MISSOURI IS NEGLECTING ITS FUTURE

Without detracting from a number of achievements by this year's session of the General Assembly, it would be prudent if state officials from the governor down to freshman members of the Legislature were to pay closer attention next year to Missouri's economic development. Recent sessions, particularly since the Carnahan administration was installed, have devoted a vast amount of time to services that were more social than economic, and while it is wise to recognize the need for both, it is even wiser to avoid neglecting either.

Let it be recognized at the outset that numerous social programs, including those dealing with improved financing for local elementary and secondary schools, play a pivotal role in attracting and nurturing economic development. Large corporations that seek locations for new plants do not overlook the competency of public education, but neither do they depend on this single evaluation as the motivating criteria for increased production and profits. And, for the most part, major corporations are not concerned with the efficacy of a state's welfare programs, although such systems do impact, if only indirectly, on industry.

It is difficult, as a recent treatise by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis notes, to pinpoint specifically the leading criteria used by major corporations in selecting new plant sites. The steady growth of industry in some states where social services are either last or near that position would seem to indicate a corporate indifference to well-funded public schools and progressive welfare assistance programs. States where these services do not rank high, such as Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, have often bested Missouri when there was new-plant competition. The recent rush by numerous states to locate a proposed Mercedes-Benz plant produced a high level of competition that pitted poorer states against those more affluent. In the end, it was the nation's poorest education state, Alabama, that landed the much sought after German automobile facility, although the generous gifts bestowed by the state implied a degree of desperation that is virtually impossible to overcome.

Alabama offered not only to build a $30 million plant and then lease it to Mercedes for $100 a year, it gave special tax abatements valued at more than $300 million -- which will, among other things, allow the entire plant to be paid for with money that would have been paid to the state. Missouri could not, and should not, try to compete with offerings such as this, for there is little or no value to be realized.

But Missouri must, by sheer economic necessity, compete with its sister states when it comes to limited tax incentives, as the state has done with Big 3 automakers and TWA, and with worker training, apprenticeship programs, infrastructure improvements and even state screening of job applicants. As expensive as these incentives are to provide, they have more or less become standard fare as states have sought to secure added industrial payrolls.

There is at least one area in which Missouri has failed to keep pace with states that have led in economic development and that is in the area of higher education as such institutions relate to manufacturing needs and requirements in the electronic age. Missouri has an abundance of higher educational institutions, but an extremely large number of them are focused more on general education than in research and fields that range from technical training to electronic engineering. Our state's principal engineering university, located at Rolla, is often treated as a poor cousin to its sister institutions within the system, while too many other universities are dedicated to the other subjects, ranging from teacher training to the humanities. There is a poor balance at the moment, yet Jefferson City seems not to notice.

States such as both Carolinas, Ohio, Texas, along with the precursor of them all, California, have developed educational consortiums that targeted economic development and new industry, while being careful not to neglect public education and human services. Missouri has most often found itself in a race to catch up in supplying essential services rather than being able to devote sizable resources to technical training and applicable research institutes. The University of Missouri system has taken notice of its depreciated research programs and has attempted to reverse this trend, with only minimal success because of inadequate financing from the state. This loss of a once-superior research curriculum should be noted by officials who are in a position to reverse it.

Missouri is enjoying a resurgence in the manufacturing operations by the nation's three major automakers: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. The Department of Economic Development says the current $1.6 billion capital expansion plans of these three companies represent the largest investment by one industry in the history of Missouri. What makes this so unusual is how little has been required from state government to effect these investments which, depreciated over a number of years, is minuscule when compared to the investment required from Alabama to locate the Mercedes facility.

But even this major development in the state's manufacturing economy has been neglected by many state officials, save those within the confines of the Department of Economic Development. Instead, our elected officials have too often concentrated on programs bearing little or even no rewards for the state as a whole. The past two legislatures have devoted far more time to enhancing the gaming industry than to the development of first-class technical institutions and other incentives that make significant contributions to the state's wealth and the general well-being of its citizens. The taxpayer investment in repeated referendums on gambling exceeds the amount our elected officials have been willing to allocate to enlightened economic development programs. There is really little excuse for such a failure, and Missourians deserve a better agenda from its leaders in both the executive and legislative branches.

Economic development is too important to leave to casual study and political caprice, and state government must begin to lead in the pursuit of a better future for our children.