COURT SHOULDN'T CONTROL DESTINY OF ENTIRE STATE

If you're looking for a job with unlimited power, consider a federal judgeship. For years, Missouri has been held financial hostage by federal court-ordered desegregation. By the end of the 1992 fiscal year, more than $1.5 billion will be drained from the budget without state or taxpayer consent. If that isn't bad enough, a federal appeals court has now ruled that Missouri must try to get a bank loan rather than cut the state budget to come up with desegregation payments.

Local legislators have balked at the idea, and rightly so. Missouri operates under a constitutional measure that says the budget must balance. This outstanding loan sounds suspiciously like deficit spending and that may be downright unconstitutional.

The federal government routinely borrows money to pay the bill ... and look where that has left us several trillion dollars in debt. Missouri doesn't want to start down that path to fiscal irresponsibility.

How do states rights stack up against a federal mandate? Not very well, according to federal court rulings. These courts, apparently, have the last and only word. Missouri's inability to do anything about the matter has left us with frustrated and angry taxpayers. Now these endless payments threaten our state's fiscal soundness.

From Fiscal 1981 through 1992, Missouri has paid out $919,765,591 for the St. Louis desegregation plan. Missouri has spent an additional $660,519,645 on the Kansas City desegregation plan since its implementation in 1986. That means a staggering figure of nearly $1.6 billion has been funneled into two school districts while the other 539 have suffered from lack of funding. School districts statewide are receiving less state aid this year than last. The Foundation program was funded at $1.14 billion in both 1990-91 and 1991-92, but due to withholdings and cutbacks, the actual payments this year were down more than six percent. That $1.58 billion paid out to desegregation since 1981 is considerably more than the $1 billion paid out to operate the state's elementary and secondary schools this year.

Perhaps the most frustrating fact of all is the fact desegregation may be doing little good, aside from additional bricks and mortar. St. Louis and Kansas City school districts have not moved to the head of the class, and racial tensions in these towns seems to be increasing, rather than subsiding. Court-ordered busing has met with little success nationwide. Missouri is no different.

Thankfully, the ruling does leave Missouri an out. The court said that if Missouri can't get a loan or the terms are not favorable, the state can still make the budget cuts.

Missouri has tried to be fiscally responsible funding state services while balancing the budget. If revenues didn't keep pace, the budget was cut accordingly. These federal judges have no right to mandate deficit spending if Missouri's constitution states otherwise. Missouri might want to seek a national forum to push for a return to common sense.

Taxpayers are way past being sick and tired of judges and legislators at the federal level spending money as if there is no tomorrow. It must stop. A state of more than 5 million people should not be controlled by a handful of federal judges, appointed to the bench for life and wielding God-like powers. People and states have rights, too. Venting the public's outrage all the way to the top may be the only way to fight this injustice.

Perhaps that's what the fight over Clarence Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court was all about: A change in the philosophical makeup of our God-like rulers on the federal bench.