VOTING FRAUD, DEREGULATION, CREDITS

Fraud or disenfranchisement? If the margin of victory in the presidential election had been 900 votes in Missouri instead of Florida, the allegations of voter fraud and disenfranchisement in St. Louis would have made Missouri election officials look as bad as those in Florida. ...

This much is uncontested: The day before the election, William Lacy Clay told a campaign rally that he was concerned that city election officials moved about 30,000 voters to the inactive voter list. He threatened to get a court order if eligible voters weren't allowed to vote. On Election Day, many city voters found that their names were not on the lists at the polls. Poll workers tried to call election officials downtown, but the phones weren't working properly.

Some of these voters got court orders allowing them to vote. Bond alleges, with documentation, that judges allowed people to vote even though they had admitted they were felons or hadn't registered on time. At least 135 people voted who were not registered.

Around 3 p.m. Democrats filed suit to keep the polls open late. Attorney Douglas Dowd represented Robert D. Odom, who claimed not to have been able to vote. It turns out Robert D. Odom died in 1999. Dowd has said since that the actual plaintiff was Robert M. Odom, a Clay campaign aide. But the real Odom had not had trouble voting, even though Dowd said in court that he was ready to testify in support of the suit.

About the time that Circuit Judge Evelyn Baker issued the order keeping the polls open -- an order at odds with state law -- city residents receiving pre-recorded telephone messages from the Rev. Jesse Jackson telling them they could vote late. Half an hour later, Vice President Al Gore was telling KMOX listeners that the polls were still open. Bond says this proves the effort was coordinated.

Secretary of State Matt Blunt is conducting an investigation. It is important that it be nonpartisan and complete. This means finding out why so many African-Americans were turned away at the polls on Election Day, as well as whether Democrats had a scheme for keeping the polls open late. It also means probing the inefficiencies of the patronage system at the Election Board. And then it means fitting reforms into the broader state-wide and national election reforms to make sure we don't have another election like the one in 2000. -- St. Louis Post Dispatch

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Soviet-style deregulation: Big-government advocates are pointing to California's electricity debacle as an example of how free markets sometimes mess up, big time. What the politicos and the electric companies did in California was anything but genuine free enterprise. ...

California (and the federal government) also pushed the use of natural gas, ignoring the fact that, because everyone had assumed natural gas would remain in a glut, the state and other political entities had been doing everything possible to block drilling, exploration and transportation for new supplies.

Not surprisingly, because of regulations and the authorities' bureaucratic foot-dragging, the Golden State's utilities haven't built a major new generating plant in more than a decade. Compounding that felony is the fact that the capacity of power lines has not been expanded either.

What's to be done? The states and the feds should properly deregulate this vital industry, primarily by removing territorial monopolies. ... New, more sophisticated generating and transmitting technology is coming on the market. Removing restrictions will allow entrepreneurs to exploit these breakthroughs.

If a utility wishes to own its own power plants, it should be free to do so. Why arbitrarily bar vertical integration? Let the market decide. As for price controls, phase them out -- fast. If there were a price spike, we'd immediately see more sensible use of a temporarily scarce commodity. State and local governments have plenty of programs to help the truly poor meet their basic needs. Politicos, of course, don't want flexible prices for a very simple reason -- consumers would quickly oppose anti-energy, anti-electricity regulations and rules if they thought those might boost their monthly utility bills. -- Steve Forbes

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State's tax-credit programs show good return: $118,722,179 in tax credits stimulated almost $4 billion in private investment in fiscal year 2000, according to a Missouri Department of Economic Development presentation to the Senate Appropriations Committee recently. This was one of several facts pulled from DED's presentation which was intended to inform the Senate of Missouri's $277 million tax credit program and bolster support for enhancements to the program during the 2001 legislative session.

Tax credits are a type of tax incentive, designed to advance public-policy goals by leveraging private-sector funding. Tax credits are generally associated with corporations because the credits are commonly used as an incentive for a business to relocate or expand in a state. The majority of states, as well as the federal government, successfully use tax credits for this purpose. (The largest of Missouri's economic development tax credit programs are outlined in the chart above.)

Surprisingly, the majority of the 50 active tax-credit programs in Missouri are not targeted at business. In fiscal 2000, $163,900,000 in tax credits was earned by individuals through programs to assist senior citizens, offset pharmaceutical purchases, preserve historic property and for other needs. The first tax-credit program in the state, the senior citizen property tax "Circuit Breaker," was introduced in 1975.

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications.