Reform ideas: Cape Girardeau hearing brings good comments

Those who sat through the hearing, which lasted more than three hours, of the Missouri State Government Reform Commission in Cape Girardeau last Friday got an insight on the committee's deliberations.

The Cape Girardeau full committee hearing was one of seven being held throughout the state in soliciting public insight into information gathering before we focus on our recommendations. Previous hearings have been held in Jefferson City, St. Louis, St. Joseph, Kansas City and Springfield. The last hearing is scheduled for in Kirksville.

Several meetings in Jefferson City were conducted earlier for the commission to hear from and ask questions of the 16 current state department heads and staff members.

Subcommittee meetings have also been conducted to discuss focused assigned areas. My subcommittee deals with the insurance, revenue and office of administration departments.

The Cape hearing was more for public input, and I felt we received excellent comments and suggestions.

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State Sen. Jason Crowell kicked off the testimony with an overview on spending other people's money, education focus and the need to put structures in place (regardless of political party) that will benefit state government.

Southeast Missouri State University president Ken Dobbins outlined the growth and services provided by the university. He pointed out that SEMO provides 750 majors and that since 2001 state higher education funding has been cut back for full-time employees as enrollments have increased. He explained the need for more reliable funding.

Dr. John Cooley (as we heard at other hearings) supports prior authorization for Medicaid services, but said the procedure has become cumbersome and requires more personal records being faxed for approval, which can require three to four weeks for authorization (except for kids 5 to 12).

Troy Wilson, president and CEO of Montgomery Bank, testified on the benefits of private-public cooperation in economic development such as is currently being achieved by the Hawthorne Foundation.

Wilson also pointed out the many non-economic divisions within the Department of Economic Development, which take up to 45 of the 53 descriptive department pages in the Official Manual. He recommended a structural change by transferring many of these functions to the office of administration.

Robert Gifford, Dr. Jean Chapman and Rebecca Fulgham (all of Cape Girardeau) testified about the importance of the arts and the economic and psychological benefits and the importance of a consistent, dedicated funding stream.

As always, though Medicaid funding is not a charge of our committee, we received a number of testimonies about the new Medicaid guidelines.

We also received two excellent, passionate pleas from state public health employees about the unfairness of the system which punishes those on welfare who are trying to get off without having severe cuts in funding that too often match income from employment so it becomes a zero-sum game.

Annette Wells, a member of AFSCME (state employee union), read a rebuttal of one of my columns (which I am now able to enter in the commission record).

I'll now be able to review her reports in my efforts to get more data (though I yield not on the information in my column.)

Another state worker, Larry Patterson, criticized the committee for being stacked and non-union -- but one of the commission members spoke out to say that his remarks offended her, as I'm sure they did all commission members in attendance.

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Patterson also claimed the Missouri Citizen Education Fund's June 2005 analysis showed that the committee was politically biased and that no report from the commission could be creditable.

This Democratic lobby group reported that members of the commission donated $19,184 to Gov. Matt Blunt's campaign (96.9 percent) and only $600 to Holden or McCaskill (3.1 percent.)

What the report did not say was that of the 20 members, seven contributed nothing to any of the candidates, one contributed to both candidates, one contributed to Democrats only, one contributed only $150 to Blunt, and 10 (or 50 percent) contributed $18,784 for an average of $1,878 each to the Blunt campaign.

This report has been handed out at the last three hearings, and the news media reports on that and under-reports the actions of the committee, much to my dismay.

When I asked Patterson to state something structurally that his group feels needed to be revised, his reply was "privatization," which I said was fair enough. However, I'd still like some positive suggestions from the organized opponents to any changes.

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I can't cover all of my notes, but excellent presentations were made by Rick Althaus and Michael Aide.

Special mention is reserved for local businessman and entrepreneur Earl Norman, who presented the commission with two well-documented proposals to consider:

1. On helping to get low-income single mothers off welfare by providing stipends for their education in the well-paying field of nursing in which there is a personnel shortage.

2. Reorganizing the state transportation budget into regional structures for funding and priorities while returning about 21,000 miles of county road maintenance back to the counties.

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Our committee will have received all of the scheduled public hearings after this Friday and will start formulating our recommendations over the next two to three months for a November report.

Our report will be in the form of recommendations which may or may not be adopted by the governor (where he can do so by executive order), the legislature and governor (where statutory changes are required) or by the people of Missouri if any constitutional changes are recommended and submitted to a vote by the legislature.

I was proud of the testimony and turnout at the Cape Girardeau area hearing.

Gary Rust is the chairman of Rust Communications.