School district leaders find school funds marching down steps in wrong direction
CUTTING COSTS
Being champions of tax cuts that have beggared services from highways to health care over the past two decades, state lawmakers are again cutting programs in answer to budget shortfalls.
Republicans blamed “high taxes” for too few businesses and population losses that cut the state from nine to eigh congressional seats after the 2010 census They reduced program funds to the point that the Missouri Department of Transportation sold land and equipment while laying off personnel. They redefined the education foundation formula for public schools so that less money is defined as “fully funded.” Bankrolling politicians who support anti-tax positions, St. Louis-area billionaire Rex Sinquefield, nicknamed “the tyrannosaurus Rex of state politics,” has pushed successfully for lopping millions from state tax collections.
“He was one of the guys early on who really started to see the connection between low-tax policies and growth,” Stephen Moore, chief economist at the…