MISSOURI WATCH: THE HIGH COST OF STATE'S `COW BARNS'

One of the most counterproductive, wasteful and devious components of governance in our state, and in every other one in America, is the Politics of Bricks and Mortar. It is a practice that can best be described as the use of public money to construct multi million-dollar buildings and facilities that are irrelevant to the delivery of services to the public. Unfortunately, it is a tactic that has become so ingrained in the distribution of public money that few now even question the practice, even when it is abused to absurdity.

A couple of examples will suffice.

Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the central office of the Department of Mental Health was located in a small building on Dunklin Street in Jefferson City, the use of which cost the taxpayers of the state less than $350 per month. It was a modest building, with few of the modern conveniences expected today, like large, airy and professionally decorated offices for assistants to deputy administrators. As the outreach of the agency expanded and its share of the budget grew, officials began lobbying for spacious quarters to reflect their growing importance in the capital city. Shortly the agency ended its lease on Dunklin Street and moved to a site formerly occupied by a large supermarket, spending large amounts of tax money to make the building more suitable. In less than a decade, reigning officials decided they required a still larger structure, one that reflected the importance of the agenda and, more particularly, the importance of the themselves. One does not have to be a mind-reader to know what has happened: the building request was approved and the state contracted for the construction of a new and modern that would house the agency's growing bureaucracy, one that had increased from 18 persons on Dunklin Street to more than 400 in its new location. It's almost impossible to know if the department needs more than 400 central office employees or it employed them to fill its greatly expanded headquarters.

Incidentally, just after the agency occupied its new multi million-dollar central office, it was decided that one of its clinical-office buildings in St. Louis, built in the 1960s at a cost of more than $24 million, should be razed to make room' for several smaller buildings at the same location. Officials explained the larger building, which had been constructed less than 40 years earlier, was being destroyed because it required several thousand dollars' worth of refurbishing. The logic employed in this wanton tax-dollar waste cries out for the kind of psychiatric help the agency attempts to provide to the public.

Although a case can be made for new-building construction for a growing list of convicted felons in Missouri, when Governor Mel Carnahan delivered his 1997 State of the State address and budget for the current fiscal year, he called for the construction of two new prisons to house an expanded caseload. After less-than-heroic attempts to find suitable locations, with the usual amount of politics prevailing once again, the multi million-dollar funding was started. Just a year later, the same governor, using the same explanation, called for still another huge appropriation to replace the oldest in-use prison west of the Mississippi River. The cost of the destruction of the correctional unit in Jefferson City and the planning and new replacement facility will exceed the annual revenue from all but three of the taxing sources for the state's general revenue fund, its principal funding account. Just 12 months before he recommended a new prison in Jefferson City, the governor had recommended an expenditure of more than $1.2 million for security enhancements at the same prison.

There is no attempt here to single out just two agencies, because the work of each is important, even critical to the well-being of every citizen in the state. There are other hideous examples of bricks-and-mortar policies that are either unnecessary or wasteful or duplicitous. For example, when taxpayers hear that a governor has recommended and the General Assembly has approved another $150 million-plus appropriation to construct a new prison, they assume with considerable logic that this is the total cost of a facility.

In the budget message delivered by the executive office last month, there were spending recommendations for the expansion of prisons that have been built within the past years, as well as askings for new equipment and staff to meet the requirements of both the original prisons and projected expansions of the same facilities. The lesson of this is obvious: the first cost is not the last cost of new construction, even when a capital budget for just 12 months can approach half a billion dollars.

Missouri taxpayers are asked to finance far too many cow barns (the political name given to state agency empire building projects) that are not only unnecessary but which, in the final analysis, subtract from the quality of institutions. There isn't a state-funded college or university in Missouri that isn't asking or planning to ask for millions of dollars in tax funds to build a new library, a new departmental building or a new athletic facility. The aim of many college presidents in Missouri, it seems, is to enhance the appearance of their campuses, not the academic services they deliver. In contrast, England's world famous Cambridge College boasts that it hasn't added a new academic-oriented campus in two centuries.

Because its total is smaller than the amount spent for annual operations and delivery of services by 16 state departments, the capital budget escapes public notice and scrutiny when the billion-dollar summaries are announced. But the cost of state bricks-and-mortar empire building is staggering, detracting from the ability of Missouri to carry out its basic responsibilities to its citizens.

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