As already mentioned at the mother ship in a story by our D.C.. bureau’s Jonathan Cooper, a national report gives Missouri a B+ for governance.

The survey, by the Pew Center for the States and Governing Magazine, praised the Show Me state for showing some innovation to save money. For instance: offering bonuses to contractors that keep costs down and deviating from “obsolete rules,” such as a regulation that requires more than a foot of pavement to be poured on state roads. That rule, says the report, does not make sense in places like the Ozarks.

“Less pavement does not necessarily mean less durability if you’re building on top of rock,” MoDot chief Pete Rahn said in the report.

Gov. Matt Blunt’s administration fared significantly better in the report than his counterpart to the east, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

The report criticized Blagojevich’s inability to create a political consensus, with House and Senate leaders ignoring his call for an “emergency” legislative session this year.

Blagojevich’s administration has been “troubled from the start,” the report said.

“It can’t be easy to manage a state such as Illinois, with huge outstanding bills and troubled revenue streams,” the report says. “But when the state’s leaders are effectively stuck in the mud, the difficult becomes all but impossible.”

Blunt’s administration doing better than Blagojevich