NO EASY ANSWERS TO HARD PROBLEMS

KENNETT, Mo. -- After endless weeks, extending into months, of political haranguing and harrumphing, we don't seem any closer to suitable answers for the questions facing us here in Missouri than when the candidates first started talking about them after the last time we elected a governor. We now have non-stop campaigns, beginning the day after we chose our incumbents, so that candidates no longer lack for issues even if they have no idea how to solve them.

Have you noticed that those wanting to spend the next four years in Jefferson City love discussing what they call "vital policy issues" which usually wind up being a little more than telling us how many sheriffs have endorsed their law-and-order platform or what redeeming benefit there is in listening to Al and George W. for the better part of a year?

Missing the point

Here in Missouri, candidates have been discussing every subject in the books except those that are of greatest importance to voters. Where candidates appear, and under what rules, suddenly take on greater significance than how they stand on the issues. As for the presumably important questions of the day, the subjects range from how many times candidates have visited every county in the state to whether it's more virtuous to take money from Hollywood or from huge corporations that answer only to their stockholders and God in that order.

Frankly, I think this year's state candidates are missing a bet in ignoring the really vital questions facing Missouri. Take highways. Please. Apparently we are stuck with a $20-plus billion road improvement program that could eventually bankrupt the state treasury with no idea how to solve it. Even though the solution is as obvious as the Gateway Arch, no one has even mentioned it.

Privatize highways

If I were running for office, I'd deal with the problem in a minute: I'd privatize the state's highway system. As the sixth largest in the country, it represents billions and billions of dollars in taxpayer investments, so if we can achieve better education by privatizing grades 1 through 12, why can't we get better roads by turning it over to people interested in this public service?

Under my plan, the state would still own the existing roads but would lease them to a corporation wanting to operate the system. We may not like the way they run our interstates, but, hey, they'd deal with KKK road signs in short order.

Under my road-lease plan, operators would pay the state so many millions of dollars each year, while gaining their revenue for vouchers purchased by motorists who want to drive, say, to Branson for the weekend. Just go to your neighborhood highway-voucher store, hand over your credit card and in minutes you're on your way. The state, free of having to collect gasoline taxes, could divert the money to other uses without having to continually worry about MoDOT bookkeeping mistakes.

Here's campaign issue number two: health care. At this moment, 15 percent of our population is on Medicaid, so we don't have to worry about them, leaving us with only 85 percent to assist. Some won't need any health insurance because it's already provided by the company where they work or by a very rich aunt. For the rest, we let them take the fund they've been spending on medical insurance and allow them to invest it in the stock market, just as some suggest it's the way to bolster the Social Security system. If it will work for Social Security, why won't it work for health care? You'd think some of those bright candidates we've been listening to for the past many months would have already thought of this. You'd think.

Name that building

Now, for another plan that will permit the state to reduce taxes far below the Hancock trigger. We take a page from shysters in St. Louis who have concocted the idea or maybe borrowed it from some wise guys in New Jersey. The state would offer to name any building it owns after someone or some company for an exorbitant amount of money. Billions are at stake. It started with the football field we all built for the St. Louis Rams, whose owners sold the naming idea to TWA, which hemorrhages more money than any corporate entity in the world.

We could expect billions of bucks for the state for naming rights to our state Capitol. Maybe the Busch family or the Waltons. Bill Gates even. After the state collected billions for the front of the Capitol, officials could sell the back of the Capitol, then move around Jefferson City where all kinds of state buildings are suddenly conspicuous by their lack of a name chiseled on their granite fronts. Billions and billions for tax relief, I'm telling you.

Education and money

Then there's education. How can we improve it and still not violate the constitution? We know, after experiencing the $3.2 billion desegregation payments, that money won't solve the problem of lousy schools. It only exacerbates it, as witness worse-than-even test scores by kids who had to get up at 3 o'clock every morning to ride to allegedly better schools.

My solution is that we first recognize that paying more money doesn't improve kids' minds, so it follows that if we're ever going to improve education, we'll have to reduce the amount of state money we send districts. Not all at once; they can't go cold turkey but gradually over the next 10 years. We leave the shortfalls up to local citizens and local school boards, which some politicians have long insisted know more about education than the bureaucrats in Jefferson City and Washington. If huge amounts of money have ruined our local schools, then the intelligent solution is to reduce the money. We'll probably wind up with thousands of geniuses before we know it.

I wish there were room to spell out some ideas I have on campaign reform, term limits, lotteries, improving the M.U. football program and balance of trade with Iowa. At least you see what a little thought and research can do when we get serious about solving major state problems. Simple does it every time.

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