The Missouri Senate Appropriations Committee has been a key player in this process, working closely with the Governor Jay Nixon and with the members of the House of Representatives.
It's been a long, hard road, as the state's economy has reflected the nation's, and state leaders hat to look at a shrinking state pool of revenue.
The committee and its chairman, State Sen. Rob Mayer, R-Dexter, recently completed in committee a budget plan that cut more than $500 million from the budget for next year -- thus meeting budget goals set earlier this year.
The cuts range from items of just a few dollars to large cuts millions of dollars from programs in an effort to keep Missouri's budget balanced.
Mayer said declining state revenue coupled with uncertain federal funding meant that at least $500 million had to be trimmed from the budget.
Missouri is bound by the state constitution to have a balanced budget -- to not spend more than the state has in revenue.
"We're in a horrendous economic time. We're having to do things we normally would not support and would not want to do," Mayer said in a recent interview in his Dexter office. "I don't think people realize just how bad the situation really is. I don't like making these cuts -- I really don't. But the money just isn't there. "
This week, the whole Senate debated the original Appropriations budget bill, and late Wednesday restored some funding. The chamber passed a plan with fewer cuts than the original submitted by the appropriations Committee. But the revised Senate budget still has more than $450 million trimmed from the budget originally proposed in January by Nixon.
Part of the Appropriation Committee's original budget plan called for the elimination of a popular program with many Missouri school districts and teachers, the Career Ladder. On Wednesday, senators restored $37.5 million to the program.
Career Ladder was created in 1985 and pays teachers an extra $1,500 to $5,000 annually for taking on extra duties, such as after-school tutoring. The program's cost is shared by the state and local school districts. Last year, about one-quarter of the public K-12 teachers in Missouri participated in the program.
Mayer said last week that he liked the Career Ladder program and thought it was a positive, beneficial program for the state's teachers.
Mayer's wife, Nancy, even participated in the Career Ladder program when she taught in the Blue Springs school district (near Kansas City) when the state senator was in law school. Nancy Mayer retired from teaching last year with the Dexter Public Schools and was elected this month to the Dexter Board of Education.
"If we can find a way to restore it, I'm all for that," Mayer said of Career Ladder. But he cautioned that with an original goal of trimming $500 million, there wasn't much room to find funding for its restoration.
However, this week Mayer had a change in heart, partly because of the way in which local school districts receive the state's share of Career Ladder funding.
Unlike most state programs, teachers are paid for their work in the following budget year. That means trimming money from the program would prohibit the state from paying teachers who already have done the work. .
Mayer said his change of heart came in part because of that unique funding system.
"When somebody works for you, you pay them what you told them you would pay them. And you pay them as promptly as possible," Mayer said.
Even as work on next year's budget is being wrapped up, Mayer says more budget worries lie ahead.
"It's bad now, but we haven't seen the worst yet," he said." The worst really is yet to come."
Mayer said projections call for the state's financial picture to only get worse in fiscal year 2012.
Legislators must have a completed budget on Nixon's desk by May 7. This year's session of the General Assembly ends May 14.
Editor's note: This is the first installment of a series focused on Missouri's budget challenges
The Associated Press provided some information for this report.
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