Opinion -- Proposition B: The Right Thing to Do for Missouri's Children

 by State Rep. Chris Kelly
Missouri voters will soon decide whether to increase Missouri's tobacco tax from 17 cents a pack (lowest in the nation) to 90 centsan increase that would still place us nineteenth lowest in the nation. Fifty percent of the revenue will go to public elementary and secondary schools, 30% to higher education, and 20% for smoking cessation and healthcare programs. I sponsored a similar bill in the legislature and am a strong supporter of the tobacco tax increase, which will appear on the November 6th ballot as Proposition B.

Proposition B provides an opportunity to achieve several important results:

    €  Smoking will decrease
    €  Fewer Missouri young people will begin to smoke;
    €  Fewer Missourians will die from smoking-related diseases;
    €  Missouri will see lower Medicare and healthcare costs; and
    €  The estimated $283 million increase in revenue will go to our most pressing needs
        - $162 million new dollars for public Elementary and Secondary education;
        -   $85 million for our public institutions of Higher Education; and
        -   $56 million for smoking cessation and healthcare.

Criticisms of Proposition B aboundfrom threatened loss of businesses and jobs, to loss of state revenue from those purchasing tobacco products across state lines, to unfairly targeting smokers. These are desperate claims without merit. One criticism of Proposition B invoked by the tobacco lobby deserves further analysis.  That is, whether the additional revenue generated for education would simply offset the general revenue (GR) that would have gone to education, resulting in no effective increase in overall educational funding. You may have heard ads referring to the likelihood of money going in the "front door" and out the "back door"a criticism that has often been levied against lottery funds. In budget parlance, this is called "supplanting"where money is used from one source to take the place of money from another source. Supplanting would mean that no net addition of funds to education or healthcare would result.

The legal restrictions outlined in Proposition B and the protection given to education in the Missouri Constitution undercut this criticism. Nonetheless, I want to address this issue as fairly and as accurately as I can.

Supplanting can take several forms:

1.  Direct supplantation would occur if Prop B funds were placed into the General Revenue Fund, rather than into the Health and Education Trust Fund as mandated by law. This form of supplantation is neither legally possible nor politically plausible. By law, money placed into the special Health and Education Trust Fund can only be used for the three purposes set out in the lawElementary and Secondary Education, Higher Education, and Smoking Cession/Healthcare. The language specifically says that any balances in the Trust Fund "shall not revert to the general revenue fund."

2.  Indirect supplantation refers to supplanting in its most common form, a situation in which the legislature would reduce the amount of money now going into the General Fund for education by some amount because of the increases coming from Prop B‹the so-called "back door" approach. The plain language of Proposition B prevents this form of supplanting. For the Legislature to do this would be illegal.

Such supplanting of funds is also not politically feasible. First, education enjoys a Missouri constitutional preference in that, after public debt, education must receive priority funding. Second, the natural inclination of legislators is to fund education at the highest possible level, given revenue constraints. The political forces one would have to confront to reduce the amount of General Revenue currently going to education would be overwhelming. Even a suggestion of the taking of current GR from schools would result in a firestorm of opposition to legislators both from within and beyond their own party, inviting electoral disaster. Third, the amendment requires that the state auditor shall perform an annual audit of the fund, including "an evaluation of whether appropriations for tobacco-related programs and elementary, secondary, and higher education have increased." The state auditor is obligated to make copies of each audit available to the public and to the General
 Assembly.

3.  Supplanting through erosionIt is technically possible that, in future years some amount of General Revenue that would have gone to Higher Education, for example, might instead be used to deal with other state issuesthe dismal conditions of the Veterans' Homes, overtime compensation for prison guards, or nurses for disabled children who are wards of the state. It is impossible to quantify or know with certainty what the increase in GR funding to education would have been, absent the addition of Prop B funds. There is simply no reasonable way to determine what future funding might have been. We do not know if another Joplin-type storm will occur, or whether we will suffer another significant economic downturn, or if we will lose an expensive roof at a state hospital that requires state funds. We do know that education has the most effective advocates in the Capitol and that in any budgetary prioritization education is likely to prevail.

Having served on the Missouri House of Representatives Budget Committee for 14 years, with two terms as Chairman, I understand the process of state budgeting. Without the naiveté of youthful exuberance and with the experience of having seen how budgets are formed, I know that passing Proposition B will result in significant new revenue to healthcare and to education at all levels, and that neither direct nor indirect supplanting will occur.  Education will continue to receive both the statutory and popular lion's share of general revenue. The protections against supplanting as written into the amendment are intentionally as strong as could have been made and, unlike previous legislation involving lottery or gambling revenues, include language to prevent supplanting to the legal extent possible.

I am positive that the vast majority of my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, join me in that resolve. Should supplanting occur against all our efforts, Missouri voters will know and can take the next electoral opportunity to take decisive action against the legislators responsible. There is no perfect safeguard, but there is also no question that Prop B will result in significantly more revenue for education at every level, as well as for smoking cessation and healthcare.

During my 35 years in public life I have found that the best policy is to tell people the truth and trust them to do the right thing.  Ultimately, the voters will decide, as it should be, but before you cast your vote, please weigh the enormous benefits that Prop B brings to the state against the criticisms levied by those paid to promote their cause. I believe there is no legitimate reason to reject Prop B.

Proposition B is the right thing to do for Missouri's children. Please vote "YES" on November 6th.

Worth County Students Call for Smoke Free School

Smokebusters, a student organization educating the public against smoking, lobbied the School Board to make the entire school smoke-free. They did a presentation at the Worth County School Board meeting in which they presented figures showing that sitting in a smoke-filled restaurant for two hours would be the same as smoking four cigarettes. They have done public presentations, a hoop shoot, raffled off t-shirts, and persuaded people to take pledges not to start smoking. They have also went into the elementary, where they did an activity with second graders where they breathed through a straw after running to show them what smoking was like.



Janice Borey, the group's sponsor, recounted their trip to Bethany where they taped some public service announcements for KAAN Radio, which will be airing on the station for the next few months. At one point, the students were in charge of the radio station while Station Manager Stuart Johnson was off taping the PSA's from the students.



Citing statistics showing that workplace exposure to secondhand smoke was a leading cause of death and that 1,200 Missourians each year died of second-hand smoke, Smokebusters students asked the School Board to make the school smoke free. Board member Richard Mullock asked about enforcement; Borey said that the answer was positive encouragement. She said that if people were to smoke in their cars at school events, that would be their business, but that the school would still be smoke-free. North Andrew is another school in the area which has gone smoke-free.



Board member Kevin Austin said that as an ex-smoker, he would like to see the group take their efforts across the county. He said that he was allergic to smoke whenever people lit up around him and that efforts to restrict secondhand smoke were taking place all over the country. Participating in the presentation were Kylie Reynolds, Cody Straight, Rebecca Moore, Montana Rush, Eli Mullock, and Kacey Smyser.



High School students Jessica Borey, Brooke Gilland, and Zach Harmening gave certificates of appreciation to the school board members for School Board Appreciation Week. The CTA also gave appreciation cards.



Amy Garrett reported on the recent hard drive crash that occured at the school which affected both the school and the library. She said both the hard drives went down and that neither the school nor Midwest Data could recover much of the lost data. Lost were the school's webpage as well as the library card catalog, forcing librarians and volunteers to enter 20,000 lost titles into the system manually to restore the library card catalog. Garrett said that the crash did not affect either the school's e-mail or the online grades.



Superintendent Matt Robinson reformatted the school's annual report in a way that he said would help recruit more teachers and that he said would be more complete. Board member Richard Mullock said that the most impressive stat that jumped out at him was the fact that there was a high number of teachers with Master's Degrees at the school.



The school board approved the 2009-2010 calendar after discussing December snow dates. Superintendent Robinson said that he wanted to coordinate the calendar with other schools as well as the area vo-tech schools. Added to the calendar will be August 13th for first-time teachers for the district; Robinson said that day would be an orientation session. Christmas break will end on January 4th next year. As usual, the school will have six snow make-up days built in; if there are more than six, the school has to make up half of the remainder.





Board member Terry Green successfully pushed for the school to have two optional snow make-up days in December, given the long Christmas break for next year. He said that if there were a disaster like the Ice Storm, the school could use those at the discretion of the Superintendent and then get back on track for January. Robinson said that he would give teachers plenty of time to make plans; for instance, if the snowstorm were to happen right before those two days, he would go ahead and use Martin Luther King Day as a snow make-up day. But if it were to happen well before the break, he would go ahead and use the December make-up days. If there were only one snow date, the school would still wait until Martin Luther King Day to make it up; the change applies to two or more days of snow.