MISSOURI WATCH: IT'S FINALLY TIME TO COME OUT OF THE (FISCAL) CLOSET

While I have attempted, obviously unsuccessfully, to hide my fiscal inclinations for lo, these many years, I have reached an age in which I no longer worry about bearing such a stigma, even in polite society. I confess, for anyone interested, that I am a flaming right-wing, radical state budget conservative. There, I've confessed, and I can't tell you what a relief it is to get that off my chest.

It hasn't been easy, hiding my tight-fisted side when I went out in public. There were times when I was tempted to blurt out, particularly in the company of friends, that I had known for a long time my fiscal leanings. I first realized my predilection about the same time I began having to keep a small weekly newspaper in the black. But even back then, I wasn't exactly sure how I felt about governmental spending, and sometimes I would cross over and find myself promoting some public program that I knew, deep down, would be too expensive.

My real moment of truth came when I began serving on a state commission that annually dispensed several million dollars a year. It wasn't that I felt strange about helping those we were supposed to be helping, but rather early on I recognized a horrible truth: while we were in the business of treating thousands of men, women and children who truly were in need of assistance, we also were in the business of wasting a great deal of money that had been entrusted to us by our fellow taxpayers.

At first, I recognized only some small items of waste, but they were sufficient to pique my interest, and so I began trying to discover what else we might be wasting the public's money on. I then became a true believer, because I started reading the department's budget, a 300-plus page document that was about as interesting as Al D'Amato reading Shakespearean sonnets on C-Span.

It was slow, painful reading, but it was also extremely revealing. Not only did I learn that many of the state institutions that were supposed to be in the business of serving Missourians were very much in the business of wasting too much money that didn't belong to them. I became possessed with learning all that I could about how an institution wanted to spend the millions we were allocating, and when I found an example of waste, I would become ecstatic. It was such a good feeling that I pursued it relentlessly and shamelessly, particularly when representatives of the institution would appear before our commission seeking to justify their requests. I soon learned that as a result of all of my snooping, I knew more about institutions' budgets than most of the staff.

I tried as best I could to hide my fiscal feelings but was so unsuccessful that departmental employees began whispering behind my back about my true feelings, as closeted as I attempted to keep them. I'm afraid I wasn't too subtle when I would discover an item that we had stricken from the previous year's budget appearing as a new item in the current year's askings. Alas, I pursued such moments without shame.

Like many flaming conservatives, I had many favorite haunts. I liked to uncover the secrets of purchasing agents at state institutions, many of whom pretended to be true believers, but I recognized early on that despite all of their pretending, they weren't actually real closet freaks. They liked to spend the public's money, and while they gave lip-service to our cause, they weren't true pinch-pennies. On the contrary, they were only pretending to be tight-fisted, and were trying to swing both ways. Well, you know how far you can trust people like that!

Like its sister states, Missouri has a long history of flagrant, wanton wastefulness. And this was true of the agency I've been talking about. For example, when I first became associated with this particular department, it had an annual budget of less than $25 million. In the next fiscal period that begins July 1, Governor Mel Carnahan has requested total expenditures of more than $600 million.

What's amazing is that this same agency now has three times more full-time employees than it had when I was still in the fiscal closet. And the piece de resistance is this: it is caring for fewer patients today than it did when its budget was less than $25 million.

Over the same period of time, the department has received millions of dollars to build, at various intervals, three centers to treat young children. In each instance, these centers were built with money provided by taxpayers who thought their contribution was at least buying better facilities, and hopefully larger staffs, to treat young boys and girls who were deeply in need of expert attention and care. Each time the *agency received millions of these tax dollars it constructed brand new, multi million-dollar facilities that were strictly uptown. A couple even had indoor swimming pools. Can you guess how many of these centers are now in operation? Three? Two? One? Guess again! None. That's right, fellow tightwad. None, zero, zip.

To make matters worse, another state agency is now in the business of providing, you guessed it, care and treatment centers for young boys and girls. New buildings are being constructed, new employees will be added, and once again our state will provide badly needed units that were badly needed when the first department built them.

One more horror story and then I'll stop. Back when I was still in the closet, we received some federal money, requiring state match, to build a beautiful, modern structure to house specialized treatment units and laboratories for important research. We even placed a multi million-dollar computer mainframe in this modern, high-rise structure. Would you like to know what the state is doing with this building at this moment? Well, you won't be happy, but here goes: it is scheduled to be demolished. That's right. This beautiful, modern building no longer houses special patients because the department is now in the business of reducing its patients. Despite the efforts of a group of us flaming fiscal rednecks, the building is soon going to be rubble.

Care to come out of the closet with me?

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