PUT TOBACCO FEES ON SPECIAL AGENDA

Among the biggest disappointments with the just-ended session of the Missouri General Assembly was its failure to pass a measure that would cap fees of lawyers who were hired to handle the state's lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

As it stands, the attorneys will get in excess of $100 million, thanks to Attorney General Jay Nixon, a Democrat, who hired the team of private lawyers -- contributors to his campaign coffers -- rather than let his staff handle the case as he should have. In November 1998, just five months after they were hired, a national settlement was reached in the case, so the lawyers will get all of that money for doing mostly paperwork.

State Sen. Peter Kinder of Cape Girardeau is waging a battle to reduce their fees to $30 million, still a hefty amount considering what little work the lawyers had to do under the circumstances. Kinder filed a lawsuit in August 1998 seeking to have the original contract authorized by Nixon declared unconstitutional, but three courts, including the Missouri Supreme Court, ruled the contract was valid.

The high court did, however, leave Kinder an opening: It said clients in a case must agree to any fee arrangement in which their lawyers are to be paid by another party. The clients in this case are taxpayers, so the General Assembly could vote to nullify the agreement. But it must do so before the end of this year.

Toward that end, Kinder, a Republican and Senate president pro tem, sponsored a bill in the Senate that would establish the $30 million cap. Democrats, however, threatened a filibuster, and while Kinder could have called the measure for debate, he didn't in fear of it eating up too much floor time in the dwindling days of the session.

The state expects to get approximately $4.5 billion over 25 years from the tobacco settlement. How all of that money is used is up the Legislature.

Gov. Bob Holden, a Democrat, has done nothing to try to save the taxpayers any of the $100 million the lawyers will get if the cap isn't put on the fees.

But he has an opportunity to do something by declaring the tobacco fees issue an agenda item for a special session. He already has pledged to call a special session to consider a prescription drug plan for the elderly.

If Holden doesn't make the tobacco fees a special-session agenda item, he at least owes taxpayers an explanation of why he would rather the lawyers walk away with the money than using it to the benefit of taxpayers.