Pop a quarter into a fish feeder and watch the reaction of the hungry fish upon tossing the food atop the water’s surface. That frenzied feeding, State Representative Tom Flanigan, R-Carthage, told Carthage Kiwanis members Wednesday, is how politicians reacted recently to an influx of $4 billion federal stimulus funds into the state capitol’s coffers.
Flanigan was in his hometown this week to speak about his first year in office, calling the experience “unique.”
He’s the 133rd representative from Jasper County to go to Jefferson City since 1844, he said, and he also had a distant relative serve Jasper County as house majority leader in 1888.
The voice of Carthage was elected without opposition to take the Missouri House Seat representing the 127th District, which includes Carthage, Carl Junction, and all of Jasper County west of U.S. Highway 71 and north of Webb City and Joplin.
Throughout his first year, Flangian has served in four of the 42 standing and eight special committees found in Jefferson City: the Public Safety Committee, the Real I.D. Personal Privacy Committee; a special committee on Missouri’s infrastructure and transportation; and the big daddy of them all, the budget committee, with its 29 total members. A good majority of Flanigan’s speech centered on his time spent with this particular committee, the largest and most powerful found in Jefferson City, he said.
It was a good year to be involved with the state’s budget, he added wryly.
“As you know Missouri had an interesting situation this year, budget wise. At the same time we were running a $600 million deficit budget… the federal government laid about $4 billion in the coffers of the state treasurer’s office and, and we suddenly had a surplus.
“So on one hand, we were running a deficit of $600 million and then we got $4 billion that we get to also allocate, so it was a very interesting balance in that.”
As a member of the budget committee, all members strive to keep it balanced as best as possible. Which means if a gain is going over here for a certain amount of money, that same amount of money will have to be taken away from another source in another part of the budget.
“In order to increase the budget by any amount, you have to decrease somewhere else. So if you want to increase, say, children’s health insurance program, in which the governor wanted to add 34,000 people to, you had to find a corresponding amount of money somewhere in the budget.
“One of the first times I ran across this process of decrease/increase of the budget, one morning we were sitting in the budget (committee meeting) and one fellow made a motion to decrease the food budget for the Department of Corrections by 40 percent. And I just sat there. I knew that we feed prisoners on $2.33 a day, so if you decrease that by 40 percent, that’s like 94-95 cents. We can’t feed them adequately now for what we do, how do we feed them then? But he was serious and this was a serious budget committee meeting and it was voted down but it opened my eyes to things that go on there.
“It’s a little bit different then sitting on the Carthage City Council doing our budget,” he continued with a light chuckle. “The city didn’t have nearly that kind of latitude or that kind of money to deal with.”
This year, he said, constituted the first time since 1821 that Missouri had to come up with two budgets. Back in 1821, legislators inked the last territorial budget and then the first state budget. And here in 2009, they had their regular budget in place and then, upon receiving the stimulus funding from the Obama administration, had to turn around and write up another budget.
Despite the “use-only-once” stimulus influx, the budget is still No. 1 priority for all Missouri legislators.
Wednesday, he said, “marks the first day of the 2010 budget and we’re down 6.1 percent from what we just thought we would have… back on May 15… so it’s important everyone gets out there and spends and gets the economy going.”
IN 2009 was the first year since 1821 the state did two budgets. In 1821 we did the last territorial budge and first state, in 2009 the regular budget and then stimulus budget which constituted another budget.
He ended his talk with a plea for folks to come visit him in Jefferson City or even take a group up for a tour. “It’s your state capitol,” he said. Since he receives hundreds of e-mails each week, either a tried-n-true mailed letter or a face-to-face visit are the best ways to communicate with him.
“E-mail is great, personal contact is better, but if you can’t do that, write a letter — get a pen out, a piece of paper, write your concerns down, because a written letter is so rare that when you receive one, you immediately know someone took time to pull that pen out, pen their thoughts, lick that stamp and mail it. That’s powerful.”
Overall, serving Jasper County in Jefferson City “was a great process and I’m glad to be there and I hope to be back and to represent everyone in Carthage and Jasper County again.”
