PLEASE NOTICE THAT COUNTIES ARE IN TROUBLE

Nearly one-half of Missouri's 114 counties are in financial difficulty, with little or no prospect that the future holds anything but a repetition of the past: declining population, diminishing tax resources and inflation-driven higher costs of doing business as usual.

On the same day that a legislative tax committee in Jefferson City was discussing ways of raising at least $1 billion in added state revenue, scores of counties in Missouri were issuing checks for which they had no immediate funds.

The process that allows counties to continue providing essential services to constituents even with an empty treasury involves so-called "protested warrants," an arrangement few taxpayers understand and even fewer find fault with.

Basically it is an arrangement between county governments and local or area banks, whereby county checks are accumulated by the financial institutions as a form of a loan to the governmental units. Most banks charge 6 percent for this service, which in turn adds to the cost of government to taxpayers.

Without such warrants, as many as 50 counties would have to shut down essential services sometime during a year, returning to normal only in November or December when property and personal taxes become due. The protested checks mean county courthouses can keep their doors open throughout the year, but the added cost of this deficit financing simply diminishes the level of services citizens receive for their tax dollars.

The financial plight of counties in every section of the state is one of the least recognized time bombs in Missouri, and one that is virtually ignored in both official and political circles. There are more bills in the current legislative session dealing with county speed limits than methods of relieving the distressed financial conditions of these grassroots governmental units.

Many of the measures submitted in this session would actually increase the cost of maintaining county services. One glaring example is a bill that would establish a retirement system only for elected county officials, a piece of special interest legislation that probably won't get floor approval. But the bill is indicative of the kind of continuing financial pressure being exerted on 114 courthouses around the state.

This financial distress can be traced to several sources, the principal one being a massive population loss in far too many counties over the past three decades and a stagnant growth pattern in some 90 counties. One-fourth of all counties now have less than 10,000 population, and 44 percent have fallen below the 15,000 mark. When county populations resemble little more than villages, citizens can never hope to receive adequate levels of services despite the best efforts of elected and appointed officials.

The population loss has resulted in lower and lower assessed valuation totals for counties, all of which depend on real estate and personal property taxes for the basis of essential funding. In recent years, the inauguration of county-wide sales taxes has supplemented revenue from lagging property taxes, and without this form of taxation, counties would simply have been out of business for months at a time.

In addition, the economically distressed area, stretching across much of the northern half of the state, has suffered from lower utility, railroad and industrial development, once again depriving counties of previous support and financial sources. Add to this the higher inflationary cost of doing business, and the picture is anything but bright.

In tiny Worth County, the state's smallest with only 2,440 men, women and children (as of yesterday), the 1990 census produced an 18.9 percent population loss. Worth's county commission clerk, formerly known as a county clerk, struggles to meet salaries, conduct elections, repair roads and bridges and pay courthouse utility bills on a mixture of property taxes and sales taxes. It isn't an easy job, as Robert Pierce readily admits, particularly when it requires five elections to vote a half-cent sales tax for county operations. Since that vote must be held every four years, Pierce isn't looking forward to the next election, nor the expenses of continually voting on a tax measure that is essential just to keep the sheriff and his deputy with enough gasoline to get their patrol cars to the scene of the crime.

Worth County runs out of money form its road and bridge levy by the second month of the year and out of general operations revenue usually by May or June. From then on, it keeps its head above water with "protested warrants" and delaying bill payments as long as possible. Multiply Worth County by scores of others around the state, and pretty soon a pattern of public bankruptcy begins to emerge. There are answers, of course, but most are not popular, and thus there is little or no political dialogue.

It's only a matter of time until some counties simply collapse. It's time to stop pretending we haven't noticed.