Sucker punch: Governor Blunt inexplicably vetoes courthouse funds

Gov. Matt Blunt’s rejection of funding to renovate the Square Courthouse in Independence is stunning, baffling and maddening.

Local officials have been at this project for a long time. The idea is to restore the building to the way it looked in the 1930s, when Harry Truman and other Jackson County officials updated the building. The grand old building should be and could be a center of tourism, but it needs work.

That work -- almost $10 million worth -- has already begun. The state’s portion was to have been $500,000, but Gov. Blunt reached way down into a $140 million appropriations bill and used his line-item veto to delete just two items, including this one.

He OK’d $7.1 million to renovate the Governor’s Mansion and the Capitol. He approved $22.59 million for vocational education facilities and $21.32 million for universities, he approved $3.74 million for park improvements, and he even signed off on $718,000 for a sewer plant at a prison. There is, no doubt, a good case  for each.

But the only item directly related to Independence got the ax.

Officials have lined up local, federal, private and – or so they thought -- state funding for this. Now they have to figure out what comes next. In all likelihood, our local legislators will have to start over again in January with the entire appropriation process so the most likely winning scenario is getting the money about a year from now.

It’s a needless setback – as much as a year’s work –  for project that will greatly aid the Square and the entire community.