MISSOURI WATCH: THE COSTLY CONSEQUENCES OF `BOOBUS LEGISLATUM'

Since the day I consistently misspelled the word "shining" in a freshman English class, I have usually sought to display the broadest possible tolerance for the mistakes of others. This understanding of human frailty has extended to the boundaries of the third floor of the Missouri Capitol where, I must constantly remind myself, 197 human beings are doing their dead level best to enact sensible, needed and hopefully error-free statutes of the land. Considering that these 197 men and women ponder, in varying degrees of interest, about 1,700 proposed laws every session, they generally perform with a grade average that runs the gamut from A to F, although on certain occasions, the average has dropped slightly below.

The problem with all of this tolerance, however, is that when a mere reporter commits an error, his stupidity can be corrected the next day, either in print or over the airwaves. Whereas when a mere majority of the 197 enact a law that suddenly turns out to be flawed, some 5.3 million Missourians are stuck with its errors for at least a year, give or take a few months. This is a classic example of what I call Boobus Legislatum.

To cite but one example from last year's 88th General Assembly should be sufficient to convey the consequences of error-filled laws. In seeking to enact legislation that would decriminalize certain traffic offenses, thus reducing mounting backlogs in urban courtrooms, lawmakers agreed to reclassify certain offenses, downgrading them to mere infractions. This seemed logical enough until someone recognized that our forgiving legislators had gone too far and had unintentionally decriminalized the crime of drunken driving. That error is being corrected in this session, and we will eventually restore this horrendous crime to its rightful place in courtrooms.

But- those searching for other examples of Boobus Legislatum need look no further than the Bill Index for this year's legislative session. In the view of some, this year's agenda has room for a large number of errors, a few of them rather innocuous and some, unfortunately, even life-threatening.

Consider a whole series of bills designed to increase the profits of Missouri's riverboat casinos, virtually all of them bearing the noble aim of making life easier for those who don't mind throwing their money away. From lifting a sensible limit on individual losses to forgiving past promises to local communities, these measures in the final analysis make life easier, and much more profitable, for outsiders whose sole interest in our state is milking its citizens for every dime they can put their hands on.

Or consider numerous proposals that would require citizens from every one of Missouri's 114 counties to send a portion of their tax dollars to a St. Louis rapid-transit system that was never envisioned to incur anything but huge financial losses. Previous thinking on this subject got around the high loss factor by explaining that Uncle Sam's subsidies would keep the newly redesigned street cars on track, but then came Newt the Naysayer and easy money went the way of Dick Gephardt's plan to move into the office of Speaker of the House. Now the thinking is that our state Treasury can be robbed almost as easily as when St. Louis got the feds to build a giant wicket on the riverfront. Ergo, lots of offers from St. Louis to accept millions of dollars in state tax revenue from millions of taxpayers, some of whom may recall when Gephardt introduced a bill declaring St. Louis' secession from Missouri.

In terms of Boobus Legislatum, let us not overlook the numerous bills that would send money from Jefferson City to Forest Park, which has been allowed to deteriorate because St. Louis was busily engaged in building a new domed stadium (with one-half of its cost coming from you-know-who) and a new rapid-transit system which even now is envisioned as being much larger than at present. It's always a good idea, it seems, to greatly expand a system that has no way of paying its bills.

One of the crushing societal problems in Missouri is crime, specifically acts of violence that kill and permanently injure hundreds of our fellow citizens every year. Now the General Assembly is getting ready to enact a concealed weapons bill without first submitting it to a statewide vote. Your lawmaker is about to arm some of your enemies without giving you any say in the matter. How can we ever thank them?

Speaking of mistakes, the guy responsible for a long series of them, Mel Hancock, is back at work, offering a long series of amendments that would correct the ones in a law he copied 10 years old. Most seem unconcerned that Hancock is back with another "correction." More Boobus Legislatum.

It's definitely time to get nervous.

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