ASHCROFT, LEGISLATORS MAY JUST HAVE MADE EDUCATION HISTORY

Reports are still filtering in on exactly what Gov. John Ashcroft and the Missouri legislature did to us with the tax-increase-for-education bill they passed shortly before Friday's 6 p.m. adjournment. With the statewide vote scheduled for this November, there's lots of time to get the full story on the real meaning of this bill. It carries a whopping price tag and tax increases of $385 million.

Early indications are, however, that Gov. Ashcroft did some shrewd and highly effective horsetrading. By this I mean that in exchange for $385 million in new taxes demanded by legislators and education groups, Ashcroft has apparently achieved farreaching educational reforms that have truly historic, long-range implications for improving our schools.

I am informed that this bill implements many of the most cherished notions of those urging effective reforms for our public schools. These include parental choice; a longer school year; school report cards; guaranteed diplomas; and alternative certification for teachers. Of special importance is that extra money is committed to reducing the pupil-teacher ratio to 15-1 for kindergarten through the second grade.

Stay tuned for more details. At this early moment, however, it looks as though the Governor and his Democratic counterparts in the legislative leadership have succeeded in a most daunting task: the crafting of a $385 million tax hike that because of major reforms included may just be be worth its high price.

A big question: Are teachers' groups backing the bill as passed?

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Reliance on the lottery sure has cured all Missouri's revenue problems, hasn't it? As lotteries have spread like crabgrass in August, evidence from state after state suggests that they've reached the point of diminishing return when it comes to raising revenue.

I voted for the lottery back in 1984 as a relatively harmless form of diversion and amusement, and a not-insignificant source of revenue.

Still, the questions linger, intensified by a course of events that cannot but give you pause. What, exactly, are we getting into? What will be the long-term impact on the various states of a lemming-like rush to all the other forms of state-sponsored gambling casinos, riverboats, off-track betting parlors, and all the rest?

Meanwhile, has it ever occurred to you that in establishing a lottery, the state lunges to satisfy its own revenue appetite at an "illicit" activity that you'd be thrown in jail for exercising on your own? Is this really is the path to salvation for revenue-starved state budgets?

Nationally syndicated columnist Bill Safire of the New York Times recently offered some of the most pungent commentary I've seen anywhere on this issue. Consider Safire's thoughtful views:

"... South Dakota's state lottery, reaching for the youth market, has also invested in video games, the modern equivalent of state-sponsored slot machines."

Reviewing similar developments in state after state, Safire is alarmed. He's alarmed at New York and Connecticut ("telephone off-track betting, likely to spread to computer modems and faxes"); Iowa ("riverboat gambling"); and West Virginia ("video machines at racetracks"). Safire didn't mention it, but the just-adjourned Missouri legislature counts among its proudest achievements the passage of a riverboat gambling bill. (Every senator from Southeast Missouri voted "YES"). The measure will be submitted to Missouri voters in November, 1992.

Safire declares, ominously:

"All this means that Americans at the state level are deciding that gambling is good not just a tolerable evil, but a positive value. Gambling has become a goal of public policy.

"Only a few years ago, proponents of state lotteries were claiming that state control would channel the profits of an unstoppable human frailty toward good ends. Why let numbers racketeers and Mafia casino operators bilk the public, their argument went why not steer those ill-gotten gains into public schools?

"The answer is spreading like a poison through state and local governments: immoral means have never led to moral ends. We are no longer skimming the profits from a criminal activity: we are putting the full force of government into the promotion of moral corruption.

"What am I, some kind of stiff? Is a friendly game of gin rummy at a penny a point to be frowned upon, or a church social that raises its costs at a bingo game to be condemned, or a privately owned gambling yacht catering to rich drunks cause for conservative concern?

"I'm a libertarian. If people want to titillate themselves with a game of chance, or delude themselves into thinking they can beat the odds, that's their private business. I just do not think it should be the public business.

"Gambling promotion has become a key to state budget-balancing. ... Really soaking the poor as this excessively regressive taxation does sticks in my craw.

"Why? Because it is wrong for the state to exploit the weakness of its citizens. It is the most unfair and painful form of `painless' taxation. The money isn't coming from a few big bookies and croupiers, but from the pockets of millions.

"And gambling taxation feeds on itself. We cannot give up the state income from betting, say legislators who feel guilty about pretending that gambling is good, because the states have become dependent on the money, or because other states will use casinos to lure their tourism. They have become as hooked on gambling as a source of revenue as any compulsive gambler betting the milk money.

"Here's what you can do to stop the explosion of government-sponsored gambling:

"Tell your local television anchor you've had it with media hype of gambling. Features of giggling lottery winners or hoohahing over million-dollar jackpots is cheap-shot journalism; show us some people impoverished by gambling, or expose the cost of the state bureaucracy pushing it.

"Apply truth-in-advertising to state-sponsored slots, lotteries and video games. Display prominently the odds against winning; state the number of losers for every winner. Demand the stations make free equal time available for anti-gambling messages.

"Demand that gubernatorial gamesters stop using their `take' for advertising. The old numbers racket was never permitted mass-market advertising; the creation of fresh demand for gambling by a public agency is against the public interest.

"Tell your kids that gamblers are life's losers. Private gambling, like prostitution, should not be illegal, but it should not be treated as a value ..." (Emphasis added).