MISSOURI DISPLAYS HIPOCRISY WITH REGARD TO TAX MEASURES

Hypocrisy: a pretending to be what one is not, or to feel what one does not feel; a pretense of virtue, piety.

Webster's New World

Dictionary

As more and more reductions in earlier appropriations to Missouri programs are announced, there are heightened cries for additional state revenue and demands for higher taxes to forestall future cuts in departmental budgets. The demands have increased in recent days as Gov. John Ashcroft has come face to face with the realities of a nationwide business downturn and a sluggish state economy that mirrors those in most other states.

The news media in general, and newspaper editorial pages in particular, have been scolding the governor, as well as other officials, for the latest round of withholdings, an understandable response even if the target is somewhat out of focus and the slings and arrows more than slightly misdirected. Some would have us believe that the governor is solely responsible for the latest $24 million service cut, but this should not be a surprising turn of events in light of numerous signals given off months ago. When one wants to gain the attention of a Missouri mule, one uses a heavy club to the side of the head; when one wants media attention, the same tactic is often used. Thus the governor bashing in recent days.

Anyone even remotely knowledgeable about the fiscal 1991 budget recognized that withholdings would be required before the period ends next June 30. The question was not whether reductions would be needed but when. That they came a few weeks earlier than the state's budget experts calculated demonstrates not a lack of knowledge on their part but an earlier-than-expected downturn in the economy, which showed up, to the dismay of many, two months ago. The service cuts ordered last month were inevitable. So was the gnashing of teeth and the charges of indifference and official misfeasance.

MISSOURI DID NOT JUST arrive overnight as one of those states that chooses to scrimp on important public services. Missouri's reputation as a tightwad in numerous essential programs has long been secure. Missourians are old hands at snapping shut their coin purses when it comes to higher taxes to adequately fund public schools, welfare assistance, higher education, mental health and highways. Although they had the sixth largest road network in the nation, Missourians for years took pride in the fact no state had a lower gasoline tax.

Missouri is bedeviled with tax hypocrisy, and few of us are innocent. No one enjoys paying taxes; if we could avoid it, we would. Most of us feel we can do a better job spending our own money than some pointy headed bureaucrat in Jefferson City, who as George Wallace was so fond of saying, couldn't even park a bicycle. Frankly, we never knew how old George ever mastered it.

There's nothing sinful about disliking to pay taxes, and as in many low-tax states, Missourians are not apologetic about it. They rather like it, in fact. If we don't like taxes, we see no reason to approve them. And we usually don't. The hypocrisy comes into play when low-tax advocates demand more than their taxes will buy. Regardless of its efficiency, no government can deliver more than it receives in revenue. Low taxes mean a low delivery rate. To expect more is hypocrisy.

There's plenty of that to go around. Everyone is eligible for a little piece of this action, starting with the men and women who are employed to run the state agencies that deliver the services. Their hypocrisy can be found in the spending priorities they devise. While telling constituents that funds are not available for direct services, they don't hesitate to spend their appropriations for items that ostensibly make their administrative work easier. Thus we have millions of tax dollars being spent on new office buildings, new electronic equipment and plain gadgetry and travel expenses that may or may not have any connection with the needs of the persons they should be serving. There is always a case to be made for more new employees, and despite the fact that we have added thousands of them in recent years, there is always a "shortage" when budget requests are being prepared. It is a fact of life, and our state capital wouldn't be a state capital without chronically "understaffed" agencies, divisions and departments.

THE MEN AND WOMEN who are directly charged with leveling taxes and then appropriating them, the members of the General Assembly, are certainly entitled to their share of hypocrisy. Few are willing to step forward at the start of a legislative session with a warning that tax revenue will be inadequate for the task at hand and few are willing to make specific recommendations as to where the needed revenue should be gained. To do so often marks a lawmaker for that dreaded D word: defeat. Legislative candidates almost never campaign on a platform of higher taxes to improve schools or build highways because of the response that will elicit at the polls. (See public hypocrisy above.)

But there's plenty left to go around. While the news media plugs relentlessly for hometown or home district improvements during a state assembly session, our opinion molders seldom bother to mention how this tax money could be better spent. Remember the shouts of joy that greeted the appalling appropriations for urban convention centers and a football stadium? Lawmakers, with the concurrence of the governor, logrolled this multimillion-dollar bottomless pit to success and the news media in the favored urban areas went ga-ga with joy. A new day was coming for our blighted metropolitan downtowns, with nary a word about how these millions of tax dollars could be better spent educating young children, caring for the poor, treating drug addiction and minimizing some of society's ills.

Many of the state's largest corporations are now clamoring for better educated workers and greater attention to societal problems, and there's a touch of hypocrisy in these cries as well. These same companies spend thousands of dollars every year supporting organizations in Jefferson City that seek to minimize corporate tax rates and seek the defeat of every new-revenue bill introduced in the General Assembly. Many employ lobbyists to see to it that their company's interests are protected when it comes time to fund the same services these companies are now clamoring for state government to provide.

IN RECENT DAYS, there has been considerable criticism of John Ashcroft, who certainly is not blameless in all this. But let's harken back to the year 1988, when Mr. Ashcroft was seeking another term as governor. His re-election platform promised, you guessed it, not to raise taxes. Had he suggested that it was time for Missourians to ante up at tax time, the problems we are facing today might have been those of Gov. Betty Hearnes. Except, let it be noted, she also promised not to increase our taxes.

Let's get to the chase, and note that all of this hypocrisy about Missouri failing to deliver services can be quickly ended. It will end when enough Missourians decide they are willing to pay more taxes to secure these services. The last opinion poll we saw indicated they weren't.

Will the last person leaving Missouri please turn out the light.