LEGISLATORS WORK WITH LITTLE NEW MONEY AND RULING IN THE WINGS

Some sessions of the General Assembly go smooth as silk, while others seem to encounter every problem in the books. Legislators who have been around Jefferson City long enough to have encountered, and endured, both kinds will quickly admit they prefer the easier variety, if only because they receive fewer constituent complaints and are thus able to enjoy some of the emoluments of public office.

This year's First Regular Session of the Eighty-seventh General Assembly has just begun to take form, and unless we misread the early signals, legislators are not going to put this one in their memory books. The session was only a week old when Gov. Mel Carnahan, in his first State of the State address, informed lawmakers that there wouldn't be much of a surplus attached to the budget for FY 1994 which starts July 1. There are few facts more disturbing to lawmakers than to learn they must sit around for four and a half months without being able to disburse some extra tax dollars to demanding constituents. When the governor had finished his address the other day, it was obvious even to freshmen legislators that this budget wasn't going to win any awards from the folks back home.

A few days after the governor delivered his bare cupboard speech, Cole County Circuit Judge Byron Kinder handed down a decision designed to agitate the ulcers of lawmakers who didn't even know they had ulcers. Judge Kinder, in a word, said the state's existing School Foundation Formula was unconstitutional. Even worse, he said that the only thing that would make the formula pass constitutional muster was the addition of a few hundred millions dollars. To make matters still worse, the capital county jurist gave lawmakers a timetable for resolving the faulty formula. Enacting laws is a time consuming process, and legislators prefer to do it without a gun to their head. Leisurely legislating helps cut down costly and embarrassing mistakes, and when 197 lawmakers are given a deadline, many of the wiser heads realize that's when the mistakes are most often to occur.

Not only did Judge Kinder order the General Assembly to revise and correct the foundation formula, he also implied that if this task wasn't performed to his satisfaction, he would consider taking over the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and running it through the services of a court-appointed master. That denouement would not only indicate to constituents that their legislator had failed to do his job, but it would raise the hackles of a goodly number of local school teachers and administrators, all of whom are voters.

The remaining problem attached to Judge Kinder's Jan. 15 judgment was that it carried the suggestion of the need for more money, and lots of it, to be corrected. We have seen legislative sessions under such pressure in years past, and believe us when we say they were not happy campers. The prospect of adding to voters' tax burdens is about the last thing any sensible politician wants to discuss seriously.

Add that to the normal schedule of headaches that automatically go with every session and you are perhaps able to sense the uneasy anticipation now being experienced by the men and women who, only a few months ago, were begging for the right to represent you in Jefferson City. What's that about not wishing too hard for something because you might get it?

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~~~BILL BLIZZARD: This year's legislative session is no different than many in past years in the number of bills being introduced for a session that only lasts until May 14. At the present rate of new bills being introduced, this session could well produce as many as 2,300 to 2,500 measures, particularly with a large crop of new representatives and senators who have their own ideas how the state should be run.

The latest Bill Index, produced by the staff members of Legislative Research, records at least 900 bills written, introduced and indexed, with hundreds more expected before deadline time. One of the trends indicated in the latest index is the growing number of proposed constitutional amendments and referenda that lawmakers want to present to the voters. This trend, evident in virtually every legislative body in the country, could soon turn voters into auxiliary lawmakers, deciding questions that previously were resolved in state assemblies.

Some 13 proposed amendments have already been introduced on the House side, while 10 have been submitted on the Senate side. While some are duplications and will be weeded out, others strike out in fields not covered by members of the other body. These proposed amendments contain such subjects as constitutional recognition of the right to privacy, increases in the minimum percentages allocated to public education, changes and alterations in the judicial selection process, creation of new departments and commissions, and several alterations in the state's criminal and civil codes.

While not all of the 23 amendments proposed thus far will make it beyond their assigned committees, it's a good bet that this session will produce far more proposed amendments than were submitted to voters as recently as a decade ago. Some political scientists hail this trend to submit more and more issues to a direct referendum, while others argue that too many issues turn away some voters and only serve to confuse still others. It does appear to be a national trend that shows little sign of abating at this moment.

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PROSPERITY PROMISE: The University of Missouri's College of Business and Public Administration on the Columbia campus publishes a quarterly report called "Missouri Economic Indicators," and we're happy to report that the current issue makes for happy reading. Not only do the UMC economists and bean counters predict a healthy growth in the country's Gross Domestic Product in 1993, they see an even higher rate of improvement for our own state. They believe Missouri will add more than 69,000 new jobs before the year is out, with only about 500 of these slots coming from government. Furthermore, they believe the state's unemployment will drop below 6 percent, while wages and salaries should increase by at least 4.8 percent.