JEFFERSON CITY — The Missouri Senate and House recently began work on the state’s budget for Fiscal Year 2016. As a new member of the Appropriations Committee and a committed fiscal conservative, I understand how important this process is and that we make the difficult decisions to balance our budget. With limited resources, it is important we carefully evaluate each program and expense to ensure it is a responsible expenditure of the hard-earned tax dollars of Missourians. These expenditures should also reflect our commitment to making government smaller and more efficient.

This process begins with the governor presenting his budget to the General Assembly. Unlike last year, we were able to come to an agreement with the governor on the Consensus Revenue Estimate which is a number we believe best reflects the amount of revenue we expect. The next step is for both the Senate and House Budget Committees to begin evaluating the governor’s budget line by line and to give each state department the opportunity to explain how they intend to spend the taxpayer’s dollars.

While we may have reached an agreement on how much revenue the state has, there are still some big differences between the Legislature and the governor on how that money should be spent.

Some of you may have heard recent announcements that the St. Louis Rams may move to another city unless a new stadium is built in St. Louis. In a bid to keep the Rams, the governor and his administration hastily put together a plan to build a new stadium in St. Louis with a price tag of almost $1 billion; $400 million of which would be paid for by taxpayers. An official in his office even told our Senate Appropriations Committee that the governor has the authority to issue new bonds on his own, without legislative or public approval, by way of an extremely loose interpretation of a more than
20-year-old statute.

While I’m sure there are some in the state who would like to see the Rams stay put, I don’t believe you are going to find many Missourians who think it is a good idea to burden future generations with massive debt to build a sports stadium. The Rams’ existing stadium, the Edward Jones Dome, isn’t even paid off yet! For these reasons, I strongly oppose using any taxpayer dollars for a new sports stadium. The governor is already withholding funds for vital budget items like the cybercrimes task force, domestic violence shelters, and forensic exams for abused children. To spend our tax dollars on a new stadium when so many vital budget items continue to be underfunded is inconsistent with our priorities as a state and our commitment to fiscal responsibility.

In other news, our state auditor, Tom Schweich, recently conducted an audit of the state airplane fleet and determined it is too large, underutilized and is costing taxpayers too much. Overall expenditures were about $6.6 million and an additional $5.6 million was used to purchase a passenger plane without Legislative approval and came at a time when so many important budget priorities were suffering from budget cuts. Staff for the state’s 20-plane fleet costs about $1.5 million a year. The fleet is rarely used but costs the state an absurd $8.7 million a year. The inappropriate size and rare use of the planes drew the second-lowest score possible from the auditor and highlighted a serious misuse of our tax dollars.

It’s our responsibility to protect the public’s money. After all, they earned it and they expect us to spend it as efficiently and effectively as possible, without putting it on the credit card and without making our children and grandchildren pay for it. I hope the governor will come to realize this as well.