MISSOURI WATCH: MYOPIA CAN BE DANGEROUS FOR STATE BUSINESS

Long-range strategic planning is not a new subject in schools of business on hundreds of university campuses around the country. Rather the topic is a regular, integral part of business school training, with graduates well aware of the need and importance of knowing where both small and large corporations are headed and what the business environment for their products will be five, ten and fifteen years from today. Those companies that forego the rigors of strategic planning generally wind up with products they are unable to sell in a rapidly changing marketplace, or worse, they end up in bankruptcy court.

Why is it, then, that one of the largest "corporations" in Missouri is so bereft of planning for the unanticipated in the next five or ten years? What's wrong with a nearly $14 billion a year "company" with the largest payroll in the state that has no idea what problems it will face even two years from now or how to solve them?

By now you have no doubt guessed that I am talking about the State of Missouri, one of the state's largest and certainly one of its most essential "business operations," with property worth billions of dollars and with a constituency of some 5,300,000 men, women and children.

Let's briefly examine some important questions that are seldom raised as state government moves from one fiscal year to another and as one legislative session dissolves into the next, during which needs and problems beyond the next 12 months are seldom even mentioned, much less anticipated.

Q: Given the predicted increase in crime now seen as virtually inevitable in the next decade, what steps will Jefferson City take to handle this criminal influx and how many new prisons will have to be built by the year 2005?

A: No one knows.

Q: As college costs continue to increase, what plans have been paid to resolve the age-old question of how much tuition subsidization should occur in state-operated colleges and universities and how much of this increased cost should be borne by the students and their families?

A: No one knows.

Q: As changes occur in federal support of essential social programs, requiring increased state financing and administration, what projects does Missouri consider essential and which can be dropped, if necessary, to maintain highly important services?

A: No one knows.

Q: What will be the capital building requirements of state government five years from now and will those requirements continue at a predictable rate within ten years?

A: No one knows.

Q: What will be the equipment needs, including both telecommunications and computers, of state government five years from now, and has a ceiling been placed on such acquisition?

A: No one knows.

Q: If elementary and secondary students continue to increase at predicted rates over the next 10 years, can the present foundation formula adequately fund the state's public education needs?

A: No one knows.

Well, you get the idea. Listing just a few of the dilemmas that are certain to face elected officials, even before the turn of the century, demonstrates how little has been accomplished in tracking problems that will confront Jefferson City and confound it even more. Until public law established the Office of Administration, which ranks as a department, there was next to nothing known about future state expenditures and little or no tracking of economic trends. The agency's inception also created the Office of Budget and Planning, both the director of this bureau, Mark Ward, had his hands full keeping track of budget requests and trends that will be required to meet the state's immediate needs. Other sections in Dick Hanson's Administration office zero in on such matters as personnel and capital building projects, yet much of this work, by sheer necessity, focuses on what is being considered by the General Assembly and what is presently needed by state agencies.

Anyone who believes the next 10 years of Missouri government will be like the last ten, only larger, is sadly mistaken. A revolutionary devolution, shifting vast power and responsibility form the federal government to the states is inevitable, with the only question being when it will occur. But it must happen if Washington is ever going to come to grips with its chronic inability to balance federal spending with revenue. IF this solution does not come within a relatively short period of time, the effects of this failure could well trigger the largest fiscal nightmare ever experienced in the United State. Not many officials in Washington want this calamity to occur on their watch, so transferring more and more responsibilities to the states is only a question of time.

The problem is that Missouri and its 49 sister states remain basically unprepared for this heightened responsibility and, worse still, unaware of how large these difficulties will be. One of the reasons for this lack of preparation is intrinsic in the makeup of "corporate management," namely the men and women who hold statewide offices, the departmental directors and the majority and minority leaders of the General Assembly. If any company had a president who was only going to be in charge four years, or perhaps eight years, then emphasis would be on quick results, with short shrift given to long-range planning.

Governors come and go. House speakers come and go. Directors of administration, revenue, social services, education come and go. State government badly needs an agency that doesn't come and go, that anticipates that future and provides options for those in temporary authority.

The system now in place is like rearranging the chairs on the Titanic -- in the dark.

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