COMMUNITY SERVICE A GOOD IDEA, BUT WHY SHOULD TAXPAPERS BE HIT?

The attempt by Southeast Missouri State University to tap into a national community service program lays bare some of the folly of AmeriCorps, President Clintons campaign brainchild.

The university is seeking $400,000 annually for three years to operate a regional AmeriCorps program for up to 20 students. Many of the AmeriCorps participants would work with youths who come from a background of poverty and crime. Others would be placed with county health departments in the area, and some would be assigned to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to work in state parks, assisting with recycling and other environmental efforts.

Congress adopted the National Service Trust Act last summer to give college students an incentive to be involved with community service projects. Good intentions aside, if Southeast Missouri States concept of a regional program is any indication, national community service is one more expensive, inefficient federal jobs program.

Workers in the program will get $7,400 a year in wages plus health insurance. For each year of service, the government also will kick in $4,725 toward the workers college or post-secondary vocational education. Thats $12,125 a worker annually. For 20 workers, the Southeast program would cost $242,500. What about the $157,500 left over? Presumably, that money would be divvied up between a project director, a full-time program coordinator, a secretary and a couple of part-time graduate assistants.

In other words, nearly 40 percent of the cost of the program at Southeast Missouri State would go for administration. It isnt our intention necessarily to criticize our university for trying to get a piece of the pie. After all, similar programs are being established throughout the country. In Missouri, there is $1.8 million in federal money already set aside for similar programs in St. Louis and Kansas City. It can be safely assumed that about $700,000 will be earmarked for the salaries of a handful of administrators for those two programs.

The problem with this idea is that it is another example of government searching for new ways to spend your tax dollars.

Is community service a bad idea? Not at all. Civic-minded individuals working to improve community life are an asset. But is such a program so indispensable that taxpayers should be compelled to foot the bill? After all, the shopowner in Elsewhere, U.S.A., might be doing a fine job of serving the community. Why should he or she be forced also to pay for an administration-heavy, bureaucratic federal program that funnels money to Cape Girardeau, Mo.? Leave people alone to serve their own communities, and they are liable eventually to improve the life of their community. But dont force them to help people they dont know.