DESEGREGATION PACT STILL NEEDS ACCOUNTABILITY

Missouri taxpayers are wondering if an agreement regarding Kansas City's school desegregation is, in the long run, a good deal. Since 1984 when U.S. District Judge Russell Clark ordered the state to begin paying for an outlandishly extravagant plan for new schools and programs to achieve racial balance, Missourians have forked over more than $1 billion in direct grants and legal expenses.

The agreement signed this week by Judge Clark does several things:

*Reduces state funding for the Kansas City plan by more than $22.5 million in the next fiscal year.

*Declares a six-month truce in courtroom battles.

*Slashes $2.5 million from the Kansas City district's bloated budget for administrative and non-teaching expenses.

*Establishes a variety of neighborhood schools for three of the district's schools.

*Ends the oversight of the desegregation monitoring committee, which has scrutinized how state funds have been spent.

Taxpayers in general can take some comfort in knowing the state will be spending millions of dollars less than anticipated in the coming year, thanks to the agreement.

But it is troublesome that the monitoring committee's oversight is being limited -- so troublesome, in fact, that Attorney General Jay Nixon is sounding the alarm that it wouldn't be in the state's best interest (see Nixon's guest column elsewhere on this page).

Nixon has been soundly attacked, in particular by the Kansas City Star's editorial board, for continuing to insist that accountability is a good thing, even when a deal is cut. It is hard to comprehend why anyone or any group would be opposed to watchful eyes, particularly when such scrutiny has proven to be effective in the past and in the best interests of taxpayers in general.

Nixon's attackers contend the attorney general is showboating and seeking to call attention to himself. Meanwhile, Gov. Mel Carnahan has taken every opportunity since the agreement was announced to take full credit for pushing such an accord since he first took office two years ago. In the long run, the state's residents are better served by a watchdog attorney general than by a spotlight-seeking governor.

There is yet another reason for Missourians to scrutinize this agreement. Simply put, the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to throw out Judge Clark's billion-dollar desegregation empire when it rules shortly on federal desegregation cases. Attorney General Nixon argued the state case before the High Court, and at least some of the eagerness to reach an agreement to keep state funds flowing likely was the prospect of losing all of the state ransom being paid by taxpayers.

There is no such thing as too much accountability when tax dollars are concerned. Why the monitoring committee has become such a sticking point is particularly difficult to fathom.