Wednesday, April 21, 2010

No Budget Cuts

Even as the Confederate generation was dying out, some state governments were loathe to cut funding for their Confederate soldiers’ homes.

Missouri’s 1919 state revenue fell short of projections, and the state’s tax commission was asked to recommend budget cuts to the legislature. After careful audits of state institutions, the commission issued its report:

Budgets of the four state hospitals would be cut by 10% from the year before. The “Colony for the Feeble Minded” in Marshal lost 8%. The Missouri School for the Deaf lost 15%; the School for the Blind lost almost 25%. Penitentiaries, libraries, schools, state offices, and reformatories—all were shaved down eight percent or more. (Even the Missouri Federal Soldiers’ Home in St. James lost $20,000 of its $196,000 requested budget.)

The Missouri Confederate Home in Higginsville? The tax commission recommended the ex-Confederates  receive every penny of their $136,020 budget request.

(See The Evening Missourian, January 13, 1919)

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