STATE SPENDING BALLOONS AS ECONOMY SWELLS

With a June 22 deadline looming for signing the budget bills, Gov. Mel Carnahan confronts the usual tough questions that come with the constitutional mandate to live within our means. When Carnahan proposed his fiscal year 2000 budget to the General Assembly in January, he called for a relatively modest 3 percent increase in state spending. This proposal amounted to $15.93 billion in the fiscal year beginning July 1, an increase of $465.3 million over the current year's appropriations.

When lawmakers adjourned this year's session, they had appropriated another 3 percent more than the governor's request. Legislators produced an operating budget of $16.44 billion, adding another $508.4 million to the governor's spending plan.

If all legislative add-ons are approved by Carnahan, the nearly $16.5 billion state budget will not only set a record for state expenditures, but will be an amazing 24 percent higher than the amount approved for fiscal 1998, which ended just a year ago. State spending in fiscal 1998 was $13.22 billion, jumping 17 percent to the current fiscal year's appropriations total of $15.46 billion.

Several observations are in order. First, we are once again witness to the amazing tendency of government to grow rapidly in good economic times. A 24 percent budgetary increase from fiscal 98 to fiscal 2000 would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

Second, we can once again thank former U.S. Rep. Mel Hancock of Springfield for the state constitutional amendment that bears his name. The Hancock Amendment, which mandates that if total state revenue grows faster than personal income, the state owes taxpayers a refund. It is the one brake we have on the growth of our state government. Thanks go to the Missouri Farm Bureau and to all others who helped in the successful effort to persuade voters to adopt the Hancock Amendment.

Third, we are glad that our governor wields the power of the line-item veto on spending measures, which enables him to nix excessive and unjustified spending.

Fourth, spending increases of this magnitude make us wonder whether the state couldn't have afforded more than the $202 million tax cut approved last month. The latter is a legislative response to the state's busting through the Hancock spending lid for the fifth consecutive budget year.