RSMO 11.020 stipulates that the secretary of state shall…publish forty thousand copies of the Missouri manual…each member of the senate shall receive two hundred volumes and each member of the house of representatives shall receive one hundred volumes of the manual.

In order to comply with RSMo 11.020 there is a budget line-item of $490,000. Nearly 1/2 million dollars for what people consider a paper weight or shelf decoration!

I filed a bill http://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills091/biltxt/intro/HB1009I.htm last year eliminating the mandatory “printing” of the Blue Book and stipulated that the same material must be decimated in electronic form, e.g. compact disc format, saving the taxpayers of Missouri approximately $450,000 per year.

The bill also stipulated that if you wanted a bound printed edition of the Blue Book then you had to purchase one at cost to the State.

I could not agree more with Senator Engler on this issue and intend to re-file the bill this upcoming legislative session.

Mark A. Parkinson
Missouri House of Representatives
District 16

It’s too bad Representative Parkinson wants to “decimate” both the Blue Book and the tradition behind it.

Senator Engler should know very well that everyone doesn’t have internet access, especially in his district.

The answer is not eliminating the print version. The answer is cutting down on the statutory number senators and representatives are allowed to give as perks to their pals, complete with “compliments of Senator Wazoo” imprinted on the cover.

Then make certain each public library, college library and school library receives a copy directly from the printer. Eliminate the politicians’ perk!

Put it online, and leave it at that. If anyone without internet access actually cares about it, they can go to the library. The truth is, almost nobody is interested in them … a shelf full of those manuals is simply a way of showing off how long you’ve been politically connected.

thanks for the catch Ed…I meant to say disseminate but the auto-correct function auto-corrected wrong. My bad, thanks again Ed.

I have also personally observed Sen. Engler picking up trash along roadways, encluding roadside furniture. I doubt Sen. Engler ment that we should kill people littering, but he was trying to make a point. I am not agreeing with his statement and I think it could have been presented in a more professional manner, however I must commend Sen. Engler for his attempts to clean up the district. Keep up the good work Senator.

So, Mr. Parkinson -
I guess Pinocchio will not be getting his copy from you this year?

It seems to me that if the State Reps and State Senators were not requesting them they wouldn’t be printed.
To me, this is no different than any other reference book. Sometimes it is easier to just pull the most recent copy off the shelf and find what I need. Othertimes, internet access will work.
Until either no one is requesting them in print and/or everyone has access to the internet (don’t give me the “go to the library” crap–have you ever seen the lines to wait for internet access–not exactly open government) then they should continue to be printed. Just maybe in less quantities.

Make them available on-line. As to printing them, there is no need IMHO to have 40,000 of these produced - what of (for example) five or so per county, to be spread out across the land, based on population density. Seriously, how many citizens of the state honestly and really access these books? lol, not how many should, but how many really do?

btw, suzyjax - per other comments and article on this subject, you should have seen that it is our state law that requires there be 40,000 of these dust collectors printed, every year.

Its every Missourian’s tax money paying for this… and IMHO its a waste of resources.

Thanks to Parkinson, Engler, and others for their work on minimizing this waste.