Missouri Representative, 140th District: Bob Dixon, Republican

Bob Dixon, Republican

Dixon has 14 years experience in banking and merchant services.

He is a board member of the North Springfield Betterment Association and the History Museum for Springfield-Greene County.

What is your plan to get the state budget back in line?

"We have to have budget discipline. I want to see a performance-based budget.

There is very little planning that goes into the state budget process right now, which is the main reason why the budget has doubled in size in the last 10 years (from $10 billion in 1992 to $19 billion in 2002). When the legislature looks at spending, they only examine the new dollars in any given year; they don't look at what was spent last year."

Dixon's budget priority is education. He said the revenue generated from gambling and lottery proceeds, which Missouri voters approved to go for funding education, "is true, but it's not true. They did put the money toward education, but the money they were spending on education before they spent somewhere else. Since it's not new money, we're seeing property taxes go through the roof.

"I'd like to see those (gambling and lottery) revenues set aside in a trust fund so that they are separate from the state budget and truly spent additionally on education. The great thing about that Classroom Trust Fund is that it allows the local school districts to decide how to spend the money."

What is your plan to stimulate the Missouri economy?

Stimulating Missouri's economy "ties into workman's comp reform for me because Missouri was number one in the nation last year for job loss. We lost 56,000 jobs. I have been told that was mostly because of the workman's compensation premiums and the unemployed premiums are so high in Missouri. And they are just escalating. Not only are we losing those jobs, but now we're not collecting state income tax, so that money is not going to go to our schools and our roads. It is all tied together."

How will you address the rising cost of health insurance and its impact on small businesses?

"We've got to have tort reform. I have talked to doctors who have said If we don't have changes, we are going to quit practicing.' We are running them out of business" because of high malpractice premiums. "We need to have caps on the settlements. There ought to be a cap on the amount of money an attorney can collect.

"We've got to make sure that people who are injured and truly have experienced negligence can sue for damages. But if we put the doctors out of business, it's going to be worse than negligence we won't be able to get health care."

by Eric Olson

SBJ Reporter