CORRECTION IS WELCOME ON TAX HIKE BILL FOR EDUCATION

Tomorrow evening is the first 1991 event in a 64-year tradition for the quality of life in Cape Girardeau. I'm referring to the Wednesday evening summer concerts of the Cape Girardeau Municipal Band. This is free entertainment that's been enjoyed by thousands over the years. We appreciate and give thanks to the musicians who give of their time. Welcome back!

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CORRECTION

Monday afternoon, I received a telephone call from Missouri Director of Revenue Duane Benton. I returned the call and soon heard the distinctive southern Missouri twang of an old friend.

Duane and I have been close friends since we worked in Capitol Hill offices one floor apart in the Cannon House Office Building back in 1981-'82. Duane was careful to compliment me on my column on education funding in this past Sunday's edition, before launching into a friendly correction.

"You referred in your column to `the largest tax increase in Missouri history' (at $385 million)," Duane observed. "The way I look at it, there are several tax hikes that were larger than the one that will be before the voters this November. I kept getting this inquiry during the legislative session," he continued, "so I researched it. If you like, I could just fax you my analysis."

In the sources I'd been reading, nobody had disputed this characterization, but I'm always eager to be corrected if I have misstated any facts. This is all the more so when the friend correcting me is a Phi Beta Kappa (Northwestern University) whose career at Yale Law School was distinguished enough to rank him as first in his class and Editor of the Law Journal, who later became a C.P.A. in his "spare time" while serving in the Naval Reserve, teaching Sunday School, serving as a lay preacher, and earning a statewide reputation for integrity and leadership, plus being something of a character.

Herewith, the analysis provided me by Missouri's highest-ranking Revenooer, the redoubtable Duane Benton (a native of Mountain View, Missouri) who once worked in the gubernatorial campaign of Walkin' Joe Teasdale and served as Congressman Bill Burlison's first summer intern back in 1969:

"The proposed tax change is not the largest in Missouri history. (I rank it seventh).

"The One Cent Proposition C education sales tax, adopted November 2, 1982, will produce about $414,405,144 in fiscal year 1991.

"The One Cent increase in the state sales tax rate in 1963 produces an equal amount of $414,405,144 in FY 1991. Earlier one-cent increases in 1933 and 1937 also generate the identical amount.

"Most significantly, on December 31, 1970, a 50 percent increase in the income tax occurred. In fiscal year 1990, the state collected 2,006,784,807 in individual income tax alone. A 1991 increase equal to the 1970 increase would bring in $1 billion.

"Equally, the 1931 enactment of the modern income tax was a tax change, in 1991 dollars, of $1 billion."

Thanks, Duane.

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Various Missouri interest groups are weighing in with comment, pro and con, on the education tax-hike proposal the legislature just passed. Sunday's column reviewed positions on the measure as they had been enunciated by Missouri's key business groups. The Missouri League of Women Voters, in state convention assembled over the weekend, has now announced a position.

The League says that $385 million is not enough for education; that there's no foundation formula specified for distributing state monies to school districts; that the key reforms Governor John Ashcroft got in the bill are "unproven"; and that the taxes in it are too "regressive." So the League will go to work statewide to defeat a measure that would immediately pump nearly $400 million into Missouri schools, and much more than that a few years down the road.

Amazing. Simply incredible. This is the education community's big chance to win public approval for a heavy slug of more funding. Because specified taxes aren't to League members' liking, and because $385 million more for education isn't thought to be enough, the League of Women Voters will work to defeat a proposal that is admittedly imperfect, but which holds the promise of enacting historic reforms to educate Missourians for the 21st century.

Get real, ladies. Recall that the perfect can be, and often is, the enemy of the good. Most working folks I talk to are wondering how they can possibly afford these tax hikes. And you say they aren't enough?

A question or two for League leaders:

Do you really want to kick away this chance to persuade Missourians to invest more money in educating our young people? With what would you replace this proposal? When? Missourians will be voting this November on the package the legislature and Gov. Ashcroft agreed upon. If it goes down to defeat with the League prominent in opposition, what do you suppose will be the chances for passing a better package next year, or the year after that?

See KINDER, Page 7

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