KEY ITEMS HEADED FOR SHOWDOWN IN FINAL LEGISLATIVE EFFORT

The General Assembly heads back to Jefferson City Monday after a weeklong spring break. From here to the May 16 adjournment, it will be a sprint to the finish line as the pace of business grows more hectic.

Many issues of statewide importance are hanging fire, among them tax cuts, education funding and bills to regulate managed health care. Along with hundreds of other bills are items of pressing local interest such as funding for the state's portion of a new area vocational-technical school and the Senate bill proposing changes to the proposed Bollinger-Cape Girardeau County lake bill originally passed in 1990.

Sales tax on food

A bill eliminating the state sales tax on food has passed the House and will soon be taken up in the Senate. There it will be the subject of proposed amendments to triple the dependent deduction, to equalize the tax treatment of private and public pensioners and perhaps others. Lawmakers are working under the hammer of owing refunds due to the state's having busted the Hancock Amendment's tax lid.

Desegregation funds

With the end of court-ordered desegregation in St. Louis and Kansas City looming in the not-too-distant future, a major education funding bill and reform act is pending in both houses. Although a version has passed out of the Senate Education Committee, it has run into rough sledding due to opposition from key senators. As originally written, the bill would replace the assignment of this desegregation spending on race with an assignment on the basis of poverty, defined as the number of children on free and reduced lunches. This week a floor substitute will be fought over that key provision. Instead of assigning the money on the basis of poverty, the substitute would distribute the money to all Missouri schools through the state's foundation formula. This approach appears to be gaining substantial support.

Managed care

On managed care, bills are moving in both houses as well. Lawmakers should heed the admonition given to physicians and "first, do no harm." There's plenty of mischief in these bills, not the least of which is impossibly vague language that could prove a warrant of authority to the Missouri Department of Insurance to enact a state version of the Clinton health care plan. This is the very version ultimately rejected by lawmakers when Gov. Mel Carnahan nearly succeeded in passing it back in 1994.

Vocational-technical school

As for vo-tech school, it is important to emphasize that the project is very much alive, with a worse-case scenario likely that the state would do two-step, phase funding over two years: $2.15 million this year and another million next. On the Senate side, efforts will be redoubled to gain the full $3.15 million in this year's budget. Either way the project can go forward.

Lake legislation

Then there is the lake bill, which has passed out of committee but has not yet been turned in for timely placement on the calendar floor debate. This one will have many more twists and turns before final action, if any, is secured.