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Both state agencies were facing a recruiting problem. The state patrol had 146 trooper vacancies statewide — 27 of those were in the Troop C area that serves St. Louis.

It’s not much different than other police agencies or branches of the U.S. military. What both the Highway Patrol and National Guard wanted from Parson was money. State troopers sought 20% raises. The National Guard sought $2 million to use for recruiting and retention bonuses.

The Missouri Legislature said yes.

Parson said no. In a series of vetoes last summer to cut the state budget, Parson nixed the raises for troopers — he converted some of the money to one-time bonuses — and rejected the $2 million recruitment money for the Guard.

He also cut $23 million that would have gone to new crime-fighting and 911 facilities in St. Louis. It was as though the governor’s veto pen had the phrase “defund the police� written on it.

Seven months later, Parson has decided that things are so much better that he’s sending 200 Guard members and up to 22 troopers to Texas to help that state’s governor — Greg Abbott — in his politically contrived battle with the federal government over the border with Mexico.

It doesn’t take a political science degree to understand what’s happening. Abbott and Parson are both Republicans, and that party’s top issue is blaming President Joe Biden for the influx of immigrants at the border. Never mind that Biden agreed to a bipartisan border bill that was poised to pass the Senate until Donald Trump told Republicans to scuttle it so the border could remain a campaign issue. The bill, negotiated by conservative Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford, was so strong that by the anti-Biden border patrol union.

But forget the politics of Texas for a moment. Let’s head back to Missouri.

Parson, a former sheriff and an Army veteran, is fond of saying he stands with law enforcement and the military. He’s a Back the Blue guy, through and through. And nobody’s put more political hay in the barn than he has by criticizing crime in Missouri’s two biggest cities, Kansas City and St. Louis. Meanwhile, he’s refused to strengthen the state’s gun laws, which are the weakest in the country.

So why is Parson spreading the state’s Highway Patrol and National Guard thin during their time of need?

Both state agencies are facing the same staff shortages they were a year ago. In fact, they’re getting worse.

The National Guard, for instance, is about 900 soldiers short of its authorized force numbers. Earlier this month, Maj. Gen. Levon Cumpton appeared before a House committee asking for $5.7 million in the budget for bonuses to recruit members. Parson had zeroed out the bonuses in his proposed budget.

The Highway Patrol, meanwhile, is 162 troopers short, a spokesman told me Wednesday. That’s despite accelerated academy classes that rob Peter to pay Paul, encouraging Missouri police officers to leave their departments and continue their service with the state.

In Troop C, which serves St. Louis, the Highway Patrol is 21 troopers short of its budgeted allocation of 150 troopers. That’s almost the exact number of troopers Parson is now sending to Texas.

Just five years ago, Parson made a big show of sending troopers to St. Louis to help with traffic enforcement on highways and to work on local crime task forces. The idea was that troopers patrolling the highways would free up local police officers to focus on other crimes. But as recently as a year ago, city officials were complaining about the failure of state troopers to regularly patrol highways. The issue has been a back-and-forth debate between the city and the state for decades.

“We have repeatedly, the mayor, the mayor’s chief of staff, and I have asked the Highway Patrol to come in and patrol the city highways,� former Director of Public Safety Dan Isom

Vacancies at the patrol were limiting its ability to help, the state said then.

Perhaps Parson saw the year-end numbers in 2023 — major crime, including murder, is down in St. Louis — and figured Texas needed our taxpayer-funded state troopers more than we did. When he asks the Legislature for the money to fund his political stunt, lawmakers would be wise to remind the governor of last year’s vetoes, and the worsening trooper shortage situation.

Is Missouri’s governor going to Back the Blue or Defund the Police?

That’s the question of the day.