Engler: Economic Development and a Balanced Budget

This week the governor delivered the annual State of the State address. This is the governor’s opportunity to announce his priorities for the year and present his budget plan to the Legislature. For the third year in a row, we are facing a budget shortfall, and it is more important than ever to create a fiscally responsible budget that keeps Missouri spending within its means.

I do agree with the governor that economic development should be our primary focus this session. We need to support legislation that encourages businesses to expand and grow new jobs. This includes expanding our economic development tools outside of the standard tax credits, some of which are no longer effective. Missouri must stay competitive with other states in attracting new businesses, while also providing incentives for companies already located in the state to stay and expand.

In the Legislature, we are working to create an environment in our state that encourages economic development. We need to reverse a judicial decision made last fall that put Missouri employees in danger of being sued over honest accidents in the workplace. We must explore reformation of our current workers’ compensation structure, unemployment laws, and liability laws to attract job-creating businesses to our state.

I have been critical of the governor in past years for delivering a budget dependent on one-time funding. The governor has again presented a spending plan that will fund K-12 education with one-time funding and depends on legislation that may or may not pass to be balanced. In order to balance the budget, we have to make at least $500 million in budget cuts, but the governor is proposing new spending and he did not include any cuts from the two largest portions of the budget….Education and Social Services, which is 70% of our budget. After five years of cuts, the other state departments will have to bear the burden again. Prisoners have to be watched twenty-four hours a day…we can’t cut that back to twenty hours.

While this increased spending might sound good in a speech, it is not the way to create a fiscally responsible budget.

Also this week, Brian Bunten started in my office as a new staff member. He is a recent law school graduate and will be available to answer your legislative questions. Please feel free to contact my office if you have any questions about legislation we have filed or any state issue.

Our work on legislation in Senate committees will continue in the coming weeks. Last week, I was appointed to chair the Senate Committee on Financial and Governmental Organizations and Elections. Several bills were assigned to that committee this week, and I look forward to meeting to hear testimony on some of this legislation when we return to the Capitol on Monday.