Nixon using school cuts for political purposes

When Gov. Nixon wielded his executive power last week to veto or freeze more than $1.1 billion in state funding for Missouri's 2015 fiscal year budget, it sent ripples of anxiety throughout the state.

Which is exactly what the governor wanted.

School districts and higher education institutions across the state are adjusting to the announcement that more than $200 million will be frozen from education spending, including preschool programs, elementary, high schools and higher education. Locally, the Cottonwood Residential Treatment Center for children with mental health issues will be shut down. Funding for the local autism center will be cut. The list goes on and on. It appears the governor has gone out of his way to target our state's young people.

For those who may not be familiar with Missouri's process, the government is bound by the state constitution to spend no more than it takes in. The governor plays a key role in upholding that requirement.

But the governor is going far beyond balancing the budget. He's using a political hammer to secure his veto power. And that's politics. Republicans have no room to argue about using political leverage. In recent years, Republican leadership has pulled every procedural lever possible to push through agendas. Republicans hold huge majorities in both houses, and the Democratic governor is turning about fair political play.

But we would argue that this is not how a state should be run.

The governor is basing his cuts on political assumptions. He is assuming that Republican strategies that involve tax cuts will not invigorate the economy. He's assuming that Missouri business leaders won't hire more people. He employed the same strategy last year, which juiced the passions of the education systems throughout the state (which are huge employers), and pressured the General Assembly to not override his veto of a tax-cut bill. The strategy worked, and Nixon released $400 million he had withheld, but only after lawmakers failed to override the veto.

This year, Nixon is raising the stakes.

The governor has vetoed 10 bills that called for tax breaks for specific entities such as power companies, laundromats, restaurants and grocery stores. Nixon has estimated the measures would bring state revenue down by $425 million.

Rep. Kathy Swan, R-Cape Girardeau, questions the math.

"I went into each one of those bills and pulled up the fiscal notes and added -- of course, some of them will say ‘up to' and some will say ‘may exceed' -- but if you take the top dollar figure on all those fiscal notes, I come up with a little over $233 million," Swan said. "So we've got about a $192 million difference."

And this is where politics fails us. What are we to make of any decision, if our politicians can't come within $192 million of the same numbers?

We have a governor willing to slash education funding, freeze increases for schools, squeeze academic scholarships for our brightest students and eliminate mental health services for children to make a political point on numbers that may or not be real.

Meanwhile, our leaders at our educational systems are flummoxed. Politics is getting in the way.

The governor is certainly making his presence known to the public. In an odd set of circumstances, it's the Democrat using the budget machete and the Republicans arguing against the cuts. What a strange situation.

We often wonder, however, why isn't Nixon making his presence known in the Capitol? Why isn't he getting involved earlier in the process, talking with leaders in both houses about his concerns? Where is the governor when the bills are being crafted? Is he voicing opposition throughout the process? Is he offering suggestions or compromises? Could this veto nonsense be avoided with a little more communication?

As with politicians on both sides of the aisle, be it state or federal, it appears Nixon is more interested in power than leadership. And for Nixon, without the benefit of political majority in either house, there's no better way to secure power than putting children's education in the political cross hairs.