TIME TO REPEAL STATE'S SALARY COMMISSION

Gov. Mel Carnahan signed the $16.2 billion budget for fiscal 2000 last week, with spending on education accounting for nearly a third of the total package. For one comparison, state government today spends more on elementary and secondary education, not including local school district spending -- $3.8 billion -- than the figure for the entire operating budget for all state government as recently as 1980.

Included among the handful of vetoes was Carnahan's eliminating of planned pay raises of 5 percent for himself and other state officials. The governor cited a Missouri Supreme Court ruling about state salary increases issued since the Legislature passed the budget in May. In that case, brought by a retired circuit judge, the Supreme Court ruled the House of Representatives violated the Constitution by failing to spread over three days its consideration and rejection of a salary commission's recommendation of pay raises for judges.

Elected statewide officials, lawmakers and the judiciary would have received 5 percent pay raises accounting for about $2.4 million. As governor, Carnahan has the authority to veto spending line by line or to withhold funding from state agencies until later in the budget year. This is an important component of executive authority, a crucial disciplining measure for spending control.

Left unanswered for now is the question whether our term-limited lawmakers, confined by the Constitution since 1992 to eight years in the House and eight in the Senate, should have a pension at all. This question was the subject of spirited debate this past session, as freshman Sen. Sarah Steelman, a Rolla Republican, tried to eliminate legislative pensions. She lost in repeated attempts.

The result for now is that lawmakers won't get a salary adjustment to which they are probably entitled through the budgetary process, while they will receive pensions to which many Missourians don't think they are.

In the meantime, let us renew our call for incremental progress. Lawmakers should get busy and propose to voters a constitutional amendment repealing the ridiculous salary commission enacted in 1994. This useless appendage on state government proposes increases that actually take effect unless affirmatively rejected by both houses of the Legislature. It never should have been adopted and richly deserves repeal.