NO TAX RELIEF IN STATE'S SPENDING GROWTH

State spending in fiscal year 2000, which starts July 1, will more than double that of 10 years ago -- 118 percent higher, to be exact. In fiscal 1990, then-Gov. John Ashcroft signed a budget, then a record high figure, featuring $7.56 billion in operating costs and another $87.8 million in capital improvements for a total state budget of $7.65 billion.

This week, when Gov. Mel Carnahan signs the state budget, he will approve state spending of $16.64 billion, an increase of nearly $9 billion in a decade. The spending includes $16.44 billion for operating expenses and another $202.5 million for capital improvements. These last six budget years, state spending has been growing at the rate of 7 percent per year, or roughly three times the rate of inflation.

When compared to expenditures a decade ago, some of today's figures are astounding. Take the 10-year increase in expenditures for the Department of Social Services. At $3.56 billion, that increase represents 47 percent of the total fiscal 1990 budget. With increases of $305.1 million, this year's budget charts spending of $5.01 billion in social services alone. At some point, both lawmakers and this governor will have to explain why spending is exploding at this rate, even five years after we started reforming welfare and those rolls began shrinking.

Or take the 10-year increase in the budget of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. This increase will almost equal the amount allocated for public schools in fiscal 1990: $1.98 billion, nearly equal to the total $1.96 billion spent a decade ago. The state will spend $3.94 billion on public education this year, an amount that doesn't include local taxing effort.

Third-costliest in all state government is the Department of Transportation, which has received a 10-year increase larger than total spending in 1990. That year, spending on all forms of highways and transportation was $678.6 million, as against today's $1.42 billion -- an increase of $740.6 million. Explosive growth such as this makes more difficult the highway construction lobby's effort to impose still higher taxes on Missourians to pay for road and bridge improvements.

These numbers reflect the reality that government in this decade has remained a growth industry. Many Missourians would like to hear a debate on how to further slow this rate of growth, and to give hard-pressed taxpayers the relief we have been seeking for so long.