Missouri engagement office unfunded in proposed 2016 budget

JEFFERSON CITY (AP) - After tensions flared in Ferguson and around the country when Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer in August, Gov. Jay Nixon created the Office of Community Engagement as a centerpiece to address concerns in the state's low-income and minority communities.

Nixon wants to fund that office in the fiscal 2016 budget, but the House Republican version of the budget contains no money for it. Lawmakers said there are other avenues to address such issues, and don't agree with the way the Democratic governor created the office through an executive order and funded it with $350,000 from various state departments.

House Budget Committee chairman Tom Flanigan, R-Carthage, says he doesn't plan to add funding for the office to the budget currently awaiting consideration by his panel. Other state offices do similar things, he said, and since there was no statute that created the office, he doesn't know how he would appropriate funding for it.

"Where does it live? What does it do?" Flanigan said. "If someone would come forward with a bill (to create the office), that's a whole different world."

The Office of Community Engagement has worked to facilitate a summer jobs program for 3,500 youths in the greater St. Louis and Kansas City areas, helped set up a job fair in north St. Louis County and is tasked with coordinating services and programs for low-income residents among state agencies and citizen groups.

"We are confident that as legislators learn more about these and other efforts led by the (Office of Community Engagement), they will join the Governor in supporting this much-needed office," Nixon spokesman Scott Holste said in a written statement.

Nixon has requested the budget for the office, headed by former St. Louis Democratic Sen. Maida Coleman, double in the coming fiscal year to about $657,000 as part of the Office of Administration's budget, state budget director Linda Luebbering said.

But Republicans have criticized Nixon for pulling $350,000 from various departments to fund the office at its inception.

Budget Committee Vice Chairmain Rep. Scott Fitzpatrick, R-Shell Knob, said if the departments had money available to fund the engagement office, then they were either not being honest about department needs or the redirected money resulted in cuts to services. He also called the office more of a "political point" than a policy solution.

State department budgets for the 2016 fiscal year, which begins July 1, are pending before the House budget committee. Lawmakers have stripped money used in the current budget to fund the Office of Community Engagement, instead redirecting it to specific programs within those departments.

The bulk of the fiscal 2015 money, about $137,000, came from the Department of Social Services. Rep. Marsha Haefner, R-St. Louis, leads the committee overseeing that department and directed that money for next year to children's services, saying it ensures better transparency and accountability of where the money is going.

"I believe we already have programs that duplicate services," she said. "It's not that I don't think Ferguson doesn't need a lot of help."

But the lack of funding would jeopardize the important work the office is doing to facilitate communication between citizens and state government, as well as helping rebuild parts of Ferguson that were looted and burned, said Assistant Minority Leader Rep. Gail McCann-Beatty, D-Kansas City.

"We've got a lot of mending of relationships to do in this state and that's a first step," McCann-Beatty said. "Don't punish the citizens because you're angry with the governor."