MISSOURI WATCH: MILLENNIUM: A NEW MISSOURI CHARTER

Twenty-eight years after Missourians approved the rewrite of their state Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark civil rights decision, a ruling that led to the expenditure of more than $3.1 billion by the state's taxpayers to correct the imperfections and illegalities of the 1945 charter.

The desegregation orders that followed the high court's ruling represent the most wasteful and most useless expenditure of public money in the history of our state, perhaps in the history of the U.S. The inadequacies of the 1945 Constitution brought about a succession of federal court efforts that heralded a massive erosion of the state treasury, canceling the educational progress of our children and creating a shortage of funds to provide essential services to millions of citizens.

We recite these facts to demonstrate the dangers of both public and official neglect in modernizing state constitutions and as one example of how this indifference to a state charter can create undreamed of repercussions within our state. Seventeen years ago, when Missourians last voted whether to assemble a new constitutional convention to rewrite the 1945 document, the results left no doubt in anyone's mind: citizens weren't the least bit interested in modernizing their all-important charter, despite the editorial efforts of a handful of newspapers in the state.

Missourians have the right to decide once every 20 years whether they wish to have their Constitution reviewed, studied and amended, but the lack of political, legal and journalistic support for such an effort has led the vast majority of citizens to conclude that such an effort was unneeded and redundant. This lethargy persists to this day, despite the horrendous cost that it exacted from citizens' pocketbooks to remedy the segregation provisions of the last rewrite in 1945.

As a result of this pejorative indifference, Missourians are perpetuating laws that govern our state and its numerous jurisdictions under the same format as the World War II era. In the interim, Missouri's population has doubled, its public school enrollments has tripled and its budget has increased tenfold. Additionally, there is little recognition of the growing state role in public health, since the 1945 document barely addresses this issue, dealing with it as a purely eleemosynary, or caretaker, function.

Following a tradition that state charters should be highly restrictive, the authors of the 1945 Constitution filled its many pages with forbidden duties, restricting beyond logic the ability of other jurisdictions to put into practice innovative ways to govern and meet public needs. Cities, for example, are restricted in their ability to devise new ways of constituent service delivery; the duties of public officials are outlined in minute detail and virtually preclude the introduction of new methods and services; functions of government at the local, county and state levels are spelled out in such great detail that the courts have more often than not struck down efforts to modernize simply because the charter offers few means of revision. It is a wonder the old charter even calls for a 20-year vote on the question of rewriting and revising its provisions.

A state official recently noted that the 1945 Constitution "has served us well," noting that many of its chapters have remained unchanged for half a century, but this begs the question because of the expense and effort required to amend and revise the charter. In recent years, a majority of constitutional codicils have narrowed on state duties and responsibilities that were not envisioned when the authors first began gathering in Jefferson City at the start of World War II. These changes have permitted the state, or one of its jurisdictions, to provide services that were never envisioned, while others have eliminated duties or services that have no significant role to play in modern governance. In short, the revisions have been made to bring the state -- and its enabling charter -- into today's world.

In less than three years, Missouri voters will go to the polls to decide once again whether a rewrite is needed of a document that will then be nearly 60 years old. Unless voters understand the urgency of the message, they may well decide, as they have decided previously, that the 1945 Constitution is meeting their needs and that any rewrite is unnecessary and overly expensive.

If this is their decision, then Missouri may never recover from the overly restrictive measures inaugurated in the state's very first charter of 1820.

State government needs the ability to deliver badly needed services without first amending the Constitution; counties and municipalities need the right to streamline government and provide innovative programs; funding support methods require modernizations; local educational needs should be dealt with locally and not restricted by past-century concepts; similar county functions should have the leeway of multi-group coordination. These are just some of the advantages that would come about with a contemporary revision of an outdated and overly restrictive document.

The indifference toward reform by entrenched political forces is understandable, but hardly excusable. The long-standing hesitancy in "fixing what isn't broken" is often presented as an argument for the status quo. Missourians would do well to remember that this argument carried the day when public school desegregation laws were being addressed and our failure to fix this provision cost the state more than $3 billion. The 1945 Constitution was "broken" and the repair was a multibillion-dollar disaster, just as failing to prepare for a new constitutional rewrite will prove to be.

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