In normal times, around the twentieth day of the month Missouri issues the Monthly Management Report for the Family Support Division and the MO HealthNet Division for the prior month, meaning about now we ought to have October’s report.
Only we don’t. And, won’t.
The federal government shutdown dropped an anvil on the Department of Social Services. Predictable activities weren’t. As reported by virtually every media outlet in the state, food pantries struggled to help every family needing help. Problems also arose in MO HealthNet (aka Medicaid) and in all sorts of other programs.
Now, I’m a believer that most things don’t work…they are made to work. It takes constant adjustments, targeted repairs, shifts in emphasis and a myriad of other activities to keep even a simple food pantry operating.
State government is especially hard to manage because the programs are so varied – and so time sensitive – that problems always outnumber solutions.
That’s especially true here in Missouri. We have way too few state workers to fulfill state commitments. We don’t pay those worker decent salaries. A string of Republican governors have attacked the right of state workers to organize and bargain collectively to improve their situation, The legislature contains a majority who claim Missouri has more than enough workers – and revenue – the workers just have to work harder.
Perhaps the easiest way to explain the chaos controlling Missouri is to look at The Butterfly Effect, the notion that a simple, inconsequential actions (such as a butterfly flapping its wings over a flower) begins a series of occurrences which can lead to grave consequences.
In this state the butterfly is called The Hancock Amendment.
Mel Hancock got voters to approve strict limits on Missouri revenue and tax policy in 1980. Good old Mel sold the idea that the state had – and would always have – more than enough money to do what really needed to be done. The limits on income were so tight that for a few years many of us got refund checks from the state.
‘Many of us,’ not all: only those with a state tax liability got the refunds even though low-income families and seniors who paid taxes triggering much of the refunds got skipped.
Anyway, the legislature didn’t like giving money back. Nor did they care to admit that the state’s obligations for education, health care, parks and roads, prisons and mental health services were increasing in cost faster than that amendment allowed revenue to grow without specific, voter-approved tax increases.
The result?
Now 45 years later Missouri is almost broke, staring at cuts in school funding, trying to kick people off Medicaid to control costs, and, well, going to hell in a cart with square wheels.
The Republican legislature’s response? Announce the largest tax cut in state history, the elimination of the individual income tax.
The problem is that slashes around $10 billion a year from General Revenue, the pool of money for education, health care, parks, etc. Proposals to fill part of the hole include adding 25¢ more in sales tax to each gallon of milk, charging sales tax on haircuts and, maybe, adding sales tax to the cost when a home is bought.
That still won’t be enough. It is quite probable that if Missouri ends the income tax and implements the sales tax increase that the state will have to slash several billion dollars a year from state funding for basic things.
That will add more chaos to an already failing, out of control government. State and local workers will lose their jobs. Questions won’t get answered. More necessary things won’t happen.
Expect to vote on the income tax repeal (and the new sales taxes) at an election next year.
Glenn