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JEFFERSON CITY | The Missouri Senate on Wednesday put the final touches on a $22.4 billion spending plan that includes more funding for public schools, college scholarships, life sciences research and low-income health care.
The operating budget sent to Gov. Matt Blunt would fund government from July 1 through June 30, 2009. It contains a $957 million increase over the current year, including an increase of $441.5 million in state general funds.
Enthusiasm for the robust spending increase, however, was tempered by a slowing economy and sharp drop in state revenue last month. April saw an $84.7 million decline in state income taxes compared with a year earlier. That 8.2 percent decline, coupled with an 11.4 percent decline in corporate income tax receipts, reduced this year’s overall revenue growth to slightly more than 2 percent.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Gary Nodler, a Joplin Republican, repeatedly warned budget writers that unbridled spending would set the state up for problems next year.
“Throughout the year, I have warned about the need to look to the future,” Nodler said. “The revenue picture is not as good as the last few years. We only have so many acres and can support only so many cows. If you put too many on there, they’re going to starve.”
The budget would boost state support for local schools by $118.9 million and bring basic aid to public schools to $2.96 billion. Several lawmakers complained that the budget failed to boost state aid for school transportation expenses, which was held steady at $167.8 million.
When the budget was debated by the House, Rep. Joe Aull, a Marshall Democrat and former school superintendent, said school funding was inadequate in the face of rapidly escalating gasoline costs. He said it was an embarrassment that Missouri ranked 42nd in the nation in per-child school funding.
But Rep. Chuck Portwood, a St. Louis County Republican, countered that funding for local schools had risen nearly $1 billion since 2001.
“It’s never, ever enough for (Democrats) on the other side of the aisle,” Portwood said.
Discretionary state support for higher education grew to $1.03 billion, rising more than $92 million. The increase included a $23.8 million increase in state scholarships, which would allow more students and students from higher-income families to qualify.
Democrats complained that the boost in scholarship spending went mostly to private universities and did nothing to help public universities hold down tuition.
The state also boosted fees for health-care providers for the second year in a row. Doctors, nursing homes, dentists, home-health workers and mental-health services would receive $130 million more next year, with the largest share going to doctors and nursing homes.
Doctors got by far the largest increase, with fees rising an average of 7.4 percent. It would bring doctors’ fee increases to $105 million in two years. Nursing homes received a 5 percent increase, or $56.6 million. Most other providers received 3 percent increases, the same pay raise as state workers.
Funding for grants for life science grants grew 56 percent, to $21 million next year. The increase came over the objections of the Missouri Catholic Conference, which warned lawmakers that the grants could be used to fund research into cloning cells or other objectionable forms of stem-cell research.
But the funding was approved by a coalition of lawmakers who supported all stem-cell research and cloning opponents who said the Life Sciences Research Board had agreed not to award grants that some lawmakers would find offensive.
Rep. Ryan Silvey, a Kansas City, North, Republican, earlier inserted new wording into the budget that would expand the types of research eligible for the grants to include research related to human health.
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