REP. KASTEN PLEASED WITH FINAL BUDGET

JEFFERSON CITY -- State Rep. Mary Kasten said Thursday she is generally pleased with the fiscal 1993 budget given final approval by the Missouri General Assembly Thursday.

"In general it's a pretty good budget," said Kasten. "The budget is balanced and the operating budget is $1.5 million under the estimated re~venue for fiscal 1993.

"All of us have worked very hard to get a good, responsible budget passed," she said.

The Cape Girardeau Republican is the only Southeast Missouri representative serving on the House budget panel. That role has kept Kasten involved in endless meetings the last few weeks as the final budget document was hammered out.

The final budget is $10,203,124,059, with $4.34 billion of that coming from general revenue sources; $2.7 billion from federal sources; and the remainder from other sources.

This year for the first time Kasten served on two budget conference committees that were appointed to resolve differences between House and Senate budget bills. Kasten served on conference committees for social services and for mental health.

In the area of social services, Kasten said she was pleased that more caseworkers will be hired to administer social programs. She is hoping the additional workers will help get people off welfare.

"We also moved a lot of monies around to get money into purchasing services in the private sector to try and reduce the number of state employees," said Kasten.

Another key action in the social services budget was retaining funding to begin paying welfare benefits by electronic transfer, which she said should improve accountability and reduce the opportunities for fraud and abuse of the system.

Gov. John Ashcroft, who has line-item-veto authority over the budget, said during a visit to Cape Girardeau Monday that he was optimistic lawmakers would approve a balanced budget before the week was over.

"The General Assembly has always delivered a budget on time and I don't expect this year will be any different," the governor had said.

He pointed out that this was the first year the two budget committees and his office agreed on what revenue estimates for the budget should be based on, which has improved the overall process.

"This year we have not been arguing over how much money we are talking about for the budget," said Ashcroft.

About 30 percent of the overall budget is devoted to education, with elementary and secondary education receiving $2.5 billion and higher education $660 million.

Kasten said the budgeted amount for the school foundation formula is $9 million over the amount included in the fiscal 1992 budget. This year's amount, though, is $84 million more than what was spent through the foundation formula in the present budget year.

Cuts and withholdings due to revenue shortfalls reduced the amount that was budgeted on education.

The Fiscal 1993 budget includes $297 million of the state's desegregation costs in St. Louis and Kansas City. This is the first time a portion of the desegregation costs have been built into the core budget.

The state's operating budget is contained in 12 appropriations bills. There are also bills for emergency supplemental appropriations and for reauthorization of funds previously appropriated that were not spent this year.