MISSOURI WATCH: LAW IS PUBLIC POLICY AT ITS WORST

Thanks in large part to the provisions of a law enacted in 1989 by the General Assembly, it is now possible for taxpayers all around the state to finance civic improvements in a community where residents are required to pay absolutely nothing. A case in point is a series of improvements being proposed by the city of Springfield, including a wildlife museum that is designed to enhance a commercial business, which will be funded almost exclusively by all Missouri taxpayers, with most local contributions coming from "projected tax revenue" from the improvements.

If you feel as if you have just been treated to a psychedelic hallucination in a state where leaders have often been reluctant to spend an additional penny on public education or food and health care for needy families, then you're in the right pew. A law that has been in existence nearly six years, and which eventually may obligate the taxpayers of Missouri to fork over an estimated $1 billion for purely local chamber of commerce-type projects, is in danger of being used once again to secure additional state tax funds.

For taxpayers who have not yet had the opportunity of learning the thrilling details of Springfield's vast blueprint of civic growth and development, settle back and get ready for the excitement that's certain to follow. A Class AA baseball club in Nashville has fallen on hard times and has been looking for several years for a city willing to adopt it, and as luck would have it, Springfield volunteered for the job. When St. Louisans made their now famous pilgrimage to Jefferson City to insert a half-billion-dollar spigot in the taxpayers' keg to build an indoor stadium in the name of enhanced tourism, sponsors of the 1989 bill were kind enough to include Greene County in the spoils, not because St. Louis cared a whit about Southwest Missouri but because all those Republicans down there weren't jumping up and down for what was clearly special interest money.

Scratching each other's backs, while adding construction funds for the disaster zone known as Downtown Kansas City to the list, the state's three largest urban areas were able to siphon money from public education and programs for the poor and mentally ill into bricks and mortar that would attract urban visitors like flies to honey. Lawmakers supplied the honey and then Gov. John Ashcroft made it official, although he wasn't exactly thrilled with this new public policy that made Jefferson City the feeding trough for civic progress. Confronted by his wealthiest contributors from St. Louis, the governor later claimed that he was left with no choice, although he did champion the "Just Say No" anti-drug program while occupying the same office on the second floor of the Capitol.

The best scenario of that 1989 fiasco was that the three cities would not use all of the tax money they were legally robbing from the rest of the state. Dream on, taxpayers.

Springfield will not only rely on state funds to build a baseball team that has "promised" to come if this Field of Dreams is finally built, but it will also construct a gleaming new shopping area, which taxpayers are told will provide everyone with untold amounts of tax revenue, and will serve in the interim as "local contributions." Naturally, the folks in Greene County wanted to make full use of all this "free" money, so along came another plan, this one dreamed up by the operators of a local sporting goods company. Why not, these promoters suggested, build a wildlife museum that will attract lots of new visitors to the area, with the sales tax collected again to serve as the local share of the development? Oh, and by the way, let's locate that museum close to our store, okay fellows? Sure, why not, and besides, it's all free and we don't have to raise a penny to match the money flowing in from Jefferson City.

You think you're dreaming? That we just made all of this up? We should all be so lucky.

Missourians can worry all they want to about paying their elected officials too much or that we might be spending more than we should on improving education or that some family may get $3 a month too much, but it should be obvious that some concerns about spendthrift government are misplaced. We need to worry less about a $500 a year raise for an underpaid classroom teacher and spend more time worrying about public officials who are influenced by psycho-babble that skims a billion dollars from an account funded by all taxpayers.

Jack Stapleton is a Kennett columnis who keeps tabs on government.