BILLS THAT DIE FOR LACK OF POLITICAL COURAGE

Missouri is a state that must continually deny its citizens essential services, whether in the area of education or family assistance, crime protection or mental health, vocational training or childhood immunization. It is rare when the state is recognized for providing superior services that rank above the national norm, unusual when it finds itself in the proper per capita category for essential services, and, unfortunately, not unusual when Missouri is once again listed as a fortysomething state, ranking right along with our less affluent neighbors south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Jefferson City does not deny services to its constituents out of malice or indifference. Our capital leaders are as cognizant of public needs as their counterparts anywhere else in the country. Service denials are necessitated not from official indifference but from the one ingredient required to meet the needs of 5.1 million men, women and children. That ingredient is revenue, although we now measure state spending not in the millions but in the billions. To be exact, 10.86 billion dollars for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

But a billion here and a billion there, and before the state knows it, there are simply not enough billions to meet the needs, the requirements and the demands. For example, the cost of fully funding a revised school foundation formula is $365 million in new state revenue alone, and the cost of meeting additional needs in other areas, such as public assistance, health care, mental health, corrections and law enforcement, would run the $365 million needed for schools close to another billion dollars. It goes without saying, in this period of a tough economy and public skittishness about tax hikes, that no political leader in his right mind is going to suggest new tax increases bordering on $1 billion. No one would buy it, even if someone could be found who would try to sell it.

But the state does have within its reach an additional $1 billion or more in new revenue without raising a single tax rate or increasing one iota an already high sales tax schedule. For at this moment, the state is granting $900 million in special sales tax exemptions to scores of industries and corporations. In a more common vernacular, tax breaks in the sales tax category alone are costing Missourians a trainload of essential services.

In the legislative session now winding down, lawmakers approved a $7.7 million tax abatement to just one company, Trans World Airlines, a firm that must be paying its lobbyists an exorbitant amount for their services. A metal processing firm in Kansas City, Armco, has been enjoying a break in sales taxes worth $1 million annually for several years. But these abatements are just the top of the iceberg, with Jefferson City granting hundreds of breaks to dozens of corporations that have been able to secure special favors through special influence in the Capitol.

Corporations aren't the only ones receiving sales tax favors from state government. Exemptions are regularly granted to buyers of luxury yachts, livestock breeders, summer theatre groups, and senior citizens who sell handicraft items.

Do you know that your local cable company, enjoying profits that finally caught the attention of Congress, is the beneficiary of a major sales tax exemption in Missouri?

We have been speaking about exemptions from just one form of state taxation, the sales tax. Yet exemptions are also granted from income and property taxes for specially favored petitioners. One of the largest property owners in the St. Louis area is Washington University, one of the wealthiest educational corporations in the nation, but this institution pays no property taxes, pays almost no income taxes and enjoys other tax abatements that assure its continued economic wealth. Fair? No one ever said tax breaks were fair, and no one could say such exemptions were fair to the citizens of Missouri, who must pay more than their share of sales, income, property and franchise taxes to meet the needs of the entire state.

If these tax exemptions were ended, Missourians would not be faced with the annual problem of inadequate revenue and an increasing number of service demands. A few years ago a state representative from Independence did the unthinkable: he introduced a measure to end most of Missouri's tax exemptions. It was an almost unheard of act of bravery in Jefferson City, and his fellow legislators were both startled and shocked at his singular act of bravery.

The lawmaker's efforts were, it goes without saying, futile and fruitless. His bill wasn't even voted out of committee and was never debated on the floor. It died for want of political courage. The state rests in peace.