EDUCATION TAX BILL GETS COSTLIER AND MESSIER

To err is human, to "clean up" is a state legislative function ... and too often a lawmaker's self-generating necessity. The Missouri General Assembly acted during its recently completed session to refine Senate Bill 380, evidence enough that the massive tax-and-school-reform plan, passed in the waning hours of the 1993 session, was a flawed endeavor. Does Senate Bill 676, the so-called "clean-up bill," do the job? Ask 55 school superintendents in Southeast Missouri who signed on in hopes of seeing the measure killed. Well, it wasn't killed. Now the next question begs: How do you clean up the cleaning up?

Gov. Mel Carnahan, assorted legislators and officials in the Department of Elementary and Secondary contend the shortcomings of Senate Bill 380 amounted to "a loophole," implying an understandable oversight due by the fast-and-furious manner in which the measure was passed. Closing the loophole entailed the discarding of a provision that allowed school districts to increase their state aid by refinancing building projects. The clean-up bill limits the amount of the required $2.75 levy a district can use for the lease-purchase of buildings or equipment.

Varying accounts indicate the loophole threw off the state's school funding formula by $200 million. The 1993 tax increase meant to bring equity to the funding of Missouri public schools totaled $310 million. As legislative oversights go, this one is lavish.

What the legislature did with passage of this clean-up measure, and what the governor will do if he signs the bill, is put many school districts in Southeast Missouri in an even tighter fiscal straitjacket. Few of these districts, most serving rural constituencies, are flush with funds. In Cape Girardeau, the public schools stand to lose as much as $800,000 in state assistance. Superintendents in smaller communities -- Delta, Scott City and so on -- are singing blues of a similar tune. If equity was the point of Senate Bill 380, where are the districts that are being helped?

And even the districts earmarked for increased state funding find the benevolence half-hearted. Along with cleaning up the financing part of the original bill, Senate Bill 676 extended state control into the decision-making of local school districts. Districts getting more money from Jefferson City also get more mandates that earmark funds for specific programs. Locally elected school board members get no voice in the assignment of these funds. The move to correct a loophole produced a bill that was greater than 60 pages in length. It is a mighty mistake, a leviathan loophole, that requires such fixing.

With the legislature now adjourned until January, we are hard-pressed to suggest any action that would allay the injury done by the ill-considered and expensive Senate Bill 380 and the clumsy and intrusive action that was meant to correct it. We urge Gov. Carnahan to withhold his signature from the bill and call for a real fix next year, but we believe he is satisfied with local school decisions being made in the state capital. We urge legislators not to believe the school foundation formula is fine-tuned and equitable, or even nearly accurate. Finally, we suggest that any subsequent attempts to clean up the formula by which schools are funded not make such a mess.