Angry? Or indifferent? -- Part III

KENNETT, Mo. -- A state official was on the phone shortly after the first of two earlier columns on departmental waste in Jefferson City was published, demanding angrily that I stop demeaning "good and conscientious state employees who are overworked and underpaid."

An attempt to explain that I had never castigated either category fell on deaf ears as the official fumed that I didn't know what I was talking about. Again, attempting to assuage his anger, I noted that the information used was gleaned from official audit reports from two sources and were written by professional auditors.

Remaining indifferent to the facts, the caller said the agency he represented had no blemishes on its record and had never been cited for inefficiency or waste. Before I could thank him for calling, he muttered a couple of familiar obscenities and banged down the receiver.

Finding an audit on the agency of the caller was somewhat difficult, but eventually I located one that was not only critical of public-employee indifference but turned out to be one of the worst of the lot.

The agency in question, wrote the auditors, "had questionable payment provisions, enabling contractors to receive 50 percent of the contract amount once the agreement had been signed." Initial payments by this agency totaled millions of dollars, the highest one totaling $4.1 million, with some contractors starting work as quickly as four months prior to the finalized contract.

Obviously, the best interests of taxpayers took second place to private contractors, a practice sometimes found in our state capital.

Taxpayers are perfectly capable of understanding when honest mistakes occur in public offices. There are few courses offered that teach students how to nurture public moneys in order that essential programs are not robbed of funding and so that the public can sleep well in the knowledge that they are being served by dedicated and competent officials, as witness the state's issuance of two sets of child-support checks, each totaling $1.3 million.

Before attempts to secure return of most of the money, workers had issued 7,504 checks two times, creating a serious shortfall in the agency's cash account. In this instance, the double payments were made by a firm contracted by the state to issue the checks and the error occurred, the agency said as a way of excusing its lack of oversight, over a Thanksgiving holiday.

So there we have it, folks. The agency was responsible because it spent thousands of dollars paying someone else to do the work -- and besides the errors happened over a legal holiday weekend. I don't know about you, but, frankly, neither explanation mitigates the state's incompetence.

Even visionary projects and programs, including those launched by an able former director of the Department of Corrections, are sometimes cited by audit reports, as witness one noting fund transfers that resulted in losses totaling $5 million for a prisoner vocational program.

Some of the costs of the projects to prepare convicted felons for return to outside life paid $2.3 million for salaries to prison officials in other programs. Yet another prison project, a waste-tire operation, has lost $1.5 million since 1995 because the state was paid only 50 cents on the dollar for labor costs incurred. Close monitoring of DOC funds was obviously in lockdown.

An ambitious welfare-assistance program, carried out by the Division of Family Services within the Department of Social Services, spent more than $102 million in just four years as Missouri sought to end dependency on public aid. Auditors from Legislative Research's Oversight Division found the agency strayed far afield of its first objectives by spending public money on "unrelated programs." The welfare agency had "not properly overseen their contracts," auditors declared.

State tax-credit programs, which everyone talks about but no one seems to have all of the details on, can greatly influence the amount of money the state treasury collects at the end of the fiscal year. Economic development officials track the number of these credits, while the departments of insurance and revenue track the total credit redeemed.

A report by state Auditor Claire McCaskill said no one in Jefferson City is matching the issued credits to the redeemed credits to calculate what is outstanding and could still be redeemed. As the budget shortfall caused by an unexpected $60 million cost increase in the 2001 Pharmaceutical Tax Credit clearly showed, the importance of tracking this figure is obvious.

McCaskill's report reveals that economic development officials overestimated the amount of credits redeemed by $14 million in 2001 and $50 million in 2000. Just one of these programs, historic preservation, has proved so expensive that consideration has been given to discontinuing it, with McCaskill recommending that it "be more closely monitored," in light of the discovery that 39 percent of the residential projects occurred in middle- and upper-income urban areas.

Is it any wonder, in light of these disclosures, that state revenue officers are reporting a dangerous number of unanticipated expenses, which in turn create the kind of fiscal uncertainty that was pervasive during the final weeks of this year's General Assembly? Even the most experienced lawmakers cannot possibly arrive at totals in which the constitutional requirement of a balanced budget is complied with.

The confusion created by the absence of accurate estimates, plus the surprise elements uncovered by one or both of the state's major auditing sources, produced a dismal format for Missourians and their state government at the close of the session May 17. Add to this the loss of productivity, the voids left by canceled programs, the lack of stability for both public servers and servants and the result is nothing short of disastrous.

Missourians expect -- and deserve -- better.

Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News & Editorial Service.