PETITION CALLS FOR EXTENSION OF STATE CONSERVATION TAX

The Missouri Farm Bureau is coordinating an effort to continue a state sales tax that expires in three years.

Funding for protecting Missouri's parks, soil and water would be in jeopardy if the tax is allowed to expire in 1998, supporters say. It also would mean the potential loss of $55 million in revenue, they said.

At every cash register in Missouri since 1988, a tenth of 1 percent of the purchase price is collected and devoted to parks and the conservation of soil and water in the state.

Missouri Farm Bureau Executive Estill Fretwell said the sales tax should be continued, and Farm Bureau is coordinating the legal issues surrounding the petition drive to put the proposal on the November 1996 ballot.

"We did of course try to pass something in the Legislature," he said. "It wasn't approved but it was because of other interest groups."

The revenue is devoted to state parks and the conservation of soil and water in rural Missouri. Some interest groups wanted as much as half of the revenue to go toward urban park development if the tax was extended for another 10 years.

Missouri Farm Bureau and many legislators disapproved of the specifics of that proposal, and it died during the last General Assembly.

The farm bureau hammered out the wording for the latest proposal. Those words were approved last week by Missouri's attorney general and secretary of state.

Several organizations are involved in the petition drive, Fretwell said. Among groups like the Conservation Federation of Missouri and the Audubon Society are a citizens group whose leaders are co-chairing the campaign. A farmer from Corder and the mayor of Columbia lead a group called Citizens Committee for Soil, Water and State Parks.

Although the committee and Farm Bureau will bypass the General Assembly with the petition drive, supporters wouldn't object to legislators taking the initiative and voting to place the proposal on the ballot in 1996.

"And the Legislature might choose to pass a bill," Fretwell said. "I wouldn't mind it if it was a proposal that was satisfactory."

He said most supporters of extending the sales tax wouldn't welcome a proposal similar to the one resulting from the last General Assembly. Neither would Sen. Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau.

"I'm all for it," Kinder said. "We were second or third in the nation from loss of soil due to erosion 10 years ago. We've made huge improvements since then."

Kinder said urban senators had pushed for redistribution of the revenue generated by the tax to fund urban park development, but he was against their proposals. He predicted that the General Assembly would wrangle with the redistribution issue again next year.

Meanwhile, petitioners have until July 5 to collect the nearly 125,000 signatures needed to place the proposal on the ballot.