By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri legislators race against time as the deadline looms to complete the state budget.
The Missouri House passed a $45.6 billion budget. The Senate increased spending and approved a $49.9 billion budget. Both chambers must approve the compromise version by six o’clock this evening.
St. Joseph State Rep. Brenda Shields says the budget includes $2.5 million to fund a study of the feasibility of upgrading U.S. Highway 36 to Interstate 72. Shields says this study will be unique, because of how Highway 36 is used in northern Missouri.
“And right now, we don’t have limited access across 36. So, it would require a lot of overpasses to be built,” Shields tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “That’s why we’re looking at how we can make it farmer friendly, because I know our farmers enjoy using 36, to cross 36, to get to their fields.”
Shields says even though the Senate increased spending by more than $4 billion, there remained a $2.5 billion surplus in the Senate version of the proposed budget.
A big item in the Senate version is the $2.8 billion set aside to expand I-70 to three lanes across Missouri, half to be paid upfront with the second half paid through bonds.
The Senate proposal fully funds the school funding formula as well as raises the starting annual teacher salary in Missouri to $38,000, more for those with a masters. It provides enough money for the state to fully pay its share of school bus transportation. That proposal also contains a change allowing the state to increase its education spending by a larger percentage annually.
“So, it would bring more dollars to education,” Shields says. “They’ve fully funded the transportation categorical which is incredibly important to all the rural districts that we serve in northwest Missouri.”
Shields says the budget contains a lot of money for projects in St. Joseph, such as $19 million for Rosecrans Memorial Airport, $6 million for Hillyard Technical School, and $1 million for the downtown Children’s Discovery Center.
An influx of federal funds has made this a record budget year for Missouri as the state benefits from money approved by Congress both to fight the coronavirus pandemic and to stimulate the economy in wake of the pandemic. Shields says the General Assembly has been careful to spend that extra money on one-time expenses, not ongoing ones.
“A lot of the money that we’re spending now is ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) dollars and they are going to projects. They’re not going to continuing expenses,” according to Shields. “So, I just want you to think about that. And even some of the money that we spent out of the surplus, is going to projects, not to programs that continue to happen every year.”
The Missouri legislature has a constitutional obligation to pass a state budget for the coming fiscal year by six o’clock this evening.