CAN GOVERNMENT EVER BE RE-INVENTED?

To paraphrase Mark Twain, everybody talks about reinventing government, but no one does anything about it. Like the weather, implementing the reinvention of government seems to be beyond earthly powers, even by the politicians who promise to bring it about during campaigns.

The phrase, reinventing government, has its origin in a best-selling book a few years ago in which the authors argued that the ability of public service budgets to continue financing existing governmental functions was finite. They also concluded that these functions could only be maintained and expanded if one of two solutions was pursued: (a) public services were transferred to a more cost-efficient private sector or (b) the cost of specialized services provided by governments at all levels was borne by those who directly benefited or those responsible for initially creating them.

Notwithstanding the emotional opposition to such a revolutionary change by incumbent public officials and career governmental bureaucrats, the idea of changing some of the long-established ways of doing business in Jefferson City or Washington has widespread appeal by the people who must bear the cost, namely the taxpayers of Missouri and the United States.

For if there is anything the current budget muddle in Washington has proved, it is that general revenue funds are, indeed, finite, as is the public's willingness to shell out more and more money to keep on doing the same things.

Here in Missouri, we just proved that with the passage of SB 380, a badly needed reform plan for the state's public education, which relies on its funding not from a broad segment of the population but a rather narrow base that includes large corporations and highly affluent individuals. The vast majority of Missourians were not asked to participate in the financing of the school reform plan and for a very good reason: state officials knew it would be almost universally opposed. And that opposition would come, not because anyone truly believes local schools don't need more money, but because the average taxpayer earning an average salary simply lacks the resources to make further financial sacrifices, even if they are for the general betterment.

After all, inflation has cut the average wage earner's purchasing power 77 percent over the last 25 years.

Faced not only with mounting taxpayer intolerance for higher and higher tax bills but the even more recent development of a state reeling from multi-billion-dollar consequences of the worst flood in mankind's memory, Missouri must begin to reinvent government in ways deemed unthinkable just a few weeks ago. The job is made more difficult because even during pre-flood days, the state was hardly at the top of the list in providing adequate social services, health, higher education and crime prevention. Those long waiting lists for substance abuse treatment, mental retardation services and even criminal justice disposition increase with each passing day, with little chance they will diminish anytime in the remaining years of this century.

At this moment, it is understandable that the principal concern is to provide immediate relief for those whose lives have been inexorably disrupted and whose property is floating downstream to New Orleans and into the Gulf of Mexico. Families must be relocated, industries must be restarted, public services must be resumed. All of this takes time, and money.

Unfortunately, neither Washington nor Jefferson City has any spare change, so whatever first aid is applied must be funded from extraordinary or off-budget sources. This is the way it should be, since disasters of this nature are rare and hardly on-budget items. But the strain of off-budget funding will have its effect when the special session envisioned by Gov. Carnahan has ended and a new Legislature convenes in January.

What happens then will depend on the vision, leadership and the willingness to take bold steps by Missouri's elected officials, the 197 members of the General Assembly and the men and women who direct the state's most important departments. Unless these folks recognize that steps must be taken to reinvent government, to dispose of channeled thinking that insists on adhering to decades-old delivery patterns, then the state is doomed to living with inadequate revenue and resources to deal with inflexible demands for services.

Jefferson City can reinvent government if there is bold vision and determined leadership. Many citizens are less than sanguine about the presence of either, but challenges have a way of bringing out the best in humankind, as the Great Flood of '93 proved day after day along the state's overflowing rivers. It is time we found the same strength and determination in our state capital.

We're sunk if we don't.