MISSOURI WATCH: DEMOCRACY REQUIRES INFORMED CITIZENS

Missourians may be surprised to learn their state is regularly judged one of the four best in the country for managing its funds and making tax dollars go as far as they can. The award, if it can properly be called that, usually generates little recognition, either nationally or statewide, but its significance lies in an assurance to taxpayers they are receiving something reasonably close to one dollar of services for every one dollar collected by Jefferson City.

The designation of Missouri as one of the nation's best managed has almost been completely overlooked by the state's media, primarily because the grading is done in an academic setting and the effort is funded by the nonpartisan Pew Charitable Trusts, while the results are compiled by another nonpartisan organization, Congressional Quarterly.

Missouri's management score this year was an A-, with only three other states -- Utah, Washington and Virginia -- receiving an identical rating; some states were able to must a grade no better than D+, with the 50-state average reaching a somewhat weak C-. No state got a straight A.

The study includes five areas of fiscal and program management: financial resources, capital management, human resources, managing for results and information technology. The overall score for Kansas was B-; Iowa received a B; Illinois ranked no better than B-, while Arkansas managed only a C-, the same score accorded the nation's largest state, California.

While this scoring doesn't necessarily mean that our state government handles every program with the utmost of efficiency or that the crowd in Jefferson City doesn't waste public money, it provides a degree of reassurance few citizens possess when it comes time to evaluate public versus private management. Many of us are stuck with the conviction, unverified or not, that much of the capital we provide elected officials at the local, county, regional and state level is wasted, reserving the unquestioned championship for those pointy headed bureaucrats in the federal capital. Our unassailable conviction is that the higher the level of government, the more tax dollars are wasted. Don't bother us with the facts: we know what the facts are without anyone telling us.

The reassuring point about Missouri's management rating is that it's rooted in bipartisanship, with each political party able to grab some of the credit. Missouri's system of managing for results was originated in the first term of Gov. Kit Bond, who made the rounds of agency conferences to lay out his strategy for making state government more accountable to the taxpayers' investment. Bond's first try at strategic planing was slow in producing results primarily because department directors and governing commissions had a difficult time learning the new management system; it seems few of them had ever thought it might be possible to measure results based on dollars spent and recognition of the plan proceeded at a snail's pace. But the governor kept at it until the concept was finally entrenched even within the most entrenched bureaucracies.

Bond's successors maintained the reforms he had instituted, and today they are universally used throughout all 16 state departments. Other measurement criteria have been added over the years so that today, Jefferson City maintains above-average control over its revenue and delivery of services.

There is one area of public governance that has never been evaluated in the annual management survey and, quite frankly, the omission is disturbing for a number of reasons. The subject ignored by the evaluation is, in this writer's view, as important as any of the five now included: citizen knowledge of a state's responsibilities to its constituents. About this subject, the average Missourian knows next to nothing. I make this charged with considerable evidence in hand, but one example will suffice: there isn't a member of the Missouri General Assembly who has not been approached by a constituent who believed the legislator was a member of the United States Congress. This occurs with regularity in our so-called Age of Information, which as far as I'm concerned is the most misnamed designation ever assigned by any period of history. It's like calling the Clinton presidency a time of Moral Reawakening.

Beyond the geographical site of the state Capitol, Missourians know virtually nothing about how Show-Me government functions or should function. Although most know the name of the governor, virtually 999 out of the 1,000 could not name all remaining statewide officeholders if their lives depended on it. There is virtually no conception of the functions of the Office of Administration, while most lawyers would be hard pressed to name all of the judges of the state Supreme Court. As for the duties of the highly important Ways and Means committees in both chambers of the Legislature, most "informed" citizens could not even venture a guess. Most taxpayers cannot differentiate between our state's operating budget and its capital budget, while even some legislators are unaware the state is now operating under a biennial capital spending policy.

It is still not clear why governors in recent times have made no effort to educate Missourians on just exactly what their state government does and how it functions. Only one chief executive, Joe Teasdale, has even made a stab at citizen information and this came as an unexpected result of a campaign promise. Teasdale promised to travel the state and talk about state activities but found the assignment beyond his knowledge and was forced to take along most of his department directors to field questions. When Joe would leave town, much of the state's leadership went with him, shutting down Jefferson City.

A better informed citizenry must become a top priority of public officials or state government will simply stagnate because so few comprehend its mission and its importance. The best interests of self-government are only met when those being served know what their servants are doing -- and why.

Jack Stapleton of Kennett is editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.