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Show Edison Stephens Sees Danger of Too Much Federal Assistance State Representative Edison J. Stephens expresses a few doubts, a few agreements with results of the state budget session, ses-sion, just completed. The Hen-efer Hen-efer Republican is making a mark for himself as a member of the Judiciary, Labor, Fish and Game and .Appropriations committees. Says Mr. Stephens: As everyone knows the State Legislature has just completed another Budget Session at which a record$597,725,000.00 budget was approved. I suppose this doesn't cause too much concern so long as the state's income increases proportionately . There are , how ever, a couple of areas that do cause me some concern. (1) Those areas designed to take care of our social needs such as social services 17.8 of total budget; Higher Educa-tion-24.7 of total budget; and Public Education 27.3 of total budget or a combined percentage percent-age of the three departments of 69.8 of the states total budget. The Natural Resources Division, Div-ision, one of the most important assets we possess for the future development of the State, receives re-ceives only 2.2 of the total budget. Other divisions and their percent per-cent of the total budget are as follows: Legislative 0.2; Judicial Jud-icial and Executive, 1.2; Government Gov-ernment Operations, 5.0; Business Regulations, 1.0; Development Services, 0.8, and Transportation 19.2. (2) The other area that concerns con-cerns me a great deal is the expanded flow of federal funds to state and local governments through participating programs. pro-grams. The concern here lies with the practice of tempting state and local governments with programs pro-grams that phase out the federal matching funds over a specified period with the intent that the state eventually will assume full financing responsibility. This procedure consequently imposes a financial hardship on the state to fund programs whose merit may be unclear or even questionable but which has inevitably resolved itself into the mainstream of social demands. de-mands. This practice makes state government less efficient and responsive to often more pressing press-ing needs and renders a program pro-gram of fiscal responsibility and planned economy virtually impossible. It fosters unrestrained unres-trained competition between the state and its cities in vieingfor federal money and results in unproportional revenues to the recipients. Whatever mechanism can be employed to change this unsettled un-settled and many times, unwarranted unwar-ranted spending should be implemented. im-plemented. A revenue sharing formula providing state spending spend-ing control seems to be a logical course of action. Unless we can change the present course of this "carrot stick approach to federal spending, we are placing ourselves our-selves on a financial c o u r s e of NO RETURN. It would appear that we are trying to cure the ills of a runaway society with a run away government. I would like to express thanks and appreciation to the County Commissioners, theState Commission Com-mission of Agriculture, and all others who helped us preserve the identity and integrity of our rural counties in the recent reapportionment of the State Legislature.-State Representative Represent-ative Edison J. Stephens. |