Missouri lawmakers are reluctant to fund a plan to produce more health-care professionals in the state. The plan, created by Gordon Lamb when he served as interim president of the University of Missouri, requests $38 million per year to fund training in some 26 universities and colleges all over the state to meet a need widely regarded as critical. Lamb says 90 percent of the state’s counties are underserved. He thinks and hopes his plan still has a chance in this year’s legislative session.

The genius of his plan is not the conception of need, it is Lamb’s brilliant political coalition gathering. To gain agreement for allocating duties and money among so many educational institutions of all sizes throughout the entire state to meet a need larger than any of them could meet alone is an astonishing feat. I can’t remember having seen anything quite like it.

Gov. Matt Blunt budgeted $13.8 million, but wary legislators are unwilling to start a program that will require ongoing funding. They have a budgetary point, but this program deserves strong consideration for biting the long-term bullet if any does. An additional $38 million per year in operating funds is not chicken feed, but it’s doable and the good it could accomplish is enormous.

Lamb’s plan might not be funded this year, but the coalition he built should be sustained and the program resubmitted until approved. Given its unusual value and statewide political support, over time legislators should come around.

Voter ID

It was Missouri Day on Capitol Hill last week as our senior U.S. senator and our own secretary of state gave conflicting testimony to the Senate Rules Committee on the value of laws that would require photo identification for voting.

Sen. Kit Bond is a staunch supporter and Robin Carnahan is not. Bond says the extra verification is needed to avoid voter fraud, and Carnahan says no evidence exists in Missouri of any such problem.

Unless real evidence can be found that additional photo ID requirements actually will solve a problem, Carnahan is on the side of the angels. Government should do nothing to interfere with citizen voting unless clearly justified. If such a case can’t be made, the extra hassle of acquiring and presenting voter identification is unjustified.

One can sit around a table and imagine a case for voter ID simply because random instances of voting fraud can be cited. But in Missouri at least, the case seems nil, and in every jurisdiction proponents should be required to prove new photo ID laws would produce a benefit worth the obvious cost. I’ve seen and heard Carnahan’s argument that not a single instance of voter fraud has occurred in Missouri that would warrant photo ID.

Maybe Bond and others can find some cases elsewhere that might lead state officials to decide otherwise, but where is the case for a federal mandate? Let the states decide. And in Missouri, at least for now, let us decide not to add the photo burden.

After the ship has sunk, everyone knows how she might have been saved.

- Italian proverb

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