interest in a gambling boat while holding office or until two years after leaving office.

Also, the rewritten bill repeals in July 1995 the 3 percent tax on the retail sale of bingo cards and pull tabs, with the money going to help finance veterans' homes.

However, the money will be replaced by Missouri Gaming Commission's leftover administrative funds, and the veterans' homes will continue to be funded.

It also exempts cities and counties from holding another election on hosting a riverboat if a previously authorized vote allowing floating casinos is still valid.