Don't touch conservation tax

To the editor:

State Sen. John Cauthorn, R-Mexico, will be the death of the Missouri Conservation Department. Missouri is the model state when it comes to conservation and its money. Leave it alone. Anyone who votes with Cauthorn and the Missouri Farm Bureau is a conservation and wildlife criminal. Both are no different than a poacher. They both rob the residents of Missouri of future wildlife.

I can see it now. You ask for a vote on the one-eighth-cent conservation sales tax knowing full well that you can rally enough votes out of the nonhunting and nonfishing metropolitan voters to overturn the tax. Both sides know this, and in return for not putting the sales tax up for a vote the MDC will have to make concessions that would allow that money to go directly to general revenue for allocation to the MDC as needed.

Some state officials will say this will protect the taxpayers from MDC abuse, but in reality they will siphon the funds for nonconservation issues, and there will probably be some clauses that allow emergency use of the revenue for other programs such as roads, welfare and unemployment.

The people are used to paying this extra one-eighth-cent tax, and no politician is going to give that money back. They simply want to get their hands on it for other reasons.

ALAN MORRIS

Jackson