ALREADY UP THE CREEK WITHOUT A PADDLE

If you left Missouri tomorrow and didn't return for a year, you would find the 1993 General Assembly created a state that had changed in innumerable ways: the local schools would be significantly improved, the health-care system would be meeting the needs of 600,000 children, local governments would be rolling in cash from their share of casino gambling and state officials would be ethically cleansed.

Yeah, right!

Without detracting one whit from the accomplishments of this year's legislative session, let's note right at the start that despite the gains made, Missouri has a long way to go before it achieves nirvana. In many respects, this session's final week of work produced more potential change than has been seen in a couple of decades. And at least some of the programs approved, often reluctantly, in Jefferson City in recent days came about not because our leaders felt the state was on the threshold of greatness but because some problems had become so challenging that solving them was easier than trying to live with them.

It was, after all, the potential threat of court control over our 538 local school districts that provided the impetus for Gov. Mel Carnahan to recommend a significant tax increase to equalize at least partially the funding inequity behind each of the state's 830,000 children enrolled in public schools. And it was this same threat that convinced many reluctant legislators that higher taxes were less of a political threat than the disgrace of having the courts become the state's de facto superintendent of schools. Presiding over a court-run school system is a fate worse than death for governors and allowing it to happen means much greater risk at the polls for legislators.

Yes, this year's session did equalize at least some portions of the school foundation formula and did, at the last minute and under considerable pressure, enact higher taxes to double payments from this fund to poorer districts. But the vast portion of this tax increase will not be borne by average citizens; the bulk of the cost has been thrown on higher-income taxpayers and large corporations. We agree with this decision, but the point is, the tax increases are less of a political burden on our elected representatives than has been claimed, and there was no serious attempt made to spread the fiscal responsibility to all taxpayers in the state.

It is possible that Missourians will begin to see public education progress in a few years under the program enacted in this year's session but only if local districts are made accountable for desperately needed administrative reforms. The educational bureaucracy can waste unbelievable sums unless both the state and the public demand that additional money go for improving classroom instruction. Whether this comes about is just as important as providing additional tax funding.

Speaker Bob Griffin's health-care measure, funded almost entirely by tobacco addicts, is perhaps one of the least understood programs approved in the 1993 session. The Griffin plan assures better health care for the state's most vulnerable citizens: our young children, providing it where it seems most logical: in hometown schools. Most districts will be able to offer for the first time a full-time health-care provider in local schools, and Missourians should welcome this needed care assistance for children who too often lack even basic health services. The measure will also well serve the state's citizens when, and if, a nationwide health-care program is inaugurated in Washington, providing an early network for a Missouri-wide delivery system.

After one scandal after another, Jefferson City has finally gotten around to inaugurating an ethics oversight authority, not that such police tactics are ever welcome in Capitol cloakrooms. Implementing earlier approval of an ethics commission was delayed as long as possible by the state's political establishments, but public pressure finally prevailed. It would be well to recognize that the ability of ethics cops to stamp out all wrongdoing is greatly exaggerated, particularly among a political population that most often survives by its wit and understandable desire to survive. The ethics commission will be less clever than those who will seek to avoid its rules, so no Missourian should be deceived by the promise of instant moral conversion in the political congregation. It won't happen, but the oversight is long needed and most welcome, even at this late date.

Any promise of wholesale overhaul or large savings in the last-minute approval of workers' compensation changes is unrealistic. The bill finally enacted is more of a minimal start toward improvement, with much of the journey still ahead of us. There were just too many last-minute, time-desperate amendments in this bill to correct all of the abuses and high costs, and so Missourians should take with a few grains of salt some of the more grandiose claims that have been made for the new law. The Senate version was better than the one enacted by the House, which unfortunately had the final word. An attempt was made to end the disturbing practice of making employers pay for non-work related medical care, while an attempt was also made to introduce some degree of competition in workers' comp insurance, which has simply gone through the price ceiling in recent years.

If the General Assembly didn't solve all of the travails of workers' compensation, its members need not apologize, since no state assembly across the country has been able to do more than put an imperfect lid on spiraling costs. Well, thank heaven the trial lawyers who specialize in this field for an affluent livelihood will not experience much if any loss of compensation, so let us celebrate this dubious feat.

If the claims for the success of this year's session seem exaggerated, we should be tolerant. It was a lazy, lazy river the Legislature traveled for four months, ending with wild paddling to stay afloat in the final two weeks. It's not the best way to run state government, but it does have one decided advantage: something is better than nothing when you're already up the creek without any paddles at all.