Luebbering News

Some Missouri officials say proposed health care legislation could create an unfunded mandate and even has some calling to abandon the state's participation in Medicaid.

Compared to last year at this time, Missouri is down nearly 11 percent. Missouri's Budget Director Linda Luebbering said this is mostly due to jobless Missourians, but also due to a decline in sales tax.

Globe/Roger Nomer Nurse Paula Kleine helps a resident wash down medication Thursday at National Health Care of Joplin, a 120-bed nursing home on 34th Street.

Another 204 Million dollars is now being slashed from Missouri's budget and another 700 state workers are losing their jobs.

Medicaid and other health care expenditures topped Gov. Jay Nixon's list as he announced $204 million in budget cuts Wednesday.

Plunging tax revenues forced Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon to carve nearly $204 million more from the states budget on Wednesday, including the elimination of nearly 700 full- and part-time jobs.Among the cutbacks are more than $32 million in Medicaid payments to hospitals, nursing homes, doctors and mental health providers, and nearly $16 million in ...

The number crunchers who follow state revenue trends sound like doomsayers. "I've never seen anything like it," said business consultant and former state budget director Jim Moody.

Missouri state parks employees took the hit Monday for the state's lagging state revenue, as about 100 of them were laid off in a cost-cutting move.

In the editorial "Too much talk over Career Ladder" , the Globe suggests that the Career Ladder issue should be discussed and resolved privately rather than publicly.

Missouri has borrowed an additional $150 million from its reserves in order to keep state government operating.

Missouri's tax revenues plunged 10 percent in the first quarter of its budget year as the state took a hard hit from a continued high unemployment rate.

Missouri taxpayers will have to pay more than half a billion dollars into a pension fund for state employees during the next two years.

Gov. Jay Nixon's administration announced Thursday details of $60 million in state budget cuts that will include trimming about 200 more state jobs through layoffs and leaving vacant positions unfilled.

The dispute over the Tour of Missouri has become a high stakes game of chicken between the governor's office and the nonprofit agency that runs the September bike race.

Gov. Jay Nixon's Department of Economic Development has proposed cutting a $1.5 million subsidy to the Tour of Missouri bicycle race - less than two months before the statewide sporting event is set to begin.

"Bleak." That's the forecast for Missouri's financial situation in upcoming years from Jim Moody, former state budget director.

JEFFERSON CITY - Severe weather caused Gov. Jay Nixon and his staff to move their meeting to the Capitol basement tonight as tornado sirens went off around 7 p.m. Missourinet radio reporter Steve Walsh and I were among a dozen of the governor's staffers who took cover in the basement hallways and House Hearing Room 3. We were joined by Nixon Press ...

State coffers are hurtingState government revenues for Missouri fell off a cliff in May.The state has taken in $6.82 billion in tax collections for the for the first 11 months of the fiscal year, compared with $7.18 billion for the same period last year.Those figures put actual revenues below January forecasts and are likely to worsen next month, ...

Missouri revenue for the nearly completed 2009 budget year is down 5 percent, and Gov.

Missouri is using $250 million of federal economic stimulus money to speed up the payment of hundreds of thousands of individual income tax refunds that otherwise could have been delayed until summer.