Today … we present the final installment of Bob Priddy’s look at the Hancock Amendment and its ever-lasting impact on Missourians.

Mel Hancock is a nice guy and a dedicated limited-government conservative. The last time we talked to him a few years past he was still passionate about the Hancock Amendment adopted almost thirty years ago. He always has been quick to rebut any criticism of the campaigns he led to control the ability of the state to tax its citizens to raise money for the programs, services, and institutions that serve those citizens, that those citizens use, and that representatives of those citizens demand. This discussion is not intended to evaluate whether Missouri has prospered or suffered because of the philosophy that Mel Hancock brought to our state constitution. It is intended to offer one perspective on the events in the last thirty years that have contributed to the budget-cuts that are causing pain to many state programs three decades after the amendment was enacted.

In the mid-1990s the state economy had recovered from the recession of the late 1970s and early 80s and state income exceeded the limits set by the Hancock Amendment. Some of the refund checks sent out by the Department of Revenue were pretty big. Some were almost a waste of postage.

We discussed the timing of the passage of the Hancock amendment in our last post. Timing becomes critical again now.

Without getting into the internal political pressures within the legislature, let us recall that the General Assembly decided the state should not be troubled by having to mail out thousands of checks whenever the Hancock limit was exceeded. What could keep that from happening and at the same time make political points with the electorate?

Tax cuts, that's what.

A check of the legislative journals and the state tax laws will show that in that era, the legislature cut taxes or eased tax burdens on a lot of things.

And here is where legislative short-sightedness in the 90s becomes a factor during these tough times as we reach the end of the first decade of a new century.

The good times did not keep coming. As the economy sagged with Recession I a short time after those tax cuts, the state not only stayed under Hancock limits, it tumbled farther away from them. The tumble was aggravated by the thinning of the state tax base the legislature had approved a few years later.

Today, the more severe Recession II has left Missouri's total state revenue at least $1.2 billion below the Hancock limit. One-point-two billion!

Some legislators in the 90s worried what would happen if the tax base was cut so refunds would not have to be made and the economy did not sustain its 1990s growth.

They have their answer now. And so do thousands of Missourians who are feeling these budget cuts.

Do not blame that short-sighted but politically popular thinking of lawmakers long gone from the Capitol for ALL of the fiscal problems their legislative and executive descendants are dealing with today. The world in which they lived and worked and in which today's leaders live and work is shaped by demands and pressures far different from the demands and pressures the folks at home experience.

But it's the citizens who elect those leaders. We don't recall any citizens or their representatives in the hallways of the Capitol saying in those days that mailing checks was better than weakening a tax base that could provide some buoyancy when the economy starts to sink.

A lot of things have contributed to the state's present fiscal situation. The series of events recounted in these posts constitutes one factor as seen by one long-time observer's effort to connect some dots. You might draw the lines differently or draw different lines.

Is what we need, though, people in the legislature, lobbyists in the Capitol halls, and people in the voting booths who can see beyond the next dot?

-Bob Priddy, News Director, The Missourinet.