Budget moves into final weeks

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Budget moves into final weeks

JEFFERSON CITY - There's a battle going on in a stone building overlooking the Missouri River.

It's a battle that flares up every year but many say is worse than usual. The spoils: A slice of Missouri's state budget. Up for grabs: Treatment for mentally ill patients, money for school teachers and support for the arts.

It's a battle not only over where to spend but also over where to get the money from.

Gov. Bob Holden and the Democrat-controlled House staked out the position of cutting some programs while also raising gambling taxes and borrowing from the state's emergency reserve fund. In the opposite trench, the Republican-controlled Senate Appropriations Committee voted to not rely on gambling money or borrow money from the reserve and instead cut further into programs.

The battle can't go on indefinitely; both camps face a May 10 deadline to pass the budget before the end of the regular legislative session. The terms of the eventual settlement could lie between the two positions or could be completely different, possibly incorporating a proposal to borrow from future payments from the state's tobacco settlement.

With three weeks to go, here are the main sticking points in the battle over Missouri's budget:

Although the House voted to fully fund the School Foundation Formula, something both parties and Holden say they are committed to doing, the Senate Appropriations Committee decided otherwise.

During debate on the education budget Thursday, the committee voted to give schools a $150 million increase rather than the $250 million the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education says is required for full funding. The proposal would mean a nearly 7 percent decrease in state payments to local districts compared with what the fully funded formula would provide.

The House leadership and the governor expressed disappointment in the committee's decision but said they are hopeful for full funding before final budget approval.

"We're hopeful that this is not a done deal," said Holden spokesman Jerry Nachtigal. "There's still room for negotiations and discussion to find ways to fully fund the formula."

For higher education and the UM system, the broad outline for next fiscal year's budget is clear - deep cuts from funding levels lawmakers approved last year.

The Senate Appropriations Committee this week voted to restore $720,000 in cuts to UM made on the House floor. The Senate's budget still leaves UM with $50 million less than last year, a 10 percent cut recommended by Holden in January.

Although the budget reductions to higher education that cleared the House came as no surprise, the lower chamber did send the Senate some surprises.

House members approved $720,000 in cuts to express displeasure at a no-flag-pin policy at UM-owned KOMU/Channel 8 in Columbia, at comments from a University of Missouri-Kansas City faculty member about child sex abuse, and at the employment of a Democratic political operative at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The cuts were restored last week by senators who said the budget wasn't the place to send messages.

Under the House and Senate budgets, the state's other public colleges, universities and community colleges face a similar 10 percent cut in state appropriations, causing many to consider similar hiring freezes and tuition increases.

Although Holden saw the accelerated growth of health care costs as reason to issue severe cuts to the Social Services Department in his 2003 budget proposal, the House responded differently by restoring more than $15 million in cuts.

The House restored more than $17 million in funds to the department's Division of Family Services budget to be used for community development. The money would be dispersed through grants and contracts to communities for various initiatives and partnerships.

Under Holden's recommendation, Caring Communities of Columbia and Boone County would have lost more than 60 percent of its budget. But before sending its budget to the Senate, the House restored more than $700,000 to the program.

The Senate largely agreed with the House on funding for mental health programs, although some additional cuts were proposed to the Health Department's budget.

The committee is not following the governor's proposal for a 15 percent, nearly $108 million, cut to the department's 2001 budget. Holden planned to supplement the department with $92 million from the rainy day fund whose use was refused by the House.

Senate committee member Betty Sims, R-St. Louis County, said she was glad the committee "held together in support of mental health."

"We are gently pushing everything down," she said. "What I don't like is the rifle approach, where we shoot a program completely out of the water."

The budget for the Department of Corrections has changed little since the governor's original $571 million recommendation in January.

The budget that passed the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved funding to open a new prison in Bonne Terre, which was completed last summer but has not opened because of a lack of funds.

The committee decided to fund the Bonne Terre prison as a reception and diagnostic center with only a few regular beds.

The House previously had left the governor's proposal virtually untouched, despite efforts to use the money elsewhere. Some lawmakers wanted to dip into the corrections budget to gather money for state employee salaries.

Rep. Joan Bray, D-St. Louis, had introduced an amendment proposing an annual $600 pay increase for all state employees during next the fiscal year instead of opening the prison. The House rejected Bray's amendment 112-27.

Funding to continue twice-daily Amtrak service between St. Louis and Kansas City is in question as the Senate prepares to examine the state's unbalanced budget for a final reading this week.

The Senate Appropriations Committee last week accepted the House's proposal to finance the $6 million annual contract with Amtrak from general revenue funds.

Holden's original plan was to use the rainy day fund to finance the train service, but that was rejected by the House.

One of Amtrak's biggest boosters, Rep. John Griesheimer, R-Washington, said that even if the Senate goes along with the House decision, the future of Amtrak still hangs in the balance.

"Even if we passed the legislation and keep the money on the bill, the governor still has the authority to do a line item veto and take the money out of it," he said.

When Holden looked for sources of revenue to fill holes in the budget, one of the places he turned to was the nonresident athletes and entertainers tax. Holden's plan diverted the revenue from arts programs into the state's general revenue account.

In doing so, he cut funding to five cultural programs the tax was intended for - the Missouri Arts Council Cultural Trust Fund, public broadcasting, library networking, historic preservation's revolving fund and the Missouri Humanities Council Trust Fund.

When the budget came to the House floor, Reps. Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, and Vicky Riback Wilson, D-Columbia, persuaded their colleagues to insert $100,000 for each of those partners, except public broadcasting, which got $95,000. Although Shields described those appropriations as a drop in the bucket, the goal was to hold each partner's place in the budget with the hope that in future years, funding would be restored to the level intended when the tax was created.

The Senate Appropriations Committee tentatively decided to keep the $95,000 for public broadcasting but moved the money to a fund restricted to television rather than radio stations. The committee removed the money for the other four programs.

"To give all of those organizations that count on that money nothing, seems very severe to me," said Senate Appropriations Committee member Roseann Bentley, R-Springfield.

Missouri Digital News reporters KATHRYN HANDLEY, BRIAN CONNOLLY, TIFFANY ELLIS, JAVIER SOLANO and JON ARIZTIMUNO contributed to this report.