TWO BUDGETS SHOW STATE'S TRUE GROWTH

An eight-year span between budgets submitted by two governors graphically illustrates the rapid growth of Missouri's state government. The eight-year period, starting with the third budget submitted by Gov. John Ashcroft and spanning the recommended spending outlined last week by Gov. Mel Carnahan's third budget, shows a remarkable increase in state programs and spending.

Ashcroft's proposed spending for Fiscal Year 1988, outlined in his State of the State address on January 13, 1987, called for Missouri to spend $6,598,695,655 for the 12-month period that would begin July 1, 1987.

Carnahan's recommended budget for FY 1996, delivered last Wednesday to a joint session of the General Assembly, calls for a revenue outlay of $13,157.714,293, starting July 1.

The increase over the eight budget periods, five presided over by Ashcroft and three by Carnahan, amounts to nearly a doubling of state spending, along with a corresponding rise in revenue from both increased state taxes and higher payments from the federal government. The increase in spending from the Ashcroft budget to the Carnahan recommendations shows a growth of $6,459,018,638, which comes very close to being a doubling of state expenditures in just eight years.

Part of the increase revenue can be traced to normal increases in general revenue taxes, such as sales-use and income taxes, while Missouri has gained from increased federal payments and grants, including expanded Medicaid funds, and this is coupled with a significant growth on other revenue, such as the increase in state gasoline taxes enacted during the Ashcroft administration.

These increases are mirrored in the expected revenues predicted by Ashcroft in 1987 and those predicted by Carnahan only last week. For example, Ashcroft predicted general revenue taxes for FY 1988 would reach $3.4 billion, with federal funds making up an additional $1.3 billion. His estimate of other funds was set at $2 billion.

In contrast, Carnahan told legislators last week that Missouri general revenue collections for the next fiscal year should be $5.7 billion, while federal funding of mandated programs and other grants would reach $3.5 billion. Other revenue, which unlike Ashcroft's budget included substantial sums from the Missouri lottery and riverboat casino gambling, should total $3.9 billion. This figure is also enhanced by the graduated gasoline tax increases that have gone into effect since enactment of the higher fuel levy.

The largest increase in state spending over the eight years separating the two governors' budgets can be found in support for public schools, which in the FY 1988 received $1.7 billion from Jefferson City and which should get in the fiscal period starting July 1 a record sum of $3.2 billion.

State spending for higher education during the same eight years will increase from $576 million in FY 1988 to an expected $755 million in FY 1996.

State expenditures for corrections systems, including staffing for units not even built when the Ashcroft budget was introduced, will nearly double in the eight-year span. The FY 1988 budget called for an expenditure of $154 million, at a time Missouri's penal units were not overcrowded, to a recommended $295 million for the next fiscal year when the state's 18 penitentiaries and assorted penal institutions will be bulging at the seams.

Gov. Ashcroft's recommended capital improvements budget, including money for repairs and maintenance as well as new construction, called for expenditures of $100 million, while Carnahan's capital improvement plans, including two new penal units as well as a smattering of major college and university buildings, recommend expenditures of $321 million in the next fiscal year.

Another spending growth area, one in which the state has no choice but to comply, is in desegregation payments to local schools in Kansas City and the St. Louis region. In FY 1987, state outlays to comply with federal court orders reached $120 million, while in FY 1996 Missourians will have to spend $344 million to meet court requirements.

In one small way, the Carnahan budget is smaller than its predecessor back in 1987 -- it weighs less. The Ashcroft budget document weighed in at 3.26 pounds, while last week's revenue and spending book, minus accompanying charts and graphs, weighed in at only 3.1 pounds. This would appear to be about the only argument that state government in Missouri is getting smaller. Gov. Carnahan offered still another in an aside during his State of the State address: Missouri will have fewer state employees in the next fiscal year than it has in the current period. This reduction, he claimed, was the result of efficiency efforts in Jefferson City.