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That’s what Barrett, the director of the state’s public defender office, did Tuesday, using what he believes is his statutory authority to assign private attorneys to defend indigent clients. Barrett wrote the letter to Nixon to lambaste the governor for withholding millions of dollars in funding from the public defender office because state revenue has slowed.

For years now, the state’s public defender system has been in crisis, underfunded by millions of dollars, leaving many poor Missourians accused of crimes without access to the competent legal representation guaranteed to them by the state and federal constitutions.

Last August, after the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice issued a damning report on how the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County Family Court treats poor children — in part because of the state’s public defender crisis — Barrett also wrote Nixon .

That letter should be a must-read for the two candidates for Missouri governor, Democrat and Republican .

In it, Barrett laments Missouri’s ranking as 49th in the nation for funding its public defender system, and contrasts that with the massive increase in funding for the Department of Corrections under Nixon, a trend that started before the current governor was in office.

On one hand, this is a huge part of the national debate over criminal justice reform. When it comes to putting its people in prison, especially if they are poor and black, .

But the story here, as it relates to who is the next governor of Missouri, is bigger than the public defender’s office and the need for criminal justice reform.

The Show-Me State is developing a nagging habit of being at the bottom of all sorts of categories that indicate the state’s priorities are upside-down.

Late last month, a new study found that Missouri’s state workers are . Nurses, social workers, corrections employees and, yes, public defenders, are all scraping the bottom of the barrel in Missouri compared to every other state. It’s not that the Midwest economy can’t afford to pay its state workers. In the study, Iowa state workers came out highest-paid in the nation. Illinois workers ranked third. Kansas state workers were 21st.

In May, state Auditor Nicole Galloway released that compares Missouri in a variety of statistical categories to help lawmakers understand how their policies place the state in comparison to its neighbors.

Want to know why lawmakers and the governor won’t pay state workers or hire enough public defenders? It’s because the amount of state and local tax revenue brought in Missouri as a percentage of personal income ranks 48th in the nation. Nearly every state in the nation pays higher taxes than we do here in Missouri, and that means they have money to invest in roads, in education, in workers.

Missouri’s tobacco tax is the lowest in the nation, Galloway found.

Its gasoline tax is 44th-lowest, even though Missouri has the sixth-highest amount of public road miles in the nation.

Missouri’s state support for higher education is also 44th in the nation.

How does Missouri survive? It gets a higher percentage of its state revenue from the federal government than all but four states, according to a Pew study released a week ago.

Low in taxes. Low in investment.

That’s the new Missouri state motto.

So while Barrett addressed his letter about public defenders to the current governor, his arguments could also set the tone for the race to replace Nixon by forcing Koster and Greitens to answer serious questions about the Missouri they see in the future:

Which one will find a way to fund public defenders and defend the constitutional rights of the state’s most vulnerable citizens?

Which one will find a way to invest in the state’s roads and bridges?

Who will pay for education, other than students and parents in the form of higher tuition and federally subsidized loans?

Who will come up with a plan to end Missouri’s race to the bottom?

The 2016 Missouri governor’s race shouldn’t be about who can blow up Jefferson City, but who has a plan to rebuild the state.