Michael Bushnell stands near the planned site of a state psychiatric hospital in Kansas City's historic Northeast. Bushnell, a longtime resident of the Scarritt Renaissance neighborhood and former publisher of the Northeast News newspaper, wants the hospital to be built somewhere else and said neighbors were promised a different plan for developing the site (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon).

Residents in Kansas City’s historic Northeast neighborhood say plans for a state psychiatric hospital on the site of a former housing project and city park clash with plans for revitalizing their community.

They’re losing patience with efforts to base ever more social services near their homes that they fear could make their streets a dumping ground for the city’s problems.

“This will define one of our most important intersections, and I don’t know if defining it this way is healthy,” said Kate Barsotti, an artist and former president of the Columbus Park Community Council. “Is that shallow? Maybe. Could be. But I do understand people feeling sandbagged and disrespected and betrayed.”

Meanwhile, the city, the state and University Health (formerly Truman Medical Center) see the psychiatric facility as an economic boon and a key part of what the region needs to deal with growing mental health demands.

The Missouri Department of Mental Health estimates the hospital could open in late 2027 or early 2028 — if everything moves smoothly. And the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could be a significant stumbling block to the plan.

Serving the courts

The roughly 20-acre parcel eyed for the psychiatric hospital used to be Belvidere Park and Chouteau Courts, a public housing complex. The tract is near the intersection of The Paseo and Independence Avenue.

In June 2020, the Housing Authority of Kansas City, Missouri, finished demolishing the crumbling Chouteau Courts. The demolition came as part of the sweeping Paseo Gateway community revitalization project, funded through a $30 million grant from HUD.

The new psychiatric hospital would be a one-level, 300,000-square-foot building on a triangular parcel between The Paseo to the east and Interstate 35 to the west. The new hospital would have 200 beds and generally serve the western half of the state.

In tandem with the state’s Center for Behavioral Medicine, which is located on Hospital Hill, the new psychiatric hospital would take on a growing statewide backlog of more than 350 criminal defendants languishing in local jails as they await mental health treatment.

Judges have ordered those inmates into the care of the department to see if it can restore their competency to stand trial, but DMH has nowhere to treat those people (with limited exceptions). DMH Director Valerie Huhn said the waiting list could reach 500 people by the end of this year.

The department said about one-fifth of the pending cases fall in the Kansas City region. It already operates 65 competency-restoration beds (intended to get defendants mentally well enough to stand trial) at the Center for Behavioral Medicine. The new hospital would boost that total to 100 beds while those at the existing facility would be repurposed.

University Health would use the other beds for short-term psychiatric treatment generally lasting two weeks or less. Patients would get psychiatric care medication management and referrals to outpatient programs. The health system would reserve 25 of its beds for referrals from the Kansas City Municipal Court or other providers in the city.

University Health would also operate a psychiatric emergency department at the hospital, something law enforcement turns to avoid taking them to a conventional emergency room or jail.

University Health closed its psychiatric emergency department in 2015, but Chief Executive Officer Charlie Shields said it faces fewer regulatory hurdles in operating as part of a psychiatric hospital.

Critically, it lightens the load for the Center for Behavioral Medicine so it can concentrate on long-term care that can average stays of nine years for treating conditions like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

A psychiatric emergency room “allows us to catch people before they get to a point of committing a crime, especially in that Jackson County area,” Huhn said, “and then give them … resources so that they don’t commit crimes and have to go through this whole process.”

Huhn and others tout the safety of the proposed new hospital. It will have a perimeter fence. Patient units will be locked. In that way, it will operate like similar state facilities near residential areas in other parts of the state.

Supporters also say the hospital will offer additional training to area medical programs. It will also open more inpatient beds and fix some of the problems created decades ago when mental health care shifted to community-based care while failing to create enough psychiatric support outside institutions.

At the same time, they see the hospital as an economic jump-start to the surrounding area.

Projections include 600-plus health care jobs (from entry-level to physicians and nurses), an annual boost of $60 million to the area economy, and the bump associated with a $300 million construction project.

Overall, the project is “an exceptional idea and way in which we can better utilize our land in a way that would be beneficial for our community more broadly,” said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas. “This shows that this is a new day on Independence, Paseo and lots of streets many Kansas Citians don’t think about enough.”

Choice neighborhoods

Those thoroughfares were in the limelight in September 2015.

HUD Secretary Julian Castro came to town then to announce a federal grant to Kansas City to tear down the Chouteau Courts public housing project and support the Paseo Gateway District. The housing authority relocated the last of the Chouteau Courts residents to seven new developments in June.

Meanwhile, a range of nonprofit and government agencies have been working to revitalize the neighborhood. Plans included a mix of affordable single-family homes and apartments alongside commercial developments and a public space for community events.

Barsotti, the Columbus Park artist, and Michael Bushnell, a longtime resident of the Scarritt Renaissance neighborhood and former publisher of the Northeast News newspaper, fume that the psychiatric hospital will dash those dreams.

What’s more, the psychiatric hospital project comes on the heels of a city plan to establish a low-barrier homeless shelter at Hope Faith Homeless Assistance Campus at 705 Virginia Ave.

“There needs to be a big ‘no.’ Not here. Go somewhere else,” Bushnell said. “We were promised a completely different development for Chouteau Court. … That’s the plan that needs to be followed.”

Shields said he received positive feedback about the psychiatric center from residents who attended a community information meeting held in August. But detractors said that instead of gathering input, the meeting organizers informed attendees about a done deal.

HUD’s role

HUD could throw a wrench into the financial plans for the psychiatric hospital by requiring the housing authority to sell the former Chouteau Courts property for full market value.

The construction plan assumes the state will acquire the property at little or no cost.

Chouteau Courts was appraised at $1.6 million this year. Any potential environmental cleanup costs would be deducted from that value, said housing authority Executive Director Edwin Lowndes.

Lowndes said paperwork could be submitted to HUD in time for a decision from the agency by the end of November.

HUD can approve a sale for less than market value if it decides the deal has a public good, typically more public housing or projects that benefit people living in public housing. Lucas said the groundbreaking could come early next year.

The mayor acknowledged that residents have been frustrated about the start-and-stop nature of various proposals for the neighborhood. But he said such projects are inherently complicated and don’t always follow original plans.

Barsotti said any lack of follow-through breeds disillusionment.

“It’s really hard,” she said, “to tell people to keep engaging with your city government when it doesn’t seem to work, when they can’t trust what they’re told, when they don’t understand what they’re told, or there’s no time to deal with a big change.”

This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The St. Louis County office of Express Scripts, one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefit managers (Google Maps).

A federal antitrust watchdog is already conducting an investigation into, and has filed a lawsuit against, huge pharmacy middlemen. Now two U.S. senators want the Federal Trade Commission to open a separate investigation into an emerging practice of their even bigger parent companies.

The middlemen are called pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs, and they have long claimed that their size enables them to force drugmakers to lower their prices and create savings for patients. But two of the big-three middlemen have entered into “co-manufacturing” agreements with some of the very drugmakers that are supposedly their adversaries in drug-pricing negotiations.

The health conglomerates that own CVS Caremark and Express Scripts already own businesses that occupy huge swaths of the health care space. The co-manufacturing agreements mean that they’ll extend their tentacles into yet another, and that won’t be good for consumers, said a letter sent to the FTC last week by two Democratic senators — Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

“The concern with these ‘co-manufacturing’ agreements is that they are a veiled attempt by PBMs to control additional parts of the supply chain which has resulted in additional harm to consumers in the form of fewer drug choices and higher drug costs,” their letter said.

For its part, CVS says that measures such as co-manufacturing agreements have helped it save clients $500 million on immunosuppressive drugs similar to Humira.

The company’s PBM, CVS Caremark, handles drug transactions on behalf of insurers, including Aetna, which CVS Health also owns.

They create networks of pharmacies and they decide how much to reimburse them from the drugs they dispense. And because CVS owns a mail-order pharmacy in addition to the largest retail chain, it determines how much to pay itself and its competitors — an arrangement in which the company’s critics see an inherent conflict.

CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and a third PBM — OptumRx — control access to about 80% of people whose prescriptions are covered by insurance. Since the PBMs decide which drugs are covered and by how much, they have enormous leverage to get drugmakers to give them huge, often nontransparent rebates and fees.

The FTC last month sued the big PBMs over their practices in this arena, saying that they forced up insulin list prices starting in 2012. The agency is also engaged in a sweeping “6(b)” investigation of the big PBMs and in July released a scathing interim report saying they appeared to be artificially increasing drug prices and harming patients.

In their letter, Brown and Wyden, both members of the Senate Finance Committee, are asking the FTC to open a separate 6(b) investigation into the co-manufacturing arrangements of CVS Caremark and Express Scripts. They say that with the agreements, the conglomerates don’t seem to be making anything, they’re just taking control of yet another part of the drug supply chain.

The agreements are with companies that make versions of adalimumab, a drug used to treat arthritis that is known under the brand names Humira and Hyrimoz.

The letter by Brown and Wyden included a graphic from a CVS earnings call. It’s in the shape of a heart and it shows that through its vertical integration, a customer with Aetna insurance can have CVS Caremark as a PBM, get adalimumab as a product of a CVS co-manufacturing agreement, get primary care at Oak Street Health, get in-home evaluations from Signify Health, and get meds from a CVS pharmacy. All those companies are subsidiaries of CVS Health.

“This graphic clearly shows the benefits that CVS and its shareholders reap by capturing patients and directing them through the vertically integrated array of CVS subsidiaries,” Wyden and Brown wrote.

Express Scripts didn’t respond to a request for comment, but CVS spokesman David Whitrap said the senators are missing a basic point — that CVS has brought down the cost of adalimumab by preferring lower-cost “biosimilars” to Humira.

“Unlocking the biosimilar market was not easy, and it required many of the tools that CVS Health brings to bear: Caremark’s proven ability to transition patients to more affordable prescription drugs, the will and trust of the businesses that hire us, our investments in (electronic-medical-record) connectivity that drive a better patient and provider experience, the consultative care and product delivery from CVS Specialty Pharmacy, and (drugmaker) Cordavis’ ability to identify biosimilar drugmakers that produce high-quality alternatives at a sustainable supply on which our members can rely,” Whitrap said in an email.

Brown and Wyden, however, suspect that the opposite is the case.

“Vertical integration of PBMs into yet another aspect of the health system,” they wrote, “intensifies our concerns about the ability of PBMs to markup the cost of biosimilars and steer patients to their higher cost ‘co-manufactured’ products while limiting access to products from non-affiliated manufacturers.”

This story was originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

A statue representing the Missouri River as the “mother of the West” stands guard outside the Missouri Capitol. The Capitol Commission tapped Robert Aitken to build two sculptures, one on each side of the building. Aitken chose a female figure to represent the Missouri River; the Mississippi River was shown as a male figure, ”the father of waters" (Caleigh Christy/Missourian).

Lightning flashed over the Missouri Capitol on Oct. 6, 1924, just 13 years after the building burned to the ground following a powerful lightning strike.

This time lightning flashes were joined by the red hues of celebratory fireworks. This was the grand pageant to celebrate the opening of the new Capitol.

Though the Capitol had been used by the legislature since 1919, it was felt at the time that the building needed a formal opening. It was decided to hold the event on the 13th anniversary of the Capitol Commission’s founding.

Twenty thousand people gathered on the steps of the building to watch a series of shows depicting major moments in Missouri’s history, including depictions of settlers founding the state, World War I and the Civil War. The Civil War section was cut short as heavy rain ended the pageant abruptly.

This summer Missourian staff members toured the Capitol with Bob Priddy, who is working on his fifth book about the building and its history. Missourian staff also spoke with historians about the significance of the building’s art at the centennial of its official opening.

With the exception of one room — the House Lounge — and a few smaller pieces, all of the art in the building was done from 1917 to 1928, Priddy said.

To pay for the building, the state issued a tax bond during the roaring ’20s as the state’s — and nation’s — economy boomed. With robust resources, $1 million of the $4 million allocated for the building was spent on decoration — equivalent to about $16 million today after adjusting for inflation.

“This new Capitol, whose cornerstone is laid today, will represent the greatness of Missouri,” former Gov. Elliott Major said at the laying of the building’s cornerstone in 1915.

The art of Missouri’s Capitol offers a snapshot of the state’s past, and the themes filling the walls of the building can be seen in the composition of the state today. Artists dealt with environmental destruction and conservation, historical accuracy and sanitization, and competing state identities. The combination of artistic quality, stylistic consistency and innovation presents a canvas for understanding Missouri both then and now.

World War I

Hanging above the visitors’ gallery on the east wall of the House chamber is “The Glory of Missouri at War.” The 49-foot-long painting depicts troops from the U.S. Army’s 35th Division, comprising Missouri and Kansas natives. During the war, 156,000 Missourians served and 10,000 were wounded or killed.

“The Glory of Missouri at War” was painted by French artist Charles Hoffbauer, who had served in World War I alongside American troops. Before the war, Hoffbauer had established himself as a prominent painter and had caught the attention of the Decoration Commission for his depictions of Confederate military leaders for the Confederate Memorial Institute in Richmond.

Noticeably absent from the painting is Gen. John Pershing, a Missourian who served as commander of the American Expeditionary Force. Hoffbauer said at the time that he instead wanted to depict the soldiers of Missouri.

The Missouri soldiers in the painting march through the rubble of a French town. The painting is bathed in gray hues, and early sketches of the painting depicted a much bleaker scene. The commission was concerned about the “rather depressed, worn, and melancholy” look of the soldiers as well as a dead horse in the original sketches and asked Hoffbauer to remove them.

Opposite Hoffbauer’s painting is “The Glory of Missouri at Peace,” a stained glass window by H.T. Schladermudt. This work utilizes the artistic and symbolic technique of personification. Central in the stained glass is Missouri, depicted as a woman on a throne surrounded by figures personifying peacetime activities including art, science, justice and learning.

Throughout the Capitol there is an outsized depiction of WWI, as the building was constructed just after the war.

Civil War

Despite World War I’s prominence, “the Civil War has the biggest legacy of any conflict in Missouri history, not only politically but socially and economically,” said Sean Rost, assistant director of research at the State Historical Society of Missouri.

Lingering impacts of the war were present on that rainy October 1924 night in Jefferson City. One of the pageants recalled the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, a Confederate victory outside Springfield. Lady Missouri emerged from the sky as the two sides fought and “clasped the hands of the blue and grey soldiers,” according to a St. Louis Star newspaper account.

The cordial display of the Confederacy and Union shaking hands wasn’t accurate to the true legacy of the Civil War in Missouri, according to Rost. From 1875 to 1903, both of Missouri’s U.S. senators were former Confederates. After failing to make Missouri a Confederate state, former Gov. Claiborne Jackson fled to Arkansas to prop up a separate Missouri government in exile. While Missouri did not leave the Union, residents fought on both sides. About 110,000 Missourians fought for the Union compared to some 40,000 for the Confederacy.

The deep divisions created by the war are evident in the Capitol. Both the Confederate victory at Wilson’s Creek and the Union victory at the Battle of Westport are shown in the “Missouri at War” area of the building.

Missouri’s complex relationship with the war plays out in the Senate chamber. On one side is a large painting of Francis Preston Blair Jr. fighting against the loyalty oath. In 1865, Missouri adopted a constitution that required citizens to attest their loyalty to the United States to hold public office or vote. It also required Missourians to say whether they had ever defied the U.S. government. It was impossible for Confederates to do that, effectively barring them from public office.

Blair was a unionist but opposed the loyalty oath. Detractors tried to assassinate Blair at some of his speeches. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled against the loyalty oath on the grounds that the state cannot punish someone for a past act that wasn’t illegal when it was committed.

While Black people moved to the state for more opportunity, “reconstruction in Missouri was just as conflicted as the Civil War,” said Marlin Barber, a Missouri State University professor emphasizing 19th-century Black history. “Politically, the state was still rather polarized. And if you went into places like southern Missouri, it’s more closely culturally aligned with the Deep South. It was even more contentious,” he added.

Between 1877 and 1950, 60 people were lynched in Missouri, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. No art in the Capitol depicts this history.

Native Americans

By 1830 most of Missouri’s Native American tribes had either been wiped out or removed from the state. Yet, paintings of Native Missourians populate the Capitol walls. Greg Olson, an expert on Native American history in the state, thinks many Missourians felt imperialist guilt by the early 20th century when the paintings were done.

“People began to realize (in the late 19th century) that not only have we settled the frontier, but we’ve also conquered the Natives,” Olson said. “We felt a little bad about killing the buffalo, we felt bad about settling the entire continent, we began to feel like we spoiled the wilderness.”

Many of the paintings depicting Native Americans are inaccurate and largely based on dated tropes, Olson said. The artists of the time presented a vision of Missouri untamed and natural before the arrival of settlers. But Olson notes that Native Americans had been reworking Missouri’s landscape for thousands of years.

The painting “Trail to Happy Hunting Grounds” represents the view that Native people were inevitably going to disappear. A Native woman looks across the Missouri River as two people standing nearby appear to try to get her to stay. Settlers believed that when Natives died, they would cross the Missouri River and enter the “happy hunting ground.” In reality, it was a justification for the death and removal of Native Americans, Olson said.

“It’s just all about romanticizing the disappearance of Indians from Missouri because it was seen as being inevitable,” Olson said.

The ground the Capitol occupies is an example of how far Missouri went in the removal of Native Americans. An 1889 historical archive of Cole County describes the removal of a native burial ground for the construction of an earlier Capitol.

Transportation/forming the state

Missouri is a state of great rivers. The Missouri River begins in Montana and flows through Kansas City, past the steps of the Capitol in mid-Missouri and enters the Mississippi River north of St. Louis. The Mississippi River starts in northern Minnesota, defines the state’s eastern border and ends in the Gulf of Mexico south of New Orleans.

“Up until the Civil War, every significant community in Missouri was on the rivers,” Priddy said. “That’s how people got here. That’s how people traveled. That’s how commerce moved. They were the liquid highways. Interior Missouri was still very much uninhabited.”

To show the significance of these two rivers, the Capitol Commission tapped Robert Aitken to build two sculptures on the left and right side of the building. Aitken chose a female figure to represent the Missouri River as the “mother of the West.” The Mississippi River was shown as a male figure: ”the father of waters.”

Thomas Hart Benton, one of Missouri’s first U.S. senators, pushed Missouri’s development forward with rail. A painting in the Senate shows Benton giving an impassioned speech at the 1849 National Railroad Convention in St. Louis, where he argued for a nationwide railroad system that became reality 20 years later.

“Railroads (stretched) across northern Missouri and then as they progressed in the southwest, created towns, created commerce, created ways for farmers to get their goods to markets in St. Louis or Kansas City,” Priddy said.

The painting “The Artery of Trade,” shows the impact rail and steamboat technology had on Missouri when the two worked in concert. The left side of the painting shows the Eads Bridge. Completed in 1874, it’s the first steel bridge and longest-standing span over the Mississippi River. The foreground shows steamboats arriving in St. Louis. The combination of steamboats, rail, growing industry and a movement of people north from the south led St. Louis to be the nation’s fourth-largest city in the 1900 census.

Brangwyn/Taos Society

With roughly $1 million in the Capitol’s budget for art and decoration, the commission hired some of the top painters from around the world.

“A million dollars would buy you England’s and America’s foremost 20th-century artists,” Priddy said. “The artists were considered to be leaders in their field, leading portrait artists, leading Western artists, and so we were able to hire the cream of the crop,” he added.

Roughly 4,310 miles away from Jefferson City, English painter Frank Brangwyn caught the eye of the commission.

Brangwyn was commissioned to paint a series of 13 murals throughout the Capitol’s rotunda. Those murals represented the largest single commission of his life. Each of the four canvases in the third-floor rotunda measures 45 feet along the top, 15 feet along the bottom and roughly 22 feet high.

“Onions and oranges are as big as footballs,” a reporter with The Kansas City Times wrote at the time of the mural’s placement. “The ordinary box of fruit becomes six feet long. The Daniel Boone rifle of the pioneer is 14 feet long.”

The third-floor paintings mark four historic moments in the state’s history:

“The Historic Landing” depicts the landing of Pierre Laclède on the west side of the Mississippi River, where he would later found St. Louis.
“The Pioneers” shows settlers traveling to Missouri from the east in the late 1700s.
“The Home Makers” shows forests being cleared so permanent settlements could be built in Missouri.
“The Builders” shows the construction of the Eads Bridge in St. Louis.
These depictions were “handled with freedom from factual details. More than this, they are permeated with a kind of robust symbolism that gives them a universal appeal,” according to Emily Grant Hutchings, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter writing at the time of the mural’s placement.

Brangwyn never set foot in the Capitol — or Missouri, for that matter. His art was shipped from England and affixed to the walls by others.

The Taos Society of Artists was a group of six artists based in Taos, New Mexico. The society was known for its depictions of the American Southwest, Native Americans and romantic style.

Artists including E. Irving Couse, Ernest L. Blumenschein, O.E. Berninghaus and Bert G. Phillips all contributed the majority of lunette paintings on the second floor. Berninghaus, born in St Louis, also contributed to two of the “Missouri at War” paintings.

Another famed artist featured in the “Missouri at War” section was N.C. Wyeth, probably America’s foremost illustrator at the time. He painted both depictions of Civil War battles in Missouri.

This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online.

The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom).

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress left Capitol Hill last week to focus their attention on the campaign trail during the six weeks leading up to Election Day, leaving much of their work unfinished.

The Republican House and Democratic Senate are scheduled to remain on recess until Nov. 12, though the urgent needs created in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which are fully funded for the moment, could bring the chambers back into session before then.

When lawmakers do return to Washington, D.C., they’ll need to address the must-pass legislation they’ve left on autopilot instead of negotiating new bipartisan compromises.

So far this year, lawmakers have pushed off reaching brokering agreement on must-pass measures like the farm bill as well as this year’s batch of government funding bills and the annual defense policy legislation.

Kids’ online safety, radiation exposure

There are also a handful of measures that have passed one chamber with broad bipartisan support, but haven’t been taken up on the other side of the Capitol that leadership could decide to move forward during November or December.

For example, an interesting combination of senators, led by Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, are advocating for House Republican leaders to hold votes on a pair of online safety bills designed to better protect children from the darker side of the internet.

The rail safety bill drafted by a bipartisan group of senators from Ohio and Pennsylvania after the train derailment in East Palestine remains unaddressed following more than a year of intransigence.

And legislation to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, which passed the Senate on a broadly bipartisan vote earlier this year, sits on a shelf collecting dust in the House.

Cancer victims, Indigenous communities and many others have pressed House GOP leadership to hold a vote to reauthorize the program after it expired this summer, but they have avoided it due to cost.

Five-week lame duck

Lawmakers interviewed by States Newsroom and congressional leaders all indicated the outcome of the November elections will have significant sway on what Congress approves during the five-week lame-duck session that spans November and December.

All interviews took place before Hurricane Helene made landfall and Israel was directly attacked by Iran, both of which are likely to be at the top of congressional leaders’ to-do lists.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune said it’s “hard to say” what, if anything, Congress will approve during the lame-duck session.

“I think a lot will be shaped by what happens in November,” the South Dakota Republican said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said just a day before Hurricane Helene made landfall that Democrats would advocate for passing natural disaster response funding previously requested by the Biden administration.

“Extreme weather events are on the rise and they affect everyone — in blue states, purple states and red states,” Jeffries said. “This is not a partisan issue, it’s an American issue in terms of being there, in times of need for everyday Americans, who have had their lives and livelihood upended.”

Other House Democratic priorities during the lame duck include approving the dozen full-year government funding bills that were supposed to be completed before Oct. 1, the defense policy bill that had the same deadline and the farm bill, which is more than a year overdue.

Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley said he “sure hopes” the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act reauthorization bill reaches the president’s desk before the end of the year.

He didn’t rule out lobbying to attach it to a must-pass government funding bill, but said the real hurdle is House GOP leaders.

“It doesn’t need help in the Senate. It just needs the House,” Hawley said. “I’ve had good, productive conversations with Speaker (Mike) Johnson in the last few weeks, and I appreciate his personal engagement on this, and I hope that that will lead to action.”

Haley said the House allowing RECA to expire, preventing people who qualify for the program from receiving benefits, was “outrageous.”

Defense priorities, farm bill

Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said staff would work during October to bridge the differences between the two chambers on the annual defense policy bill, called the National Defense Authorization Act.

Those staff-level talks will lay the foundation for Republicans and Democrats to meet once they return to Capitol Hill following the elections.

“We have to be ready when we come back to go right to the ‘Big Four’ meeting,” he said, referring to the top leaders in both chambers. “That’s our objective.”

Reed said many of the differences between the House and the Senate aren’t typical Defense Department policy issues per se, but are “more political, cultural, social.”

Congress may begin to debate additional military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine this year, though that’s more likely to happen next year, Reed said.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said she was making a “big push” for the House and Senate to reach agreement on the farm bill in the months ahead, though she cautioned talks don’t actually constitute a conference.

“I wouldn’t call it a conference; technically to have a conference, you have to have a bill passed by the House and a bill passed by the Senate, which will not happen,” Stabenow said.

“But I believe that there is a way,” Stabenow added. “I believe there’s a way to get a bipartisan bill.”

Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, the top Republican on the Agriculture panel, said lawmakers didn’t need the election results to “start working through our disagreements” on the farm bill, adding there’s some new momentum in talks.

“I think what’s changed is that there is a recognition among members, all members, how difficult it is right now as a farmer,” Boozman said. “So that’s really what’s changed in the last three or four months. It’s developing a real sense of urgency for these folks.”

Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst said the election outcome could influence what lawmakers choose to accomplish during the lame-duck session.

“There’s any number of scenarios, whether it’s NDAA, whether it’s farm bill, whether it’s anything else,” she said. “But it comes down to Leader Schumer.” New York Democrat Chuck Schumer is the majority leader in the Senate.

Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine said he expects Congress will broker some agreement on government funding legislation and the NDAA, but not necessarily anything else.

“In an odd way, the better the Dems do on Nov. 5, the more we’ll get done,” Kaine said. “Because I think if the House is going to flip back to Dem, I think the Rs will say, ‘Well, let’s get a whole lot of stuff done before the House goes down.’ So I think the better we do, the more we’ll get done in the lame duck.”

Kaine said if Democrats do well in the elections, they might not need to approve additional aid for Ukraine this Congress, since that funding can last into next year.

“If we don’t do well in the (elections), we might need to do it in the lame duck,” Kaine said. “So that’ll all depend.”

A photo taken in 1960 of deteriorating steel drums containing radioactive residues near Coldwater Creek, by the Mallinckrodt-St. Louis Sites Task Force Working Group (State Historical Society of Missouri, Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection, 1943-2006).

Missouri lawmakers will convene a special committee to study the consequences of nuclear weapons production in the St. Louis area and recommend legislation for next year, House Speaker Dean Plocher announced Thursday. 

In a press release, Plocher said the Special Interim Committee on the Impact of U.S. Nuclear Weapon Programs on Missouri will allow “policymakers, health professionals, environmental experts and affected community members to document their concerns and develop legislative solutions.”

“Missouri has long felt the effects of nuclear weapons production, and it’s our responsibility to address the consequences head-on,” said Plocher, who represents part of St. Louis County.

The St. Louis area has struggled with the ramifications of nuclear weapons production since the development of the first atomic bomb. Workers refined uranium in downtown St. Louis as part of the Manhattan Project, which was used in the first successful nuclear chain reaction, which took place in Chicago.

But after the end of World War II, the waste from the bomb development was allowed to spread and pollute sites in St. Louis and St. Charles counties. 

Immediately after the war, the waste was transported haphazardly — with waste falling off trucks — to St. Louis County and dumped at the airport. Deteriorating barrels of radioactive waste polluted the site and leaked into Coldwater Creek. 

Heaps of radioactive material and debris were also dumped in a quarry in Weldon Spring, adjacent to the Missouri River. 

The waste was then taken to a nearby site — also along Coldwater Creek — where it remained exposed to the elements and continued to pollute the creek. It was sold so another company could extract precious metals from the waste, and the remaining radioactive material was dumped in the West Lake Landfill where it remains today.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing the cleanup of Coldwater Creek, which is expected to last until 2038. The Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing the development of a plan to remediate the West Lake Landfill.

In the meantime, generations of St. Louis-area residents have been exposed to radioactivity from Coldwater Creek and the quarry where state Rep. Tricia Byrnes has said she would sneak in and swim as a teen. 

Byrnes will chair the interim committee. In the release, she said the committee will listen to “survivors, production workers and remediation workers to understand the real-world impact on their health and financial stability.” 

“We must take a comprehensive approach to address the lasting impact of nuclear weapons production in Missouri,” Byrnes said. “The health and well-being of our residents and the environment are at stake.”

The first meeting of the committee will take place Oct. 15 at from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Spencer Creek Library in St. Peters. 

Rep. Mark Matthiesen, a Republican from O’Fallon, will serve as vice chair of the committee, and Rep. Raychel Proudie, a Ferguson Democrat, will be ranking member.

The remaining members are Republican Reps. Don Mayhew, Renee Reuter and Richard West and Democratic Reps. Aaron Crossley and Ian Mackey.

U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri speaks as Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar testifies before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, on Oct. 2, 2020 in Washington, DC. (J. Scott Applewhite-Pool/Getty Images).

A new survey of state chief information and security officers finds them better prepared to protect their networks from cyberattacks than four years earlier, but still worried about limited staff and resources (Bill Hinton/Getty Images).

Many state chief information and security officers say they don’t have the budget, resources, staff or expertise to feel fully confident in their ability to guard their government networks against cyber attacks, according to a new Deloitte & Touche survey of officials in all 50 states and D.C.

“The attack surface is expanding as state leaders’ reliance on information becomes increasingly central to the operation of government itself,” said Srini Subramanian, principal of Deloitte & Touche LLP and the company’s global government and public services consulting leader. “And CISOs have an increasingly challenging mission to make the technology infrastructure resilient against ever-increasing cyber threats.”

The biennial cybersecurity report, released today, outlined where new threats are coming from, and what vulnerabilities these teams have.

Governments are relying more on servers to store information, or transmit it through the Internet of Things, or connected sensor devices. Infrastructure for systems like transit and power is also heavily reliant on technology, and all of the connected online systems create more opportunities for attack.

The emergence of AI is also creating new ways for bad actors to exploit vulnerabilities, as it makes phishing scams and audio and visual deep fakes easier.

Deloitte found encouraging data that showed the role of state chief information and security officer has been prioritized in every state’s government tech team, and that statutes and legislation have been introduced in some states which give CISOs more authority.

In recent years, CISOs have taken on the vast majority of security management and operations, strategy, governance, risk management and incident response for their state, the report said.

But despite the growing weight on these roles, some of the CISOs surveyed said they do not have the resources needed to feel confident in their team’s ability to handle old and new cybersecurity threats.

Nearly 40% said they don’t have enough funds for projects that comply with regulatory or legal requirements, and nearly half said they don’t know what percent of their state’s IT budget is for cybersecurity.

Talent was another issue, with about half of CISOs saying they lacked cybersecurity staffing, and 31% saying there was an “inadequate availability” of professionals to complete these jobs. The survey does show that CISOs reported better staff competencies in 2024 compared to 2020, though.

Staffing of CISOs themselves, due to burnout, has been an increasing issue since the pandemic, the report found. Since the 2022 survey, Deloitte noted that nearly half of all states have had turnover in their chief security officers, and the median tenure is now 23 months, down from 30 months in the last survey.

When it came to generative AI, CISOs seemed to see both the opportunities and risks. Respondents listed generative AI as one of the newest threats to cybersecurity, with 71% saying they believe it poses a “high” threat; 41% of respondents said they don’t have confidence in their team to be able to handle them.

While they believe AI is a threat, many teams also reported using the technology to improve their security operations. Twenty one states are already using some form of AI, and 22 states will likely begin using it in the next year. As with with state legislation around AI, it’s being looked at on a case-by-case basis.

One CISO said in the report their team is “in discovery phase with an executive order to study the impact of gen AI on security in our state” while another said they have “established a committee that is reviewing use cases, policies, procedures, and best practices for gen AI.”

CISOs face these budgetary and talent restrictions while they aim to take on new threats and secure aging technology systems that leave them vulnerable.

The report laid out some tactics tech departments could use to navigate these challenges, including leaning on government partners, working creatively to boost budgets, diversifying their talent pipeline, continuing the AI policy conversations and promoting the CISOs role in digital transformation of government operations.

Corn sprouts in long rows in Wichita County, Kansas. With farm incomes on the decline, agricultural groups say a new federal Farm Bill is a must. (Allison Kite/Kansas Reflector)

The cost of fertilizer is up; crop prices are down. Farmers have struggled through drought, and ranchers sold off huge swaths of their herd. 

To top it all off, Congress has yet to pass a new iteration of the Farm Bill, which expires in a matter of days. And it likely won’t take action on the wide-ranging legislation, which offers everything from nutritional assistance to farm disaster recovery aid, until late this year.

The slow action on the legislation isn’t unusual, but as farm income continues to slide, producers are struggling to make ends meet. Tim Gibbons, communications director for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, noted it currently costs more to raise a bushel of corn than farmers make when they sell it.

The prices farmers receive for major grain crops such as corn and soybeans are down 20 to 40% from highs set in 2022 in the months after Russia invaded Ukraine, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. But that spike was an aberration, Gibbons said.

“We haven’t had really high prices for decades … that really support farmers over the long term,” Gibbons said, “so that not only can they stay on the farm, but pass that farm on to the next generations.” 

Researchers at the University of Missouri expect farm income to drop by 35% by next year, compared to a high in 2022. While they still expect income to remain above what farmers saw between 2015 and 2020, it’s a steep drop. 

“Farmers will have a tighter situation … than they experienced in the last three years, and they’ll have to be much more cognizant about having a very strategic marketing plan in order to make a good cash flow,” said Bob Maltsburger, a senior research economist at the Food & Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the university. 

The “bleak” state of the farm economy — as U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, put it — has agricultural groups and heartland lawmakers clamoring for an updated Farm Bill. But partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C., and tension over what programs to prioritize in the enormous bill have made it difficult for lawmakers to find common ground. 

“We need a Farm Bill in place,” Moran said on the Senate floor earlier this month, “even if it’s the current one, but the current one is insufficient to meet the needs of the disaster that is occurring in the incomes of farmers across the country.”

The Farm Bill, the primary vehicle for food and agriculture policy in the U.S., expires Monday. While some of its banner programs — including crop insurance and nutrition assistance — will continue even if the legislation lapses, lawmakers and farm groups have said it’s essential to get assistance to struggling farmers. Moran urged colleagues to extend the existing Farm Bill while a more thorough rewrite is still pending.

Competing for funds

The Farm Bill’s single largest chunk of spending — about 75% — supports a variety of programs to combat food insecurity, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, commonly known as “food stamps.” Its other banner programs include crop insurance and support for farmers when crop prices are low. The legislation also provides funds to encourage conservation and more sustainable farming. 

Prominent in this year’s debate is how to permanently increase spending on conservation and climate-friendly practices. Congress previously provided $20 billion through the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2023, to help farmers plant cover crops and trees; alternate grazing and resting grassland and restore wetlands. 

Andrew Lentz, who leads agriculture policy for the Environmental Defense Fund, said that funding helped more farmers participate in historically underfunded conservation programs. He said his organization hopes Congress takes advantage of the “huge opportunity” to make those funding levels permanent. 

While Democrats want to ensure those funds are spent on practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, those requirements weren’t supported in the Republican-controlled U.S. House committee. 

“If Congress is able to do that,” Lentz said, “they’ll be able to maintain these elevated funding levels and also maintain the climate focus of those funds in order to address the root causes of climate change and…help farmers tap new markets for lower carbon agricultural goods.” 

But Jennifer Ifft, an associate professor at Kansas State University, said Congress can’t increase the federal deficit when it passes a new Farm Bill, creating tension between lawmakers over how to prioritize programs. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives supported increasing funding for the farm safety net, which supports farmers when crop prices are low.

That’s hard enough to do this year, Ifft said, but it will be even more difficult to pull off next year with crop prices projected to keep declining, increasing the cost of the safety net.

“It’s probably not going to get easier to compromise,” Ifft said.

The House Republican version of the bill also cuts $30 billion from nutrition assistance, a nonstarter with Democrats. 

U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat and chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, called that bill and Senate Republicans’ “framework” for a Farm Bill “flawed,” noting it cuts the nutrition budget and “walks away from the progress we have made to address the climate crisis.”

Gibbons said the conversation is missing better options to help with crop prices. He argues managing supply and adjusting decisions to meet market needs is a lower-cost alternative to ensure farmers get a fair price for their crops. But that’s not part of the policy discussions, he said. 

“The fight,” Gibbons said, “is once again over, ‘How hard are we going to make it for hungry people in need to get food,’”

(Getty Images).

A rural Missouri fire district near Kansas City committed so many violations of the Missouri Sunshine Law that listing them separately wasn’t the best way to present them, attorney Jim Layton told Western District Court of Appeals during oral arguments.

Under questioning from Presiding Judge Thomas Chapman, Layton said he counted 46 violations committed in 11 meetings of the Western Cass Fire Protection board. The appeal brief gives a narrative of events, seeking to show a multiplicity of violations at any particular meeting, rather than individually enumerated violations for each meeting.

“We have to look at it and weigh the evidence in each one of these instances, and it just seems like it kind of was a shotgun approach on these,” Chapman said.

The nature of the appeal led to the format he chose, Layton said. Cass County Circuit Judge R. Michael Wagner entered a judgment against his client, Citizens for Transparency and Accountability, when he concluded his portion of the case during a June 2023 trial.

Wagner didn’t give any reasons for his decision in his judgment. The appeal is of that single act, so a narrative is the correct format, Layton said.

“I will confess that I struggled with how to draft points relied on in this case as much as I ever have on an appeal because of the nature of how this was decided below,” Layton said.

Wednesday’s hearing at the appeals court is just the latest round in battles, in and out of court, involving the fire district, based in Cleveland, that serves about 2,600 homes. The battling factions of the board have made numerous headlines, and the appeal drew the attention of three important voices for open government.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office, the Missouri Press Association and the Freedom Center of Missouri all wrote briefs urging the court to overturn the trial court. The issues involved are some of the most fundamental aspects of what constitutes proper notice of a meeting, how much can be added to an agenda after it is posted, and what information must be presented about an item to be considered.

“If you can obscure the matters that are actually going to be discussed and decided at a public meeting, then you can kind of slip under the public’s radar and address matters that otherwise members of the public would very much like to have input,” said Dave Roland, litigation director of the Freedom Center of Missouri.

An example from the Western Cass case is the Aug. 3, 2022, meeting, where the notice included an item called “special considerations,” with no more detail. What board members Kerri VanMeveren and Darvin Schildknecht didn’t know, and found out only when the agenda item was reached that evening, was that “special considerations” meant booting them off the board.

“I asked at the start of the meeting, before we adopted the agenda, ‘can you please explain what special considerations mean?’” VanMeveren said in an interview with The Independent. Board president “John Webb would not answer the question. And I kept saying, ‘I think the public has a right to know,’ and he just would not answer it.”

Defending the judgment on Wednesday, attorney Aaron Racine told the court that any violations that may have occurred were inadvertent, due to inexperience of new members.

Judge Alok Ahuja was skeptical of that as he looked at the Aug. 3, 2022, meeting agenda.

“What does special considerations mean?” he asked. “Special considerations of weather? Special considerations of finances? Special considerations of personnel?”

Even the phrasing of particular agenda items can be traced to inexperience, Racine said.

“I think those are the mitigating or exigent circumstances, and that you had an inexperienced board trying to comply with the law,” he said.

Origins of the dispute

VanMeveren won election to the district Board of Directors in 2020, running for the position after a brush fire spread onto her property in 2018 and she felt the tactics employed showed poor training.

“It was just kind of a clown show,” VanMeveren said.

When she became district treasurer, she said, she found that tax rates for a bond issue had been improperly calculated, bringing in excessive revenue.

A state auditor’s report in 2021, prepared in response to a residents’ petition, found problems with bidding procedures, budget information and Sunshine Law compliance. VanMeveren recruited new board members, including John Webb, a conservative Republican who unsuccessfully challenged then-U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler several times in the 4th Congressional District GOP primary. 

But she and Webb were soon battling over issues that included payroll expenses for contractors and a contract for lawn care at the firehouse, the Kansas City Star reported. In the late summer and early fall of 2022, three departments in Belton, Dolan-West Dolan and West Peculiar canceled their mutual aid agreements.

VanMeveren resigned as treasurer in May 2022 but remained on the board. A lawsuit was filed by the board to oust her and Schildknecht. It was dismissed when a recall effort began that succeeded in removing VanMeveren and Schildknecht in August 2023.

VanMeveren and Schildknecht formed Citizens for Transparency and Accountability and filed a countersuit, the case now in the hands of the Western District Court of Appeals.

They testified in the spring in favor of a bill that gives the State Auditor new power to investigate wrongdoing in local government. Instead of a time-consuming petition process, the auditor can now open a full audit if investigation of a complaint shows problems that require more attention. 

And the cost of the audit would be borne by the auditor’s office instead of taxpayers in the political subdivision being examined.

The new power is an important tool to help taxpayers, Schildknecht testified in a Missouri House hearing. 

“Over the years some people who come on the board who do want to try and do the right things, but I have also seen others who realize there is no outside agencies monitoring fire districts and take advantage of this, knowing there is nobody watching that they follow the laws,” he said.

The meaning of “tentative”

Widespread issues the case will address brought amicus, or friend of the court, briefs from the attorney general’s office, the press association and the Freedom Center of Missouri.

“Several issues raised in this appeal are brought to this office’s attention with increasing frequency in complaints filed by citizens against local public governmental bodies, in question-and-answer sessions during training programs, and phone call inquiries from the public and public governmental bodies,” Assistant Attorney General Jason Lewis wrote. “Unfortunately, many of these issues have not yet been conclusively addressed by Missouri’s appellate courts.”

Those questions include what an agenda must have when a meeting notice is posted and what can be added later.

“All public governmental bodies shall give notice of the time, date, and place of each meeting, and its tentative agenda, in a manner reasonably calculated to advise the public of the matters to be considered,” the law states. 

The fire district board used the word tentative in the broadest sense. At one meeting in November 2022, Layton’s appeal brief states, the board approved “a contract for a medical director; creating and sending a newsletter throughout the district; adopting a program that would allow firefighters to reside at the fire station; changing the bid solicitation for one of the fire stations; an insurance rider for proof of loss; barring one director from taking photographs at the fire station; having and paying for a party; and purchasing a generator battery.”

None of those items were on the agenda.

No violation occurred when items were added, Racine told the judges.

“Tentative means what tentative means, and absent some statutory or court guidance as to what tentative means, we have to look to its plain meaning, which is subject to change going forward,” Racine said.

All three of the amicus briefs argued that tentative means subject to change for unforeseen reasons, such as a storm that prevents the meeting from being held or the absence of someone essential that prevents an item from being considered.

It cannot mean that new items can be added at will because the public, and their watchdogs, deserve full notice of the items to be considered, attorney Jean Maneke wrote for the press association.

“Reporters recognize that they cannot be everywhere at once and the agenda gives them the information they need to make the best use of their time,” Maneke wrote. “Like the public, the reporters rely on the agenda to inform them regarding which activities/issues will be addressed at each public meeting.”

Other meeting notice issues the appeal addresses are the amount of information that must be provided. Fire district notices often gave the least possible information, appellants argue, such as a resolution number and no other details under the heading “Banking” on the July 20, 2022, meeting.

During the same meeting, while on the agenda item with the heading “reports,” the board adopted changes to the duties of some personnel without any indication that was the intent.

“It’s crucial that public governmental bodies not be able to shoehorn in agenda items at the last minute, and that’s why they need to provide an acceptable level of specificity when it comes to what they’re going to be considering and voting on,” Roland said.

The attorney general’s brief also argues that notices must provide details that show the intent of the action. 

“That means that a public governmental body cannot hide an elephant in a mouse hole by using vague or excessively broad terms to hide what the body intends to do,” Lewis wrote. “The tentative agenda must be specific enough for the public to be able to make an informed decision about whether to attend the meeting.”

The court could create a test that would help agencies in the preparation of meeting notices and agendas, Lewis wrote.

“The Attorney General’s Office is eager for resolution of these issues at the appellate level,” Lewis wrote, “which will provide both this office and the public with significant guidance in resolving citizens’ Sunshine Law complaints, providing education to local public governmental bodies, and seeking enforcement when appropriate.”

(Getty Images).

Missouri has begun distributing summer food benefits for children and aims to finish by the end of the year, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Services told The Independent this week.

The aid was intended to be distributed during summer break, to help vulnerable kids avoid a drop-off in nutrition while they were out of school.

Missouri didn’t begin issuing the benefits until Sept. 19.

That’s faster than the state issued summer 2022 emergency benefits that were tied to the COVID-19 pandemic — those were not distributed until the following summer. And in 2023, Missouri did not accept federal pandemic summer food aid for children.

This year’s benefits are part of a federal program in its first year called Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer, or SUN Bucks, which is administered by states.

Each eligible child receives a one-time benefit of $120, loaded onto a card that can be used like a debit card to buy groceries.

Thirteen Republican-led states, but not Missouri, opted out of participating in the program.

Benefits for the program have so far been issued to 9,500 Missouri kids, out of the 490,000 kids estimated to receive benefits that amount to $58.8 million.

“[The Family Support Division] remains committed to disbursing benefits as swiftly and accurately as possible,” DSS spokesperson Chelsea Blair said, “with the goal of completing all disbursements by the end of the year.”

State officials said they dealt with technical issues that delayed federal approval and hindered earlier launch of the program. 

One issue is that “much of the data collection process for children enrolled in the National School Lunch Program is still manual at this time,” another DSS spokesperson, Baylee Watts, said — the department needs schools to submit data before they can determine eligibility for many of the kids.

The children who will be automatically eligible for the program are:

• Students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch during the school year;
• Households already enrolled in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or temporary assistance; and
• Students who are in foster care, are experiencing homelessness or are migrants.

Missouri has so far issued benefits to foster kids, Watts said, and is next turning to kids whose families are already on SNAP or temporary assistance.

It won’t be until after Oct. 10 that the benefits for kids on free or reduced-price lunch will begin to be issued, she said, because that’s the deadline for schools to submit eligibility data to the department.

Benefits will be issued on an existing card if the family is enrolled in SNAP benefits or temporary assistance, or on a new mailed card if they are not. Families who need a new EBT card can request one by phone or the ebtEDGE mobile app.

SUN Bucks benefits will expire 122 days after they are issued, regardless of usage, so families must act quickly once the benefits are distributed. They should also keep the cards for next summer’s program, the state’s website advises.

Those who aren’t automatically eligible were required to submit an application. The window for applications closed Aug. 31, and any received thereafter will be considered for next summer’s program, the department said. The agency received 17,000 applications.

Next summer, Watts said, the agency is expecting benefits to be distributed during the summer months, because the proper infrastructure will be in place.

Idaho Attorney General candidate Raul Labrador at the Idaho GOP election night watch party at the Grove in Boise, Idaho on November 8, 2022. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador – along with attorneys general and other officials from 20 U.S. states including Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey – has accused the American Academy of Pediatrics of possible “violations of state consumer protection statutes” over its standards and recommendations for gender dysphoria care for children.

In a letter sent by Labrador on Tuesday, the attorneys general requested information detailing the academy’s evidence for its current recommendations for puberty blockers for gender dysphoria-diagnosed youth.

“Most concerning, AAP claims that the use of puberty blockers on children is safe and reversible,” Labrador’s office said in a press release. “This assertion is not grounded in evidence and therefore may run afoul of consumer protection laws in most states.”

Children with gender dysphoria “need and deserve love, support, and medical care rooted in biological reality,” Labrador said in the release.

“It is shameful the most basic tenet of medicine – do no harm – has been abandoned by professional associations when politically pressured,” Labrador said.  “These organizations are sacrificing the health and well-being of children with medically unproven treatments that leave a wake of permanent damage.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization made up of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, voted in August to reaffirm its 2018 policy statement on gender-affirming care and authorized development of an expanded set of guidance for pediatricians.

The organization could not immediately be reached for comment. But at the organization’s August 2024 leadership conference in Itasca, Illinois, American Academy of Pediatrics CEO and Executive Vice President Mark Del Monte emphasized that the organization is confident that the principles presented in the original policy statement, “Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents,” remain in the best interest of children, according to an Aug. 4 press release from the academy.

The decision to authorize a systematic review reflects the academy’s board’s concerns about restrictions to access to health care with bans on gender-affirming care in more than 20 states, according to the Aug. 4 release.

In Idaho, the Legislature passed House Bill 71, a law banning Idaho youth from receiving gender-affirming care medications and surgeries. It was signed into law by Gov. Brad Little in April 2023.

The law makes it a felony punishable for up to 10 years for doctors to provide surgeries, puberty-blockers and hormones to transgender people under the age of 18. However, gender-affirming surgeries are not and were not performed among Idaho adults or youth before the bill was signed into law, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported.

Missouri lawmakers in 2023 banned gender affirming medication and surgical treatments for minors. The bill did not include criminal penalties but it did make providers subject to license action and lawsuits.  A trial is underway in Jefferson City in a lawsuit filed by providers and patients challenging the law.

What is in the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for gender-affirming care?

As outlined in its policy statement, the academy encourages pediatricians to use a gender-affirmative care model when treating young patients. The model encourages pediatricians to recognize that:

• transgender identities and diverse gender expressions do not constitute a mental disorder;
• variations in gender identity and expression are normal aspects of human diversity, and binary definitions of gender do not always reflect emerging gender identities;
• gender identity evolves as an interplay of biology, development, socialization, and culture; and
• if a mental health issue exists, it most often stems from stigma and negative experiences rather than being intrinsic to the child.

“Many medical interventions can be offered to youth who identify as (transgender and gender diverse) and their families,” the academy notes in its policy statement. “The decision of whether and when to initiate gender-affirmative treatment is personal and involves careful consideration of risks, benefits, and other factors unique to each patient and family.”

However, Labrador said treatments that suppress hormones or use puberty blockers may have adverse health effects to the patient, including interfering with neurocognitive development, compromising bone density and interfering with normal puberty experiences. He said the treatments may cause “harm particularly egregious” to children who “grow out” of the condition by the time they are adults.

But the American Academy of Pediatrics in its policy statement says that research shows that children who assert their transgender identity before puberty and who “know their gender as clearly and as consistently” as their cisgender peers benefit from the same level of social acceptance as those peers.

“More robust and current research suggests that, rather than focusing on who a child will become, valuing them for who they are, even at a young age, fosters secure attachment and resilience, not only for the child but also for the whole family,” the academy wrote in its policy statement.

But Labrador and the other state officials say they want more information on how the academy has come to those conclusions, especially when it comes to puberty blockers.

“The letter requests detailed information from the AAP regarding its communications and practices related to youth gender dysphoria and substantiation of the academy’s claims regarding the safety and reversibility of puberty blockers,” the attorney general’s press release says.

Other states joining Idaho in sending the letter to the academy, along with Missouri, include officials from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.

Rudi Keller of the Missouri Independent contributed to this report.

This story was originally published by the Idaho Capital Sun, a part of States Newsroom.

The Cole County Courthouse, in Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Department of Social Services “knowingly and purposefully” subverted the state’s open records law to gain the upper hand in litigation, a Missouri judge ruled Monday.

Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem determined the department violated the Sunshine Law by wrongfully denying a records request because of the identity of requester and not the contents of the records. 

The department also took months to respond to the request without a reasonable justification, Beetem ruled. 

A software company and former state vendor, HHS Technology, submitted the records request and filed the Sunshine lawsuit. 

Beetem in his decision ordered the department to hand over the records and set a hearing for Oct. 18 to consider penalties. HHS is entitled to civil penalties of up to $5,000 plus reasonable costs and attorneys’ fees.

The Department of Social Services declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

HHS Technology was involved in years of litigation against the state for breach of contract and Beetem awarded the company more than $23 million in August 2022, over its work building a fully-integrated system for managing DSS programs including Medicaid.

The records request, submitted in April 2022, was for documents showing how the state requested and allocated public money for its Medicaid system and related communication about the competitive bidding process.

“These are prime examples of open records the Sunshine Law was intended to allow the public to access,” Beetem wrote, calling the records “indisputably open.”

The department acknowledged receiving the request but then, despite repeated inquiries, the company heard nothing for months.

Missouri Sunshine Law requires government agencies to respond to requests “as soon as possible.” They must provide the records within three days or explain the delay and provide a timeline for predicted fulfillment of the request.

The department decided the documents would be closed sometime in October, according to the decision. But the company did not hear back from DSS until February 2023. 

At that point, nearly a year after the request was submitted, the state formally denied it and refused to turn over records.

The state said the documents were exempt from the Sunshine Law because they were related to ongoing litigation. 

The litigation exception to Sunshine Law carves out records related to the nexus of ongoing litigation. Records must be inherently connected to litigation to qualify.

Beetem ruled the state’s interpretation of the litigation exemption was inappropriately broad and would justify closing any records that could be potentially subject to litigation in the future.

Beetem said the department “intentionally violated the Sunshine Law to impermissibly gain an advantage in the…litigation.”

The agency identified 570 documents responsive to the request that it deemed closed, according to the decision. 

Eleven of those were privileged communications with counsel.

But “none of the remaining 559 records at issue is a legal file, memorandum, or work product generated by the Department’s counsel,” Beetem wrote.

And DSS “did not close the 559 at-issue records based on their contents,” he added.

“Rather, they closed the records based on the identity of the requester (HHS) and their belief that HHS desired these documents for use in the…litigation.”

Last year, Beetem ordered the state to pay more than $240,000 in legal fees as part of a ruling that found the attorney general’s office  “knowingly and purposefully” violated open records law while it was being run by now-U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley.

(Marc Serota/Getty Images).

Two of every five Missouri adults owe money to medical providers, according to a survey published Tuesday by the nonprofit Missouri Foundation for Health.

Those debts include unpaid fees for services ranging from lab tests and doctors’ visits to emergency treatment and dental care. Often, the bills are from one-time or short-term medical expenses, the report states.

One in ten Missouri residents have more than $5,000 in medical debt.

The result is that Missourians with medical debt commonly cut back on spending for basic needs, exhaust their savings and increase other forms of debt, like credit card debt.

“When people struggle to access affordable health care, the effects ripple through our economy,” said Sheldon Weisgrau, foundation vice president of Health Policy and Advocacy, in a press release.

“It’s not just about health; it’s about financial stability, workforce productivity, and the ability of families to thrive,” he added.

The foundation commissioned a statewide survey of over 2,000 adults last spring, conducted by the research firm SSRS. Data were weighted to be representative of the population.

The survey found Hispanic and Black Missourians are more likely to have medical debt compared to white adults. 

Those in rural areas are also more likely to have current or recent medical debt, as are those with disabilities.

Half of Missouri adults have held medical debt at some point in the last five years, according to the report. Most of them — 78% of those under age 65 — had health insurance at the time they received the care that sent them into debt.

One reason those with coverage are incurring debt, the report notes, is that many have unaffordable deductibles — meaning out-of-pocket costs they must pay before the insurance company starts to pay. Cost-sharing measures, like copays, can also be high.

In 2023, the average family deductible in Missouri was $3,783, according to the nonprofit KFF. The average deductible for single coverage in Missouri was $2,340.

Yet many Missourians live paycheck to paycheck. 

Four in ten Missourians don’t have the money to pay for an unexpected $500 bill, the Missouri Foundation for Health survey found. 

“The burden of medical debt is not only financially devastating but also demoralizing for families,” said Samantha Schrage Bunk, MFH health policy strategist, in the press release.

The results in the survey were similar to the national average found in a 2022 survey conducted by the nonprofit KFF.

The states with the worst rates of medical debt haven’t expanded Medicaid, KFF has found. Missouri implemented Medicaid expansion in October 2021.

There has been increasing attention to medical debt at the state and federal level in the last few years. At least 17 states this year proposed legislation related to consumer relief for medical debt, though not Missouri, according to LexisNexis’ state legislative tracker.

The Missourians surveyed widely support policies that would require greater price transparency, limits for hospital charges and uniform criteria for financial assistance programs.

“Missourians are clear – they want policy changes that make health care affordable and accessible, and they’re looking for government and health care systems to listen to them and take action today,” Schrage Bunk said.

In an earlier report, published in March, Missouri Foundation for Health interviewed focus groups.

“[Medical debt is] something that I will have to pay for the rest of my life,” one low-income woman, who has between $1,000 and $2,500 in debt is quoted as saying.

Others quoted needed to declare bankruptcy due to medical debt, or took hits to their credit that hurt their ability to find housing and employment.

One rural farmer needed to take on odd jobs in town to try to pay off thousands in debt. A man with disabilities needed to pay hundreds each month for years, instead of saving for retirement. A young mother needed to cut back on spending for food and clothes for her kids to pay hospital bills. 

Another described the “vicious cycle” of taking out credit card debt to try to pay off medical debt. 

“Honestly, if you’re middle class or low class,” one interviewee asked, “how can you afford $2,000 a ride in an ambulance?” 

Marcellus Williams, photographed in prison (photo submitted).

Just a few hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal, Missouri officials executed Marcellus Williams Tuesday at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre.

Williams, who was backed in his appeals for clemency by St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, left only a single sentence — “All praise to Allah in every situation” — in his last statement, KMOV TV reported.

Williams was sentenced to death for the 1998 slaying of Felicia Gayle, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who was stabbed more than 40 times.

None of the physical evidence at the crime scene, including fingerprints, bloodied shoe prints and hairs, could be tied to Williams. He was arrested based on the testimony of a jailhouse informant, who said Williams confessed the murder. 

During testimony at his murder trial, Williams’ then-girlfriend also said he confessed to the killing. Williams picked her up the day of Gayle’s slaying wearing a jacket over a bloody shirt and with scratches on his neck. She saw a laptop in his car – later shown to have been stolen from Gayle’s apartment – and a purse in the trunk, with Gayle’s identification card.

In the final effort to free Williams or reduce his sentence, Bell filed a case under a 2021 state law allowing prosecutors to bring new evidence to the courts. It was the first time the law has been used in a death penalty case. 

Bell filed the case in January, arguing there was “clear and convincing evidence” that potential jurors had been excluded based on race and questioning whether DNA evidence on the knife that killed Gayle had been contaminated by careless handling.

The Missouri Supreme Court heard a final appeal of the ruling in that case on Monday, and found the evidence was not convincing.

Bell “failed to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence Williams’ actual innocence or constitutional error at the original criminal trial that undermines the confidence in the judgment of the original criminal trial,” Judge Zel Fischer wrote in the opinion.

The Department of Corrections declared Williams dead at 6:10 p.m. after a lethal injection, the Kansas City Star reported. 

Bell issued a statement that he remained convinced Williams should have been spared.

“Marcellus Williams should be alive today,” Bell said. “There were multiple points in the timeline when decisions could have been made that would have spared him the death penalty. If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence, the death penalty should never be an option. This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.”

State Rep. Crystal Quade, the Democratic candidate for governor, issued a statement over social media saying that she disagreed with allowing the execution to proceed.

“I’ve always stood firm in my stance that the state should not execute potentially innocent people. Marcellus Williams is no different,” Quade said.

There was no statement from Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, the Republican candidate.

Gov. Mike Parson, in a statement on Monday stating he would not stop the execution, said he was not convinced by any appeals.

“No jury nor court, including at the trial, appellate, and Supreme Court levels, have ever found merit in Mr. Williams’ innocence claims,” Parson said. “At the end of the day, his guilty verdict and sentence of capital punishment were upheld. Nothing from the real facts of this case have led me to believe in Mr. Williams’ innocence, as such, Mr. Williams’ punishment will be carried out as ordered by the Supreme Court.”

Williams is the 100th person executed by Missouri since 1989, when executions resumed after a two-decade lapse.

The Trinity explosion, 16 milliseconds after the atomic bomb test detonation on July 16, 1945. The viewed hemisphere’s highest point in this image is about 660 ft. (Berlyn Brixner / Los Alamos National Laboratory / Public Domain)

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson is holding up compensation for generations of Americans who developed cancer after exposure to the nation’s nuclear weapons program, several members of Congress said Tuesday. 

At a news conference in Washington, D.C, U.S. House members and Senators stood beside advocates from Missouri and tribal nations in the southwest who have — for months, or even years — cried out for help from the government as they and their loved ones suffered from cancer because of exposure to radiation.

Dawn Chapman, who lives near the contaminated West Lake Landfill in suburban St. Louis, said Johnson was the “only reason these people are suffering right now in this room.” 

“He can fix it,” Chapman said. “There are a lot of things in this world that you cannot fix. This one can be fixed. This one can pass.”

Fred Vallo, who endured a 37-hour bus ride from New Mexico., said his community can’t keep coming to the nation’s capital “begging” for help. He urged Johnson to visit New Mexico and see where the contamination originated for himself. 

“I’ll even take you with my own truck if you don’t believe us,” Vallo said.

Vallo and fellow advocates called on Johnson to bring the stalled Radiation Exposure Compensation Act up for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. The legislation has twice passed the U.S. Senate and would offer compensation to individuals suffering from certain cancers after exposure to improperly stored radioactive waste, uranium ore or bomb tests.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, who — along with New Mexico Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján — championed the legislation in the Senate, said he’d spoken with Johnson. But the House leader hadn’t committed to taking action on RECA. 

Luján encouraged advocates to pray for Johnson “to give him the strength and the wisdom to allow this legislation to the House floor, to be voted on, and to work to earn Republican and Democratic votes to get this to the President of the United States.”

Johnson’s office declined to comment.

Congress first passed RECA in the 1990s to compensate uranium miners and individuals exposed to bomb testing, known as “downwinders,” but the program only covered bomb testing victims in parts of Nevada, Arizona and Utah. 

Since the original RECA legislation passed, Hawley said, the radiation was found to have traveled further than the government originally thought. And communities that were known to be affected at the time were left out.

The expansion would offer coverage to downwinders in the remaining parts of Nevada, Arizona and Utah and expand coverage to Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Guam. It would also offer new coverage for residents exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska and Kentucky. 

In Missouri, uranium refining and improper storage of radioactive waste has affected residents for decades. Coldwater Creek, which runs for miles through busy St. Louis suburbs, is contaminated with radioactive material, and exposure to its waters increased the risk of cancer for generations of residents — primarily children. 

Waste was haphazardly trucked from site to site in St. Louis county before being dumped at the West Lake Landfill where it remains today. 

Hawley said he was confident there was enough support in the House of Representatives to pass RECA. 

“The wait has been too long,” Hawley said, “and it has been too cruel. And there is no need to wait any longer.” 

One family still suffering the effects of the bomb is Carol Rogers’. 

Rogers, of Shiprock, New Mexico, said her father was a miner. She and her mother could see the gold-hued uranium ore falling from his clothes as they scrubbed them and wrung them out. At the time, she didn’t know helping wash her father’s clothes would cause her to develop cancer decades later. 

When she was diagnosed, Rogers said, her doctor asked if she had worked with uranium. She said she hadn’t.

“Who did?” she said he asked. 

“He said, ‘Yes, it’s uranium,’” Rogers said.

After treatment, she said, she was in remission from cancer for three or four years. It came back, affecting her eye. She’s currently undergoing radiation treatment.

“It’s painful,” Rogers said. “I have to take pain medicine almost every day, sometimes twice a day.”

Rogers said her father died of lung cancer. Her grandson was diagnosed with cancer at 19. Now 20, he’s going through testing again along with his one-year-old baby. Doctors have recommended, she said, everyone in her family get tested, even infants. 

U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat from New Mexico, said the detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb at the Trinity Test site made it look like the sun rose over New Mexico at 3 a.m. one day in July 1945. And almost 80 years later, it’s still affecting New Mexican families. 

“For too many decades, New Mexicans have suffered generational impacts,” Vasquez said, “while being gaslighted…for having intergenerational disease, cancer, gastrointestinal issues, tumors, so much more.”

The Cole County Courthouse is hosting a trial challenging the state's restrictions on gender-affirming care, bringing in a judge from Wright County to oversee the bench trial (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A case that will determine whether Missouri can continue restricting adolescents’ access to gender-affirming care began Monday in Cole County Circuit Court.

The plaintiffs — which include transgender minors, gender-affirming care providers and loved ones — will argue that medical treatments for gender dysphoria are “safe and effective,” attorney Omar Gonzalez Pagan said in opening arguments.

The state will defend the 2023 law restricting gender-affirming care by looking into the risks of the treatment and highlighting those who have regretted medical transitions.

“These kids need compassionate, evidence-based medicine. But what they’ve been doing for the past 15 years isn’t evidence-based,” Solicitor General Joshua Divine said in his opening statement.

Defendants include Gov. Mike Parson, who signed the bill into law, and Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who is responsible for enforcing the law.

Both parties plan to call a host of expert and fact witnesses, and attorneys have requested a week for each side to present evidence.

On the first day of the trial, which will be heard by Circuit Judge Craig Carter without a jury, attorneys argued over which experts were most qualified to speak on the efficacy and risks of gender-affirming care.

“(Plaintiffs’ experts) are the type of people that are qualified to testify as to this type of care,” Gonzalez Pagan said. “The state’s experts, with one exception, do not have this sort of experience.”

Divine said that plaintiffs’ experts benefit financially from gender-affirming care, so they have their “financial reputations” at stake. He defended his witnesses’ qualifications, calling one a “victim of cancel culture” when a journal article was retracted.

The first expert called to testify was Dr. Aron Janssen, vice chair of clinical affairs at the Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. A majority of the patients in his psychiatry practice are transgender or gender-nonconforming children and adolescents, he said, and he has published approximately 24 articles in academic journals.

Jason Orr, an attorney for the plaintiffs, asked him about the state’s claims.

One claim is that gender dysphoria is a self-diagnosed condition because the symptoms are self-reported. Janssen said physicians base a diagnosis on questions to patients and loved ones, like other psychiatric conditions he treats.

“If that was a standard to base diagnosis, we wouldn’t have depression, anxiety, migraines,” he said.

The state will bring “detransitioners,” or people who began transitioning to a gender other than their sex as assigned at birth and later stopped. One received gender-affirming care in Missouri as an adult, but none received the care as a minor in Missouri, attorneys discussed in a virtual hearing last Friday.

Orr asked Janssen if there’s any scientific literature about those who stop their transition.

“The majority of patients who detransition do so because of external pressures but not because of internal pressures or regret,” Janssen said. “For some, transition is a wonderful experience… For others, it means you are kicked out of your family, lose your job.”

Patrick Sullivan, with the attorney general’s office, used several documents to challenge Janssen during cross-examination. Some were not on the list of items the defense plans to submit as evidence, but Carter allowed the exhibits for questions only.

Some of the documents were studies, including the over 400-page Cass Review published earlier this year. The report was a systematic review commissioned in England that concluded that there was weak evidence to support cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for transgender youth.

Sullivan presented Janssen a document called an “evidence pyramid,” with systematic reviews at the top as the best form of scientific literature.

Janssen said the Cass Review had a key flaw: the authors are not experienced in gender-affirming care and wouldn’t know the best factors to look at.

“When we look at what is involved in creating a good systematic review, having experience in the field is important,” he said. “When none of the authors work in the area, we have to take what they’re saying with a grain of salt.”

Sullivan interrupted him as Janssen explained the review’s flaws.

“He’s answering your question,” Carter said.

Sullivan’s questioning lasted around two hours, with multiple objections from plaintiffs as new exhibits came into the courtroom. The exhibits were largely studies out of Europe and articles from The New York Times and The Free Press.

Sullivan used an opinion article to question plaintiffs’ second expert, a clinical child psychologist.

The other witness to take the stand during the trial’s premiere day was a transgender man who transitioned at a young age in Missouri.

Arguments are scheduled to conclude Oct. 4.

An undated photo from the 1980s, of two teenagers stepping on rocks and wooden planks on Coldwater Creek. The photo is from a scrapbook kept by Sandy Delcoure, who lived on Willow Creek in Florissant and donated the scrapbook to the Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection (State Historical Society of Missouri, Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection, 1943-2006).

Federal officials plan to post warning signs along a contaminated suburban St. Louis creek where generations of children were exposed to radioactive material.

Coldwater Creek, which winds between homes and parks in St. Louis County for 14 miles before meeting the Missouri River, is plagued with nuclear waste left over from World War II. For decades, families had no idea the danger it posed to the children who played along its banks and swam in its waters. 

More than six years ago, a federal study found residents who live near the creek or regularly came in contact with its waters faced a higher risk of certain cancers. 

Still, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is cleaning up the creek, did not post signs warning visitors of its danger. 

But this fall, the Corps plans to post signs along Coldwater Creek, warning of the “low-level radioactive materials present.” In a Facebook post, the Corps’ St. Louis branch said the first of the signs will be placed in mid or late November. 

The signs, marked with an eye-catching cautionary yellow border, instruct readers not to dig near the creek but say the waste doesn’t pose a health threat as long as the ground is left undisturbed. Corps officials had previously released a draft of a warning sign with a blue banner that said there “may” be radioactive materials near. 

Dawn Chapman, who co-founded Just Moms STL to advocate for St. Louis-area families harmed by radioactive waste, said the group was happy with the new signs and thinks they’ll save lives. 

“But also, we’re so sad because we know people that are hurt that probably wouldn’t have been if they were up a long time ago,” Chapman said. 

The Missouri Coalition for the Environment, which has advocated for signs along Coldwater Creek for more than 25 years, said in a press release that the signs mark a “step in the right direction,” but don’t fully acknowledge the danger present along the creek.

The sign doesn’t acknowledge areas where contamination may be at the surface, doesn’t use the universal symbol for radioactive material and may confuse visitors by referring to the material as “low-level,” the Missouri Coalition for the Environment said. 

St. Louis has struggled with radioactive contamination since World War II. Uranium used in the development of the atomic bomb was refined in downtown St. Louis. After the war, the waste was dumped at the airport and, later, a nearby property — both along Coldwater Creek. The waste was further refined to extract valuable metals and the remaining material illegally dumped in the West Lake Landfill, where it remains today. 

The Corps is leading the cleanup of Coldwater Creek and the Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing work at the West Lake Landfill.

Last summer, The Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press found that, for decades, federal officials and companies handling the waste downplayed or failed to investigate the true danger of the material. Since the revelation, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and members of Congress from Missouri — along with southwestern states affected by nuclear weapons testing — have been fighting for compensation for victims of radioactive waste exposure.

To do so, Hawley and U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat from New Mexico, proposed expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, originally passed in 1990 to compensate uranium miners and those who were exposed to atomic bomb testing in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona. 

Hawley and Luján’s bill would expand the program to remaining parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah and provide coverage for the first time in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Guam, where residents were exposed to radiation from weapons tests. It would also expand coverage to those exposed in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska and Kentucky. 

The legislation twice passed the Senate, but was never heard on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. When the House failed to pass a RECA expansion or extension in June, the legislation expired. 

Hawley said on the U.S. Senate floor last week that the legislation is being “attacked” and exposure victims labeled as “greedy and unthankful and ungrateful and undeserving of any help or recognition or thanks from this country.” 

Hawley called on members of Congress to “stand up and be counted” and support the legislation.

“We will not stop fighting,” he said. “We will not stop working until every nuclear radiation victim who has given their life and health for the support of this nation is thanked and compensated.”

Chapman said RECA advocates are returning to Washington, D.C., next week to advocate for the expansion. She said she believes Congress will act on RECA sometime in the coming months. 

“I feel very close,” Chapman said. “We feel like this could be it for us next week.”

Tammy Reed, center, is suing the Missouri Department of Corrections for wrongful death of her son, Brandon Pace, at Tipton Correctional Center. In January, she was joined by Tina Burger, left, and her daughter, Bethany Pace, at a memorial service for the 382 Missourians who died in department custody in 2021, 2022 and 2023 (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

Missouri corrections officers drenched an inmate with pepper spray and ignored his pleas for help for four hours, responding only when his screaming stopped as he died in the Tipton Correctional Center, a federal lawsuit filed this month alleges.

The events that led to Brandon Pace’s death on April 7, 2023, began when correctional officers intervened in an altercation between Pace and another inmate, according to the lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri. 

Both men were taken into administrative segregation in restraints.

When Pace refused to give up what corrections officers believed to be methamphetamine, the lawsuit states, they put him in a holding cell and ordered him to strip for a search. When he refused, the officers called the Correctional Emergency Response Team, a unit used in cases where use of force may be required to deal with an inmate who will not comply with officer instructions.

An officer from the team used a fire extinguisher-sized can of pepper spray, a type usually used for riot situations, to subdue Pace.

The officers “took the MK-46 canister of OC and sprayed Mr. Pace with an excessive dose of the chemical agent at close range while Mr. Pace was in a confined space and, based upon information and belief, Mr. Pace’s hands were restrained behind his back and his legs shackled,” the lawsuit filed on behalf of Pace’s mother, Tammy Reed, states. “Mr. Pace began screaming in pain, gasping for air, and saying ‘I can’t breathe.’ He kept saying, ‘Help me, I can’t breathe,’ over and over.”

The lawsuit names former department Director Anne Precythe, current acting director Trevor Foley, three deputy directors, the department’s general counsel, former Tipton warden Brock Van Loo, medical care contractor Centurion Health, 12 corrections officers and a nurse as defendants.

The 11 counts in the lawsuit seek damages for wrongful death, civil rights violations and Missouri Sunshine Law violations for refusing to turn over any of the records, including video recordings, of the events prior to Pace’s death.

The lawsuit relies on statements from other men, held in nearby cells, for many of the allegations.

“The Department of Corrections is duty-bound to protect those individuals like Brandon Pace, who are in state custody,” said Lynn Ellenberger, one of Reed’s attorneys . “They’re obligated to provide for his well being and for his care, and in this case, that was not done.”

The department does not comment on pending litigation, Foley said last week.

Other death cases

The lawsuit is the latest in a string of cases filed this year related to inmate deaths. Despite a one-third reduction in the number of men and women being held by the department over the past decade, inmate deaths are at record levels.

In June, four former correctional officers were charged with assault and murder and a fifth was charged with involuntary manslaughter for the December death of Othel Moore while he was incarcerated at the Jefferson City Correctional Center.

Moore, 38, was pepper-sprayed in the face multiple times, had his face improperly covered by a hood that blocked his nose and mouth and was left unattended in a cell for more than 30 minutes, according to documents filed in the criminal case.

The charges against one of the corrections officers have been dropped and the remaining defendants were charged with assault and second-degree murder in September by the Cole County Grand Jury. An arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 16.

Missouri corrections officers charged with murder in death of inmate in restraints

The criminal charges came after four officers were fired in March and the warden at the Jefferson City prison was fired in June.

“We take seriously our responsibility for creating the safest environment possible and will not tolerate behaviors or conditions that endanger the wellbeing of Missourians working or living in our facilities,” the corrections department said in a statement issued after the charges were filed. “The department has begun implementing body-worn cameras in restrictive-housing units at maximum-security facilities, starting with Jefferson City Correctional Center, to bolster both security and accountability.”

The family of Othel Moore began publicly agitating for release of records, including video showing the actions of the officers, in the weeks following his Dec. 8 death. The case was investigated by the Cole County Sheriff’s office.

No outside agency has investigated Pace’s death, said Tom Porto, an attorney working with Pace’s family. 

“That’s not going to be done until the facts are brought to light,” Porto said. “There’s not going to be an investigation from the police, from the prosecutor’s office, from the Attorney General’s Office, until you smack them with the facts right in their face.”

Tony Wheatley, Moniteau County sheriff, said in an interview Wednesday that he has not received a complaint from the family about Pace’s death and he has not been asked to investigate by the department. His office has the necessary resources and no conflicts that would prevent him from investigating.

“What really upsets me is, and this happens all the time, is everybody wants to blame the local sheriff’s office because they didn’t do anything,” Wheatley said.

The only way he can act is if he gets a call, Wheatley said.

“I have not once heard from the family, I have not once heard from the state, I have not heard from anybody on this,” Wheatley said.

If Reed or her attorneys send him the complaint, Wheatley said, he will read it and evaluate whether it warrants further action.

The mother of another man who died in custody, Willa Hynes, won a $60,000 judgment against the department for withholding records in the death of her son Jahi, who died April 4, 2021, at the Southeast Missouri Correctional Center in Charleston.

Jahi Hynes, who was 27, was serving a 13-year sentence for first degree robbery when he hanged himself with a bedsheet while in solitary confinement.

On April 1, Willa Hynes filed a wrongful death lawsuit accusing the department, Centurion Health and 11 corrections employees of negligence in allowing her son to possess the bedsheet and failing to conduct required checks on inmates in administrative segregation.

A hearing is set for Monday in Charleston on a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

‘The car that hit him’

Pace’s death was one of 134 among people being held by the Department of Corrections in 2023. This year, with 96 deaths through Aug. 31, could exceed the record 136 deaths in 2022.

Only eight of the inmate deaths over the three years were executions of men sentenced for capital crimes. 

“My main concern being an organizer and an advocate is to make sure this information is publicized,” said Michelle Smith, director of the Missouri Justice Coalition, who compiles data on inmate deaths.

Smith, who in January led a memorial service for the deceased inmates at the Missouri Capitol Building, said most elected officials have yet to take the problem seriously.

Memorial service seeks answers on rapid increase in Missouri inmate deaths

“They think that I and other people are just being hyperbolic and exaggerating the issues at the Department of Corrections,” she said. “We need legislation, we need transparency, we need accountability at DOC.”

In his opinion in the Hynes case alleging Sunshine Law violations, Western District Court of Appeals Judge Edward Ardini wrote that the department deliberately withheld public records, including video recordings and a death investigation report, to hinder her wrongful death lawsuit.

The department argued unsuccessfully that the material was inmate medical records protected from disclosure even to the family of an inmate. 

The same violations are occurring in the case of Pace, his mother’s lawsuit alleges. Reed, who is a former corrections officer, asked for all the video from that day that shows officers with her son. The video recordings being withheld include one recorded by a member of the emergency response team of the pepper spray being used on Pace.

Pace was autopsied two weeks after his death by the Boone/Callaway Medical Examiner’s Office and the toxicology tests showed methamphetamine and Narcan, used by officers as they tried to revive him. The report says Van Loo told the medical examiner’s office he investigated Pace’s death personally and that video showed Pace swallowing the methamphetamine.

“Plaintiff has been denied all video evidence of the events that occurred that day – including the video defendant Van Loo says exists – despite lawful requests for such evidence,” the lawsuit states.

The autopsy report lists the cause of death as accidental due to methamphetamine intoxication, the court filing states.

The lawsuit accuses Van Loo of lying to the medical examiner’s office by stating Pace was taken to a medical unit after he was seen ingesting the unknown substance, and that there was an emergency response in an attempt to revive him when he stopped breathing while in the unit.

Based on statements of other inmates in nearby cells, the lawsuit alleges “other inmates at Tipton were charged with spurious infractions because they said things such as ‘Rest in Pace’ or otherwise referred to Mr. Pace’s death,” the lawsuit states. “The correctional officer defendants did this to instill fear in the inmates to stop them from speaking about the brutality and callousness that led to Mr. Pace’s death.”

In the recitation of events after Pace was doused with pepper spray, the lawsuit alleges the corrections officers joked about his agony. When corrections officer Billie Webb told another officer, Randy Witt, that Pace was “saying he can’t breathe,” Witt allegedly responded, “I don’t give a f**k.”

A nurse “talked and laughed” with another corrections officer stationed outside the cell where Pace was held but never entered the cell to check on Pace. She only did so at the urging of inmates after Pace had stopped crying out for help.

“Defendant (Terry) Payne said to other correctional officers present words to the effect of, ‘make sure you get the restraints off of him before the ambulance arrives,’ in an attempt to cover-up that Mr. Pace was restrained when he suffered and died,” the lawsuit states.

The degrading comments about Pace by corrections officers did not stop when he died, the lawsuit alleges.

“An inmate in administrative segregation said to Defendant (Earl) Roach, ‘they killed that guy,” referring to Brandon Pace,” the filing states. “Defendant Roach responded, ‘we didn’t kill him. He was kinda like a dog that ran out on the street, and we were just the car that hit him.”

A bipartisan group of two Kansas and three Missouri members of Congress sign a joint letter urging the U.S. Postal Service to address persistent problems with mail delivery in the greater Kansas City area (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector).

Three Missouri and two Kansas members of Congress serving constituents in the greater Kansas City area forwarded a joint letter Tuesday to the U.S. Postal Service demanding action to rectify problems with missing or delayed mail and protracted periods in which no mail was delivered at all.

Republicans Reps. Sam Graves and Mark Alford, both of Missouri, and Rep. Jake LaTurner of Kansas, as well as Democrats Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and Sharice Davids of Kansas, forwarded the letter to USPS postmaster general Louis DeJoy. They pointed to the July federal audit of the Kansas City Postal and Distribution Center in Kansas City, Missouri, and stations in Hickman Mills in Missouri as well as in Mission and Kansas City on the Kansas side of the border.

Deficiencies at the distribution center touched on mail clearance times, delayed mail, late cancellations and dock scanning during an inspection period in May, USPS auditors said. The report said challenges at the three stations included document scanning, delayed mail and property conditions.

The inspector general concluded USPS ought to address problems with employee staffing and recommended supervisors prepare better for staff absences in the Kansas City region.

“The audit makes clear that the USPS must do more to ensure Kansans receive reliable, timely mail delivery,” said Davids, who is seeking reelection in the 3rd District of Johnson and Wyandotte counties. “I will keep working across the aisle with my colleagues in the KC area to help fix these issues and ensure our postal service meets the needs of our communities.”

In recent months, the letter said, all five congressional offices received a growing number of complaints regarding inadequate mail service.

“It is unacceptable that these facilities … are failing to keep up with the USPS standard of service,” the bipartisan letter from U.S. House members said. “We wholeheartedly urge the leadership of the Postal Service to roll out the recommendations of the USPS office of the inspector general immediately.”

The federal lawmakers said USPS ought to implement strategies to mitigate mail delays, ensure compliance with processing procedures, improve delivery logistics, and upgrade safety and security policies for staff at the mail facilities.

The representatives said residents of communities across Kansas and Missouri relied on consistent mail service and deserved better support from USPS management.

This story was originally published by Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Gov. Mike Parson speaks at his last Governor's Ham Breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson is the guest of honor Tuesday night at a fundraiser for a pair of PACs at the home of a longtime Jefferson City lobbyist.

The event is being advertised as a “celebration of public service” for the Republican governor and First Lady Teresa Parson. It’s hosted by Steve Tilley, a longtime lobbyist and adviser for Parson. It coincides with Parson’s 69th birthday. 

Some of the invitations ask for donations to Uniting Missouri PAC, the political action committee created to bolster Parson’s political career. 

For the last two years, Uniting Missouri has mostly existed to bankroll Parson’s trips to the Super Bowl. But in the weeks leading up to the GOP primary, it spent several hundred thousand dollars supporting the candidacies of Mike Kehoe for governor and Andrew Bailey for attorney general. 

Parson is leaving the governor’s office in January because of term limits, and he has repeatedly said he has no intention of ever running for office again. 

‘Exploiting a loophole’: PACs tied to Missouri lobbyist draw new criticism 

Other invitations to Tuesday night’s gathering seek to raise money for Missouri Prospers PAC, which was formed last week by Tilley’s son-in-law. 

Missouri Prospers is one of a constellation of political action committees connected to Tilley, a former Missouri House speaker who became a lobbyist after resigning from office in 2012. 

For years, Tilley’s lobbying clients have spread donations among six PACs associated with him and his firm. The PACs then donate that money to candidates. 

It’s a practice that’s drawn criticism from those who see it as a way to skirt limits on how much a candidate can accept from an individual or PAC, as well as a ban on direct corporate contribution to candidates. 

And in the past it’s drawn scrutiny from federal law enforcement. The FBI began looking into utility contracts in Independence after four Tilley-connected PACs donated to the city’s mayor just days before a key vote. 

Each of the PACs had received money from a company connected to one of the contacts. 

No charges have ever been filed in any matter involving Tilley, and he has long denied any wrongdoing.

Parson and Tilley have been friends for years, going back more than a decade to when they served together in the Missouri House. 

When Tilley resigned from office to become a lobbyist, he still had more than $1 million in his campaign committee. He invested a big portion of it in a Perryville bank, and later used the money to donate to candidates, such as Parson, who would then hire Tilley as a campaign consultant. 

Lawmakers felt Tilley had found a loophole in Missouri’s campaign finance laws, ultimately taking aim at his practices by passing legislation in 2016 requiring elected officials to dissolve their campaign committees when they register with the Missouri Ethics Commission as lobbyists.

Since then, Tilley has been a prolific fundraiser for Parson and Uniting Missouri. At one point during the 2020 election cycle, a quarter of the governor’s campaign funds could be connected to Tilley. 

And Parson’s years in office have been lucrative for Tilley. 

Before Parson took over as governor in June 2018, following the resignation of former Gov. Eric Greitens, Tilley had 25 lobbying clients. A year into Parson’s first term, that number had ballooned to more than 70.

House Budget Chair Cody Smith, R-Carthage, summarizes his budget proposal to reporters in March. State revenues fell in the first portion of the fiscal year, raising concerns about future tax receipts. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri’s general revenue has lagged behind inflation for two years in a row. And with that gap widening, the next few months could determine whether state revenue will see a year-over-year decline for the first time in more than a decade. 

“September is a good sort of bellwether one for us, because that’s where we get quarterly payments from both individuals and corporations,” Dan Haug, Gov. Mike Parson’s budget director, said in an interview with The Independent last week. “There’s not a lot of significant due dates in July and August, so we try not to even really look at what trends are until we get through the end of September.”

Through Friday, general revenue receipts are down more than 3% compared to the same period in fiscal 2024.

Revenue grew 2.74% in fiscal 2023, while inflation was calculated at 3% by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fiscal 2024, which ended June 30, revenue grew 1.47%, while inflation was again pegged at 3%.

Missouri isn’t the only state suffering from sluggish revenue growth, according to a recent report from Pew Charitable Trusts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many states — including Missouri — enjoyed a surge of revenue that drove new spending and tax cuts.

Missouri enjoyed double-digit revenue growth for two years, a trend that ended in early 2023. Nationally since the start of fiscal 2023, the report states, state government revenues have fallen below inflation rates and below the growth trend seen before the pandemic. That is the first time in 40 years that has happened outside of an economic recession.

“There’s less fiscal flexibility, but it’s unclear whether states will be really under strain or not, but it’s going to be more difficult than before,” said Alexandre Fall, a senior associate with Pew who was the main author of the report.

As they wrote this year’s budget in the spring, the Republican-led legislature tried to limit ongoing general revenue spending to the anticipated revenue of $13.2 billion. But even after Gov. Mike Parson vetoed $1 billion, the budget anticipates spending $15.1 billion in general revenue, dipping into surpluses accumulated during the surge in 2021 and 2022.

House Budget Committee Vice Chairman Dirk Deaton, a Republican from Noel, said lawmakers must continue to limit ongoing spending to new revenue.

“If revenue is lower in the future we will have to look carefully at core spending items to make sure the state budget is on a sustainable path and Missouri is well positioned to balance the budget year after year,” Deaton said.

State revenue was down in the early part of fiscal 2024 but ended up with modest growth, Deaton noted.

State Rep. Peter Merideth of St. Louis, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, said future legislatures should commit to meeting state needs instead of hanging on to surpluses. Merideth is not returning to the House due to term limits.

Any spending cuts tied to the flow of revenue, rather than to the state’s total available resources, will fall heavily on education programs, Merideth predicted.

“We will cut education further,” he said. “Maybe it’s on the transportation line, or maybe it’s somewhere else, and we will cut higher education because those are about the only two slightly discretionary places that the legislature has to cut with large sums of money.”

Sitting on a surplus

On June 30, the general revenue fund held $4.8 billion, down $960 million from the balance a year earlier. That is still the third-highest year-end balance in state history.

Some of that money is committed to multi-year building projects, such as a $300 million mental health hospital in Kansas City, but most of it is unencumbered.

Other surplus money was stashed elsewhere. The state is holding $2.4 billion transferred from general revenue for major projects including rebuilding Interstate 70 and expanding the state Capitol Building. 

Another $1.8 billion was held in accounts that can be spent like general revenue.

The question for lawmakers and state officials is how to spend from surplus funds without exhausting them, said Liz Farmer, a fiscal policy writer at Pew.

“States are spending down balance dollars at a rapid rate,” Farmer said. 

The budget presented by Parson in January anticipated an unencumbered general revenue balance of $1.9 billion on June 30, 2025. 

Along with major projects, in the past two years lawmakers have used the surplus to fund smaller items in their districts. Parson has vetoed many of those items as he cut $550 million from the budget in 2023 and $1 billion approved this year. 

Future lawmakers need to resist the urge to earmark funds for their district, Merideth said. Stagnant or declining state revenue should mean extra funds are reserved for filling shortfalls in important programs.

“We have a surplus to work with in the short term but we haven’t hit an economic crash, which at some point will happen in the future,” Merideth said. “That’s when we’re going to be in real trouble.”

During the recession that began in 2008, revenues fell from about $8 billion annual to $6.7 billion a few years later. Haug, who has worked for both the legislature and the executive branch, said the state is in good shape in case of a recession.

“We’ve got a very healthy fund balance to help us get through a minor downturn, if there is one, although I’m not sure that there even will be one,” Haug said. “We’re in a lot better spot to weather this kind of stuff than we’ve been probably in any of the time I’ve been here.”

There are structural changes in the cost of state government that are permanent, thanks to the surge of revenue. 

The pay of every state worker hired before the beginning of 2022 has increased at least 20.7% under pay raise plans proposed by Parson. Some workers have received much larger percentage boosts, from a longevity pay plan approved this year, increases in night pay for workers in prisons, mental health hospitals and other custodial institutions and approval of a minimum salary of $15 an hour for all state jobs.

With state agency staff vacancy rates averaging more than 10%, the cost of running the state will go up as workers are added.

“Increased state employee pay and salaries, as well as permanent tax cuts, were two very popular policy choices that were made across states and were made in Missouri,” Fall said. “But now that we’re seeing all this excess revenue kind of pull back, and states are seeing decreased flexibility, it’s unclear what comes next.”

Missouri has passed two large permanent tax cuts, with income tax rate cuts enacted in a special session in 2022, and a bill exempting Social Security benefits from state income tax in 2023.

Together, that legislation will reduce state revenue by $1 billion or more annually. The next step in the phased-in tax cut passed in 2022 will take effect on Jan. 1, cutting the top income tax rate to 4.7%.

Those cuts will generate economic activity that will sustain revenues, Deaton said.

“Missouri has made very clear through our tax policy we are more interested in growing the bank accounts of the people as opposed to growing the amount of monies coming to Jefferson City,” he said.

With a new governor coming into office in January and new legislative leadership, tapping the surplus could be a temptation.

“Whoever is sitting in that governor’s mansion and whoever is sitting in the budget committee chair will make a significant difference and it’s hard to predict,” Merideth said.

Revenue picture

In the last full fiscal year before the pandemic, the Missouri general revenue fund took in $9.6 billion. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the total was $13.4 billion, 1.47% more than in the previous year.

Two of the main sources of state revenue — personal and corporate income taxes — saw a decline in collections in fiscal 2024. So far this year, the decline in revenue received so far has extended to sales tax collections.

The surge in revenue coincided with the highest inflation rates in 40 years and sales tax growth led the way, thanks to consumers spending federal pandemic relief aid along with higher wages and prices.

There is no evidence in the Missouri economy that would show the current decline in sales tax collections is anything but temporary, Haug said.

“People may be pulling back a little bit temporarily to pay off debt and things like that, but eventually the fundamentals are what’s going to drive it,” Haug said. 

Missouri added 62,400 jobs from July 2023 to July 2024 and personal income grew at an annual rate of 6.7% in the first quarter of the year. State GDP is up 1.6% on an annual basis and inflation, while slowing, continues, with prices nationally about 2.5% higher than a year ago.

“Long term, that’s what’s going to drive our revenues, and I think that’s still what’s going to drive our revenues,” Haug said.

With the end of pandemic restrictions, consumers are spending more on non-taxed services and travel, Farmer said, as well as substituting cheaper goods when they make purchases.

Missouri estimates its revenue each December for the remainder of the fiscal year and the coming year. A longer horizon for budget outlooks would make the state better prepared for possible trouble, she said.

“That is one of our key benchmarks for state fiscal health, and something that could be really helpful for assessing what these impacts on personal income tax and those cuts look like for the state down the line for revenue,” she said.

A longer-term outlook may be helpful, Deaton said, but experience shows that the short-term estimates aren’t particularly accurate.

“There have been times they were very close and other years when estimates missed badly,” Deaton said. “The further you extend out, the greater the margin of error.”

An apartment maintenance man changes the lock of an apartment after constables posted an eviction order in Phoenix. In Arizona, low wages, a housing shortage, and short-term rental and vacation homes are eating away at the stock of affordable housing for renters (John Moore/Getty Images).

There were 21 states where a majority of tenant households spent 30% or more of their incomes on rent and utilities last year, compared with just seven states in 2019.

Nationwide, about 22 million renters are shouldering that percentage. Anyone paying more than 30% is considered “cost burdened,” according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and may struggle to pay for other necessities, such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care.

Three presidential swing states had among the biggest increases in the share of renters who spent that much on housing: Arizona (to 54% from 46.5%), Nevada (to 57.4% from 51.1%) and Georgia (to 53.7% from 48.4%). The numbers are based on a Stateline analysis of American Community Survey data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Florida and Maine also saw large jumps.

In Arizona, low wages, a housing shortage, and short-term rental and vacation homes are eating away at the stock of affordable housing for renters, according to Alison Cook-Davis, associate director for research at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy.

“You’ve got people across the state kind of pulling their hair out, saying ‘I thought Arizona was supposed to be the affordable state,’” Cook-Davis said.

Rents in Arizona have shot up 40% to 60% in the last two years, she said. And the state’s eviction filings spiked 43% to 97,000 between 2022 and 2023, she said.

In places such as Arizona and Nevada where the housing bubble of the late 2000s left vacant houses, the construction of apartments and other homes has not caught up with population increases, Cook-Davis added.

A University of Nevada, Las Vegas, data brief reported in May that the Las Vegas area had the highest percentage of cost-burdened renters in the state, at 58.3%, more even than the New York City metro area (52.6%) or San Francisco metro area (48.9%).

Today’s newly released census figures showed that in addition to Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, the states with the highest jumps in the share of cost-burdened renters were Florida, which increased to 61.7% from 55.9%, and Maine, at 49.1% from 44%.

That jump left Florida as the state with the highest rate of cost-burdened renters. It was followed by Nevada (57.4%), Hawaii (56.7%), Louisiana (56.2%) and California (56.1%).

“Florida isn’t the deal it used to be,” said Christopher McCarty, director of the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research. “Florida still has disproportionately lower-paying jobs compared to other states, and rents are increasing compared to other states as well.”

The states with the lowest rates of cost-burdened renters as of 2023 were North Dakota (37%), Wyoming (41.2%), South Dakota (41.3%), Kansas (43.5%) and Nebraska (44%).

The share of cost-burdened renters increased since 2019 in every state except Vermont (down to 47.8% from 54%), Wyoming (down to 41.2% from 44%), North Dakota (down to 37% from 38%) and Rhode Island (down to 48.1% from 49%).

There’s hope for the future in Arizona and other states with increased home construction, Cook-Davis said.

“If you keep building, eventually this will sort itself out. But that could take years. It’s a slow process,” she said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

State Rep. Raychel Proudie, a Democrat from Ferguson, questions officials from the state education department about emails that show early knowledge of widespread problems with the child care subsidy program (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri House Budget Committee grilled state education officials  for over two hours Wednesday morning over the backlog of payments in the child care subsidy program.

House Budget Chair Cody Smith, a Republican from Carthage, pressed subsidy administrators about how the backlog may affect the state budget.

Officials were not able during the meeting to say how much money they owed providers for subsidized child care for the previous fiscal year, which ended June 30. The department had $84.3 million left in appropriations for fiscal year 2024 it can no longer spend.

This money must come out of appropriations for the current fiscal year, which may lead to a supplemental request, Smith noted with concern. Kari Monsees, commissioner of financial and administrative services for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said any additional appropriations could be pulled from remaining federal funding for the program that the legislature has not yet authorized the department to use.

And now, with discretionary funds expiring at the end of the month, DESE is writing checks to child-care providers as a one-time grant to use up the funds and try to keep struggling preschools open. The grants will vary from $5,000 to $55,000 based on the size of the facility.

“We wanted the stipend to be substantial. We thought it needed to be substantial, given the nature of the situation we are in,” Monsees told the committee.

It was the second day in a row that department leaders faced tough questions from lawmakers. On Tuesday, a parade of child-care providers testified to the House Education Committee about the massive backlog and how it is impacting their ability to keep their doors open. 

DESE took over the administration of the child care subsidy program from the Department of Social Services in December and hired a new service provider to cover the technology.

Since then, providers have been missing payments for many months, and families are waiting for long periods to get into the system. Some day care centers have closed their doors, and many have taken out loans to survive.

“I have people who are at the brink of going out of business. I have individuals who told families, ‘Unless you can come up with the full amount even though you’ve been approved for the subsidy, you cannot have your child here at our center,’” State Rep. Darin Chappell, a Rogersville Republican, said. “These people are trying to be cared for. 

“They are working poor, working middle class. We are not talking about people with our greatest amount of money. They wouldn’t have qualified if they were. These are the people in our communities that are the most at risk,” he continued

He wished the department would have paid, at the minimum, part of their obligation to providers by the end of June. Then, they wouldn’t have as much owed now.

Rep. Raychel Proudie, a Democrat from Ferguson, held printed copies of emails between DESE officials and contractors. Concerns about the system were known months before addressing it publicly.

“The assistant commissioner let them know that there was an issue over and over and over and over again before we ran out of the trial period,” Proudie said. “It was well known that this was a disaster, that she felt that the contractors weren’t taking it seriously.”

Pam Thomas, assistant commissioner for Missouri’s Office of Childhood, said she knew it was a “system wide” problem by the end of January.

“There were some hot fixes put in place immediately,” she said. “At that point in time, there were over 2,000 provider accounts and over 22,000 children. We had duplicates in the system because of missing data, and the volume by the end of January was very large.”

The department has a goal to fix the backlog by the end of October, but lawmakers expressed skepticism.

Rep. Kathy Steinhoff, a Democrat from Columbia, asked for weekly updates, preferably on a public platform.

Monsees said the department would “address that.”

This article has been updated at 2:43 p.m. to correct the status of fiscal year 2024 appropriations and officials’ knowledge of the amount owed to borrowers.

State Rep. Brad Pollitt, a Sedalia Republican, leads the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee hearing Tuesday afternoon (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Julita Harris has worked in child care for 47 years and has refused to shut down her business, Peter Rabbit Learning and Development Center in St. Joseph, despite mounting financial concerns.

The preschool has become a family affair, with her son Edwin helping with administrative tasks. Lately, that’s meant watching for payments from the state’s child subsidy grant program, which is a federal grant administered by the state to help low-income families afford child care.

But even he can’t understand the software, which doesn’t recognize all the subsidized children correctly. 

And the money from the state has gotten sparse since this past winter.

While she waits for the money she’s owed, her family is  nearly $70,000 in debt. The utilities to their home are shut off — anything to keep the lights on at the day care.

“We borrowed a lot of money, tied our (trucking business) up, used our social security and using other funding we had set aside that’s not there now,” Julita Harris said. “I don’t regret that, but it’s wrong.”

Payment backlog leaves Missouri child care providers desperate, on the brink of closing

She attributes the financial hardship to a change in the child care subsidy program, a federal grant administered by the state. The Department of Social Services administered the subsidy until December, when the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education took over and contracted with a new software provider to manage the program.

Since then, payments have been sparse, with providers around the state closing their doors and others taking out loans to stay in business. The Missouri House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, back in Jefferson City for veto session this week, called for an informational hearing about the problem.

Officials with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Childhood told committee members Tuesday that the backlog of payments to providers should be resolved by mid-October. The backlog of subsidy applications will be completed by the end of this month.

But the meeting’s attendees, which were largely child care providers, weren’t so sure. 

“The current plan talked about today is just not working,” said Lyndsey Elliott, director of Missouri S&T’s child development center. “I’ve been waiting for more than 60 days for payment resolution requests to even make it to a human.”

The center was missing more than $50,000 in subsidy payments from the state between the months of January and July, she said. Other providers had as much as $148,000 owed to them, they told the committee.

Kari Monsees, DESE’s commissioner of financial and administrative services, said there were “startup challenges” beginning the new system. The new system developed by World Wide Technology in St. Louis must interact with a preexisting attendance-tracking software, KinderConnect.

The interaction between the two software systems has caused duplication errors and created manual labor, Monsees said. The program by World Wide Technology hasn’t been meeting contractual obligations, he said, but it is past the 90-day warranty period.

The errors have created a backlog where providers are waiting months to receive payment, and parents’ applications are taking over a month to get approved.

Pam Thomas, assistant commissioner for Missouri’s Office of Childhood, said some records are taking “months” to be accepted and entered into the system when it should be instantaneous.

The department has hired 22 staff members to oversee eligibility, 10 to process payment and 14 hourly technicians to fix system issues at a combined cost of $4.8 million, Monsees said.

State Rep. Marlene Terry, a Democrat from St. Louis, said the state needs to “find a way to get these people their money.”

Rep. Crystal Quade, House Minority Leader and Democratic candidate for governor, asked why checks can’t be sent today.

“That is the kind of question that all of us were asking,” Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger said. “Let’s just get the money out the door. Let’s do it. But I have been learning on this job that those kinds of things are not that easy.”

Quade said the state legislature has already appropriated funds, so repeat providers should receive their checks without having to revalidate currently.

Monsees said he believes that fixing the issues with the system is a “more productive” use of staff time.

State Rep. Ed Lewis, a Republican from Moberly, suggested temporarily implementing an enrollment-based system instead of using attendance and paying the providers at the beginning of the month. These are goals of the department, as well as federal suggestions. He also said the department could pay based on average attendance to expedite payment.

Child care providers said an enrollment-based system would alleviate some of the pressure.

Rachel Wilfley, a program director at Kindercare, said parents fill out attendance using tablets. Some have technology problems, and attendance registers lower than kids’ actual turnout.

Others complained that the department had removed incentives for providers to take on a large amount of subsidy-funded children.

Diane Coleman, who owns Nanny’s Early Learning Center in Columbia, said she previously received a 30% bonus for having an enrollment with over 50% subsidy-funded kids and an additional 20% bonus for an accreditation program. Now, she said, she must choose one or the other.

This change alone is costing her $148,000. “We relied on that money,” she said.

Lacey Allen, owner of Learning and Fun Preschool in Kansas City, said losing the bonus has cost her $107,000.

“I have not received a correct payment since DESE took over,” she said.

Discussion of the problems plaguing the subsidy program isn’t over. The House Budget Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday morning to look into the issue as well.

Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger speaks during a State Board of Education meeting (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is asking for over $174 million in supplemental funding for this school year after receiving $1 billion less in appropriations compared to the previous year.

When the State Board of Education reviewed the budget bill approved by lawmakers in May, Board Chair Charlie Shields predicted that “the mother of all supplemental budgets” would come, possibly in a special session.

In its meeting Tuesday, the board approved a supplemental budget with a high request from the state in general revenue and a budget for next year with increasing costs associated with an education bill that was recently signed into law.

“We can’t assume that this is all going to be able to be funded. There’s going to be some really hard decisions and prioritization that has to happen throughout the process,” Kari Monsees, DESE’s commissioner of financial and administrative services, told the State Board of Education Tuesday. “That might be the understatement of the year,” he added.

The supplemental request includes over $100 million from the state’s general revenue fund. Last year, the department asked for under $2 million in state funding.

Nearly half of the general-revenue request — $48 million — is from changes to the formula that funds school districts and charter schools. The board did not discuss what changes drove the supplemental, but multiple additions to the formula will boost funding in its fiscal year 2026 request.

Other drivers of the expense is an increase in the early childhood special education caseload, which the department requests $20.8 million to manage.

“The last three or four years, we’ve been fairly flat in (early childhood special education enrollment) because of the covid impact,” Monsees said. “We had fewer students entering those programs for a few years, and so we didn’t need much in the way of additional funding. Well, that kind of came home to roost last year, and the numbers are up.”

The department is also requesting $15 million for a grant program it provides to schools with under 350 students. The education package passed by the legislature this year increased the size of the program, so the supplemental request is to meet that demand, Monsees said.

He noted that budget instructions for fiscal year 2026 direct the department to specify mandatory new decision items. For that, the department requests an increase of $810 million from this year’s appropriation of $8.73 billion, of which $719 million would come from the state’s general fund.

A sizable portion of the request is powered by expenses in the education package passed by lawmakers this year, which had a $230 million fiscal note for next year.

Requests from state agencies are due to the Missouri Office of Administration by Oct. 1.

A St. Louis liquor store hung a sign announcing Gov. Mike Parson's executive order to ban intoxicating hemp beverages (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is creating a new specialized unit to assist the state’s alcohol and tobacco regulators in cracking down on intoxicating hemp products, Bailey announced at a Capitol press conference Tuesday afternoon. 

The announcement comes after Gov. Mike Parson’s ban on these products hit a delay of up to six months.

The ban was supposed to take effect on Sept. 1, after Parson signed an executive order on Aug. 1 to remove all hemp-derived THC edibles and beverages from store shelves. However last month, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft rejected the emergency rules detailing how it would have been enforced.

With Missouri regulations in flux, what’s the difference between hemp and marijuana?

That meant regulators at the Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control didn’t have the authority to enforce the ban among stores that have licenses to sell liquor or tobacco products — which is where the vast majority of products are being sold, Parson said. 

Ashcroft’s action did not prevent the Department of Health and Senior Services’ regulators from investigating nearly 60 facilities, Parson said.

“DHSS investigations have confirmed our fears,” Parson said. “Product after product resembles popular snacks and candies that would be hard for me to determine that contained cannabis, let alone my five-year-old granddaughter.”

Because hemp isn’t a controlled substance like marijuana, there’s no state or federal law saying teenagers or children can’t buy products, such as delta-8 drinks, or that stores can’t sell them to minors, Parson said. 

And there’s no requirement to list potential effects on the label or test how much THC is actually in them. State lawmakers have failed to pass such requirements the last two years.

Parson said the main target of his order are companies that sell intoxicating hemp edibles that mimic popular candy. However, hemp industry leaders argue the order also bans products that aren’t attractive to children, have gone through lab testing and are only sold to customers 21 and up.

“The Missouri Hemp Trade Association agrees that illegal products should be removed from store shelves,” said Craig Katz, spokesman for the association. “But DHSS is casting such a wide net that it is not differentiating legitimate products from bad products, and in the process, it is trampling on the constitution and ruining small businesses.”

The association has decried DHSS’ enforcement of these products. It filed a lawsuit on Aug. 30 in Cole County Circuit Court in hopes of stopping the governor’s ban through a preliminary injunction. The association argues the products are legal and state law prohibits regulators from deeming them as “adulterated.”

“DHSS must stop seizing and destroying products that are legal and follow the letter of the law,” Katz said.

At the Tuesday press conference, Bailey said his office will create a “dedicated electronic repository” for the Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control to submit actionable referrals to his office. The division will be responsible for “investigating its licensees, collecting evidence of deceptive marketing practices,” Bailey said. 

Bailey’s specialized new unit within his office’s Consumer Protection Division will work with the ATC to offer legal support, he said. His office will use its authority under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act to bring legal action against licensees who continue prohibited practices related to unregulated psychoactive cannabis products, he said. 

“The ATC will assist by making its investigators available as witnesses for legal proceedings resulting from actionable referrals,” Bailey said. “Our enforcement toolkit will be robust from cease-and-desist letters and investigations to subpoenas and lawsuits to referrals for criminal prosecution where appropriate.”

He believes this partnership will lead to a significant reduction in these products.

“We’re committed to keeping unsafe products away from our kids,” Bailey said, “and ensuring that those who break the law are held accountable.”

This story was updated at 4:15 p.m. to include the Missouri Hemp Trade Association’s comment.

Hemp and marijuana are essentially terms the government uses to distinguish between the part of the cannabis plant that can get you high when smoked – that’s marijuana – and the part that can’t — that’s hemp (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has vowed to run intoxicating hemp products out of Missouri, banning their sale and threatening penalties to any business that makes or sells them.

In many ways, it’s the latest showdown between the marijuana industry — which has operated legally in Missouri since 2018 but is outlawed federally — and the hemp industry, whose products were legalized by the 2018 Farm Bill.

But at the end of the day, what’s the difference between intoxicating hemp products and intoxicating marijuana products?

Hemp and marijuana are essentially terms the government uses to distinguish between the part of the cannabis plant that can get you high when smoked – that’s marijuana – and the part that can’t — that’s hemp. 

It all boils down to their THC content, or their psychoactive component.

Any part of the plant containing 0.3% or less THC by dry weight is defined as hemp. That means if you were to smoke a joint of dried hemp, you shouldn’t get high. 

And that’s why in 2018 Congress removed hemp and hemp seeds from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) schedule of controlled substances as part of the Farm Bill.

However, there’s a big complicating factor with a definition based on dried weight. Today’s intoxicating edibles, pre-rolled joints and other products – using both marijuana or hemp – often incorporate extracts of highly concentrated THC, or distillates. 

Laboratories can take a large amount of hemp and extract enough THC to make intoxicating edibles and drinks with 5 to 20 mg of THC in them. Up until the governor’s Sept. 1 ban on these products, they were found in regular Missouri gas stations, stores and bars. 

When THC is extracted in this way, there’s no way for regulators to tell whether the THC came from hemp or marijuana. 

Hemp is full of CBD, a nonpyschoactive cannabinoid that helps people relax and often found in massage oils and sleep aids.

Some companies synthetically convert CBD to THC to make their products. CBD can be converted into delta-8 THC, as well as delta-9 THC, using a solvent, acid and heat to produce higher concentrations of THC than those found naturally in the plant.

Leaders of the Cannabis Regulator Association have asked Congress to close “the 0.3% loophole” in the pending Farm Bill to prevent intoxicating hemp products from going unregulated, according to the association’s statement last summer.

While the threshold of 0.3% delta-9 THC by weight is a small amount of THC in a hemp plant, when applied to things like chocolate bars or beverages that can weigh significantly more, 0.3% by weight can amount to hundreds of milligrams of THC, the association said.

For example, a 50-gram chocolate bar at 0.3% THC would have around 150 mg of THC — 30 times the standard 5 mg THC dose established by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. A family sized pack of cookies weighing 20 oz can contain around 1,700 mg of THC using the 0.3% THC threshold.

Hemp industry leaders don’t want to see these intoxicating products banned. Instead, they’ve suggested the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau handle their regulation. That’s also been the case locally in Missouri. 

States have passed a patchwork of different laws to attempt to regulate the products until the new Farm Bill is passed. Many of the laws have been challenged by the hemp industry, and federal judges have differing opinions on whether states can legally regulate these hemp products without Congress changing current federal law. 

Parson signed an executive order on Aug. 1 banning intoxicating hemp products and threatening penalties to any establishment with a Missouri liquor license or that sells food products for selling them. It also bans companies from producing hemp-derived THC beverages in Missouri.

The Missouri Hemp Trade Association filed a lawsuit two days before the order took effect, asking for a state judge for a preliminary injunction. 

Missouri is currently shining a light on the THCA loophole. After more than 60,000 cannabis products were recalled last year, a company has revealed that it was importing THCA extracted from the hemp plant and putting it in marijuana products — arguing that THCA is not actually intoxicating until it is heated, so it doesn’t count as total THC. 

CANNRA told Congress that despite some states’ efforts to address this issue, many hemp businesses are selling “THCA hemp” flower that contains less than 0.3% delta-9 THC but has a total THC concentration of 15% to 20%. 

“This so-called ‘hemp’ is indistinguishable from marijuana flower,” the association stated.

Gov. Mike Parson speaks at his Capitol press conference announcing Executive Order 24-10 that bans the sale of intoxicating hemp products in Missouri "until such time approved sources can be regulated by the FDA or State of Missouri through legislative action," he said (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

State health regulators walked into the busy Prime Fuel gas station in Sedalia on Tuesday morning and asked the clerk if there were any intoxicating hemp-derived THC edibles in the store — products the governor banned as of Sept. 1.

The two employees of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services learned the store had already taken the products off the shelves, according to the regulators’ report on the visit, and they were being stored in a box in the office.

The report says regulators called the owner and he voluntarily agreed to destroy the products. 

But that’s not how the owner describes the incident, said Craig Katz, spokesman for the Missouri Hemp Trade Association. 

“He seemed to be forced into it,” Katz said. 

Katz said the owner had boxed up the products so he could return them to the wholesaler for a refund, and he explained this to the regulators. Instead, they told him his manager had to pour bleach over about $5,000 worth of product, Katz said, a process that took two hours.

Missouri hemp leaders file suit to halt governor’s ban on hemp THC products

On Wednesday, the Missouri Hemp Trade Association’s attorney Chuck Hatfield sent a letter to the department’s general counsel saying the regulators deprived the owner of his right to tell his side of the story to a judge.

“The law is extremely clear that DHSS is not authorized to destroy product, or to demand that others do so, without a court order,” Hatfield wrote. 

State regulators have visited 44 establishments as of 4 p.m. Thursday to inspect for the banned products, said Lisa Cox, spokesperson for the department. 

Of the 44 facilities, regulators found “unregulated psychoactive cannabis products” during inspections at 23 of them, Cox said. 

“Four facilities have refused to embargo or discard products,” she said. “The remaining facilities agreed to embargo and/or discard products. At this time, we have taken no court action.” 

Cox declined comment on Hatfield’s letter.

The association says it has heard of three reports of “raids” by state health regulators on stores selling intoxicating hemp products, mainly edibles. Regulators asked owners or clerks to sign a document stating they agree with the destruction of the products, Katz said.

“I can only describe what is happening to small business owners in Missouri as disturbing,” Katz said.

The association filed a lawsuit on Aug. 30 in Cole County Circuit Court to stop the governor’s ban on all intoxicating hemp food and drinks from taking effect Sunday. The association argues the products are legal and state law prohibits regulators from deeming them as “adulterated.”

On Aug. 1, Gov. Mike Parson signed an executive order to remove all hemp-derived THC edibles and beverages from store shelves and threatening penalties to any establishment that continues selling them.

Because hemp isn’t a controlled substance like marijuana, there’s no state or federal law saying teenagers or children can’t buy products, such as delta-8 drinks, or that stores can’t sell them to minors, Parson said. 

And there’s no requirement to list potential effects on the label or test how much THC is actually in them. Hemp industry leaders themselves have pushed for such regulations, but state lawmakers have failed to pass proposals the last two years.

Parson said the main target of his order are companies that sell intoxicating hemp edibles that mimic popular candy. However, hemp industry leaders argue the order also bans products that aren’t attractive to children, have gone through lab testing and are only sold to customers 21 and up.

The order directs regulators “to identify food that contains unregulated psychoactive cannabis products as deleterious, poisonous and adulterated.” 

The department has the authority to do this, Parson’s order states, because of a state law regarding the process to deem a food product adulterated.

However, Hatfield notes the same law also states that, “a food shall not be considered adulterated solely for containing industrial hemp, or an industrial hemp commodity or product.”

That line was added to Missouri’s law in 2018, after Congress legalized hemp as part of the federal Farm Bill. It was part of a Missouri House bill that brought the state’s definition of hemp in alignment with the federal government’s. 

There has been no movement on the lawsuit since the association filed it last week.

This story was corrected at 2:30 p.m. to identify Craig Katz as spokesman for the Missouri Hemp Trade Association.

Residents assess a fallen tree in their Houston neighborhood after Hurricane Beryl swept through the area on July 8. As climate change has fueled more intense and frequent natural disasters, emergency responders face challenges from burnout to budgets (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

AUSTIN, Texas — Four days after residents of coastal Houston celebrated the Fourth of July with the traditional parades, backyard barbecues and fireworks, Beryl came calling.

The Category 1 hurricane, weakened from an earlier Category 5, slammed into Texas’ largest city on July 8 — an unusual midsummer arrival. Delivering one of the worst direct hits on Houston in decades, Beryl flooded streets, ripped down trees and left thousands without power, causing multiple heat-related deaths during a period of triple-digit temperatures.

Superlatives like “worst,” “biggest” and “most” increasingly sprinkle news accounts in disaster coverage. Even as residents of Houston deal with Beryl’s lingering impact, farmers and ranchers in the Texas Panhandle are still trying to recover from the largest recorded wildfire in the state’s history, a February inferno that consumed more than a million acres of land, an estimated 138 homes and businesses, and more than 15,000 head of cattle. Three area residents were killed.

Climate change has rewritten the script for disasters, leaving communities vulnerable to weather patterns that don’t abide by schedules or the rules of past behavior. As a result, hundreds of thousands of emergency responders are facing unprecedented challenges —from burnout to post-traumatic stress disorder to tighter budgets — as they battle hurricanes, windstorms, wildfires, floods and other natural disasters that are more frequent and intense than those in the past.

“Everybody’s strapped,” said Russell Strickland, Maryland’s secretary of emergency management, who also serves as president of the National Emergency Management Association, or NEMA, the professional group for state emergency management directors.

Agencies are grappling with “stagnant budgets and staff shortages” at a time when they need more money and people to deal with disasters and confront other demands, Strickland said. In the 1980s, states averaged just over three $1 billion weather disasters a year in cost-adjusted dollars, according to the association. In each of the past three years, the average has been 20. Last year, the nation was hammered by a record 28 of those billion-dollar catastrophes.

In a 2023 white paper, NEMA reported that “the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing number of back-to-back disasters have resulted in disaster fatigue and burnout.” It also reported that current funding levels for most emergency management agencies are “wholly inadequate to address the types of events that states are experiencing along with expanding mission areas.”

The nation’s disaster response system is a massive multilevel network that includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is charged with dispatching hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants to battered states and communities, and counterpart state disaster agencies that advise or report to the governor. County and city governments also operate disaster and homeland security units.

Disaster officials throughout the country acknowledged that natural disasters such as wildfires, tornadoes and floods have increased and intensified as a result of climate change. Moreover, disaster agencies are being tasked with nontraditional assignments such as cybersecurity, opioid addiction, homelessness and school safety.

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report published in May of last year said that state demands for FEMA assistance have “increased with more frequent and complex disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and the COVID-19 pandemic” but that “FEMA has had trouble building a workforce to meet these needs.”

Budgets for state emergency management are funded by state legislatures and vary widely. The biggest states allocate a half-billion dollars while the smallest set aside closer to a half-million, according to a NEMA examination of state emergency management budgets.

California’s emergency management unit, attached to the governor’s office with nearly 2,000 employees, had the largest budget as of the 2022 fiscal year, with more than $530 million, according to the NEMA report. California is the nation’s largest state with 39 million people. By contrast, Vermont, which has less than a million people, had a fiscal year 2022 budget of $650,000 to fund 34 emergency management personnel, according to NEMA.

Texas, whose emergency management division teams works with the governor’s office and is based in the Texas A&M University System, had one of the largest budgets, $33.5 million to fund close to 500 employees, as of the 2022 fiscal year.

State emergency management agencies, which also receive money from the federal government, including FEMA, constitute the central nerve center during major disasters, typically working from a strategically located emergency operations center that includes representatives from various other agencies. Real-time information begins pouring in hours before the crisis, resulting in an all-points response that ultimately encompasses legions of state and local police, sheriff’s deputies, EMS, firefighters, relief agencies and a long list of other responders.

Heavier strain on emergency workers

As he took a late-morning break from battling a recent 11-acre brush and grass fire near Smithville, a small town about 50 miles southeast of Austin, 36-year-old state firefighter Billy Leathers reflected on his 18-year career with the Texas A&M Forest Service, which helps local fire departments fight outdoor blazes. A charred grassy hillside stretched behind him.

Leathers is a third-generation firefighter who followed his parents and grandfather into the job.

“That’s the only one that I found that I liked,” he said of being a firefighter, adding that he and his co-workers “wouldn’t do it if we didn’t like helping people.” But he acknowledges that the increasing pace “does kind of start to run you a little bit ragged towards the middle of the season.”

The job increasingly involves more than fighting fires.

In 2020, Tennessee responders confronted a bombing on Christmas Day in downtown Nashville, when a 63-year-old conspiracy theorist apparently intent on suicide parked his recreational vehicle near an AT&T facility and ignited an explosion that took his own life, injured eight others and triggered dayslong communication outages.

Tennessee also has faced a relentless surge of more traditional disasters, said Patrick C. Sheehan, who has directed the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency since 2016. In the 1980s, Tennessee had only three major natural disasters caused by severe storms and flooding. Since January 2014, the state has had 24 major disaster declarations.

“We’re having incredible, record-breaking rainfall,” Sheehan said. “We’re having record-breaking cold. We’re having record-breaking heat. We’re having tornadoes earlier and later.”

Sheehan and other emergency managers point out that climate change’s continually shifting weather patterns now make it almost impossible to precisely predict a so-called season for storms such as hurricanes and tornadoes. As illustrated by Hurricane Beryl, coastal storms are increasingly arriving earlier and in greater strength.

“We expect weaker hurricanes to decrease in frequency and stronger ones to increase in frequency,” said John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist.

More residents, more danger

Texas’ chief disaster responder is Nim Kidd, a former San Antonio firefighter who heads the Texas Division of Emergency Management and who is typically alongside Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott during briefings on tornadoes, fires, floods or other weather events.

The division was formerly attached to the Texas Department of Public Safety, the state police force, and was transferred to the Texas A&M System in 2019, putting it under the same umbrella as firefighters in the Texas A&M Forest Service. Kidd is also A&M vice chancellor for disaster and emergency services.

Forest Service Director Al Davis and Deputy Director Wes Moorehead said the wildfire danger in Texas has steadily increased with the state’s surging growth as more and more people migrate to the state, often settling in attractive areas close to trees and brush that become vulnerable to ignition during drought and triple-digit heat.

“They like a little bit of nature around them,” said Moorehead. “They want some trees, some grasses and vegetation. And in Texas that grass, that vegetation, those trees — that is fuel for a wildfire.”

The state’s disaster and firefighting operations came under scrutiny during a state House of Representatives hearing on the catastrophic Panhandle fires, which started Feb. 26 after a downed power line set off the blaze that ultimately advanced 95 miles, reaching into Oklahoma.

Local concerns focused heavily on delays in engaging aircraft into the firefighting effort, since the state doesn’t have its own firefighting fleet and relies on private contractors. The state’s first order for aerial fire-suppression equipment from the federal government wasn’t made until 24 hours after the so-called Smokehouse Creek fire erupted, the investigative committee found.

Kidd, testifying at the hearing, endorsed the creation of a state-owned firefighting fleet, which also was recommended by the five-member panel.

The Panhandle investigation also underscored the importance of volunteer fire departments in augmenting government emergency response agencies. Committee members found that volunteer departments are “grossly underfunded,” further undercutting emergency preparedness.

Many first responders say they tolerate the danger, stress and low pay because they want to serve, said Moorehead, of the Texas forest service.

“When you’ve got people with the drive and the willingness and the service mindset to go out and do right and do good for the citizens of the state,” he said, “you can overcome shortages like you’d never imagine.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

Maricruz Dominguez, left, and Maria Dominguez visit a memorial marking the spot where 31-year-old police officer Bianca Quintana, their sister and daughter, respectively, was hit and killed by a car Aug. 14 while walking on South Coors Boulevard near her mother’s house in Bernalillo County, N.M. Pedestrians die at the highest rates in Western and Southern rural areas and small cities (Tim Henderson/Stateline).

BERNALILLO COUNTY, N.M. — Bianca Quintana was just taking a walk in the early morning dark near her mother’s house on South Coors Boulevard. There, the city streets of Albuquerque give way to feed stores and irrigation ditches, and the sounds of chickens and crickets mingle with high-speed traffic noise.

Quintana, a 31-year-old mother of two, liked to walk to stay in shape for softball, her passion, and for her job as an Albuquerque police officer.

On Aug. 14, her mother found her lifeless body and the bright, police-issued flashlight she used for work, set to flashing to draw attention. Quintana might have tried to cross the highway, possibly to avoid weeds or a snake in her path, her mother and sister think, when a hit-and-run driver took her life. There are no sidewalks or streetlights nearby and the “boulevard” is really a four-lane highway with 55 mph speed limits and cars often going much faster. Police are still looking for the driver.

In some ways, the tragedy is typical of pedestrian deaths at a time when they have dropped nationally but are still higher than before the pandemic. Pedestrians die at the highest rates not in brightly lit big cities where sidewalks are crowded with office workers, but in Western and Southern rural areas and small cities where poverty forces more people to walk on dark highways with inadequate sidewalks or shoulders.

New Mexico has the highest rate as a state at 6.1 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 residents as of 2023. The state also led the nation before the pandemic; its rate was 4.7 in 2019, according to a Stateline analysis.

And across the country, the 33 counties with the highest rates — each with more than twice the national rate of 2.5 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 — are mostly in the South and West.

Many big cities, including Los Angeles, Phoenix and Houston, have higher numbers of pedestrian deaths, but lower rates per resident. The numbers are based on a Stateline analysis of preliminary death records kept by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More deaths on ‘stroads’

Julian Padilla, a transportation planner for the Mid-Region Council of Governments in New Mexico that includes Bernalillo County, calls roads like Coors Boulevard “stroads” — balancing the incompatible roles of streets with foot traffic and roads meant to push cars through as fast as possible.

Stroads, he said, can be urban as well as rural, as with Albuquerque’s historic Route 66, which runs through the city as Central Avenue and claims an outsize share of pedestrian deaths.

“These thoroughfares are the worst for the drivers and the worst for pedestrians,” Padilla said. “Drivers aren’t expecting to see pedestrians, and pedestrians aren’t expecting the speed of the cars and might perceive it incorrectly, especially in the dark, when most of these accidents happen.”

The fast-driving and rule-skirting motorist habits since the COVID-19 pandemic have drawn plenty of attention nationally. State and local officials are working to prevent pedestrian deaths with solutions such as brighter lighting, crosswalks with automatic flashing signs and “road diets” that cut down the number of traffic lanes.

Nationwide, the number of pedestrian deaths dropped last year after three straight years of increases, but the overall numbers are still 14% higher than 2019’s figures, according to a recent Governors Highway Safety Association report. The report was based on preliminary information from state highway safety offices.

From the Stateline analysis of death records, more than three-fourths of the counties with the highest rates from 2018 to 2023 have persistently high poverty rates above 20%.

Poverty also marks many of the areas within counties where most deaths occur. In Bernalillo County’s South Valley area, where Quintana’s mother lives, the poverty rate is about 21%. And in census tracts in Albuquerque’s International District, a neglected stretch of the old U.S. Route 66 meant for interstate travel, the rate tops out at almost 60%.

‘More likely to be walking’

Advocates for safer streets say poverty is a known risk factor in pedestrian deaths, as people without cars often get around on foot and must contend with speeding cars on dark arterial roads at night.

Rural Washington County, Mississippi, with a poverty rate of 29%, has one of the highest pedestrian death rates at 9.6 per 100,000 residents through last year. The county has seen even more tragedies this year, including an 18-year-old college student who died on a road at 3:45 a.m. in April, and a 36-year-old woman who was killed on a highway at about 5:50 a.m. in July.

“This has been extremely tragic, and we’re all shocked. This weighs heavy on us,” said Carl McGee, president of the Washington County Board of Supervisors. “It seems people are walking late on these roads and they’re not being seen by drivers. We’re meeting to go over ways of making sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Florida has three counties, all considered high poverty, among those with the highest pedestrian fatality rates: Suwannee County, west of Jacksonville; Escambia County, in the panhandle near the Alabama border; and Putnam County, southwest of St. Augustine. A state pedestrian safety improvement plan, begun in 2021 in the city of Pensacola in Escambia County, added mid-block lighted crosswalks and lowered the speed limit from 35 to 30 mph on 2.2 miles of busy West Cervantes Street where pedestrian deaths are common.

Fatality rates are five times higher for low-income neighborhoods compared with high-income neighborhoods, according to a report this year from Smart Growth America, which follows pedestrian fatality trends. And death rates increase as incomes drop.

“People with lower incomes are more likely to be walking, and walking in the most dangerous areas,” the report concludes.

McKinley County, New Mexico, has the highest rate in the state and the third highest in the country at about 18 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 population. McKinley — like the others in the top three, Oglala Lakota County in South Dakota and Apache County in Arizona — has large numbers of people walking and hitchhiking on highways.

In McKinley, a state project will add more lighting and crosswalks to U.S. Route 491, a route often used to reach communities in Arizona, Colorado and northern New Mexico. It will also add fencing and barriers to I-40 to deter pedestrians from crossing the high-speed highway as a shortcut to a local shopping center, said Luke Smith, an engineer with the New Mexico Department of Transportation.

“Improving pedestrian safety is one of the main driving factors in our design,” Smith said. The $16.4 million project, which includes other roadwork, is in the design phase and scheduled to start in 2027.

Even in urban areas of New Mexico, experts say, roadways built solely for cars can become death traps when low-income residents must cross them to get to neighbors and stores. An example is Albuquerque’s International District.

The road is six lanes but has little traffic, and the old motels that once beckoned to tourists along Route 66 have fallen down, leaving only ghostly, faded signs, or are used as shelters for the unhoused residents who often sleep on the neighborhood’s streets. The area has about 5% of the city’s population but more than 20% of its pedestrian fatalities, according to the University of New Mexico’s Geospatial and Population Studies department, a state-funded research group that analyzes pedestrian fatalities.

“That’s the problem with our Western roads in general, is they were never meant for foot traffic,” said Jessica Bloom, a research scientist in the department.

The International District has been slow to draw attention because so many residents are poor and unhoused, said Christopher Ramirez, director of Together for Brothers, a statewide advocacy group supporting boys and young men of color.

“We’ve created a place in Albuquerque where people experiencing homelessness are congregating, but we haven’t seen the resources yet to make sure people can be safely on the streets,” Ramirez said.

The city of Albuquerque plans to implement more pedestrian safety measures that have worked well on other, more gentrified parts of Central Avenue, such as Nob Hill. There, three lanes of traffic have been condensed to one as a so-called road diet, with a bus-only lane and a dedicated bike path filling out the roadway, said Valerie Hermanson, coordinator for Albuquerque’s Vision Zero program. Vision Zero is an international strategy to eliminate traffic fatalities and severe injuries that many American cities have adopted.

With only one lane of cars, pedestrians should be able to cross more safely, especially with new crosswalks that flash warning lights as pedestrians cross.

Among plans for the area: using artificial intelligence to detect pedestrians about to step into the street that would then warn drivers with flashing lights, and more lighting on sidewalks to help walkers navigate and make them more visible.

Streetlights for cars, not pedestrians

West of Albuquerque on Coors Boulevard, where Quintana died, there were 29 pedestrian fatalities from 2018 to 2022, the latest available numbers from the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System based on police reports.

An $8 million state project is planned to improve pedestrian safety with lower speed limits, new sidewalks, raised medians, crosswalks and lights on Coors Boulevard. But it ends almost 4 miles north of Quintana’s mother’s house, limited to an area with chain stores, gas stations and restaurants that make pedestrian safety more pressing.

A Mid-Region Council of Governments report stressed the importance of better lighting and sidewalks on rural high-speed roads as well as on Central Avenue in Albuquerque.

“Unfortunately, the lighting infrastructure that is available along the street tends to be geared towards vehicular traffic and does not provide adequate lighting for other modes of travel,” the group’s report, approved in August, concluded. Lighting more geared to pedestrian needs “would make a great impact on reducing fatalities.”

Quintana’s sister Maricruz Dominguez and her mother, Maria Dominguez, made a roadside memorial for her, as is traditional in Hispanic cultures. Known as “descansos,” or “resting places,” in New Mexico, they are protected under state law, which prohibits damaging them.

For Quintana, the memorial includes a metal cross with the inscription “Mother, Daughter, Sister, Auntie & Friend,” flowers and balloons, and a yellow softball inscribed with her softball team number, 22, and “We love you B!” There are benches for visitors.

“The kids just don’t know how to process this yet. We’re taking it day by day,” said Maricruz Dominguez. “The only light here is way down the street, and why do cars have to go so fast here? I’ve flown through here at 70. I’m not innocent. But I don’t see why the speed has to be so high.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

A family enters the Missouri Department of Social Services resource center in Columbia on April 18, 2023 (Clara Bates/Missouri Independent).

Missouri’s backlog of unresolved child abuse and neglect cases has fallen by more than 80% since January, with officials anticipating it will be eliminated by the end of the year. 

From last September to January, there were over 10,000 open child abuse and neglect cases each month that had been languishing for over 45 days, raising concerns about child safety. 

Most of those cases were in St. Louis. 

That number has fallen every month this year, according to records obtained by The Independent through the Missouri Sunshine Law, and now stands at 1,869 open cases statewide as of July. 

“I’m very proud of our team,” said Darrell Missey, director of Children’s Division, Missouri’s child welfare agency. “They’ve worked really hard to take care of that backlog.”

There were over 6,000 open cases in St. Louis alone in January, which dropped to 74 in July.

Missey said the Children’s Division is almost fully staffed now — a “remarkable turnaround” from the hundreds of vacancies it had in recent years. 

“It shows what can happen when you start getting enough staff, and I think they’ve done a terrific job,” Missey said.

Jessica Seitz, executive director of Missouri Network Against Child Abuse, an organization that represents child advocacy centers across the state, said she is “really pleased” to see the improvement.

“The division turned an immediate eye toward this and made this a priority,” she said. 

Seitz hopes the cases were thoroughly investigated before being closed, noting that there are “kids behind every case, and so it’s my sincere hope that safety remained a priority as we looked at closing these.”

State law requires Children’s Division staff to investigate and complete assessments for child abuse and neglect hotline reports within a 45 day window unless there is good cause for a delay. 

Investigations typically include speaking to the hotline caller, going to a family’s house, interviewing the child and family members and checking the safety of the house. When the investigation is complete, staff issue a report determining whether the finding was substantiated or unsubstantiated. 

Around 5% of investigations result in a substantiated conclusion of abuse or neglect. Those children can be removed from their homes and taken into foster care.

But staffing issues over the last few years resulted in huge caseloads and delays getting those investigations done and reports out the door, especially in St. Louis.

As St. Louis Public Radio reported last year, the regional backlog spurred concern among advocates and lawmakers that children could be unsafe. 

The state worked with the consulting firm Change & Innovation Agency to focus on the St. Louis area workload, according to a July press release from the Missouri Department of Social Services. 

One of the consultants, Bill Bott, is quoted as saying among the several states and welfare offices the group has worked with, “St. Louis was, by far, the hardest hit by this national capacity crisis.”

The long-open investigations can also cause families stress, as the threat of having their kids taken away looms for months.

And high caseloads have contributed to a cycle of turnover in Children’s Division.

Now, the majority of overdue cases — 1,136 cases in July — are from Kansas City. 

Seitz said she is “alarmed” that that number is still high, but acknowledged it’s much lower than it was. Last September, that stood at over 3,000.

The agency has long struggled more to find staff in metropolitan parts of the state because the salaries aren’t adjusted for location-based cost-of-living. Entry level child welfare workers start at salaries of just over $44,000. They can make more in Illinois, Missey said.

The agency is getting to a place where the open cases are open due to an ongoing investigation, Missey said, and not just because they’re having trouble keeping up.

“All the backlog,” he said, “should be resolved by the end of the year, or close to it.” 

Government requirements and culture can make upgrading aging computer systems difficult, experts say (Getty Images).

Idaho’s state government was facing a problem.

In 2018, its 86 state agencies were operating with a mix of outdated, mismatched business systems that ran internal processes like payroll and human resources. Some of the programs dated back to the 1980s, and many were written in programming languages they don’t teach in engineering schools anymore.

The state made a clear choice — one many other state and city governments have made in recent years — they overhauled their entire IT suite with one cloud-based software.

But since the $121 million project, called Luma, rolled out in July 2023, things have not gone as planned.

Luma has created procedural and data errors and caused “disruptions in day-to-day processes and [is] impacting overall productivity,” said an audit that was provided to legislators in June.

Five months into its launch last year, the Luma project was still receiving criticism from employees, organizations that work with the state’s government agencies and from top state legislators.

Speaker of the Idaho House of Representatives Mike Moyle said in a November 2023 Legislative Council meeting that the state might want to come up with an exit plan for the platform — “No offense, this thing is a joke and it’s not working,” he told legislators.

Idaho’s Luma project is just one of many government IT overhauls that hasn’t gone as smoothly as city and state officials may have aimed for.

As few as 13% of large government IT projects succeed, a field guide by the U.S. General Services Administration’s 18F team said. The group of designers, software engineers, strategists and product managers work within the GSA to help government agencies buy and build tech products.

State projects, the org’s report says, can face the most challenges because state departments often don’t have sufficient knowledge about modern software development and their procurement procedures can be outdated for what’s needed to properly vet huge software solutions.

“Every year, the federal government matches billions of dollars in funding to state and local governments to maintain and modernize IT systems used to implement federal programs such as Medicaid, child welfare benefits, housing, and unemployment insurance,” 18F’s State Software Budgeting Handbook said. “Efforts to modernize those legacy systems fail at an alarmingly high rate and at great cost to the federal budget.”

Why are governments overhauling long-standing IT systems?

Most of the time, as in the case of Idaho, a state is seeking to overhaul a series of aging, inflexible and ineffective systems with one more modernized approach.

Each year, governments need to budget and allocate resources to maintain existing systems and to get them to work with other business operation systems. In 2019, 80% of the $90 billion federal IT spending budget went toward maintenance of legacy software.

Giant projects, like Washington state’s proposed $465 million replacement program of its legacy systems, may likely be replacing the millions spent every year to keep up old systems.

Aging software systems aren’t just awkward or inefficient to use, but they can also pose cybersecurity risks. Departments that use systems built with older programming languages that are going out of style will struggle to find employees who can maintain them, experts say. Departments might also struggle to get newer business systems to integrate with older ones, which causes the potential for hiccups in operation.

A closer look at Luma 

Idaho’s State Controller’s Office found itself in that position six years ago when it sought to overhaul all its business operation systems. Scott Smith, the chief deputy controller, and project manager of Luma, said they were trying to maintain systems that they were losing technical support for.

Each agency had built their own homegrown system, or had procured their own up until that point. There was a desire to modernize operations statewide and do an audit on return on investment for taxpayers. The project got the name Luma, an attempt for the state to “enlighten, or shine a light on” its existing systems and update them, Smith said.

After a procurement process, the state chose enterprise resource planning software company Infor, and replaced a collection of separate systems that ran payroll, budgets, financial management and human resources with one cloud-based solution. Many of these legacy systems dated back to 1987 and 1988, and were becoming vulnerable to security threats, Smith said.

Reports by the Idaho Capital Sun found that since its rollout last summer, the new system didn’t correctly distribute $100 million in interest payments to state agencies, it double paid more than $32 million in Idaho Department of Health and Welfare payments, and it created payroll issues or delays for state employees. A nonprofit that works with the state said it wasn’t paid for months, and only received payments when they sought attention from state legislators and local media, and upon launch day in July 2023, only about 50% of employees had completed basic training on the system.

In February, Moyle and a bipartisan group of eight legislators asked an independent, nonpartisan state watchdog agency called the Office of Performance Evaluations to look into Luma’s software. And in June, a Legislative Services Audit found system lacked a range of information technology controls for data validation and security.

The performance evaluation report isn’t due until October, but Ryan Langrill, interim director of the OPE, said in August that they were told to make the Luma study its priority.

“Our goal is to identify what went well and what didn’t and to offer recommendations for future large scale IT projects,” Langrill said.

Smith told States Newsroom that with any large-scale IT project, there’s always going to be difficulties during the first year of implementation. Idaho is the first to do a rollout of this kind, where all business processes went live at once in a multi-cloud environment, he said.

They developed requirements for the system for several years before its rollout last year and spent time in system integration testing with experts from Infor.

“Once you put it into the real world, right? There’s still a lot for you to understand,” Smith said. “And while the system itself can provide you the functionality, there’s still a lot of inherent business processes that need to be adapted to the new system.”

Each agency had to evaluate their own internal processes, Smith said. Large-scale departments like military, transportation and health and human services are going to operate differently than smaller ones like libraries and the historical society. Trying to provide a singular system to support each facet of government is going to come with its challenges, he said.

Human error has also likely played a role in the rollout, Smith said. As employees have to learn the new system and make changes to years-long processes, they’ll have to take time to change, adjust, refine and improve.

Smith said he hopes the Office of Performance Evaluations looks at the Luma project with a “holistic” approach, going back to source selections and analyzing what could have been done better with everything from implementation to the development of requirements for the technology.

“We’ll obviously look at those results and see where we can make improvements, but it can also be used, I hope, as a source document for others…” Smith said. “Every state’s going through a system modernization effort, that they can use to help improve their potential for success in their projects.”

Other challenging rollouts 

A similar situation is brewing in Maine with the rollout of its child welfare system, called Katahdin — named after a mountain in Baxter State Park.

The state sought to overhaul its child welfare database used by the Office of Child and Family Services back in 2019 when its older system began losing functionality, the Maine Morning Star reported. It aimed to “modernize and improve” technical support for staff that work with families, and the department received eight proposals from software companies in 2021, but only three met eligibility criteria.

The state ultimately chose Deloitte, and spent nearly $30 million on the project, which went live in January 2022. But employees say their workflow hasn’t been as effective since.

Caseworkers have described it as cumbersome, saying they need to use dozens of steps and duplicative actions just to complete a single task, and that files saved in the system later go missing. It’s additional stress on a department that faces staff vacancies and long waitlists to connect families with resources, the Maine Morning Star reported in March.

In her annual report in 2023, Christine Alberi, the state’s child welfare ombudsman, wrote “Katahdin is negatively affecting the ability of child welfare staff to effectively do their work, and therefore keep children safe.”

Katahdin, too, received recommendations from a bipartisan oversight committee to improve the system earlier this year. Recommendations included factors beyond just the software, like improvements to the court system, recruiting more staff and addressing burnout.

States Newsroom sought to determine if any of the recommendations had been implemented, and to confirm that the department was still using Katahdin, but the department did not return a request for comment.

A fall 2023 report shows that California has also struggled with the maintenance of its statewide financial system that performs budgeting, procurement, cash management and accounting functions. The program, called FI$Cal, has cost about $1 billion since it began in 2005, and last fall State Auditor Grant Parks said that despite two decades of effort, “many state entities have historically struggled to use the system to submit timely data for the [Annual Comprehensive Financial Report].”

The state, which is famously home to tech capital Silicon Valley, has its own department of technology, which oversees the strategic vision and planning of the state’s tech strategy. But the department landed on the Auditor’s “high risk” list in 2023, with Parks saying the department has not made sufficient progress on its tech projects.

Government v. corporate tech rollouts

When a government rolls out a new software system, two things are happening, says Mark Wheeler, former chief information officer of the City of Philadelphia. First, they’re replacing a system that’s been around for decades, and second, they’re introducing workers to technology that they may see in their private lives, but aren’t used to operating in a government setting.

Sometimes, he said, governments spend a lot of time planning for the day a system goes live, but don’t think about the long learning curve afterward. They spend years defining functionality and phases of a product, but they don’t designate the real resources needed for “change management,” or the capacity for teams to engage with technologists and become a part of the transition to using the new technology.

Wheeler suggests that departments train new hires in advance of a rollout so certain people can fully focus on the technology transition. Learning these new technologies and building new internal processes can become “a full time job” of its own, Wheeler said. The people who are touch-points for their department with the new systems will also need to form relationships with the software companies they’ve chosen to ease the transition.

Huge software rollouts call follow either an “agile” or “waterfall” approach — agile focuses on continuous releases that incorporate customer feedback, while waterfall has a clearly defined series of phases, and one phase must reach completion before others start.

“We get this message over and over again that government needs to operate like a business, and therefore all of our major technology transformations need to operate in this agile format,” Wheeler said. “Well, if you don’t properly train people and introduce them to agile and create the capacity for them to engage in those two week sprints, that whole agile process starts to fall apart.”

Another way these tech transformations differ between private and public sectors is that there are often project managers at private corporations who oversee the many facets of a project and “own” it from start to finish. Between constant iteration on its improvement, thinking about its long term health, the care and growth of a project, Wheeler says, corporations tend to invest in more people to see transitions through.

Wheeler acknowledged that it can be frustrating for residents to see huge budgets dedicated to government projects that take time to come to fruition and to work smoothly. But his main advice to state or city governments that are on the precipice of a huge change is to invest in the change management teams. When a government is spending potentially hundreds of millions of dollars on a new solution, the tiny budget line of some additional personnel can make or break the success of a project.

And finally, Wheeler says, governments and residents should keep in mind the differing expectations and priorities, between private and public sectors when comparing them.

Tech transformations at large companies are mostly about meeting a bottom line and return on investment, while governments are responsible for the health and safety and stability of their societies. They also require the feedback and inclusion of many, many stakeholders and due process procedures, Wheeler said, and they have to be transparent about their decision-making.

Governments also just aren’t known to be super great with change, he said.

“As much as the public says they want government to move quickly, when you propose a very big change, suddenly everyone wants to question it and make sure that they have their say in the process,” Wheeler said. “And that includes technology pieces so that will slow it all down.”

Missouri Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick will have new powers to initiate audits of local governments under a law taking effect Wednesday (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

On July 23, State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick released an audit detailing how a former mayor of Excelsior Estates improperly paid himself more than $37,000 and funneled more than $200,000 to a business he owned.

During the course of their work, auditors found that the records for the village of 209 people on the border of Ray and Clay counties were in “total disarray with missing financial records (and) other vital city records stored in a makeshift camper trailer made from the bed of a pickup truck…”

The audit was conducted at the invitation of the village Board of Aldermen after an investigation of a whistleblower complaint showed possible wrongdoing. Without the board’s consent, the auditor wouldn’t have had the authority to conduct the probe.

But not every local governing body is so cooperative. And as of Wednesday, when a new law took effect, Fitzpatrick’s office will have the power to initiate audits of local agencies when an initial investigation shows “improper government activity” — including fraud, waste of resources or violations of law — or when a county prosecutor or law enforcement agency requests it.

Missouri lawmakers gave the auditor’s office power to investigate reports of improper actions by local government officials in 2013 but withheld the authority to force those officials to open their accounts for a full-scale audit. The only way for the auditor to follow up on the investigation was to convince the governing body of the political subdivision to request an audit, like in Excelsior Estates, or for a resident to gather enough signatures on a petition to force an audit.

The new law eliminates those restrictions. 

“This is not designed to give us unfettered access to auditing any political subdivision for any reason,” Fitzpatrick said. “It was to make things easier for taxpayers. If they’ve made a credible whistleblower complaint to us that there’s a problem somewhere that we investigate, that we could then initiate the audit instead of forcing somebody to have to go gather a bunch of signatures.”

The bill, passed unanimously in the second year it was introduced, originated with concerns about cost overruns at the new Francis Howell School District high school in St. Charles County, said the sponsor, Republican state Rep. Phil Christofanelli of St. Peters.

A school district was the only local government entity that the state auditor had discretion to audit, he said. The auditor’s office is legally obligated to audit every county without a county auditor.

If the cost overruns had been at a municipal construction project, Christofanelli said, only the willingness of the governing board or the determination of citizens to complete a petition drive could bring the auditor in.

For a small community like Excelsior Estates, the petition would have to include signatures from 25% of the city’s registered voters. For a city the size of St. Peters, the requirement would be 10% of the votes cast for governor in the most recent election, with a minimum of 750 signatures.

“The idea of doing something like this in a city like St Peters, for instance, is completely impractical, and you’d have to have a remarkable campaign put together to do it properly,” Christofanelli said.

During work on the bill, he said, he was told that up to 90% of petition audit attempts are unsuccessful.

The state auditor’s office will be taking on the new powers at a time when Fitzpatrick is trying to rebuild his staff, which had shrunk to 89 full-time employees – out of 167 authorized in the budget – when he took office. 

Fitzpatrick was elected auditor in 2022 after four years as state treasurer and six years in the Missouri House, where he was chairman of the House Budget Committee. 

In recent years, the audit output of the office, especially detailed audits of state agencies and programs, has declined significantly. 

During the first eight months of 2004, the office issued 27 audits and reviews of state agencies and programs ranging from elected official offices to tax credit programs and agency operations in determining Medicaid eligibility and the acquisition of highway right-of-way. In the same period of 2014, the number of state agency audits and reviews was 10.

This year, through Wednesday, the total was three – the operations of the attorney general and secretary of state’s offices and how the Missouri State Highway Patrol uses highway fund money.

The two factors limiting the number of individual agency and program audits are time devoted to the annual audits of the state financial report and the federal funding awards. Work that once took 18,000 to 20,000 staff hours in a year is now approaching 50,000, Fitzpatrick said.

That workload, combined with the staffing shortages, has reduced the number of individual agency and program audits. There are 10 agency or program audits in process, including the Department of Conservation, pandemic food programs and the cannabis programs within the Department of Health and Senior Services.

“It’s a huge report,” Fitzpatrick said of the cannabis program audit. “It’s going to be, in terms of the number of staff hours, what will probably be the largest performance audit that’s been done in the auditor’s office in recent history.”

The cannabis program audit should be released early next year, he said.

The routine work of the auditor’s office includes checking tens of thousands of local property tax rates against the legal maximums, receiving and publishing reports of spending by local taxing agencies and auditing counties that do not have an elected auditor. 

To help rebuild staff, lawmakers have added $4.2 million to the auditor’s budget over the past two years, increasing it to $13.5 million. That increase, he said, recognizes that the pay raises given by his predecessor, Democrat Nicole Gallaway, to retain staff is the salary level needed to attract new talent as well.

“They were adjusting the salaries to try to be more competitive, which needed to happen,” he said.

The new authority should not interfere with the statutory responsibilities of the office, Christofanelli said.

“Just because we give the auditor the power to initiate new investigations does not necessarily mean that if there are other matters that are not discretionary, that he would have to pursue those audits,” he said. “It just provides him the authority to do it, should the need arise.”

The exterior of a Planned Parenthood Reproductive Health Services Center on May 28, 2019 in St Louis (Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images).

Missouri’s Planned Parenthood affiliates are asking the state administrative hearing commission to block a new law that prohibits the organization from being reimbursed for serving Medicaid patients. 

The law went into effect on Wednesday.

Nearly one in five Planned Parenthood patients in Missouri is insured through MO HealthNet, the state’s Medicaid program that serves low-income and disabled residents and has long banned funding for abortion.

The complaint to the Missouri Administrative Hearing Commission was filed after Missouri’s two Planned Parenthood affiliates say they received notifications of their termination from Medicaid, effective Wednesday.

“Despite an already overburdened health care safety net for Missouri Medicaid patients,” Planned Parenthood Great Plains and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers wrote in a joint press release, “lawmakers prioritized the legislative ‘defunding’ of Planned Parenthood this last session, harming Missourians with low incomes and forcing them to search for other providers.”

It’s the third — and Republicans hope final — attempt to end Medicaid reimbursements to any health centers affiliated with abortion providers.

Planned Parenthood alleges the state’s new restrictions violate federal Medicaid law, which protects patients’ right to choose their health care providers. 

The Missouri Department of Social Services, which oversees the state’s Medicaid program, said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

Abortion has been banned in Missouri since 2022, but Planned Parenthood clinics in Illinois and Kansas continue to perform the procedure. In Missouri, Planned Parenthood clinics provide services such as contraceptive care, STI testing, cancer screenings and wellness checks.

Missouri governor signs bill ending Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood

Critics of the law have argued it would primarily harm low-income Missourians who could be forced to find a new provider through the state’s already strained public health safety net if Planned Parenthood cannot foot the bill for these patients long-term. This could delay critical and potentially life-saving care.

In Missouri, women on Medicaid are 10 times more likely to die within one year of pregnancy than those on private insurance, according to an August multi-year report on maternal mortality published by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

“The impact of defunding efforts will only further destabilize Missouri’s fragile safety net,”  said Michelle Trupiano, executive director of Missouri Family Health Council in Monday’s press release, “by straining providers, extending wait times, and unnecessarily creating additional barriers for people accessing basic healthcare services.”

Planned Parenthood clinics in Missouri have been without Medicaid reimbursements for more than two years as prior attempts by Republicans to pass similar restrictions through the state budget were litigated and struck down in court. 

Planned Parenthood says it will continue to serve Medicaid patients despite the new law.

Some clinics, including Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, have offset the cost of care with private fundraising, according to the press release.

“Planned Parenthood’s doors remain open so patients can get the affordable, accessible care they rely on,” said Richard Muniz, interim president & CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, “as we challenge the state’s latest, illegal attempt to exclude us from participating in the Medicaid program.”

This story was updated Aug. 27 to add the Department of Social Services’ comment.

The Cole County Courthouse in downtown Jefferson City (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A pair of administrative law judges are suing the Parson administration claiming wrongful termination and illegal withholding of salary. 

Ryan Asbridge, who has served as an administrative law judge since 2019, and Gina Mitten, who has served since 2021, filed a lawsuit last week in Cole Circuit Court. 

They allege the administration of Gov. Mike Parson declared them at-will employees without any authority to do so, thus allowing Mitten to be dismissed and Asbridge’s pay to be withheld while he was on active military duty.

Administrative law judges are appointed by the governor and handle cases involving things such as worker’s compensation. They receive a roughly $120,000 salary. 

In May, Mitten says she was contacted by Parson’s director of the division of worker’s compensation dismissing her from her position. In the lawsuit, plaintiffs argue that state law is clear that administrative law judges can only be discharged or removed after receiving three or more votes of no confidence two years in a row from a five-member review committee that audits their performance. 

Administrative law judges are also subject to retention votes every 12 years by the review committee. 

Lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to change this process over the years, and the lawsuit notes that during legislative hearings the Parson administration admitted that there is no other process for removing administrative law judges other than the review committee. 

Judges can also be removed if the legislature doesn’t allocate enough money to cover all salaries. But the lawsuit says the Department of Labor budget has funding for 28 administrative law judges, including Mitten and Asbridge. 

Asbridge is still listed as an administrative law judge, though the lawsuit says he has been on a military leave of absence for the last three years. A major in the United States Air Force Reserves, Asbridge’s deployment on active duty began in November 2021 and had previously been extended through at least August. 

He continued to receive his salary from the state while deployed with the Air Force. According to the lawsuit, Missouri law requires the state to pay salaries of administrative law judges regardless of the hours they work. There is no provision in state law, the lawsuit says, that authorizes the department to withhold Asbridge’s salary. 

Asbridge’s three years of military leave was “an expense beyond what the citizen of Missouri should be responsible for supporting,” the workers compensation division director wrote in a letter included with the lawsuit. 

Mitten is asking to be reinstated and provided back pay, and Asbridge is asking for back pay withheld since June. 

Spokesmen for the governor and the office of administration, which handles payroll for the state, did not respond to a request for comment. In addition to Parson and Office of Administration Commissioner Ken Zellers, named defendants in the lawsuit include Attorney General Andrew Bailey and the director of the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, Anna Hui.

A crisis counselor answers a 988 call at the Ozark Center, which covers four southwestern counties (Photo courtesy of Freeman marketing).

Missouri has seen one of the nation’s largest increases in calls to the revamped national hotline that aids people facing mental health crises.

The number of calls to 988 from Missouri jumped 136% in May 2024 compared to May 2022, according to recent data from the health policy nonprofit KFF.

That’s a greater increase than the national average and ninth highest in the country.

State officials have celebrated Missouri’s volume increase as a product of significant efforts to ensure the public knows about 988.

“We are really proud of what we’re doing here,” said Jeanette Simmons, deputy division director of the Missouri Department of Mental Health’s Division of Behavioral Health, during a mental health commission meeting earlier this month. “In national meetings, lots of people ask us questions about our 988 efforts, and how we have had so much success, and how we’re doing it.”

She said they tell others they’re just “handing it out everywhere,” referring to outreach materials. 

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline transitioned nationwide two years ago to the new three-digit 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which aims to be a comprehensive resource for people facing mental health, substance use and suicide crises. 

It’s part of a national effort to streamline access to services for mental health emergencies and craft a number that’s as easy and ubiquitous to remember as 911.

Last month, Department of Mental Health spokesperson Debra Walker said, Missouri’s 988 call centers answered more than 8,000 calls, 2,800 text messages and 600 chats.

The state answered 92% of calls at in-state call centers, which is above the national standard of 90%. 

The hotline directs calls based on callers’ area code to their nearest crisis center. When the in-state call centers are busy, the call is routed to the national phone line.

In July of 2022, around 12% of calls were abandoned before reaching someone on the other line.  That fell to 6% in 2024 despite the number of calls more than doubling in volume. 

The average speed to answer has decreased from 37 seconds in July 2022 to 19 seconds in July 2024, Walker added.

Walker said through the state’s training, strengthening partnership with community service providers and other partners, and prioritizing timely service, “Missouri has built an equitable and accessible crisis system.”

Going forward, the state will focus on continuing to educate people about 988 “with the  goal of reaching individuals most at risk for suicide and other negative mental health and substance use outcomes,” Walker said.

The federal government invested money for 988’s launch and rollout but requires states to establish long-term funding strategies. Missouri hasn’t passed legislation authorized by Congress to add a monthly fee to phone bills to help permanently fund the hotline and crisis services, similar to how 911 call centers are funded. 

So far, 10 states have added telecom fees.

And a report released in June by the national mental health nonprofit Inseparable found that although Missouri scores well in call center capacity, the availability of crisis mental health services is itself limited. The organization estimated the state would need 286 new short-term crisis residential beds to meet crisis stabilization needs, as well as 49 mobile response teams.

The Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., in March 2024 (Lyle Muller/Investigate Midwest).

A federal watchdog this month told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that its regulatory oversight of Seresto flea-and-tick collars, which have been linked to more than 2,000 pet deaths, was not “adequate.”

Federal scrutiny of the Seresto collars started in 2021, after Investigate Midwest and USA TODAY revealed the collar was linked to tens of thousands of incidents of harm, including rashes on humans. The EPA ultimately allowed Seresto to continue to be sold, but the agency ordered a warning label to be added to the product.

However, in February, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General told the EPA it needed to determine whether, “Seresto pet collars pose an unreasonable risk to pet health.” Despite its review, the EPA has “not provided assurance” the collar is safe, the inspector general concluded.

To accomplish that goal, the inspector general recommended the agency re-open the review process for the two active ingredients in Seresto — essentially, this would determine whether the pesticides were safe enough to be sold in the U.S. This would also allow for public comment on the collars.

The EPA has declined to follow the watchdog’s recommendation. While the review process is the standard way a pesticide makes it to market, the EPA has other mechanisms to address concerns with products, the agency told the inspector general’s office in response to its February report.

For instance, in 2023, the agency released the results of an inquiry into the collar. The EPA ultimately decided the collar could stay on the market, with more reporting requirements for Seresto’s maker. The agency said this inquiry satisfied the recommendation’s intent.

On Aug. 7, the watchdog published its response.

“Overall, the agency’s response does not adequately address” how it will regulate the Seresto collars, according to the inspector general’s office. In particular, not opening Seresto up for public comment is a “deficiency” that is “inconsistent” with the EPA’s standard practices, it added.

In a statement to Investigate Midwest, the EPA reiterated that the new requirements placed on Seresto’s maker, Elanco Animal Health, were enough to keep pets safe.

“Based on this analysis and in order to continue the registration, Elanco implemented several new labeling and reporting requirements to improve the safety of this product,” the EPA said. “The goal of these mitigations is to continue to allow products on the market that can protect pets while minimizing risk associated with the use of Seresto collars.”

Elanco did not return a request for comment. The company has maintained the collar is safe, and it disputed that incidents of harm reported to the EPA equaled evidence of danger. Bayer, the German conglomerate, sold its entire animal health unit, which originally produced Seresto collars, to Elanco in 2020 for $7.6 billion.

“Elanco unequivocally continues to stand behind the safety profile of Seresto as a proven solution to help protect dogs and cats from fleas and ticks,” an Elanco spokesperson told Investigate Midwest in 2022. “We support all agency review processes.”

Internally, the EPA identified incidents related to Seresto collars as a cause for concern years ago. In 2015, agency officials said Seresto’s incident counts “ranked #1 by a wide margin” compared to other flea-and-tick collars, Investigate Midwest and USA TODAY reported.

Despite that, the agency did not review the collar until the number of incidents was reported widely in the press in 2021. Once the story was out, an EPA biologist emailed a colleague, “Looks like the sh** has hit the fan. … We have been screaming about (Seresto) for many years.”

Inspector general’s findings

The inspector general started its probe into the EPA’s handling of Seresto collars in May 2022. In February of this year, it released its findings.

When the EPA conducted its registration review of Seresto’s active ingredients, it did not assess whether the pesticides posed a risk to pets. The agency originally committed to do this, but it ultimately did not, according to the inspector general’s report. The active ingredients are flumethrin and imidacloprid.

The agency told the inspector general’s office it does not have the “expertise and resources” to assess the toxicity to animals. It also has no standards to assess the risk to pets, it said.

The EPA said its scientific review, released in 2023, was the “equivalent” of assessing the risks posed to pets.

The protocol the EPA relied on when it originally approved the ingredients in the Seresto collar is not “up to international standards.” The protocol the EPA follows is from 1998, despite other countries following more recent guidelines.

“Staff we interviewed indicated this was not a priority,” the inspector general’s office wrote. One longtime EPA scientist called using the 1998 protocol “a ‘glaring weakness’ that has become publicly obvious with the Seresto pet collar incidents.”

The data the EPA collects on incidents related to pesticide exposure is “inadequate to determine unreasonable adverse effects.” For instance, it does not capture any narrative information on incidents that would help the agency assess a pesticide’s toxicity.

EPA staff told the inspector general’s office the incident data is “unreliable … there is underreporting, and data quality is suspect.”

The EPA has already asked Elanco to provide more information than other companies related to incidents involving Seresto. This includes “critical details on death incidents, adequate case follow up on any reported deaths, and information on a pet’s health status” before it wore the collar, the EPA said.

The EPA lacks a standard operating procedure for reviewing the risks to pets, and it was unclear to the inspector general’s office where the responsibility for reviewing risks to pets resides. One agency official said a lack of veterinary expertise likely contributes to the issue.

Seresto timeline

In early 2021, Investigate Midwest and USA TODAY revealed that the Seresto flea-and-tick collars were linked to tens of thousands of incidents of harm, including almost 1,700 pet deaths over several years. But the product carried no warning.

A month later, the EPA announced it was reviewing the collar. As the review happened, the House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy launched its own investigation. At the time, the subcommittee was part of the House Oversight Committee, the main investigative body of the U.S. House of Representatives, and was chaired by Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Illinois. (The subcommittee no longer exists.)

In summer 2022, shortly after the EPA’s inspector general announced its probe, the House subcommittee released the findings of its investigation. It found other countries require Seresto to come with a warning label, and that Canada banned the collar after authorities there found a high rate of incidents of harm. The subcommittee called on the EPA to ban Seresto.
About a year later, in July 2023, the EPA announced it had completed its inquiry of the Seresto collar. It could still be sold, but the EPA placed mitigation measures in place. Elanco was required to add a warning label, and it was only granted a 5-year registration. Normally, pesticides are approved for 15 years before producers need to apply for their continued use.

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

In Missouri, 490,000 kids are estimated to receive benefits amounting to $58.8 million (John Moore/Getty Images).

Missouri’s social services agency announced Monday that it is officially launching a federal food program that could provide aid to over 400,000 kids in the state.

Each eligible child will receive a one-time benefit of $120, loaded onto a card that can be used like a debit card to buy groceries.

It’s part of a permanent federal program in its first year of existence called Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer, or SUN Bucks. The program aims to help kids who receive subsidized school meals avoid a summer drop-off in nutrition.

The money was intended to be distributed during the summer break. But state officials said they dealt with technical issues that delayed federal approval and hindered earlier launch of the program.

The Missouri Department of Social Services, which will oversee the program, did not lay out a timeline for dispersing the benefits, and a spokesperson didn’t respond to questions.

The following groups of kids are automatically eligible, and their families will not need to apply for benefits: 

• Students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch during the school year,
• Households already enrolled in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or temporary assistance,
• And students who are in foster care, are experiencing homelessness or are migrants.

Those benefits will be issued on an existing card if the family is enrolled in SNAP benefits or temporary assistance, or on a new mailed card if they are not. Families who need a new EBT card can request one by phone or the ebtEDGE mobile app.

Families who are not automatically eligible must submit an application online by Aug. 31. The state’s eligibility navigator will tell families whether they must apply.

Even with the department announcing that money was set to be distributed, it warned in its press release that “delays in issuing benefits are possible.” 

Benefits will expire 122 days after they are issued, regardless of usage, so families must act quickly once the benefits are distributed. They should also keep the cards for next summer’s program, the state’s website advises.

Food security advocates in the state were relieved when Missouri opted into the program after weighing factors like technology issues and staffing.

Thirteen Republican-led states opted out of the program entirely this year.

The program is run through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the benefits are fully federally funded. The state shares one-half of the administrative cost. DSS is leading Missouri’s administration, with the help of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

In Missouri, 490,000 kids are estimated to receive benefits amounting to $58.8 million.

“Although we had to face some difficult challenges,” Director of Family Support Division Kim Evans said in the press release, “I am proud of our team members who worked diligently with our state and federal partners to get this important program off the ground. 

“We will be much more prepared for next summer when we anticipate a smoother rollout and even greater success,” Evans said.

A similar, temporary program called Pandemic EBT provided various benefits during the pandemic and was beset with administrative issues — particularly because it required a new data collection portal to collect and share eligible students’ information with two agencies in the state. 

The benefits designed to cover food costs during the summer of 2022 did not start going out until June 2023, and Missouri declined to participate in the summer 2023 program because of those issues — forgoing at least $40 million in aid.

Transgender Missourians will need proof of surgical transition or a court order before their driver's license can match their gender identity (photo illustration by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder)

It became much harder this month for Missourians to change the gender marker on their driver’s licenses following a quiet move by the state Department of Revenue.

The department, which issues state driver’s licenses, switched from requiring the signature of a physician, therapist or social worker to approve a change in gender designation to mandating documentation of gender reassignment surgery or a court order.

The shift happened earlier this month, though it was not announced publicly by the department. The Wayback Machine, which archives web pages, shows the gender designation change request form requiring physician signoff, known as Form 5532, was available Aug. 6. The next day, the web page with the form was offline.

A spokesperson for the Department of Revenue told The Independent in a statement that “Form 5532 is no longer needed.”

“Customers are required to provide either medical documentation that they have undergone gender reassignment surgery or a court order declaring gender designation to obtain a driver license or non-driver ID card denoting gender other than their biological gender assigned at birth.”

PROMO, Missouri’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, reached out to the department after hearing that people could no longer make changes to their identification using Form 5532 and heard that “an incident” spurred the move, said executive director Katy Erker-Lynch.

According to the Movement Advancement Project, which maps states’ policies affecting LGBTQ residents, Missouri is one of 10 states with this policy. Just three states do not allow residents to change their gender markers.

The policy change occurred soon after controversy erupted earlier this month over a transgender woman who used the women’s locker rooms at a private gym in Ellisville.

State Rep. Justin Sparks, a Republican from Wildwood, told The Independent that his office “would have never even known about (Form 5532) unless the Lifetime Fitness incident had occurred.”

Sparks was among a group of elected officials who convened a press conference outside the gym Aug. 2, and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced an investigation into the incident the same day.

During a radio appearance Aug. 1, Sparks said the transgender woman “displayed a state ID describing (herself) as female.”

“We are going to get to the bottom of what happened in the Department of Revenue and that form they issued several years ago,” he said. “It was inappropriate and in my opinion, it is not legal.”

Later that evening, in a live broadcast via Facebook, he told followers that he had been in contact with the department.

“I have assurances from the Department of Revenue that they are going to change their policies and their form,” he said, promising to follow up with the department.

Sparks told The Independent that he had questions about the creation of the form, which was made in 2016 with the help of LGBTQ advocates.

“I don’t even know if the people that have used that form, if that’s even valid,” he said.

He is looking into whether or not the department is allowed to change a policy without the legislature’s direction, which would determine whether the change in 2016 and this month’s switch are authorized.

“State law does not allow them to change that (policy). That’s something that we’re looking into right now, meaning can the Department of Revenue arbitrarily change policy without legislative oversight or legislation? And to the best of my knowledge, they cannot,” he said.

The change of gender markers on state identification is not explicitly mentioned in state law. The section of Missouri state law that describes driver’s license application forms allows the department to “promulgate rules and regulations necessary to administer and enforce this section,” though they must follow normal rulemaking procedure.

Sparks felt like his initial interaction with the department was unhelpful. When he involved Bailey and state senators, he says the Department of Revenue promised to change the form.

He believes the change might have been out of appeasement, to stop them from “digging.”

Erker-Lynch had a similar impression.

“It seems the mere mention and threat of a potential investigation into the policies and practices of the Department of Revenue caused Director (Wayne) Wallingford to end a policy that worked to help people,” Erker-Lynch said. “This decision reflects a state and state departments run by fear and intimidation — not a state run to serve its residents.”

PROMO is gathering stories of those who are struggling to change their gender marker on their state identification, calling the campaign “The ID for Me.”

This story was updated at 2:28 p.m. to include reaction from Rep. Justin Sparks.

Students hold up anti-abortion signs at the Midwest March for Life on May 1 at the Missouri State Capitol (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (photo submitted).

Jackson County officials said Monday they are evaluating potential legal challenges to an order by the State Tax Commission they argue was only issued to cover for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

The Missouri State Tax Commission last week ordered the county to roll back most of its 2023 property valuations, finding that they had been performed illegally, resulting in huge increases in property values.

“It’s unconstitutional. It’s unprecedented. And it has no evidence to even prove it,” County Counselor Bryan Covinsky said at a press conference in Kansas City about the commission’s order.

Covinsky said the county will work with school districts and other taxing jurisdictions to find the best path forward to overturn the order.

The commission’s order came eight months into a lawsuit against Jackson County filed by Bailey, who accused officials of failing to follow proper procedures when it assessed property values last year. According to Bailey’s lawsuit, the county saw an average 30% jump in property values. Bailey claims the county failed to offer physical inspections to property owners facing a value increase of 15% or more. 

But with only one day of trial left in Bailey’s case against the county, the commission ordered the assessments rolled back and Bailey asked for the case to be dismissed. 

Missouri attorney general asks to dismiss lawsuit a day before scheduled deposition

Both the order and the motion to dismiss came a day before Bailey was expected to sit for a deposition regarding his contact with Sean Smith, a Jackson County official, which appeared to violate legal ethics rules. They also came a day after Bailey won the GOP primary for a full term as attorney general.

The judge in the case granted Bailey’s motion to dismiss on Thursday, ending the possibility that Bailey would be questioned under oath in the case. 

Covinsky and County Executive Frank White Jr., claimed Bailey’s office was losing and knew it. 

“Attorney General Bailey dismissed a case that he himself called the most important in the history of his office,” White said. “Let’s not forget, Attorney General Bailey dismissed the lawsuit the day after his election because he was afraid to answer questions under oath.” 

Assistant Attorney General Jay Atkins said in an email that the goal of Bailey’s lawsuit was to provide relief to Jackson County taxpayers.

“The tax commission’s order does just that,” Atkins said. “(Attorney) General Bailey was proud to stand with the state tax commission as we worked together to hold Jackson County accountable and bring taxpayers the relief they deserve. We look forward to defending the state tax commission’s lawful order.” 

The commission could not immediately be reached for comment. 

In a legal memo to White, Covinsky recommended the county keep operating as they were before the tax commission order “unless and until such time that a court of competent jurisdiction orders otherwise.” He argued “no government entity is required to comply with an unlawful order.” 

Both Bailey and one of his deputies met with Smith while the litigation was ongoing in apparent violation of Missouri Supreme Court rules, which prohibit attorneys from communicating about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another attorney without the consent of the other lawyer. 

Bailey and Smith maintained the meeting was nothing more than a campaign event.

But his deputy, Travis Woods, also spoke with Smith without permission. The judge found Woods in violation of the rules of conduct and Bailey was ordered to sit for the deposition as a form of sanction.

Now, Jackson County and taxing jurisdictions in the county — including school and fire districts and law enforcement — face a budget quandary. 

The State Tax Commission order instructs Jackson County to roll back property assessments that had increased more than 15% since its last assessment.

Rather than provide refunds to homeowners who saw a large increase in property value, officials said, the order will simply redistribute who pays the most. County Assessor Gail McCann Beatty said poorer communities could wind up paying disproportionately high tax bills compared to enormous, stately homes in the city’s Country Club District.

That’s because of a provision of the Missouri Constitution that caps revenue increases for local governments. The Hancock Amendment instructs local governments to adjust their property tax rates to avoid a windfall. When property values rise, the tax rate falls. 

If assessments are rolled back, taxing jurisdictions will raise their rates to provide funds for schools, firefighting and other services, Jackson County officials said. But they face an Oct. 1 deadline to do so, creating a scramble for the county and taxing districts to determine how to move forward.

“If they don’t get it through property values, they’re going to get it through property tax rates. They’re going to adjust it up,” said County Administrator Troy Schulte, “so I don’t see a scenario where taxpayers don’t get hit significantly.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks on the floor of the Missouri House of Representatives in 2023. Bailey was granted a motion to dismiss in his lawsuit against Jackson County before he was expected to sit for a scheduled deposition in the case. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey narrowly avoided being questioned under oath about his contact with a Jackson County official when he was granted a motion to dismiss his lawsuit against the county on Thursday. 

Bailey, who filed suit against the county late last year over its property tax assessment process, was ordered by the judge in the case to sit for a deposition regarding communication with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith which appeared to violate legal ethics rules. 

According to court filings, the deposition was set for Thursday morning. 

But after a series of legal maneuvers to avoid the deposition failed, Bailey asked the judge to dismiss the entire case. In the filing, he said it was no longer necessary because the State Tax Commission issued an order instructing Jackson County to roll back the property assessments.

Jackson County officials cried foul Thursday, arguing in a press release that the tax commission “is being used as a shield for Attorney General Bailey, who is trying to escape accountability after lying and realizing he was losing the case.”

Jackson County noted Bailey less than a month ago called the case “one of the most important pieces of litigation to reach a Missouri courtroom in decades.”

“Yet after only three days of trial, he chose to drop the case entirely,” the county said. “This abrupt reversal exposes the lawsuit for what it truly was: a politically motivated tactic that has cost Missouri taxpayers countless dollars and eroded public trust.”

Missouri attorney general asks to dismiss lawsuit a day before scheduled deposition

Bailey’s spokeswoman, Madeline Sieren, said were it not for the commission’s order, the attorney general “would have pushed the lawsuit forward…and we would have won.” 

“Pushing the lawsuit forward could have jeopardized the much needed relief offered in the Tax Commission’s order and would be counterproductive for Jackson County taxpayers,” Sieren said in an email. 

At issue in the case was Jackson County’s 2023 property assessment process, which, according to Bailey’s original lawsuit, resulted in an average 30% increase in values across hundreds of thousands of properties. The higher property values mean some homeowners will see their property tax bill increase.

Bailey’s lawsuit accused the county of violating a law requiring it to offer physical inspections before increasing a property’s value by more than 15%.

The county argued Bailey waited too long to file the lawsuit as property tax bills had been paid and money distributed to government departments. And, the county said, the attorney general couldn’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission had first attempted to resolve the issue. 

Bailey and a deputy then came under scrutiny for meeting with Smith. Under Missouri Supreme Court rules, attorneys are not to communicate about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another lawyer without the consent of the other lawyer.

Bailey maintained that his meeting with Smith amounted to nothing more than a campaign meeting with little discussion of the lawsuit. On Tuesday, Bailey won the GOP primary for attorney general. Smith ran unopposed in the Republican primary for 5th District Congressional seat and will face incumbent U.S. Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, II in the general election in November. 

Jackson County attorneys sought sanctions against Bailey, and Clay County Circuit Judge Karen Krauser granted them permission to take his deposition.

Bailey’s office tried several times in July to get out of the deposition. Then on Tuesday, Bailey appealed the judge’s decision. A Missouri Court of Appeals judge denied that on Wednesday.

Later on Wednesday, Bailey filed a motion to dismiss the case outright, citing the Missouri State Tax Commission order.

Krauser granted that motion Thursday morning and dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning Bailey can’t refile it.

Bailey said the State Tax Commission used information his office gathered in the discovery process for the lawsuit.

Jackson County’s press release called officials’ estimate of what rolling back the property assessments would cost “devastating.” The county said schools and libraries would lose $86.3 million in funds they’ve already “received, budgeted and spent.” Cities and fire districts, the county said, would lose almost $20 million. 

“Jackson County firmly believes that fairness will prevail once again,” the county said, “and we will not allow our community to be sacrificed for political gain.”  

This story was updated at 2:45 p.m. with reaction from Jackson County officials and a response from Bailey’s office. 

Patrick McKenna, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation, on Wednesday told the Highways and Transportation Commission that he intends to resign after almost nine years on the job. (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

Patrick McKenna, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation, on Wednesday said he will leave his post after almost nine years on the job.

McKenna announced his decision near the end of a meeting of the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission in Poplar Bluff. He did not give a date for his departure and did not return messages seeking comment on his decision.

“I’ve never been more confident in the future of MoDOT… and with the leadership of the commission,” McKenna said. “It’s been a blessing for me to be a part of this, and it’s also a good time to recognize when it’s time to move on, and that’s what I’ll be doing.”

McKenna did not say whether he will be retiring or seeking other work. He said he had contacted the commission members individually on Tuesday to let them know his intentions.

“I have some family obligations to attend to, and I feel that the department is in good hands,” he told the commission.

McKenna was the deputy commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Transportation when he was hired in 2015. He has presided over a massive expansion of the department’s highway construction program, known as the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan, or STIP. When McKenna arrived in 2015, commission chairman Dustin Boatwright said during Wednesday’s meeting, the program averaged $325 million annually.

The program approved for the 2025 through 2029 fiscal years averages $4.4 billion annually.

The expansion is partially due to a 2021 increase in the state gas tax, which so far has added 10 cents per gallon to the previous levy of 17.4 cents per gallon. A final step next year will make the tax 29.9 cents per gallon on July 1, 2025.

MODOT has also benefited from increased federal funding under an infrastructure bill approved by Congress in 2021 and appropriations of general revenue, including $100 million a year for low-volume roads and $3.4 billion in one-time allocations for widening Interstate 70 and Interstate 44.

“We have a historic opportunity in front of us with the funding that we have been entrusted with by the General Assembly and the governor, and there’s no doubt in my mind, this team that we have will execute that flawlessly,” Boatwright said.

McKenna has also had friction with the legislature. 

In 2021, the Highways and Transportation commission sued the Office of Administration when Commissioner Ken Zellers refused to allow the commission to implement a pay raise plan that carried a price tag of $60 million. The highways commission wanted to stem turnover at MoDOT and attract new employees.

The raises were not included in the department’s legislatively approved appropriations.

That led six state senators — including state Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin of Shelbina, who has since become Senate Majority Leader and is expected to be Senate President Pro Tem next year, — in a February 2022 letter to the commission, to demand that McKenna either resign or be fired.

The highways commission filed the lawsuit to test constitutional language that is unique to the road fund. The Missouri Constitution states that the money deposited in the fund shall “stand appropriated without legislative action.”

Last year, Cole County Circuit Judge Cotton Walker agreed with the commission that it could use money in the road fund at its discretion. The decision is being appealed but no date has been set for oral arguments.

Commissioner Dan Hegeman, a former senator who signed O’Laughlin’s letter, praised McKenna on Wednesday for his professional demeanor in disputes with the General Assembly.

“He’s got a lot to be proud of as he takes on a new challenge that is going to be great for him and his family,” Hegeman said.

There was no discussion of who will take over as director or whether there would be an interim director during a search. McKenna stated there is a plan but gave no details.

“I know the commission has a plan that there will be no gap in leadership,” McKenna said. “I want the whole team to understand that it’s been an absolute blessing to be here.”

This article has been updated to correct the name of the State Transportation Improvement Plan.

The Missouri state flag is seen flying outside the Missouri State Capitol Building on Jan. 17, 2021 in Jefferson City (Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images).

The Missouri Housing Development Commission awarded millions of dollars in public funds and tax credits without notice or public votes, a former employee alleged in a lawsuit filed last week.

The lawsuit, filed in Jackson County, claims the commission regularly violated the state’s Sunshine Law and the law governing its actions, which requires an “affirmative vote of at least six of the members.”

The lawsuit was filed by Jesse Mofle, who was employed by the MHDC from March 2021 until October 2023. 

In addition to the Sunshine law claims, the lawsuit alleges that Mofle was also sexually harassed by a coworker. He was fired in retaliation for complaints he made about sexual harassment and complaints he made to the attorney general’s office about Sunshine violations, the lawsuit states.

Rather than hold public meetings where commissioners would vote on which developers were to receive millions in public funds and credits, the lawsuit states, MHDC staff would email commissioners their recommendations, to be implemented unless there were objections.

The lawsuit also claims that the commission has violated the Sunshine law by failing to deliver records Mofle requested in September by the time the lawsuit was filed on July 31. 

The Missouri Housing Development Commission oversees the administration of low-income housing tax credits. There are ten commissioners, including the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and state treasurer.

Last year, it awarded $380 million in tax credits for low-income housing.

The lawsuit alleges that “in order to avoid conducting public meetings,” the MHDC staff would email commissioners the “list of proposed funding recipients and…if a given commissioner had no objection, [MHDC] would implement the list as is.”

That violates the statutory requirement to hold a public, noticed meeting with recorded, affirmative votes, the lawsuit alleges.

The agency “knowingly violated the Missouri Sunshine law,” the lawsuit states, “each and every time funding was allocated without an affirmative vote, a meeting, notice of the meeting, and recording of the vote.”

The lawsuit is a last resort, Dan Curry, Mofle’s attorney, wrote in the court filing.

Curry also serves as attorney for the Missouri Press Association.

Mofle “has exhausted any and all required administrative prerequisites” in an attempt to gain satisfaction without going to court, Curry wrote. 

The lawsuit alleges Mofle was sexually harassed by a coworker and reported the behavior — which included “her tracking [Mofle’s] movements and stalking behaviors” — several times without resolution.

Mofle took leave at the end of July 2023 because he was uncomfortable working due to the alleged sexual harassment and the “anxiety of being asked to violate the law,” the lawsuit states.

He submitted a request for accommodations signed by his doctor to find another position that would “avoid the need to follow directives from executive staff to violate the Sunshine law,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit requests that the court void funding allocations that were made without proper votes.

A spokesperson for MHDC did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The Independent previously found that developers who make large political donations to statewide officers on the commission received a significant share of the awards.

Between 2018 and 2023, approximately $1 of every $6 in tax credits awarded since the start of 2018 has gone to the five developers who contribute the most.

At the last meeting, held in December, members of the commission asked no questions about the staff recommendations. One member said he’d just seen the recommendations for the first time during the meeting.

In vitro fertilization process close up (Getty Images).

When Missourians head to the polls in November, they may get to vote on whether to overturn their state’s near-total abortion ban and legalize abortions up to the point of fetal viability.

But one lawmaker says the results of that vote may not matter if his colleagues approve his bill declaring that fetuses are people.

Missouri state Rep. Brian Seitz, a Republican, plans to reintroduce a bill in January that would grant “unborn children” the same rights as newborns, building on a similar Missouri law that has been on the books since the 1980s.

Seitz said the bill would provide protections for embryos and fetuses “regardless of that vote in November.”

Absolute abortion bans remain unpopular, even in conservative-led states and among Republican women. So during this legislative session, many GOP state lawmakers pivoted to protecting the rights of fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses. And when the national Republican Party released its official platform in July, it made no mention of a federal abortion ban. Instead, the GOP affirmed states’ prerogative to pass laws protecting life under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which has been used in legal arguments to support fetal personhood.

Fetal personhood, a longtime cornerstone of the anti-abortion movement, is the idea that a fetus, embryo or fertilized egg has the same legal rights as a person who has been born. If the law considers fetuses to be people, the thinking goes, then abortion would legally be considered murder.

Can a fetus be an employee? States are testing the boundaries of personhood after ‘Dobbs’

At least 19 states — either through state law, criminal statutes or case law — have declared that fetuses at some stage of pregnancy are people, according to a 2023 report from Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit that conducts research and advocates for the rights of pregnant people, including the right to abortion.

Missouri is one of several Republican-led states where lawmakers have taken a renewed interest in fetal personhood legislation in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and dismantled the federal constitutional right to abortion.

“If you elevate a fetus to the status of a person and grant it citizenship rights equal to that of a pregnant person, then now you have a clash of rights,” said Rebecca Kluchin, a history professor at California State University, Sacramento, who is writing a book on the history of efforts to establish fetal personhood in the United States.

Kluchin said one goal of the recent fetal personhood bills is to get a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Dobbs decision, and the conservative bent of the current court, have created an environment where lawmakers are saying, “Let’s try it,” she said. “If one of them gets it right, then others can pass identical laws.”

Seitz thinks his bill could fulfill that purpose.

“If it does get to the Supreme Court, due to the makeup of the court right now, I think they would see this commonsense legislation is, in fact, truth,” he said.

Critics, meanwhile, warn of legal chaos. The possible implications of fetal personhood bills extend far beyond abortion — to fertility treatments, birth control and even child tax credits. In states that have enacted such laws, pregnant women have faced criminal charges for actions that might harm their pregnancies.

“When a pregnant person’s rights conflict with fetal rights,” Kluchin said, “fetal rights tend to trump them.”

IVF’s chilling effect

Seitz’s bill didn’t make it out of committee before Missouri’s legislative session ended in May.

He attributed that failure to the GOP’s reluctance to push an anti-abortion bill in an election year, a concern that might have been justified: Missouri abortion rights supporters gathered more than double the number of signatures needed to get their constitutional amendment on the ballot. As of press time, the ballot petition signatures were still being reviewed by local and state officials.

But Seitz said the bill will be the first he introduces when the legislature returns in January. With election season behind them, he said, “I think it will be very easy for my Republican colleagues to come on board and support this.”

Conservative lawmakers in Alaska, Illinois, South Carolina and West Virginia introduced similar fetal personhood bills in their most recent legislative sessions, though none made it out of committee.

Then in February, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos created through in vitro fertilization are children under state law, and that people can be held liable for destroying them. The court cited Alabama’s constitutional amendment, passed by voters in 2018, that confers personhood on fetuses and affirms the state’s responsibility to protect “the rights of unborn children.”

The court’s decision generated a national uproar, ignited bipartisan ire and halted fertility treatments statewide until Alabama’s Republican supermajority legislature hastily passed a law protecting fertility service providers.

The backlash underscored how many lawmakers hadn’t fully considered the far-reaching implications and legal bedlam that can be created by fetal personhood laws.

And it had a chilling effect on fetal personhood bills.

In February, a Florida Republican state senator sidelined her bill that would have covered fetuses under wrongful death lawsuits after some lawmakers worried it would hurt IVF providers.

In March, the Iowa House passed a bill to criminalize “the death of an unborn person,” but Republicans in the Senate declined to take up the bill over concerns it could criminalize IVF.

Similarly, the Kentucky House refused to hear a bill that the Senate passed that would have granted the right to retroactively collect child support for costs incurred during pregnancy.

Through the back door

Last year, Arizona Republican state Rep. Matt Gress introduced five pregnancy-related bills that he said were inspired by his experience growing up in a family headed by a single mother.

“I’m the youngest of four and raised by a single mom in a single-wide trailer house in rural Oklahoma. We grew up very poor,” Gress said in an interview with Stateline. “These bills, to me, represented a policy approach that helps women and families.”

One of the bills would have allowed families to retroactively claim child tax credits in the year before a baby is born; another would have allowed pregnant women to drive alone in a highway car pool lane, their fetus counting as a separate passenger.

Yet another bill would have allowed a woman, after having a baby, to collect child support backdated to the date of her positive pregnancy test.

Arizona’s Democratic state legislators accused Gress of taking a back-door approach to inserting fetal personhood language into state law. But Gress denies that codifying fetal personhood was his intent.

“That didn’t even cross my mind,” he said. “The way I read the bills, there were no rights being afforded to anybody besides women and families.”

Gress noted that he was the first Republican, and one of the few, who supported Democratic state legislators’ bid to repeal Arizona’s near-total abortion ban, which dated to 1864. The repeal effort eventually succeeded in early May.

Arizona’s legislature passed two of Gress’ pregnancy bills, but Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed both. Gress said he doesn’t intend to reintroduce the bills unless a new governor is elected who might support them.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Missouri tried but failed to pass similar fetal child support laws this year. Georgia’s 2019 “heartbeat law,” which went into effect in 2022, grants child support benefits for fetuses.

Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, now the speaker of the House, introduced a similar bill in Congress in 2022, and was explicit about its purpose. In a statement, he called it a “first step” toward updating federal laws to reflect that “life begins at conception.”

Beyond abortion

Fetal personhood laws, like abortion bans, end up having broader effects on all pregnant people and pregnancy-related care, said Dr. Daniel Grossman, an OB-GYN and the director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a research program at the University of California, San Francisco, which focuses on abortion and reproductive health.

Grossman points to cases in which pregnant patients experiencing obstetric emergencies had to be airlifted out of states with strict abortion bans, such as Idaho, because doctors were afraid of violating the law.

In states such as Florida, North Carolina and Texas, pregnant women who weren’t seeking abortions but who experienced possible miscarriages or other emergencies have been turned away from hospitals. Stories of pregnant women being turned away from emergency rooms spiked after Roe was overturned, a recent Associated Press investigation found.

Fetal personhood has implications for birth control, too.

Hormonal contraceptive methods such as IUDs and birth control pills typically work by preventing an egg from being fertilized, but there’s a small chance that some forms can also prevent a fertilized egg from being implanted in the uterus, said Grossman. So, if state law considers a fertilized egg a person, that could create a legal basis for banning any contraception that could possibly prevent implantation.

Grossman also worries about increased scrutiny these laws create for people who experience miscarriage or stillbirth.

“Before Dobbs, people were arrested and criminally prosecuted for allegedly trying to end a pregnancy on their own,” he said. “I’m already concerned that’s going to become more common, especially in places with fetal personhood laws.”

The laws also have resulted in women being criminally charged for actions that might harm their pregnancies, said Lourdes Rivera, president of Pregnancy Justice.

Rivera’s organization documented nearly 1,400 instances of pregnant women being charged, often for substance use, in the 16 years leading up to the June 2022 Dobbs decision. Most of the cases occurred in a handful of Southern states — including Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee — that have expanded their definitions of child abuse to include fetuses, fertilized eggs and embryos.

Nearly 85% of pregnancy criminalization cases in the Pregnancy Justice report involved charges against a pregnant person who was legally indigent, and the laws were disproportionately applied to poor women and women of color, Rivera said.

“These laws are forcing pregnant people to give up their bodily autonomy, their health and well-being,” she said, “and to be surveilled and criminalized for actions that would not be criminal if they were done by people who were not pregnant.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

(Credit: Katarzyna Bialasiewicz/Getty Images)

Missouri in the last year has significantly reduced its backlog of overdue nursing home inspections, recent federal data shows, though it still stands out for how low nursing staff is at many facilities.

Around this time last year, a quarter of nursing homes hadn’t been inspected in at least two years. 

Now the number is closer to 3%, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data.

The state’s surveyors “have investigated complaints at night, early morning, weekends and holidays,” said Lisa Cox, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Senior Services. “The decline in overdue complaints can be attributed to the hard work and dedication of our surveyors and inspectors.”

The department also hired certified part-time staff to help with the backlog, received additional money in this year’s budget to increase the nurse surveyor salaries and has contracted with private agencies to get additional staff, Cox said.

The backlog had mounted in part due to state staffing issues, plus an increase in complaints.

When the state resumed its standard inspections in January of 2021, after a COVID pause, there were over 4,000 pending complaint investigations and now there are 265.

Still, advocates are worried about oversight in Missouri’s nursing homes. 

The main issue that has come up for years is Missouri’s low level of nursing home staffing.

The most recent data, updated last month, shows residents receive 3.3 hours of daily care, on average. That’s below the federal standard of 3.48 daily hours that is going into effect over the next few years — and even that was a level advocates fought for being too low.

Missouri has consistently ranked among the worst states for nursing home staffing levels.

Staffing varies widely by facility in the state. Two dozen facilities offer less than 2 hours of daily nursing care per resident.

The for-profit Reliant Care owns several of the largest facilities in Missouri. Sixteen of the entities associated with Reliant Care offer less than 2 hours of daily individual nursing care, according to the latest data.

One, North Village Park, offers just 37 minutes per day of care, the federal data shows.

Marjorie Moore, executive director of VOYCE St. Louis, an advocacy group for long-term care residents, said Missouri’s nursing home staffing is one of the biggest challenges facing residents.

“A lot of people are going to be laying in bed all day uncared for because there’s short staffing in the facilities,” she said. 

She said they’ve recently been hearing about a lot of residents who don’t have nurses to come get them out of bed to attend activities.

Moore said the state’s ombudsman program, which is an oversight arm composed of staff and volunteers who advocate for long-term care residents, can help but needs more resources.

Moore’s organization operates the ombudsman program for St. Louis and Northeast Missouri regions.

“Those residents really rely on ombudsmen, both staff and volunteers, to speak up for them and to make sure that they’re getting the care that they need and that they deserve,” she said.

Ombudsmen make sure residents can go to the bathroom, take their medications and be fed on time, as well as enjoy activities.

Without the oversight that ombudsmen offer, she said, “it’s very easy for people to just kind of say, ‘Oh well, the call light was on for a long time, I just didn’t get to it.’”

For the second year in a row, Gov. Mike Parson vetoed the $2.5 million increase the legislature approved for the program, which would have added around 25 staff statewide, Moore said.

Parson wrote that “while this supports the important goal of helping seniors throughout the state, there is insufficient funding from the appropriated source to support this item.” 

Moore said she was aware of some issues with the source lawmakers assigned to draw funding from but was hopeful they’d be resolved by the end of session.

“We have a lot of challenges here in Missouri for nursing homes,” she said. “…It’s definitely a disappointment.”

A general view of pre-game ceremonies for the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Detroit Lions at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Sept. 7, 2023 in Kansas City (Jamie Squire/Getty Images).

For decades, academic research has been clear: Taxpayers almost never get their money back on subsidized sports stadiums.

And yet, over and over again, U.S. cities and states find themselves locked in lopsided negotiations with beloved football, baseball and basketball teams, hoping to keep them from jumping to a new market.

In the newest bidding war, Kansas aims to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lure the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs or MLB’s Royals from their side-by-side stadiums in Missouri just a few miles away. It could be one of the most expensive stadium deals yet, according to Victor Matheson, a researcher who studies stadium subsidies.

“This is wildly destructive,” he said. “This is in some ways significantly worse than intercity competition, because you’re just spending billions of dollars to just move economic activity from one point in the metro area to another.”

Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, watched closely in June as lawmakers in Topeka, Kansas, approved an expansion of an often-criticized tax incentive program with the aim of subsidizing a new stadium for one or both teams.

The bidding war for the teams is being viewed as particularly irresponsible by those who hailed a 2019 compact between Kansas and Missouri that some had hoped would set a new model for states across the country to curb corporate tax incentives.

Five years ago, the Democratic governor of Kansas and the Republican governor of Missouri celebrated an end to the so-called economic Border War, a long-standing practice in which governments would offer lucrative subsidies to lure companies back and forth across state lines in the Kansas City area. People saw the practice as wasteful, since it paid companies to relocate without spurring new growth for the regional economy.

The truce was momentous for Kansas and Missouri, two states whose rivalry traces back to bloody Civil War days. But it also garnered national acclaim from both liberals and conservatives who saw the move as a blow to corporate welfare and the cynical practice of companies pitting governments against each other.

But more powerful than the bipartisan cross-border cease-fire, apparently, is the allure of a new professional sports venue.

“Literally every piece of public policy that people said was bad before is being seen here,” said Kansas City, Missouri, Democratic Mayor Quinton Lucas.

Across the country, professional sports teams are playing various local and state governments against each other — a trend that will likely accelerate as a wave of existing stadium leases begin to expire across the country.

It’s a page from the pro sports playbook: Teams often threaten to move to other markets — one without an NFL or NBA franchise, for example. But when those efforts don’t work, team owners often seek to spark competition among local jurisdictions, Matheson said.

New Jersey officials are currently in talks with the owner of the Philadelphia 76ers to get that NBA franchise to hop over to Camden, New Jersey. And the NFL’s Washington Commanders, whose current stadium is in Maryland, are in talks with officials in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia as they look to build a new facility.

“If there’s not a credible threat to relocate,” Matheson said, “the only way to really get the money out of people’s hands is to play localities against one another.”

Lucas said the bidding war between Kansas and Missouri — and local governments in each — gives more leverage to the Chiefs and Royals in negotiations. But it’s up to elected officials to keep from being outmatched.

“I do think some support is important,” Lucas said. “Giving away the farm is not.”

In Topeka, the GOP-controlled legislature expanded Kansas’ Sales Tax and Revenue Bond program, known as STAR, which would redirect sales tax generated at the stadiums and surrounding areas to pay off construction debt. If the teams were to hop the state line, they could benefit from an unprecedented level of taxpayer support: as much as 70% of the costs of two stadiums, which could amount to billions.

The law allows the state to strike stadium deals with little to no public involvement, doubles down on a state incentive program with a spotty track record of success and potentially puts the state’s finances at risk — all for the prospect of luring a sports team a few miles away.

“I do not like this. It feels gross,” Kansas state Rep. Jason Probst said during a caucus meeting of House Democrats in June. “This whole show that’s going on feels disgusting to me. And it’s still the right thing to do.”

In an interview, Probst, who is from Hutchinson in central Kansas, said the reality of professional sports requires governments “to play the game” and offer public assistance, lest they risk losing teams altogether.

“You can stand on your principles. … But if another state isn’t playing by the same set of rules you are, then they’re going to make that investment and they’re going to take that away,” he said.

Reigniting the Border War

On a hot summer day in 2019, hundreds of people gathered to celebrate an end to Missouri’s and Kansas’ practice of offering tax incentives to move companies and jobs from one state to the other.

By one estimate, the practice cost taxpayers more than $300 million over a decade and created almost no new jobs for the Kansas City metro area, which straddles both states.

“Sometimes common sense does prevail,” Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson said at the time. “Because you don’t have to be a scientist to figure out this was a bad deal for both states.”

Parson’s office did not respond to requests for comment for this story. But in July, the governor said he was confident the NFL team would stay put at Arrowhead Stadium in Missouri.

“I’m not too worried about Kansas at this point,” Parson said.

This spring, voters’ rejection of a 40-year sales tax to help finance a new Royals stadium — and upgrades for Arrowhead — sparked a fear that the teams might leave if they don’t get new facilities. Claiming voters in the Chiefs’ and Royals’ home county had “dropped the ball,” Republican leaders in Kansas pushed to offer the teams a deal, worried they could leave the region altogether.

That fear was enough to reignite the dormant competition between officials in the two states.

“And then they said, ‘Oh, but this is sports, that doesn’t count,’” Matheson said. “Bad economics with sports teams seems to have few boundaries.”

While some Missouri officials have criticized Kansas’ overtures to the teams, Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly said in June she made no promises about leaving the teams alone when she signed the Border War truce.

This week, Kelly’s office declined to comment on the legislation, referring questions to the Kansas Department of Commerce, which would oversee any stadium deals. That agency did not answer questions but provided a statement saying such projects “require discretion and confidentiality.”

“The department will not disclose any details regarding the activity surrounding negotiations or future agreements,” department spokesperson Patrick Lowry wrote in an email.

Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Republican from Lee’s Summit in suburban Kansas City, likewise said the truce wasn’t meant to cover sports teams — and he wants his state to keep the teams. He expects the state to respond with an offer of its own.

“The sports teams are sort of in a special category of their own. I don’t think that’s what that legislation really was meant for,” Patterson said of the truce.

Kansas’ offer to the Chiefs and Royals enhances an often-criticized program meant to bring major tourist attractions to the state.

But in most cases, the STAR bond program, according to a state audit, failed at its goal of increasing tourism. There may have been some cases, the audit said, where certain projects kept Kansans spending money in Kansas rather than going to Missouri.

“But we think it’s more often that local visitors simply move existing economic activity from one part of Kansas to another,” the audit said.

Prairiefire, a sprawling development in the Kansas suburb of Overland Park, defaulted on its STAR construction bonds earlier this year because sales tax revenues from its restaurants, movie theater and museum came in far below projections.

The proposal for the stadiums would allow the Chiefs or Royals to pay off construction loans using the increased sales and liquor tax collections at the stadium. In pushing for the legislation, lawmakers noted that the money for the stadium would come from spending in and around the stadiums, not general taxpayers.

And they claimed that bond investors would be on the hook — not the state — if sales tax collections come up short.

But Geoffrey Propheter, an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver, said it’s unclear how interested investors will be in loaning huge sums for stadium projects, which typically do not create enough revenue to cover costs.

And if those state-issued bonds were ever at risk of failure, he said, lawmakers would feel implicit pressure to bail out the stadium.

“In the real world, there’s a huge risk to Kansas state taxpayers,” he said. “They’re going to have to decide to either bail out the project or do nothing. And if they do nothing, their credit, the state’s credit worthiness, will take a hit. And that will make all future borrowing more expensive.”

‘Zero-sum’ game between states

Experts viewed the Kansas-Missouri truce as a model that other states and cities could emulate.

“We were very interested in the Kansas and Missouri situation, because it gives a test as to whether this will work,” said Marc Joffe, a state policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank. “And there have been some encouraging results since 2019 … but I think sports teams are just too big of a war, and they weren’t able to avoid the temptation.”

The institute is studying the Kansas-Missouri truce, in its larger effort to end bidding wars for factories and other major employers.

Joffe criticized such competition as wasteful, and said bidding for stadiums was no exception.

“It is at best a zero-sum game,” Joffe said, “and because of all the waste involved, it’s a really negative-sum game.”

Joffe pointed to the Coalition to Phase Out Corporate Tax Giveaways, a bipartisan group of state lawmakers that sponsored bills in more than a dozen legislatures between 2019 and 2021.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Christopher Rabb, a Democrat, has twice introduced legislation in Harrisburg to end corporate subsidies. He said he was motivated by Amazon’s 2018 announcement that it was seeking a new corporate headquarters, a move that set off a national bidding war among cities.

He broadly believes corporate incentives are wasteful, especially for professional sports teams. Rabb views the Philadelphia 76ers talks of moving across the Delaware River to New Jersey as a ploy for public subsidies.

He noted most average people can’t afford to attend pro games and likened chasing the purported economic benefits of stadiums and arenas to hunting for “fool’s gold.”

“How does this really change the collective quality of opportunity for regular Philadelphians? It doesn’t,” he said. “Let’s be honest: This is the sandbox of billionaires.”

Rabb said elected leaders should be focused on policies that help marginalized people, not the “excessively wealthy,” such as team owners.

After talks stalled over a new arena for the 76ers in Philadelphia, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said he proposed the team relocate just a few miles to Camden.

Murphy’s office declined to comment, but the Democratic governor told a local television station last week that the team’s interest was “legitimate.”

“We think we got an angle here. We’re taking it seriously. Where it lands? I can’t promise you,” he said. “I think they are taking it seriously as well — we shall see. I say this as a Boston Celtics fan — don’t get mad at me.”

But this sort of jockeying between states only benefits team owners, said Neil deMause, a journalist who has written a book about stadium subsidies. Taxpayers and fans, he said, stand to gain little, especially if game tickets become more expensive at new facilities.

“All the economists I know say the best thing you could do is reject it for your state and have the stadiums get built in the other state,” deMause said. “You still get to go drive across the border and see the games the same way as you would otherwise … but you don’t have to pay for building the thing.”

Rural broadband has been a top priority of state and federal officials (Jared Strong/Iowa Capital Dispatch).

Free internet?

It sounds like a nice dream. We’d all love to ditch the $80 a month we pay for the ability to stream movies, do doctor’s appointments from home or check in on our cousin’s latest Facebook post.

But in North Kansas City, residents get a steady online connection with no monthly bill.

Anyone there who signs up for KC Fiber can get internet service with no monthly bill. And not just a janky dial-up connection — it’s high-speed gigabit internet, at speeds comparable to Google Fiber, AT&T or Spectrum.

It took $10 million from the city’s hefty gambling tax revenue and eight years of troubleshooting, while dodging a legal challenge from a telecom provider and dodging a state legislature restricting city-run broadband.

North Kansas City is one of few cities in the country that give away high-speed fiber internet service to residents as a basic city service.

The City Council “saw it as a city utility, very similar to water and wastewater,” said Kim Nakahodo, North Kansas City’s deputy city administrator.

She said the council members hoped free internet would seduce businesses and residents to North Kansas City.

It’s a part of a growing movement nationally to treat broadband as public necessity — like mail service, roads and sewers — rather than a luxury. Cities like North Kansas City spend tax dollars to build broadband networks, rather than relying on the free market to provide an essential service.

But municipal broadband programs like North Kansas City’s KC Fiber are tricky. For eight years, the city spent more money on its fiber network than it planned for — about $1 million between 2009 and 2010 — and it took years for North Kansas City to get its program out of the red.

And now that fiber-optic internet is available in most parts of the Kansas City area, it’s becoming less likely that cities or suburbs will compete with private businesses already selling high-speed service.

The bumpy road to free internet

North Kansas City kicked off its $10 million fiber network plan in 2006, hoping to install high-speed internet hookups to all 2,500 residences and 900 businesses by the end of that year.

It was an ambitious plan. It didn’t go so smoothly.

The first hiccup came in the courts. Time Warner Cable, now known as Spectrum, sued North Kansas City, arguing that it could not go through with its plans without a citywide vote under Missouri law. A federal judge ruled in North Kansas City’s favor, and the city charged ahead with its plan.

Then came financial problems.

North Kansas City was spending a lot of money to run its fiber program, and the money it charged customers (before it made service free for residents) wasn’t covering the cost of running it. A state audit found that operating losses ate up $1 million of the city’s gambling fund in 2009 and 2010.

So in 2014, the City Council changed course and signed a deal with a local business called DataShack (now called Nocix).

The city would continue to own the fiber network, but DataShack would run the operation under the name KC Fiber. They split revenue and expenses 50/50, and the city could not be responsible for more than $150,000 per year.

As part of that deal, DataShack said it would provide free gigabit internet service to all residents who signed up and paid a $300 installation fee. Businesses still pay a monthly bill, which generates some revenue for the city.

Now, North Kansas City residents like Jill Toyoshiba get online without that pesky monthly bill.

She enrolled in the program before the transition to DataShack, and she hasn’t looked back.

“It’s a real asset,” she said. “If you call up, there’s somebody to pick up the phone and answer … A municipal service that is attentive to residents is really appealing.”

But at the same time, not all residents have been able to get free internet.

Some apartment complexes in North Kansas City have effectively prohibited their tenants from signing up for KC Fiber because they have exclusive deals with providers like AT&T or Spectrum.

It can also be expensive to wire a large apartment building for a new internet provider. When landlords don’t have to pay the internet bill — or in some cases, when they get a cut of their tenants’ bills in exchange for exclusivity — they don’t have much incentive to install KC Fiber.

“It’s easier to do those things when you’re building from the ground up,” Nakahodo said.

North Kansas City is instead trying to get developers of new apartments to agree to install KC Fiber if they’re receiving tax incentives like property tax breaks.

Why cities are pursuing their own broadband networks

North Kansas City is one of 57 city-owned broadband networks across the country.

They have a variety of models. Some of them, like KC Fiber, own the network and contract with a private business to operate it. Others own and operate the utility themselves, similar to how KC Water provides services in Kansas City, Missouri.

But they share a common philosophy: that internet service is no longer an amenity. Much like how tax dollars build roads and bridges, these local governments build broadband to keep their residents connected to telehealth, emergency notifications and city services.

Aaron Deacon, the managing director of KC Digital Drive, said that initiatives like municipal broadband are especially beneficial in filling a market gap where private businesses don’t smell profits in providing internet. KC Digital Drive pushes for broadband equity and digital innovation in Kansas City.

In filling a market gap, they can play a role in closing the digital divide between households with reliable internet and those without.

But it’s not always the right tool in the toolbox.

Municipal broadband is cost-effective in small, dense communities like North Kansas City, with a population just shy of 5,000 people and a land area of less than five square miles. Houses are closer together, so it’s cheaper to install a fiber connection for every resident.

But the places that desperately need broadband tend to be rural and sparsely populated. That’s where broadband is the most expensive to install and the least profitable for internet companies.

“You can find people who … find three examples and be like, ‘It’s done so much for these communities, and it’s amazing,’” Deacon said. “And you can have a paper that says, ‘Look at these three examples where it’s been a complete boondoggle.’”

Broadly speaking, Deacon said, municipal broadband is most effective in places without other internet providers. Recent examples include Utah’s Utopia network serving 20 cities in the Salt Lake area, or Burlington Telecom in Vermont.

The cities that are best equipped to start a city-owned broadband network already have public utility boards overseeing electricity. That puts Wyandotte County and Independence at the top of the list in the Kansas City area.

But from a business standpoint, Deacon said decision-makers should look at the causes of digital inequities — whether they’re cost issues, service issues or something else — before jumping to the conclusion that municipal broadband would actually fix those problems.

“If you’ve got another network provider that is providing quality service,” Deacon said, “I don’t know that it makes any sense for a city to get into that business.”

State laws restrict municipal broadband in 18 states, including Missouri

Meanwhile, state governments have made it more difficult for cities to get into the internet business.

In Missouri, cities are allowed to offer internet service, but they’re prohibited from including cable TV packages or telephone service. That’s the law that Time Warner used when it unsuccessfully tried to sue North Kansas City over its city-run fiber in 2006.

Another law proposed in 2022 would have prohibited cities from taking federal funding to provide broadband unless it’s an “underserved” area — and it would have given other internet companies the opportunity to challenge any proposal first.

Kansas does not keep cities from running their own broadband, but other states are more restrictive. Nebraska bans city-run internet completely. Nevada only allows it in its least populated cities or counties.

The United States Telecom Association opposes municipal broadband because it says cities don’t have the technical expertise to effectively run their own internet services.

“While government-provided broadband might appear ‘free’ to residents,” spokesperson Mariah Wollweber told The Beacon in an email, “the reality is that taxpayers ultimately foot the bill.”

A representative from AT&T said the company encourages local governments to work with private companies with a “proven track record” of efficient and effective internet services.

For what it’s worth, Toyoshiba is happy with the free internet she receives from KC Fiber.

She hasn’t had to pay for her internet since 2015, and she can’t remember the last time she had any outages lasting longer than a few minutes.

“I’ve mentioned it before (to friends), and it’s almost like bragging in a way,” she said. “It’s something I don’t have to think about.”

This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft announcing a lawsuit Thursday against President Joe Biden's 2021 executive order for federal agencies to promote voting (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

With less than a week before Tuesday’s primaries, statewide elected officials are doing what they can to use their jobs to grab last-minute headlines.

On Thursday in Jefferson City, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft went first, holding a news conference to announce he is suing President Joe Biden and 15 federal department heads over a 2021 executive order intended to boost voter registration.

Ashcroft is locked in a bitter fight with Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and state Sen. Bill Eigel for the GOP nomination for governor.

Two hours  later, Attorney General Andrew Bailey and the man who put him into office, Gov. Mike Parson, held a joint news conference announcing a crackdown on unregulated cannabis products legalized by federal agricultural laws governing hemp.

Bailey faces a stiff challenge in the GOP primary from Will Scharf, who has raked in millions of dollars from national conservative groups.

And for State Treasurer Vivek Malek, the opportunity for publicity came on Wednesday in the form of new state money available to subsidize business loans through a linked-deposit program called MoBUCKS.

Malek is trying to keep his job in a Republican primary against five opponents, including three who are running full-scale campaigns.

Mike Parson works to boost his favored candidates in Missouri GOP primaries

Ashcroft, an attorney, is representing himself in the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Other plaintiffs are Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston, McDonald County Clerk Kimberly Bell and St. Charles County Director of Elections Kurt Bahr.

In it, they accuse the Biden Administration of overstepping its legal authority in the executive order. The result, the filing states, requires “federal officials and agencies to use federal taxpayer money and resources to fund what is, in all practical effect, a get-out-the-vote and ballot harvesting scheme favoring a select demographic of the electorate that favors President Biden and the Democrat (sic) Party.”

Thor Hearne, a St. Louis attorney, is providing pro-bono help in the lawsuit, Ashcroft said at a news conference.

The order received little attention until this summer, when it became a GOP target for outrage. It directs federal agencies to do what they can to promote voter registration in their interactions with the public.

“It is our duty to ensure that registering to vote and the act of voting be made simple and easy for all those eligible to do so,” the order states.

The lawsuit is being filed now rather than when the executive order was issued, Ashcroft said, because he believes a body of evidence shows the Biden administration doesn’t want to provide information about how the order is being implemented.

Ashcroft was unable to state with certainty whether his office had tried to obtain information from the Biden administration about how the order was being implemented in Missouri or how many times it had tried to obtain that information.

“This is something that I’ve been following for years, and we’ve been trying to get more information about it,” Ashcroft said. “We only filed now because we were finally ready to and because it needed to be done.”

Parson’s event with Bailey also included agency leaders who will be responsible for implementing a new executive order banning the sale of any food product containing hemp-derived cannabinoids as adulterated with unapproved additives.

During the news conference, Parson held up several packages of products labeled like candies but containing THC derived from hemp. Children are eating the THC-laced products and being hospitalized, Parson said, because of the deceptive packaging.

The state Alcohol and Tobacco Control office will help enforce the order by threatening the liquor license of any retailer who keeps the products on their shelves.

The order will take effect on Sept. 1.

Hemp and derived products were legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill and the result has been a rapidly expanding market.

“When the almighty dollar, for the people who sell these products, becomes more important than our children’s lives here in the state of Missouri, it should be a wake up call for everybody,” Parson said.

Bailey said his office has been investigating the sources of the THC additives in the products and the investigation would continue. He’s compiled information about poisoning cases involving children, he said.

“We must end deceptive business practices that pursue profit from illicit substances ahead of children’s sake,” Bailey said. “These products represent an abusive market failure and the various children are suffering.”

Malek didn’t hold a news conference but he did use his social media accounts to promote the renewal of the MoBUCKS program.

The loan program shut down in January when it reached its statutory allowance of $800 million. The program works by linking a deposit of state money to a loan that is discounted because the lender pays below-market interest to the state on its money.

Malek successfully lobbied lawmakers to increase the statutory allowance to $1.2 billion during this year’s legislative session. 

“MOBUCK$ is a relief valve from inflation, and I urge everyone interested in a lower-interest loan to meet with their local lender and discuss what is necessary to submit an application,” Malek said in a news release.

Joe Amrine, who spent 16 years on death row in Missouri for a killing he did not commit, speaks at a news conference Thursday calling for Attorney General Andrew Bailey to drop his opposition to an innocence hearing for Marcellus Williams, set for Sept. 24. Amrine was joined by, from left, Ray Krone of Arizona, Herman LIndsey of Florida and Eric Anderson of Michigan, who have all been freed from death row after their innocence was proven (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

A group of men exonerated after years on death row gathered at the Missouri Capitol Thursday to call on Attorney General Andrew Bailey to stop blocking efforts to vacate the conviction of Marcellus Williams.

Williams was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 stabbing death of Lisha Gayle during a robbery of her suburban St. Louis home. He is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24.

But since his 2001 conviction, new testing was able to determine DNA on the murder weapon matched someone else.

Four members of a group called Witness to Innocence, each of whom were sentenced only to later have their innocence revealed, shared their stories Thursday in Jefferson City and advocated for Williams’ release.

“We’re asking the Attorney General of Missouri to stop acting like innocence doesn’t matter,” said Herman Lindsey, executive director of Witness to Innocence and exoneree from Florida’s death row. “We are asking you to represent the people of Missouri by looking for the truth over politics.”

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who is running for U.S. House, filed a motion earlier this year to vacate Williams’ conviction, and a St. Louis County Circuit Court judge will hold an evidentiary hearing Aug. 21.

Just 30 minutes after the exonerees began their press conference, Bailey joined Gov. Mike Parson one floor above in the Capitol for their own press conference on unauthorized cannabinoids.

Asked about Williams’ case, Bailey said: “The criminal justice system has to have a component of finality.”

“The juries of the state of Missouri under the Sixth Amendment have a right to participate in that process,” he said, “and we should respect and defer to the finality of the jury’s determination.”

Bailey said he doesn’t want to forget the evidence used in the original conviction.

The original case relied on testimony of  a witness who served as a jailhouse informant in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Williams’ isn’t the first case that has stirred questions of innocence after new evidence arrived post-conviction.

Among Witness to Innocence’s speakers was Joseph Amrine, who was exonerated in Missouri in 2003 after informants admitted to lying during trial. The Missouri Attorney General’s office, which at the time was then led by Democrat Attorney General Jay Nixon, acknowledged Amrie’s innocence but still pushed for execution.

Amrine’s case made it all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court, where Judge Laura Denvir Stith questioned then-Assistant Attorney General Frank Jung: “Are you suggesting … even if we find that Mr. Amrine is actually innocent, he should be executed?” 

“That’s correct, your honor,” Jung said.

For the last 30 years, the Missouri Attorney General’s office has opposed every innocence case.

“The Missouri Attorney General’s office is emphasizing winning and personal gain over truth and justice…. To them, executing a person is just the cost of doing business,” Lindsey said.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Missouri has exonerated four people from death row and has killed 99 since 1976, with four executions in 2023.

(Larry Mayer/Getty Images).

Danielle and Grace Perkowitz packed up and left Chicago two years ago for Houghton, Michigan, to start a career in goat farming.

“I had a joke for years — I’m going to start a goat farm,” Danielle Perkowitz said, co-owner of BigGoat Farm. “What are we waiting for? Let’s do it.”

As beginner farmers, they said, they hoped for support from the Michigan Farm Bureau to get their farm started. But they found the Farm Bureau didn’t align with their values, both as small farmers and as queer women.

“I think we like the idea of farming as rebellious, self-sustaining, and community oriented,” they wrote in an Instagram message to the Arnolt Center. “The farm bureau doesn’t seem to capture those ideals. It also doesn’t seem inclusive or supportive of diversity in farming.”

The couple is not alone in their concerns, as Investigate Midwest reported in 2022. Many members of state farm bureaus and the American Farm Bureau Federation noted similar concerns, and some have left their local farm bureau for alternative industry groups as a result.

While farm bureaus across the Midwest lobby for agricultural issues, a seven-month long investigation by the Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism, the University of Missouri, the University of Illinois and Investigate Midwest found that isn’t where the advocacy stops.

A review of campaign finance records, social media, lobbying disclosures, websites, and policy books in nine Midwestern states revealed that state farm bureaus threw their weight behind political and social causes with little or nothing to do with farming:

• Election security laws in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wisconsin
• State constitutional amendments and/or ballot initiatives in Indiana, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio
• Availability of government services for immigrants lacking permanent legal status in Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, and amnesty for immigrants lacking permanent legal status in Illinois
• Removal of tenure in Illinois, opposition to teaching critical race theory in Indiana, and advocating for teaching abstinence in Missouri
• Reading the bible in schools and voluntary prayer in Indiana and Missouri
• Recognition of only two genders: female and male, in Missouri

The Illinois Farm Bureau, the largest in the Midwest, claims a membership of nearly 400,000, with revenue of $57 million and expenditures of $55.7 million in 2022, according to the most recent tax filings. The Minnesota Farm Bureau, the smallest in the Midwest, has nearly 30,000 members, revenue of $3.4 million in 2023 and expenditures of $3.45 million.

Farm bureaus in Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin did not respond to multiple calls and emails for comment. The Ohio Farm Bureau is the only organization to respond.

Developing policy from the roots up

Across the Midwest, farm bureaus are supporting policies that have little or nothing to do with agriculture: from the Indiana and Illinois farm bureaus favoring leaving “Under God” in the pledge of allegiance to the Missouri Farm Bureau opposing cloning humans.

Farm bureaus in all nine Midwestern states researched for this story champion being grassroots organizations. Members vote on every policy included in a state’s annual policy book that directs the bureau’s political efforts.

National issues are sent with delegates to be discussed and voted on for the American Farm Bureau Federation’s national policy book, which helps direct its political efforts. With $35.5 million in revenue and $31.7 million in expenditures in 2022, where the American Farm Bureau Federation directs its own political efforts matters.

Darcy Maulsby, a fifth-generation Calhoun County, Iowa farmer, has been speaking with farmers in her area for years to get a policy around foreign ownership of farmland in the books. As an Iowa Farm Bureau member since about 1999, the former president of the Calhoun County Farm Bureau and current member of the board of directors, she knows the process well.

“We do want investment in Iowa, but we don’t want to have farmers shut out of an opportunity to own farm grounds.” Maulsby said. “It’s a real complex, tricky issue with a lot of legal ramifications, but you try and work with groups like (the) Farm Bureau to figure out solutions to this issue.”

There is no policy concerning foreign ownership of farmland in the Iowa policy book, according to Maulsby. (The Farm Bureau’s policy book is only available to members.)

But even without the Iowa Farm Bureau’s lobbying for such a policy, Iowa and other states across the Midwest are taking action to bar or restrict foreign ownership of farmland.

In Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Iowa laws have been passed to limit or track foreign ownership of farmland. Meanwhile in Illinois, Missouri and Michigan, they are still in the process of passing legislation on the topic.

“We have a support structure,” Maulsby said, “from the county level and the state level. But really, this is all driven by the members.”

Platform policies in practice

A long-held common policy shared by the Ohio and Missouri farm bureaus is that there should be a higher threshold to amend the state constitution. Both bureaus have gone on to support legislation that would make their policy law.

The Ohio Farm Bureau donated $7,500 to “Protect Our Constitution,” a campaign in favor of state Issue 1 — a Republican-backed measure to raise the threshold for passing constitutional amendments to 60%. In a special election held in August 2023, the measure failed.

Whittney Bowers, the Ohio Farm Bureau’s director of state policy and grassroots engagement, said the bureau’s position was consistent with their policy. The Ohio Farm Bureau supported changing the procedure to amend the constitution, Bowers said.

“Our (support) was based on our policy,” Bowers said. “It has nothing to do with social issues.”

In Missouri, Senate Joint Resolution (SJR) 74 was prefiled on Jan.1, 2023, and would have required constitutional amendments to receive a majority of votes across the state as well as a majority of the votes in most of the congressional districts, raising the threshold to pass an initiative petition on the ballot.

SJR 74 would have allowed rural districts to have more influence over constitutional amendments. The bill was the subject of a 50-hour filibuster by Democrats on May 15, 2024. The legislation didn’t pass before the session ended on May 17.

Currently in Missouri, to change the constitution an amendment must receive a majority of the votes across the state.

While both farm bureaus were lobbying for different bills to pass, efforts to add legal abortion to the Ohio and Missouri state constitutions also were in progress.

In Ohio, the Right to Make Reproductive Decisions Including Abortion Initiative, was approved by 56.78% of voters on Nov. 7, 2023. In Missouri, the ACLU turned in 380,000 voter signatures on May 3, 2024, double the minimum needed to qualify for the ballot.

Had Ohio’s state Issue 1, from the special election held earlier in 2023, passed it would have — like SJR 74 — made legalizing abortion through the state constitution more difficult.

Ben Travlos, the director of state and local legislative affairs for the Missouri Farm Bureau, appeared before the Senate Rules Committee in late January 2024 to testify in support of SJR 74.

During the hearing, Travlos expressed the Missouri Farm Bureau’s opposition to the current threshold for passing ballot initiatives.

State Sen. Barbara Washington, D-Kansas City, questioned him about how the current rules for passing a ballot initiative have previously benefited the farm bureau and its members.

“The initiative petition process, as it stands today, provided our farmers in this state the Right-to-Farm, is that correct?” she asked, which Travlos affirmed.

Right-to-Farm was passed in 2014 as Amendment 1 with 50.12% of the vote and would not have passed under the threshold stipulated in SJR 74, the legislation that would have changed the rules.

When Washington asked for clarification about opposing the current petition process after benefitting from it, Travlos said, “A lot of our members are concerned about the ease of changing the Missouri Constitution, which is why they’ve been taking the stance they have on wanting to call for initiative petition reform to make it more difficult to change and amend the state’s constitution.”

The Missouri Farm Bureau has long supported making it more difficult to amend the state constitution via initiative petition, and said, in several policy books, “A constitution should be a framework for action rather than a collection of special-interest taxes and programs.”

The Missouri Farm Bureau also has long opposed abortion, according to several of its policy books.

“We oppose abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is in danger,” the Missouri Farm Bureau said in several of its policy books. “We oppose government funding of abortion. Partial birth abortions should not be performed under any circumstance.”

Missouri voters in November will consider a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights in the state.

The Missouri Farm Bureau did not answer several emails and phone calls requesting comment. Farm Bureau representatives declined to comment on its policy book when a reporter went to their Missouri headquarters.

The American Farm Bureau Federation does not participate or comment on policy making at the local and state levels. Mike Tomko, the director of communications at the American Farm Bureau Federation, said in an email, each state farm bureau is autonomous.

Some farmers feel represented, others left out

Maulsby, the fifth-generation farmer, was born into farming. Her family has been working the same land in Calhoun County, Iowa, since 1889.

She joined the Iowa Farm Bureau because she liked how it developed agriculture policy through a grassroots system. She has been heavily involved with Iowa’s policy process, contributing several policies that have made it into the state policy book.

But she doesn’t agree with every policy that has been passed.

“You’re not going to win on every issue you care about. But that’s the same as when you vote for a senator or representative or the president,” Maulsby said. “It would be very rare that you would agree on absolutely everything that that person stands for.”

At the local level, the farm bureau is involved in the community. Every year Maulsby, other volunteer board members, a local veterinarian and banker, and the district conservationist with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, go to South Central Calhoun and Manson Northwest Webster Middle School to participate in an agriculture career day.

They talk about their work to show what types of agriculture careers students could have without leaving the county.

Annually, the Calhoun Farm Bureau also donates to local food pantries, Maulsby said.

“One of the things we’re passionate about is helping provide safe, affordable, abundant food supplies,” Maulsby said. “And part of that means taking care of those in need right in your local community.”

Farm bureaus represent around 1.3 million farmers across the nine Midwestern states researched for this story, but not all members think that the organizations represent them.

Heather Wright Wendel, owner of Apple Acres Farm in Houghton, Michigan, is a member of the Michigan Farm Bureau for insurance but said the organization’s lobbying does not represent her views.

“I’m basically helping them lobby, which doesn’t align with small-farm values,” Wendel said. “I feel like they’re out for large corporate interests.”

Wendel also noted that the farm bureau lobbying does not support sustainable farming or regenerative agriculture, which she said prioritizes soil health and limits the use of pesticides and fertilizers. At her solar powered farm, she said she values sustainability, focusing on upcycling and boosting native plant life.

The farm bureau does not share those priorities, she said, but supports farms with heavy machinery, growing one crop (monoculture) and other industrial practices, such as automation, to produce as high a yield as possible. All of which, Wendel added, makes farmers highly vulnerable to market fluctuations.

“The farm bureau is entrenched in that setup,” she said. “There are people making lots of money off of it.”

Farm bureaus cultivate candidates for public office

Farm bureaus exercise influence through advocacy and lobbying, and, in many states, grow their own candidates.

The Arnolt Center found that farm bureaus in Missouri, Nebraska, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and Wisconsin have programs of varying length and intensity that train farmers to run for local or statewide offices.

• In Minnesota, the two-day program costs $200 for members and $300 for non-members.
• In Ohio, the members-only program holds classes over the span of a year. The cost was not listed on their website.
• In Illinois, the $800 program started in 1979 and has trained more than 1,200 people, with a class size of 25 participants a year.

Participants are taught a variety of lessons including campaign strategies in Nebraska, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and media training in Nebraska, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

Participants’ individual policy positions were not part of the training, said Dan Hughes, a former Nebraska state senator of Venango who attended the training in August 2013.

“My district was very heavily Republican … if you want to get in the ideology, that’s pretty much where (the) Farm Bureau is at,” Hughes said. “I don’t think very often that I would have been opposed to overall issues – the implementation or the nuances is probably where we would have differences.”

These programs teach farmers across the Midwest how to win elections.

Missouri State Sen. Rusty Black, R-Chillicothe, was invited to forums back when he taught agriculture and now while he is in the legislature.

Forums have ranged from 30 to 250 people, Black said, and covered topics like funding for roads and broadband. He said generally a Farm Bureau employee presents on the topic, followed by a bureaucrat to help explain the government’s goals, and wrapped up with a question and answer session.

“(I am) always willing to listen to that organization,” Black said.

And there is always a need for prospective candidates.

As the Michigan Farm Bureau notes on its website, “In the era of term limits there is a constant need for farmers to run for office.”

Christy Avery, of the Arnolt Center, contributed reporting. Talia Duffy, of the University of Illinois, Emily Hook and Zeke Shapiro, of the Arnolt Center contributed research.

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

University of Missouri System President Mun Choi discusses plans to reorganize diversity, equity and inclusion efforts by ending a separate campus division during a Friday briefing with reporters. He was joined by Vice Chancellor Maurice Gipson, who headed the division and is leaving for a new post in Arkansas. (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent)

The University of Missouri will eliminate its division focused on diversity, social equity and inclusion on the Columbia campus, completing the dismantling of administrative structures put in place after protests in 2015 brought national attention to issues of racial equality.

The move coincides with the departure of division Vice Chancellor Maurice Gipson. It is designed to appease Republicans who are showing hostility towards efforts designed to attract and retain students from historically underrepresented groups, Mun Choi, University of Missouri System president and Columbia campus chancellor, said at a briefing with reporters last week.

There have been 13 bills targeting diversity, equity and inclusion filed in the legislature over the past two years Choi noted. During debate on the state budget during 2023, Republicans in the Missouri House added language banning any diversity efforts across state government, language that was deleted before the final budget passed.

One of the leading Republican candidates for governor, state Sen. Bill Eigel, has said he will fire every state employee who works to promote diversity and equity in state agencies, including universities.

“We realize the political situations that have occurred in other universities across the United States, including Texas, and Florida, Utah, and now Alabama, as well as many others,” Choi said.

Choi said the university has lobbied heavily against legislative action.

“We do believe that our proactive approaches in the past have really played an important role when diverting these bills from passing and I will be sharing our plans with elected leaders beginning this week,” he said.

The top goal is to protect the university’s operating and capital appropriations, Choi said.

“As a university we see about $500 million per year in appropriations and $200 million in capital one-time projects,” Choi said. “If we don’t see the $700 million dollars per year, we would have to eliminate every single position at all of the colleges that we have at universities. That is not a risk that I want to take.”

Gipson, hired as vice chancellor in 2020, is leaving to become interim president at Philander Smith University, an historically Black college in Arkansas. The four units of the division will be moved into other offices, which Choi said will make their mission part of the overall mission in each office.

No employees will lose their jobs, Choi said.

Gipson, who joined Choi in the briefing, said he’s confident that the work begun in the division will continue.

“We’ve been inspired and impressed that our colleagues here say, ‘this is going to work, we don’t have to all be underneath, necessarily the same place to get this work done,’” Gipson said.

The division’s units were moved out of the offices where they will return as part of a university commitment following the events of the fall of 2015, when long-simmering grievances about racial issues on campus led to a protest movement called Concerned Student 1950. 

The student group chose a name that reflected the year the first Black student was admitted to the school, which was founded in 1839. It sought to bring attention to overlooked school history that the campus was founded on the wealth of slaveholders and partially built with the labor of enslaved people.

A large group of students created a tent city, a graduate student started a hunger strike and the protests grabbed international attention when the Missouri Tiger football team joined the protest, stating they would not participate in sports until administrators showed they were meeting the demands that included the resignation of then-system President Tim Wolfe.

Other demands included more Black faculty, a plan to increase the retention rates for marginalized students and increased funding and personnel for the student support centers.

Wolfe resigned in November 2015 and the protest ended. In the year between his removal and the announcement that Choi would become the new permanent president, the university established both a campus division and a system vice-presidency focused on DEI efforts.

Choi, who was born in Korea, is the the third non-white permanent president of the university, following Manuel Pacheco, president from 1997 to 2002 and Elson Floyd, who was Black, holding the post from 2003 to 2007.

Choi became campus chancellor in 2020, becoming the first president since the university system was established in the 1960s to hold both jobs.

“This reporting structure in the chancellor’s office is important to cementing the level of support for this work,” Kevin McDonald, then-chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer for the UM System and vice chancellor for inclusion, diversity and equity on the MU campus told the Columbia Daily Tribune in 2016. “I would hope it elevates the level of visibility of the work they have been doing.”

Despite those efforts, Black enrollment on the Columbia campus has fallen from 7.3% of the student body in fall 2015 to 5.3% last fall. The share of Hispanic students has increased to 5.5% from 3.5% in fall 2015 and the share of Asian students has increased from 3% from 2.2%.

The share of white students has remained virtually unchanged at about 77%.

The university anticipates an 11% increase in Black students and a 14% increase in Hispanic students on campus this fall, Choi said.

One specific demand was to increase Black representation among faculty to 10%. Black academics made up 3.5% of tenured and tenure-track faculty on the Columbia campus in the fall of 2023, down from 4.2% in 2018, the target year for the 10% goal.

While the share of Black students and faculty has declined, graduation rates for underrepresented ethnic groups on campus have increased, Choi said. The Columbia campus has the highest six-year graduation rate for Black students among public universities in Missouri, he said, and is near the median of flagship universities in nearby states for Black faculty.

The university began removing the structures put in place following the protests last year after a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled race-based admission policies were unconstitutional.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey ordered universities to “immediately cease their practice of using race-based standards to make decisions about things like admission, scholarships, programs and employment.”

The university responded by ending preferences in a number of scholarships and persuading donors to remove any racial or ethnic criteria from endowed programs. It also stopped requiring applicants for system administration jobs to include diversity statements in their job submissions.

Choi said the university has used those actions as part of its lobbying strategy.

“We do believe that our proactive approaches in the past have really played an important role when diverting these bills from passing,” Choi said, “and I will be sharing our plans with elected leaders.”

There were issues identified with a separate structure that the reorganization will address, Choi said.

“Because the ID division that works on student success programs were operating in an organization that was outside of the rest of the student success organization that’s in the Provost Office, there’s less opportunity to be inclusive, and less opportunities to be collaborative in that process,” he said.

The goal of the reorganization, Choi said, is to preserve the jobs and programs but to make them less visible.

“When you read the headlines that are out there, nationally, DEI is seen as an ideology, and it may be viewed by some as being exclusionary in the name of inclusion,” Choi said. “That is not what we do at the University of Missouri.”

This article has been updated to correct that Mun Choi is the third non-white president of the University of Missouri System.

Homebuilders want the Kansas City Council to relax its current green building code requirements so that they can find more cost-effective construction options (Alex Unruh/The Beacon).

The Kansas City Council gave homebuilders new rules last year designed to make housing easier on the environment.

Those rules told them what kind of windows to install, how well the walls should be insulated and how efficient the heating and air conditioning systems should be.

Developers now blame those rules for a construction slowdown that’s keeping the housing market tight and posing obstacles to making more of those homes affordable to more people.

But environmentalists say the new code needs more time to work. Ditching it, they contend, will lead to construction of energy-hog homes, adding to global climate change, and stick owners and tenants with higher energy bills.

“It will lead to less efficient and more costly homes,” said Billy Davies, conservation program coordinator for the Missouri chapter of the Sierra Club.

Some regional homebuilders want the city to relax the energy-efficiency rules of the building code it put into action last year. Rather than a rigorous checklist that dictates specifics, they want a general scoring system that gives them options to hit the mark on conserving energy. That, they say, can help them keep costs down and keep housing more affordable.

“What this is intended to do is add flexibility within the process for the contractor, the homebuilder and the homebuyer,” said Will Ruder, the executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City.

Groups defending the existing, stricter code see it as the only way for Kansas City to hit its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 100% by 2040.

Buildings play a critical role in this effort, as they are responsible for 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, said architecture instructor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Dominic Musso. “So something needs to be done if we’re going to create as big of an impact,” he said.

What would change?

The Kansas City Council adopted the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code in July 2023. That code offers builders three ways to comply with its energy standards.

However, homebuilders want more flexibility. They say they’re willing to build energy-efficient housing, but they just want to figure out the best way to do that themselves. So they’ve suggested a fourth option: achieving a Home Energy Rating System score of 68 or lower to qualify for permits.

The HERS scale, created by the Residential Energy Services Network, uses a baseline score of 100 to represent the energy use of a home built to the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code. The lower the score, the better the energy efficiency.

But Davies said that the new proposal sets the standard too low by referring to energy standards set almost two decades ago. And he said the standard isn’t tough enough. In California, new homes average a HERS score of 18.

“This is a score that is so easy to meet,” he said, “that it practically makes the code null and void.”

But Ruder with the homebuilders group said a HERS score of 68 is equal to the average in suburbs like Overland Park and Prairie Village, making it the lowest and most energy-efficient score in the metro.

The city code adopted last year requires more effective wall insulation, energy-efficient furnaces and updated windows that help maintain indoor temperatures.

The homebuilders want the leeway to upgrade windows, walls and furnaces to different standards so long as the home produces an energy rating of 68 or lower.

Ruder said that would avoid wasted expenses for buyers.

Davies said that the current energy code is crucial for protecting residents from the impacts of climate change.

“What (the homebuilders’ proposed change) does is create a loophole in Kansas City’s ordinance by weakening the energy policy and allowing developers to build more cheaply,” he said.

Davies said that he is also concerned that the proposed ordinance only requires energy testing for the first home in a development plan, which could lead to undetected issues and increased costs for homeowners.

“Imagine if there’s no testing,” he said. “Then the occupant could learn a year after they moved in that their utility bill is really high — there’s some kind of leak or other issues.”

Ruder said that builders want the City Council to change the language at its next meeting (July 23) to ensure that every home undergoes energy inspections.

Has the green building code impacted affordable housing?

Builders blame the current energy code for Kansas City’s housing shortage, partly for slowing down the rate building permits get approved.

The city averaged 60 permits per month between October 2023 and June, Ruder said. That same nine-month period averaged 66 permits a month over the last two years and 85 permits a month over the last four years.

Davies said that a drop in permits is common when new codes are introduced. He said construction workers who have already adapted to the current code shouldn’t have to learn a new one so soon.

“Kansas City needs to give the experts in the building community who want to work with this (2021) code more time to make it happen,” Davies said.

Steven Bennett, a professor in the Construction Management department at Johnson County Community College, said that Kansas City has historically had a slow permit process. But he finds the delays over the last nine months excessive. He said nearby cities typically need one to two months to adapt to new building codes.

What do the numbers say?

The Home Builders Association estimated that following the current standard can add up to $31,000 to the price of a 2,400-square-foot, two-story home. Bennett, who has also taught classes on green building, agrees. He said that while builders should strive for better energy efficiency, the city’s existing energy standards are too pricey.

“It’s going to impact the owner’s cost to build, which in turn increases rent and lease costs for those utilizing these homes,” Bennett said.

He said that the code increases home construction costs by up to 30%.

However, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development states that the international standards adopted in 2021 add about $7,200 to the cost of a single-family home.

Musso at UMKC believes that the added expenses from an updated energy code are worthwhile.

“You don’t want to do it cheap up front and then have everything not give you the performance that it should,” he said.

Conservationists agree. They say that the money residents will save on utility bills will eventually offset the upfront cost of building to the city’s current standard. The U.S. Department of Energy found that the average new homeowner in Missouri can expect to save $677 annually on their utility bills, which average out to $2,603 annually.

That would take roughly 10 years to break even under HUD’s upfront cost estimation.

But homebuilders have different ideas about the cost-benefit ratio for homeowners.

Bennett said that in his experience, savings aren’t as great as significant as energy agencies claim. Even if they are, he questions the value.

“If you saw a home with a break-even deal in 10 years, I don’t know that I would advise you to do it,” he said. “You’re probably going to move out and never see that savings.”

The Home Builders Association calculated that utility savings would only be $90 to $125 per year for a 1,400-square-foot starter home, using average gas prices from Spire and average electric costs from Evergy, Ruder said.

This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The three major-party candidates for Missouri attorney general, from left, Will Scharf, Andrew Bailey and Elad Gross (campaign photos).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey insists his office is working to hold the federal government accountable for the decades-old radioactive waste contamination that plagues the St. Louis area.

“We are fighting to ensure that the federal government protects Missourians from the poison that the federal government injected into the streams and creeks there in eastern Missouri,” he told The Independent. 

But the two candidates vying to oust him from the office say Bailey is just the latest in a long line of Missouri officials who have failed the victims who have suffered from the effects of radioactive contamination left in the area since World War II.

Activists tried for months last summer to get Bailey’s help, and “they were met with a closed door,” Will Scharf, who is challenging Bailey in the Aug. 6 GOP primary, told The Independent. 

Both Scharf and Elad Gross, the Democrat running for attorney general, say Bailey could be doing much more.

The St. Louis region was pivotal to the development of the world’s first atomic bomb in the 1940s. Uranium refined downtown was used in experiments in Chicago as part of the Manhattan Project.

After the war, dangerous radioactive waste was dumped at the St. Louis airport right next to Coldwater Creek and contaminated the creek water and banks for miles. Generations of families moved into new suburban homes springing up along the creek without knowing the dangers it posed. A federal study shows children who played in its waters face a higher risk of cancer.

The waste sat at the airport for years before it was sold and moved to a property in Hazelwood also adjacent to the creek. A company bought it to extract valuable metals and trucked the remaining waste to the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton and dumped it illegally. It remains there today.

Officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are working to clean up the creek, and the Environment Protection Agency is overseeing the cleanup of the landfill. 

But after an investigation by The Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press revealed last summer that the federal government knew the waste posed a threat to St. Louis residents years before revealing that to the public, Missouri officials and activists have said the federal government should be held accountable for the damage.

Gross argued Bailey, as the state’s chief attorney, wasn’t doing enough to ensure that happens. 

“Our attorney general can sue Joe Biden for everything under the sun,” Gross said during a candidate forum last month, “but he can’t figure out how to sue him to protect Missouri families when we need him the most.”

Gross, who previously worked in the attorney general’s office, said the state should reinstate the environmental division, which was dissolved when Josh Hawley was attorney general in 2017. Bailey should have more attorneys dedicated to investigating nuclear waste and pushing the federal government for better management of the cleanup, Gross said.

If that’s not enough, Gross said, the state should sue the federal government. He pointed to Washington, where the attorney general’s office sued over the slow cleanup at the Hanford nuclear production facility and inadequate protections for workers.

The state previously sued Republic Services, which owns the West Lake Landfill, under former Attorney General Chris Koster over a subsurface smolder in the adjacent Bridgeton Landfill that emitted a foul odor and risked coming into contact with the radioactive waste. It was settled under Hawley. 

Bailey said his office has reviewed documents the news organizations used in the investigation last summer and found that they “paint a picture of the federal government poisoning Missourians.” But he thinks there are documents missing. 

His office filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the U.S. Department of Energy in March seeking further information. Madeline Sieren, a spokeswoman for Bailey, said the attorney general’s office hasn’t received a response from the Department of Energy.

Those documents, Bailey said, will help determine whether the state should sue the federal government.

Bailey said he’s also supporting Hawley, who now serves in the U.S. Senate, as he seeks compensation for St. Louis residents who have developed cancer following exposure to the radioactive contamination. Hawley sought to add Missouri — along with southwestern states exposed to bomb testing — to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The 35-year-old federal program, however, expired before the U.S. House of Representatives took a vote on extending and expanding it. 

Last month, Bailey wrote to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, demanding that the agency put up signs along Coldwater Creek, where there is currently no warning that radioactive contamination may be present. 

Gross’ criticism, Bailey said, was “an oversimplification and a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the attorney general’s office.” 

“I’m not withholding any tool at our disposal to ensure transparency, accountability and justice for the victims,” Bailey said. 

Gross said “writing letters is one thing.“Getting results is something entirely different.” 

Scharf called Bailey’s Freedom of Information Act request “a good start” but said he’d like to see if the state could sue the federal government or the private company that dumped waste in the West Lake Landfill.

“My strong suspicion,” Scharf said, “is that there is much more that can be done, from a legal perspective, to vindicate the rights of Missourians…who have been grievously injured by the federal action, federal inaction and the federal cover up here.”

The Independent’s Jason Hancock and Anna Spoerre contributed to this story.

The Rev. Bobby Love of Second Baptist Church in Olathe, Kansas, said Thursday at a rally for resistance against white Christian nationalism that it was important for the future of democracy for people to set aside difference and bring unity to their lives (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector).

OLATHE, Kansas — The Rev. Bobby Love of Second Baptist Church endorsed a campaign Thursday to awaken Americans to the threat of white Christian nationalism and press for wider appreciation of how democracy could be damaged by a movement intent on undermining inclusive communities.

“Together we must reject the notion of placing one race above the other,” Love said. “We must reject the notion of intolerance. We must reject the notion of violence under the banner of Christianity.”

He said Second Baptist Church — which in 1882 put up a building two blocks from where the crowd gathered outside the courthouse in  Johnson County, Kansas — was founded by Black Exodusters who migrated to the Great Plains from the South. He said nearly 150 years of trials and tribulations hadn’t destroyed the congregation’s sense of community.

He pointed to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a “beloved community” in which a critical mass of people committed to the philosophy and methods of nonviolence. King recognized the human experience included personal, group and national conflict, but he also said those differences should be resolved through reconciliation among adversaries.

In the end, King preached, cooperation and goodwill could win out.

It was King, Love said, who put forth the idea that Americans had to find ways to live together as brothers and sisters or perish together as fools.

“If you feel like that today, let us reject the notion of divisive rhetoric. Let us reject the notion of violence,” Love said. “Let us together build up the beloved community.”

‘Growing partisan movement’

The noon event was coordinated by the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity, or MORE2. It’s a Kansas City-based, nonpartisan social justice organization committed to transforming communities. The organization included members of different faith traditions, cultural backgrounds, races and economic means.

The rally was the fourth of seven scheduled from April through October in counties of the metropolitan area in Kansas or Missouri. The next is set for 7 p.m. Aug. 15 in downtown Parkville.

The coordinator of the two-state campaign, the Rev. Stephen Jones of First Baptist Church of Kansas City, said the issue of Christian nationalism was relevant as voters marked ballots during the 2024 election cycle.

“White Christian Nationalism is a growing partisan movement of grave concern to many in our society,” said Jones, co-paster of First Baptist Church. “In these monthly rallies leading up to the November elections, we want to lift up the dangers of white Christian nationalism to our American democracy.”

Rev. Laura Phillips, who serves the Overland Park Christian Church, said King’s vision of the beloved community granted equal status to women, men and all persons in terms of leadership and opportunity for expression.

“I’m in favor of unity,” said the Rev. Barry Dundas of Grace United Methodist Church of Olathe. “I think we’re all in favor of unity.”

Dundas said it was proper to address the issue of unity following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

He said the alarming attack on Trump added urgency to the quest for bridging gaps among Republicans and Democrats and to engage in dialogue on fostering a more collaborative approach to politics.

‘Not a religion’

Rev. Chris Wilson, who serves the congregation at Saint Andrew Christian Church of Olathe, Kansas, said it was important for Kansans to gain a broad understanding of harmful ideologies that sought to distort religion for political gain.

Christian nationalists were in the business of eroding the separation of church and state by arguing government and Christianity should be one and the same, he said.

“Christian nationalism is not a religion,” he said. “Christian nationalism is a political ideology that is distorted. White Christian nationalism is a distorted ideology that seeks to pressure and misuse the term Christian to forward a system that enlarges power and privilege to those that already have it.”

Wilson said a core ideal of Christian nationalism was to marginalize and suppress views of people who deserved a seat at the table of government. It was elemental, he said, for Kansans to “vote their own values” in the August and November elections.

This story was originally published by Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Students celebrate graduation in May at Cleveland High School in Liberty County, Texas, one of the fastest-changing counties in the country, where the non-white population grew more than 7 percentage points since 2020 to about 52% of the population. Five of the 19 counties that turned majority non-white since 2020 are in Texas (Vanesa Brashier/Bluebonnetnews.com).

Growth in Asian, Black and Hispanic communities is transforming cities and suburban counties, especially in red states such as Florida, Indiana and Texas, according to a new Stateline analysis. The presidential swing states of Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania also were among the fastest-changing states.

Nationally, the share of the non-white population grew in 47 states between mid-2020 and mid-2023, according to the analysis of U.S. Census Bureau estimates released in June.

Nevada had the largest change, with the non-white population — mostly Hispanic — growing 2.3 percentage points to 54.3% of the population. Growth in the number of Black residents propelled Georgia to a near non-white majority, up about 1 point to 49.9% of state population, amid continuing Black migration that helped turn the state’s 2020 vote Democratic for president and U.S. Senate.

Hispanic growth was the dominant factor across states, in blue and red counties and in rural and urban areas, according to the Stateline analysis. Growth in the Hispanic population is coming partly from immigration but mostly from higher birth rates, the Census Bureau said in a release.

Only three states — Montana, South Carolina and Tennessee — and the District of Columbia have seen their white population share grow since 2020.

The increase in Hispanic and Black residents — and where it’s happening — could sway outcomes in the 2024 presidential race and local and state races, although these groups’ political allegiances have shifted recently. Black voters have long been considered among Democrats’ most enthusiastic supporters, but their support has declined somewhat. And Republicans are making increasing inroads among Hispanic voters.

Many of the largest changes were driven by Black and Asian migration to cities and suburbs in job-rich red states. The economy is going gangbusters by nearly every national metric, and the availability of jobs outside major cities has become a significant magnet.

That includes Indiana’s Marion County, home of Indianapolis, and Kaufman County, Texas, a Dallas suburb, where Black population growth helped create new non-white majorities as of mid-2023. In Kaufman County, the Black population grew 6 percentage points to 23% and the Hispanic population grew 3 points to 28%. Kaufman County elected its first African American district judge in 2020.

“We do have jobs here, and all those counties are growing dramatically,” said Lloyd Potter, Texas’ state demographer. Asian, Black and Hispanic residents are moving to suburbs from the city of Dallas, he said, and from California and New York state. Meanwhile, local white populations are aging and diminishing, with more deaths and fewer births.

“These are some of the biggest and most significantly growing urban areas in the country, and [the new census data] indicates tremendous diversification in the population. It’s been occurring for some time, but it really seems to have accelerated over the last five years or so,” Potter said.

New groceries, same politics

Kaufman County’s growing Black community remains a minority in a county that voted two-thirds Republican for president in 2020 and governor in 2022. The county commission held hearings on moving a Confederate memorial statue away from the entrance of the county courthouse in 2021, but ultimately decided not to act.

“It’s very red here. It’s super red,” said James Henderson, a longtime resident of the county who favored moving the statue. He said he sees more African Americans like himself moving to Kaufman County cities such as Forney and working remotely for Dallas-based companies. There also are more African immigrants, he said.

Whether increased racial diversity will lead to political change is an open question. Black migration to the Atlanta area in Georgia had an effect on elections in 2018 and possibly 2020, but Republicans remain firmly in charge of state governments there and in Texas.

The younger population is growing more diverse, said demographer William Frey of the left-leaning Brookings Institution think tank. But the older population, which is growing as baby boomers age and is the most likely to vote, is still mostly white, he said.

Asian growth in Collin County, another Dallas suburb, and Hispanic growth in Florida’s Duval County (home of Jacksonville) also helped turn those large counties majority non-white since 2020.

Many of the new Collin County residents are Telugu-speaking tech workers from southern India who have found an economic niche in remote work for Dallas firms, said Farhad Wadia, president of the FunAsia branded radio stations in the area. Their presence is bringing subtle changes to the community, he noted.

New transplants often hold elaborate Hindu housewarming ceremonies that include boiling milk to overflowing to signify prosperity. Stores cater to their tastes with tangy tamarind-based curries and sun-dried peppers.

“If you go into Costco here you will think you are in South India,” Wadia said. “A lot of them come from California, where they could sell their 1,000-square-foot house for a million dollars and get more bang for the buck here.”

Growing rural diversity

Of the 16 counties that turned majority non-white between 2020 and 2023, five were in Texas. Most of the 16 counties voted Republican in 2020.

They included two counties each in California (Napa and Yuba counties, both near Sacramento) and New Mexico (rural Quay and Roosevelt counties), and one each in Alabama (rural Conecuh County), Kansas (rural Stanton County), Mississippi (Lowndes County, along the Alabama border), New Jersey (suburban Somerset County) and South Carolina (Florence County, near Myrtle Beach).

In Georgia, Atlanta suburb Henry County had the largest shift of any county outside Texas, with Black population growth fueling a 7-point increase in the non-white population to 69%. The county was already majority-Black in 2020; retired basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, who bought a home in the county in 2016, helps the local sheriff’s office with community relations and recently hosted a summer youth sports camp.

Hispanic growth also lifted the non-white population share in the presidential swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In Texas’ Liberty County, where Hispanic growth helped drive a new non-white majority of 52% — up 7 points since 2020 — schools are bursting with new Hispanic students, said Stephen McCanless, superintendent of the Cleveland Independent School District in Liberty County.

The district, where about 88% of students are Hispanic, grew from about 10,000 to 12,000 students in the past school year and could reach 14,000 next year, he said.

The district has spent more than $17 million on portable classrooms since growth started in 2015, including $2 million in the past year, as bond issues to build more schools have been voted down.

“Tough decisions had to be made. I cut $7 million out of the budget in order to start the [next] school year without dipping into the fund balance too much,” McCanless said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas speak Monday at the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C. The press briefing focused on the assassination attempt on Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and the U.S. Secret Service response. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — As the nation reels from the attempted assassination against former President Donald J. Trump and the Secret Service comes under intense scrutiny, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday said “we are in a heightened and very dynamic threat environment.”

The former president and official 2024 GOP presidential nominee survived a shooting on Saturday that killed one person and left two others injured at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“Both President Biden and former President Trump are constantly the subject of threats,” Mayorkas said during a White House press briefing in which he defended the performance of the Secret Service. Members of Congress are organizing hearings to examine whether security lapses occurred.

“The United States Secret Service, we, including the FBI and our other partners across the federal government, take the threats very seriously and adjust security measures as warranted,” Mayorkas said. He added that “maintaining the safety and security of the president, the former president and their campaign events, is one of our most vital priorities.”

Mayorkas said that in light of the shooting, Biden ordered Secret Service protection for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate.

The secretary also said that “both prior to and after the events of this past weekend, the Secret Service enhanced former President Trump’s protection based on the evolving nature of threats to the former president and his imminent shift from presumptive nominee to nominee.”

Trump is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for the Republican National Convention, where he was officially nominated as the GOP presidential candidate on Monday alongside his newly chosen running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.

Mayorkas also echoed Biden’s pledge Sunday for an independent review, saying it will “examine the Secret Service’s and other law enforcement actions before, during and after the shooting, to identify the immediate and longer term corrective actions required to ensure that the no-fail mission of protecting national leaders is most effectively met.”

In the aftermath of the shooting, Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro identified the person killed as Corey Comperatore, who was a former fire chief. Shapiro said Comperatore “died a hero” and “dove on his family to protect them” the night of the shooting.

The FBI is continuing its criminal investigation into the incident and has identified the shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Crooks was killed at the scene.

Mayorkas expressed support for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.

“I have 100% confidence in the director of the United States Secret Service. I have 100% confidence in the United States Secret Service and what you saw on stage on Saturday, with respect to individuals putting their own lives at risk for the protection of another, is exactly what the American public should see every single day. It is what I indeed do,” he said.

Pressed on CNN whether it was a security failure, Mayorkas said, “When I say something like this cannot happen, we are speaking of a failure.”

Congressional investigations multiply 

Meanwhile, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for investigations into the attempted assassination of Trump.

The Secret Service is set to brief members of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability on Tuesday.

The committee will also hold a hearing at the beginning of next week, once Congress returns from its week-long recess, with Cheatle set to testify.

“We are grateful to the brave Secret Service agents who acted quickly to protect President Trump after shots were fired and the American patriots who sought to help victims, but questions remain about how a rooftop within proximity to President Trump was left unsecure,” Rep. James Comer, chairman of the committee, said in a statement Monday.

“Americans demand answers from Director Kimberly Cheatle about these security lapses and how we can prevent this from happening again,” said Comer, a Kentucky Republican.

In a statement on Monday, Cheatle said the Secret Service understands the “importance of the independent review announced by President Biden yesterday and will participate fully.”

“We will also work with the appropriate Congressional committees on any oversight action,” she said.

Cheatle also noted that the “Secret Service is working with all involved Federal, state, and local agencies to understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again.”

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green wrote a letter Sunday to Mayorkas requesting multiple documents, saying “the seriousness of this security failure and chilling moment in our nation’s history cannot be understated.”

“No assassination attempt has come so close to taking the life of a president or presidential candidate since President Reagan was shot in 1981,” said Green, a Republican from Tennessee.

Senators also plan probes

Efforts to conduct investigations into the attempted assassination are also ramping up in the Senate.

Michigan Sen. Gary Peters and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — the respective chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — said Monday that the committee is launching a bipartisan investigation and plans to hold a hearing soon to look into the “security failures” leading to the attempted assassination of Trump.

The two sent a letter to Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray asking for a briefing for committee members and requesting information from the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They also asked that either Mayorkas, Wray or an “appropriate designee” appear at a committee hearing on the matter by Aug. 1.

“There is no place for political violence in our nation, and Saturday’s shocking attack should never have been allowed to happen,” Peters said in a statement on Monday.

“Our committee is focused on getting all of the facts about the security failures that allowed the attacker to carry out this heinous act of violence that threatened the life of former President Trump, killed at least one person in the crowd, and injured several others,” he said.

Additionally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, led fellow GOP members of the panel on Monday in urging Chairman Dick Durbin to “hold a hearing into the circumstances that led to this tragedy.”

Graham and nine fellow Republicans also asked the Illinois Democrat to invite Cheatle, Mayorkas and Wray to testify in front of the committee.

A soldier with the South Dakota National Guard stands near the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass on Sept. 11, 2023 (Photo by Justin Hamel).

More than a dozen Republican governors gathered in Eagle Pass in February, heeding a call from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to confront what he labeled “President Joe Biden’s border crisis.” The governors, along with other GOP state leaders, vowed to send another round of National Guard troops from their states to the Texas-Mexico border.

With shifts in pandemic-era federal border policies, there’d been a sharp increase in migrant encounters in the latter half of 2023. But then January saw a steep 50% drop.

Still, the governors told their constituents that they needed to send more people to assist Texas in fending off an “invasion,” as both Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have called it, or fight drug smuggling. But the deployments have been widely criticized as political grandstanding — opportunities to take photos near personnel in uniform on the border while feeding nationalism and fear during an election year.

States Newsroom outlets across the country have tracked state deployments and expenses so far this year as part of a collaboration with Texas Tribune and Stateline to get a sense of what becomes of these promises, and what those deployments look and feel like at the border.

States generally chip in anywhere from five to 200 troops for deployments that can last anywhere from a couple of weeks to months. Typically, the funding comes from state budgets and state emergency funds.

The federal government also deploys thousands of National Guard members to the border year-round.

Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the chief of the U.S. National Guard Bureau who will retire Sept. 1, told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense in mid-June that nearly 2,500 troops were serving at the southwest border under federal command. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana, asked the general about the impact of this deployment on the guard’s other duties.

“There is no military training value for what we do [on the border],” Hokanson said. “For our guardsmen there, they might as well be deployed to Kuwait or somewhere overseas, because they’re away from their families. They’re there doing mission sets that are not directly applicable to their military skill set. That time, I think, would be better utilized building readiness to deter our adversaries.”  — Marisa Demarco

STATE DEPLOYMENTS

Texas

Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021, soon after Biden took office. Since then, the state has deployed thousands of people from the Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas National Guard along the roughly 1,250-mile border it shares with Mexico.

It was an unprecedented activation of soldiers for a state operation. Usually the federal government, not a state, deploys troops for long-term assignments and gives them much more notice. Soon after the operation began, guard members began to complain about being paid late or not at all, living in cramped mobile homes and feeling underutilized.

Today, 97% of troops currently on the mission volunteered to be deployed, according to guard leadership. The state also just finished building the first phase of a new base in Eagle Pass to house National Guard members. The base is designed to house up to 2,300 people.

Texas has spent more than $11 billion on Operation Lone Star to date, but it’s not clear how much of the money has been spent on the National Guard deployment, and the state hasn’t divulged exactly how many people have been sent to the border. — Alejandro Serrano / The Texas Tribune

Missouri

When Gov. Mike Parson announced a deployment of 200 National Guard troops and 22 state highway patrol officers in February, he cited a visit to the region that he said showed it was a “crisis.” There has been some debate over the deployment, which was funded in part by a special appropriation bill.

During a February budget hearing, lawmakers focused on short-staffing at the state patrol, noting that the officers were being sent despite being 132 short of full strength.

“Does that not put Missouri at risk when we’re sending even more troopers away when we already have a deficit of 132?” asked state Rep. Deb Lavender, a Democrat from Manchester.

Col. Eric Olson, superintendent of the patrol, said only volunteers were going, and they had been selected from eight of the patrol’s nine regions.

“Geographically, we spread that out,” Olson said, “and we feel like we will be able to manage this event as well as take care of our duties here at home.”

There was very little opposition to the actual spending once troopers were deployed in March. National Guard members were sent on rotations of 50 over three months at a cost of $2 million, while patrol officers were split into two teams and sent to Texas for 32 days at a cost of $206,000. The deployments were set to end on June 13. The money came from the state’s general fund.

The Missouri budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 included $8.8 million to continue deployments for a full year, but Parson has said he will not extend the deployment and vetoed $6 million of that appropriation.

“We don’t need that money,” he said. “I think that was more of a political statement people were trying to make.”

In his letter to lawmakers explaining the veto, Parson wrote the National Guard’s deployment to the southern border has already concluded. If there is a need to deploy again, Parson wrote, there is enough money already in the budget to “support another short-term mission.” — Rudi Keller / Missouri Independent

South Dakota

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s deployment of 60 National Guard troops in the spring is the state’s fifth deployment to the U.S.-Mexico border since 2021.

Noem initiated three of the deployments in response to calls for help from Texas, and the other two were federal.

One of the deployments Noem initiated was mostly funded by a $1 million donation from Tennessee billionaire Willis Johnson. That donation and Noem’s use of it sparked criticism from Democrats, who said it gave the appearance that the South Dakota National Guard is available to do the political bidding of wealthy donors.

Noem funded the remaining costs and the two other deployments she initiated with money from the state’s Emergency and Disaster Fund, despite a state law that defines emergencies and disasters as events “in any part of the state.” She declined to deploy guard troops to flood-ravaged areas in South Dakota in late June. Her use of the fund has drawn bipartisan criticism from some legislators, but a majority endorsed the practice during the last legislative session.

Previous deployments have cost the Emergency and Disaster Fund at least $1.3 million, and $1.5 million is budgeted from the fund for this year’s. No further deployments are planned yet. — Seth Tupper / South Dakota Searchlight

Montana

After Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte made a trip to the border earlier in the year, he declared that he would send members of the Montana National Guard to Texas at the request of the Texas governor, a fellow Republican.

Ten troops were called to active duty for vehicle repair and maintenance.

They returned home in mid-May after a monthlong deployment, where Gianforte met with them for breakfast, and he declared May “Military Appreciation Month” in Montana.

Despite public document requests being filed in April, no information has yet been released on the expense. — Darrell Ehrlick / Daily Montanan

Indiana

Indiana’s National Guard has estimated the cost of a 10-month, 50-member deployment at $7 million. The troops were called up under state active duty, meaning Indiana pays their salaries. That budget also covers transportation, supplies and maintenance.

Guard officials have said they will use existing appropriations in their budget for the costs.

Gov. Eric Holcomb made the move this year — his last in office. He didn’t need legislative action. There has been little debate on the matter. Republican lawmakers issued supportive statements, and Democrats have been opposed.

Troops deployed in early April. That month, an Indiana guard member assigned to Operation Lone Star shot a migrant who was attacking another migrant, according to a U.S. Border Patrol bulletin.

“I am beyond thankful to this individual who potentially saved two lives by defending them and themselves. I’m reassured that the training that they got before they deployed and assumed this active duty on the southern border was beneficial,” Holcomb told reporters on a Zoom. — Niki Kelly / Indiana Capital Chronicle

New Hampshire

​​New Hampshire National Guard troops have been deployed to the southern border twice since 2020, each time for about a year and by the federal government. From April through early June, 15 soldiers from New Hampshire were stationed at a Texas National Guard base camp in Del Rio, about an hour from Eagle Pass.

Two months earlier, during an hourlong discussion with Gov. Chris Sununu, the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee’s Democrats in February asked the governor how much of an impact 15 National Guard members could have at a border crossing seeing thousands of migrants a day.

Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, a Manchester Democrat, said a better response could come from Republicans in Congress who blocked a border deal that cleared the U.S. Senate. “Although it’s a wonderful thought in terms of support, it seems to be that the real issue is that Congress isn’t funding what they should be funding to protect the southern border,” D’Allesandro told Sununu.

The committee’s Republicans praised Sununu’s plan to send troops to the border. Senate President Jeb Bradley noted the governor had requested the funding for the 2024 deployment under the civil emergency law to address the state’s drug overdose deaths, which have topped 400 yearly since 2015.

The three-month deployment cost the state $850,000, which covered salary and benefits. New Hampshire paid the Texas National Guard $200 a day per soldier for room and board, as well as other expenses at its base in Del Rio. — Annmarie Timmins / New Hampshire Bulletin

Idaho

In Idaho Gov. Brad Little’s State of the State Address in January, he announced he would send two teams of five state police troopers to the border to “learn the best tactics to respond to those who smuggle and abuse vulnerable people.”

The 10 officers were sent to the border in April for three weeks and partnered with the Texas Department of Public Safety for the mission.

“We are determined to utilize this training to enhance our efforts in Idaho and to combat human trafficking with utmost efficiency,” Idaho State Police Col. Kedrick Wills said. “It’s vital for our troopers to face repeated real-world scenarios to sharpen their skills.”

The governor this year recommended $200,000 to the Idaho state police budget to send troopers to the Texas-Mexico border for training. The total cost of the trip was $205,655.

One state police officer said the majority of the time was spent along the border wall assisting the Texas Department of Public Safety and the National Guard with traffic stops and arrests, then turning people over to the Border Patrol. — Mia Maldonado / Idaho Capital Sun

Nebraska

Republican Gov. Jim Pillen has continued a push by his predecessor, former Gov. Pete Ricketts, to send state-paid law enforcement and National Guard members to the Texas border with Mexico.

In 2023, Pillen sent 61 National Guard members and 10 state troopers to the border, and Ricketts sent 32 state troopers to the Del Rio area in 2021.

This year, Nebraska sent 24 National Guard members for roughly three months from April 1 through June 27. Ten state patrol troopers deployed for two weeks from April 14-28. No additional deployments have been announced.

This year’s two border deployments ordered by Pillen cost a combined $1.27 million. The state says it paid $1.2 million of that total using interest accrued from the second wave of $48 million in federal pandemic relief funds that Congress set aside for rental assistance.

State taxpayers covered the remaining $71,675 from the state’s general fund, the Nebraska state patrol confirmed.

Pillen has argued that public safety and national security dictate the need for every state to send help, speaking often about the importance of doing what it takes to stem the flow of migrants at the southern border. He has dismissed questions about the cost-effectiveness of state efforts.

Pillen, like Ricketts, has faced criticism of his efforts from some Democrats and from groups that advocate for immigrant rights and those representing Latino voices in Nebraska. They argue that his push is political and his rhetoric about crime and drugs at the border contributes to the animosity and fear local Latinos face. — Aaron Sanderford / Nebraska Examiner

Iowa

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has deployed National Guard troops and state law enforcement officers to the border multiple times in recent years. There are currently five Iowa National Guard troops in Texas who arrived April 1 and will be there through Sept. 30, providing public affairs assistance and vehicle maintenance for Operation Lone Star. Earlier this year, 110 troops were deployed to the Texas border from April 1 through May 3, assisting the Texas Military Department. Eight Iowa Department of Public Safety troopers and two sergeants went to work with Texas DPS from March 31 through April 27.

The cost of the 2024 border deployment has not yet been released, according to Iowa National Guard officials.

Previous deployments saw 109 National Guard members and 31 Iowa DPS personnel assisting at the border in 2023, and 28 Iowa State Patrol troopers in 2021. While the deployments over the past two years have been financed using federal American Rescue Plan funding, with the 2023 mission costing $1.93 million, according to the governor, the 2021 deployment was paid for with $300,000 in other state funds

Reynolds has also spoken in favor of the 2023 Texas law — currently under injunction — allowing state law enforcement to arrest migrants suspected of illegally entering the country. She signed into law a similar measure this year that was set to take effect July 1 but is under a preliminary injunction following challenges from the U.S. Department of Justice and civil rights organizations.

The blocked Iowa statute would have also allowed state law enforcement to arrest and charge immigrants if they have been previously deported, removed or denied admission from the U.S., or if they have an order to leave the country. Judges would have been allowed to order people charged with “illegal reentry” crimes to leave the country or face prison time, with state agencies and law enforcement authorized to transport them to U.S. ports of entry to ensure they leave the country.

State Attorney General Brenna Bird appealed the injunction ruling on Iowa’s law in June, seeking to begin enforcement. — Robin Opsahl / Iowa Capital Dispatch

Tennessee

Gov. Bill Lee has continued to deploy Tennessee National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border since 2021, when he first sent 300 troops on a yearlong mission.

In March, Lee affirmed he would send two waves of 50 active-duty soldiers as part of Operation Lone Star, in addition to the 123 deployed in October 2023.

State funding for these deployments have ramped up through the years. In fiscal year 2022, Tennessee spent $500,000. In 2024, it jumped to $1.4 million. The state government’s fiscal year 2025 started July 1, and $5 million in nonrecurring funds was budgeted. — Holly McCall / Tennessee Lookout

Utah

After Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s February visit to Texas’ southern border, he deployed a small number of troops. The Republican governor announced he would send five people from the Utah National Guard engineer battalion to maintain military equipment, plus one sergeant and four officers from the Utah Highway Patrol’s Criminal Interdiction Team, which specializes in drug investigations.

The deployment for both groups was scheduled on Feb. 26. The highway patrol team went for 30 days at a cost of $100,000, while the Utah National Guard battalion was sent for 14 days costing $50,000. Funding came from the Governor’s Office’s emergency fund.

Legislative leaders at the helm of the Republican-supermajority Utah Legislature applauded the deployment when it was announced earlier this year, while Democratic leaders pushed back, arguing it shouldn’t be Utah’s role. Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, and Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, agreed, however, that Congress and the White House should seek solutions to the nation’s broken immigration system.

The Utah Democratic Party criticized Cox for playing a part in “the MAGA Republican party’s ongoing political grandstanding in immigration.”

Asked whether the governor has sent or will send any additional resources, a spokesperson said, to her knowledge, no additional deployments are promised or planned. A spokesperson for the Utah National Guard echoed that. — Katie McKellar / Utah News Dispatch

Arkansas

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has spent more than $2 million in state funding to send 120 Arkansas National Guard members to the southwest border twice since taking office in January 2023.

Eighty guard members were deployed for a mission that lasted from June 24 to Aug. 5, 2023, and cost $1.3 million. This year, another 40 were activated for a $1 million mission from April 1 to May 30.

Both active-duty missions ordered by the governor were paid for with state funds, said Maj. Cibeles Ramirez-Rodriguez, Arkansas National Guard spokesperson.

Additionally, 50 guard members were deployed to the southwest border from October 2022 to October 2023 for a Title 10 federal mission in support of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Ramirez-Rodriguez said. The state guard also sent 40 members to the southern border in 2021 for 90 days. That mission was primarily to recover and repair vehicles belonging to a Texas task force.

Troops from the Arkansas Guard were deployed between 2006 and 2008 in support of the federal Operation Jump Start under former President George W. Bush, with the state providing more than 750 soldiers and airmen in support of Border Patrol. — Antoinette Grajeda / Arkansas Advocate

Louisiana

Gov. Jeff Landry announced July 1 that engineers with the Louisiana National Guard would deploy in Texas to assist with border security through mid-November. Their assignment extends Louisiana’s commitment of 150 personnel from its state militia spread across three 30-day rotations.

Landry said the additional time guard members will spend in Texas will not create an additional cost to taxpayers. State lawmakers approved $3 million for Operation Lone Star earlier this year, and there is $800,000 remaining from that allocation, according to the governor’s office.

Landry is one of many Republican governors who have sent National Guard troops to Texas in support of Abbott’s border policies. In addition to busing migrants to Democratic-led cities, the Texas governor placed razor wire along the banks of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass to hinder unauthorized border crossings.

In a letter to legislative leaders, Landry said Abbott and the Texas National Guard leadership requested additional engineering support from Louisiana. The governor said he has worked with Brig. Gen. Thomas Friloux of the Louisiana National Guard and Jacques Thibodeaux of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness “to ensure that this will not impair our ability to mobilize troops here at home if necessary.”

Louisiana National Guard members are among the first emergency response personnel put to work ahead of a pending disaster and during the recovery stages. The Atlantic hurricane season started June 1 and lasts until the end of November. — Greg LaRose / Louisiana Illuminator

Georgia

The Georgia Army National Guard has fewer than 20 troops supporting Texas’ border operations, according to spokesman Maj. William Carraway.

Carraway said the deployments are paid for through Texas’ Emergency Management Assistance Compact and directed questions about funding to the Texas National Guard and Texas governor’s office. He declined to give a specific timeline but said the troops likely arrived in early May and that they wouldn’t be there long.

“It’s a short-term thing,” he said. “They’re just going over there, and they’re coming back. So they’re not going to be over there for years or anything like that.”

Gov. Brian Kemp announced the deployment in a Feb. 13 press conference in the Georgia Capitol, where he blamed Biden for what he termed a crisis on the southern border. Kemp said the troops will be responsible for assisting with the construction of a forward command post on the border.

Kemp has made multiple visits to the U.S.-Mexico border since he was first elected in 2019 and made immigration a major issue in both of his successful campaigns, suggesting in a 2018 commercial that he may need to round up “criminal illegals” in his big truck. — Ross Williams / Georgia Recorder

Florida

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Feb. 1 that Florida would deploy up to 1,000 members of the Florida National Guard and Florida State Guard to assist Texas with Operation Lone Star. That was in addition to the more than 90 officers from the Florida highway patrol, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and Florida Department of Law Enforcement that were already on the border.

A couple of weeks later on Feb. 23, DeSantis announced he would send more troops to Texas for border security — 50 National Guard members and another 76 Florida highway patrol officers.

How many troops were sent or what it cost the state remains unknown. Gov.Ron DeSantis’ press office did not respond to requests for comment.

The state budget this year provides nearly $20 million to “restore and build upon” the Florida State Guard, one of the state agencies that has been sent to deter migrants in Texas and South Florida.

Gov. DeSantis signed measures in 2022 and 2023 that included an additional $12 million to continue to relocate immigrants to “sanctuary jurisdictions.” This year, there is no funding specifically allocated for those relocations.

A spokesperson for the Florida National Guard said troops have also deployed as part of the federal mission in 2021 and 2023, with the next company set to depart in October and return a year later. — Mitch Perry / Florida Phoenix

FEDERAL DEPLOYMENTS

North Dakota

About 100 members of the National Guard deployed to the southern border in August 2023 under state orders from Gov. Doug Burgum. Members of the 188th Engineer Company, they were integrated into the Texas Department of Public Safety and Military Department for one month as part of Operation Lone Star. The North Dakota Emergency Commission authorized up to $2.2 million for the deployment through a loan with the Bank of North Dakota. About $1.7 million was spent.

Since 2021, members of the North Dakota National Guard have supported U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents every October under federal orders through the Department of Defense. North Dakota National Guard members will complete their third yearlong deployment to the southern border in the fall.

The deployed units, consisting of between 100 to 125 soldiers, are tasked with assisting with surveillance efforts, maintenance and other needs, according to the National Guard.

The 142nd Engineer Battalion will head to the southern border in the fall on federal orders under the direction of U.S. Northern Command and Joint Task Force North, according to a guard spokesperson. The unit will consist of about 50 service members. — Michael Achterling / North Dakota Monitor

Ohio

After a request from Texas’ governor, in June 2023, Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine authorized 14 Ohio state highway patrol officers and supervisors to go to Texas to help with border surveillance for two weeks. They were not tasked with making arrests. A spokesperson for DeWine said in May that he did not believe Ohio highway patrol troopers had been down to the border at all in 2024.

Ohio National Guard spokesperson Heidi Griesmer said Ohio troops have had a continuous presence at the border since October 2020.

“Over the past four years, Ohio has deployed approximately 375 Ohio National Guard members to support the Southwest Border operations at the request of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Northern Command, including Ohio National Guard members who deployed in October 2023 and remain there today,” she said.

For operational security reasons, she said, they would not reveal the number of guard members currently at the border. Nor could she confirm whether there would be future deployments. When asked for the costs, she said they don’t have a figure for expenditures.

“Ohio National Guard members’ deployments have been paid for by the U.S. Department of Defense,” Griesmer said. — David DeWitt and Marty Schladen / Ohio Capital Journal

Alaska

Alaska plans to send 20 National Guard members and two helicopters to the border as part of the federal Department of Defense’s ongoing border mission, according to a spokesperson for Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican. They are scheduled to support the federal Border Patrol for an estimated nine months, starting in early October. While there are no official orders yet, the state continues to move forward with planning.

This mission is entirely federally funded and not related to Texas’s Operation Lone Star, according to Dunleavy’s office. The state does not have plans to send the Alaska National Guard to support Operation Lone Star, the governor’s spokesperson said.

Dunleavy said in February that he was interested in supporting Texas’s operations, but cited the cost as a potential concern. The estimated cost was $1 million per month to support 100 guard members, and the Legislature did not include funding for this in the annual budget it passed in May, which Dunleavy signed into law in June for the budget year starting in July. — Andrew Kitchenman / Alaska Beacon

Kansas

The Kansas Legislature allocated $15.7 million to send Kansas National Guard troops to Texas to assist with the U.S.-Mexico border.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the funding, but she was overridden by GOP supermajorities in both the House and Senate. That means the funding remains in place through fiscal year 2025 but is unlikely to be spent.

“As the Kansas National Guard’s commander-in-chief, it is my constitutional authority to direct the National Guard while on state duty,” Kelly said when she vetoed the funding. “It is not the Legislature’s role to direct the operations or call out the National Guard.”

The governor also said “lawmakers in Washington must act to solve this issue.”

Still, there are Kansas National Guard troops at the U.S. border as part of federal security efforts, whose deployments are federally funded by the Department of Defense. —  Sherman Smith / Kansas Reflector

Michigan

Dave Kennedy, a spokesperson for the Michigan National Guard, said there are no troops deployed to the U.S. southern border, nor any scheduled for fiscal year 2024, which ends Sept. 30. While negotiations are ongoing for the FY 2025 budget, there has been no discussion of additional funding for deployments to that region.

However, that hasn’t stopped the Michigan Freedom Caucus, a small group of far-right lawmakers in the Michigan House, from demanding Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer send guard troops to Texas or Arizona.

The legislators banded together during the current session after Republicans moved into the minority in Lansing for the first time since 2010. The caucus says the military personnel are needed to help stop what they referred to as “sabotage” of the nation’s borders. Several members also visited the border in February.

Whitmer’s office has noted that the Michigan National Guard has made several deployments to assist at the southern border in the past few years as part of federal operations, during both the Trump and Biden administrations, including 175 members of the 3rd Battalion, 126th Infantry Regiment, who were sent to locations in Fort Bliss, Laredo and El Paso, Texas, from March 2020 to March 2021. — Jon King  / Michigan Advance

Pennsylvania

In March, the GOP-controlled Pennsylvania Senate voted along party lines 27-22 to pass a resolution urging Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro to send Pennsylvania National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. Introduced by Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the resolution came the same day as a U.S. Supreme Court preliminary ruling that allowed state authorities in Texas to deport people who crossed the border into the U.S.

Mastriano, who ran for Pennsylvania governor in 2022 and lost, argued that immigration was as big a concern for Pennsylvania as it is for border states, noting that in 2006, then-Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, authorized 500 Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers and airmen to deploy to the Texas border on a volunteer basis for “Operation Jump Start” during the George W. Bush administration.

Shapiro ultimately did not send troops. “This issue requires leaders in both parties to step up and deliver real, comprehensive solutions – not more the failed talking points and political grandstanding that have brought us decades without immigration reform,” Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder said. — Peter Hall / Pennsylvania Capital-Star

This article was reported and written in collaboration with The Texas Tribune, a nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

A patron awaits her turn Dec. 2, 2020, at the Central Pantry in Columbias (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

For the third year in a row, taxpayers claiming Missouri’s food pantry tax credit found they didn’t get the full value when the state Department of Revenue reviewed their returns.

The credit, up to $2,500 per taxpayer for 50% of qualifying donations to food pantries, homeless shelters and soup kitchens, is capped at $1.75 million annually. 

But this year about $2 million was claimed.

That means every taxpayer using the credit got only 87.8% of the amount claimed. And unless a taxpayer paid extra, anticipating that the full credit may not be available, the disallowance notice also stated they had to cover the difference, plus interest and penalties on the unused portion.

The law creating the credit “does not provide provisions to waive interest and penalties due to the apportionment of the food pantry tax credit,” department spokeswoman Anne Marie Moy said in an email to The Independent. “Interest is statutory and cannot be waived.”

In each of the previous two years, less than 75% of each individual credit claim was allowed, Moy said.

“The champion for children tax credit has also been apportioned in the past,” Moy said. “It was last apportioned in fiscal year 2019.”

The cap on the champion for children tax credit, which helps agencies that support children involved in court cases or family crises, was $1 million in fiscal 2019 and has since been increased to $1.25 million.

A bill to stop the interest and penalties until a taxpayer has been given a chance to pay or make arrangements to cover the difference didn’t get very far this year. State Rep. Brenda Shields, a Republican from St. Joseph, said she was surprised to find out that people who thought they had paid in full were getting bills with interest and penalties.

“I had one constituent contact me, and when they contacted me and told me they received this, I said, ‘Oh, we don’t do that.’,” Shields said. “And sure enough, come to find out, we do.”

The food pantry tax credit is one of about a dozen that encourage charitable donations to organizations that promote adoptions, help victims of domestic violence, provide diapers and food for people in poverty and perform other tasks lawmakers wish to support. The credit is generally 50% or more of a donation and can only be used by the donor to offset their own state taxes.

If a portion of the credit can’t be claimed in the year it is issued, the remainder can be carried over for up to three years.

But that doesn’t excuse the interest and penalties. The maximum credit is $2,500, so a return that claimed the maximum would have been allowed $2,195. If the $305 remainder was not paid when the return is filed, the initial charge of interest and penalties would be $21.35.

“It’s annoying,” Shields said. “It discourages people from doing what we want them to do, which is to contribute to our local food pantries.”

Shields’ bill would give a taxpayer a grace period of 60 days after receiving notice that the food pantry tax credit has been disallowed to pay the balance or make arrangements to pay. Her bill includes a grace period for the champion for children credit, which also does not include an exemption for penalties and interest.

Many donors to food pantries, she said, are people who have used the free groceries to feed their families.

“We need to give them that grace period of figuring out the payment plan,” she said, “because they might not have extra $50 within five days to be able to pay that right back.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks to reporters after being sworn into office on Jan. 3. 2023 (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey does not believe it was improper to meet with a Jackson County official as his office sues the county, he told The Independent Thursday. 

Bailey’s comments came after a judge ordered him to sit for a deposition about the meeting, which may have violated legal ethics rules. In an interview, Bailey said his office was “weighing legal options to correct the mistake that we feel like the judge made in that case.”

“There’s nothing unethical for two Republican candidates for office to meet and talk about politics,” Bailey said.

Judge orders Missouri AG Andrew Bailey to sit for deposition over possible ethics breach

Clay County Circuit Court Judge Karen Krauser ruled Tuesday that Bailey could be questioned under oath as a form of sanction for meeting with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith.  

The attorney general’s office is suing the county over its property assessment process, and the rules of professional conduct laid out by the Missouri Supreme Court prohibit attorneys from commuting about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case without their lawyer’s consent. 

The judge has already determined that one of Bailey’s deputies violated the rules.

Asked if he would sit for the deposition, Bailey said he was “going to do whatever the law requires.”

“But we don’t think it’s proper for the court to essentially attach a form of liability for two Republican candidates for political office who have a campaign-related meeting,” Bailey said.

Krauser’s order stems from meetings Bailey and one of his deputies, Travis Wood, had with Smith this spring. 

Attorneys representing both the county  and the county legislature said in a motion for sanctions that Bailey’s office showed a “blatant disregard for the Rules of Professional Conduct” in meeting with Smith without their knowledge. They asked for several sanctions, including dismissal of the case, disqualification of Bailey from litigating the case or for permission to take Bailey’s deposition.

“Based on what is known today, it is clear the Attorney General’s Office has been working with Sean Smith on trial strategy against Jackson County,” the county’s filing said.

Krauser, who is handling the case after all of the Jackson County Circuit Court judges recused themselves, ruled on Tuesday that attorneys for the county could require Bailey to sit for a deposition. 

“The Missouri Attorney General’s Office is not exempt from the requirements of the state ethical rules, and this court finds that Travis Woods…violated the Rules of Professional Conduct,” wrote Krauser, who is handling the case after Jackson County judges recused themselves.

The attorney general’s office has been in litigation with the county since December when Bailey sued over Jackson County’s property assessment process. The lawsuit names as defendants Jackson County and its legislature; County Executive Frank White Jr.; director of assessment Gail McCann Beatty; the Jackson County Board of Equalization; and Tyler Technologies, a software company hired by the county. 

The lawsuit claims the county violated the law when it assessed property values last year resulting in an average 30% increase in value across hundreds of thousands of properties. The lawsuit says more than 90% of residential properties saw their values increase, and values increased by at least 15% for three-quarters of properties.

The increase in property values means some owners will have to pay more each year in taxes. 

The attorney general claims Jackson County failed to notify owners of the property value increases and their right to a physical inspection — which is required before the assessor can increase a home’s value by more than 15% — in a timely manner. The county didn’t conduct all the required inspections before hiking values more than 15%, the lawsuit says. 

Jackson County has denied the accusations and accused Bailey of waiting too long to file the case since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. Beyond that, the county argues, the attorney general can’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission has attempted to resolve the issue first.

Requiring the state’s top lawyer to sit for a deposition is exceedingly rare, according to legal experts. And the admonishment from the judge drew criticism from rivals vying for Bailey’s job.

“It is absolutely outrageous that this important litigation against Jackson County is now imperiled because Andrew Bailey wanted a quick hit for his campaign,” said Will Scharf, who is running in the Republican primary for attorney general against Bailey.

Bailey’s campaign responded with a statement criticizing Scharf for working in the scandal-plagued administration of former Gov. Eric Greitens and accused Jackson County of misleading the judge.

Elad Gross, who is running for attorney general as a Democrat, said on social media “we need to fire our corrupt attorney general.”

“Attorney General Andrew Bailey repeatedly violates Missouri ethics rules,” Gross said. “He takes money from opponents. He makes up facts. He sells out the people of Missouri for campaign cash and uses taxpayer resources to support his campaign.”

This story was updated at 2:55 p.m. to include a statement from Bailey’s campaign and correct a misspelling.

(Photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's office)

Gov. Mike Parson signed legislation Thursday to make preventing veteran suicide a top priority for the state agency that aids these residents, the Missouri Veterans Commission. 

The suicide rate among Missouri’s veterans is nearly double the state rate and one of the highest in the country.

After three years of trying, Republican state Rep. Dave Griffith of Jefferson City said he was grateful for the governor’s support, along with the unanimous approval of both the House and Senate this spring. 

“I’m hoping that through House Bill 1495 we’re going to be able to take a deeper dive into what some of the causes are and some of the best practices we can learn from other states,” Griffith told the Independent this week.

The bill mandates the commission research procedures, treatment options and any other assistance to reduce the veteran suicide rate.

“The legislation we are signing today continues our commitment to our nation’s heroes that Missouri will remain one of the best places for veterans and service members to live, work, and raise a family,” Parson said in a news release.

In separate budget bills, lawmakers approved $120,000 for the commission to hire one or more people dedicated to the mission. 

Griffith said he spoke with retired Col. Paul Kirchhoff, the commission’s executive director, about next steps this week.

“He said, ‘We’re ready,’” Griffith said of Kirchhoff. “‘As soon as the governor signs the bill, we’ve got applications already on file for people who want to apply for that particular job.’”

Up until now, Griffith said the commission has implemented “as much as they can” to address the issue, while juggling their main duties.

The commission has long had three core missions of managing the veterans’ nursing homes and cemeteries and providing service officers who help veterans with their benefits, Griffith said.

The bill would add a fourth. 

“They really couldn’t devote as much time as they can now,” he said, “so creating that fourth priority for them will allow them to do that. It’s a good day for all veterans in Missouri.”

According to the legislation, the commission must file a report every year on July 1 with the Department of Public Safety and the General Assembly on the recommendations and implementation of its efforts. 

In 2021, Parson established an interagency team to collaborate on suicide prevention, so Griffith said he expected to receive the governor’s full support on the measure.

Kirchhoff told the House Veterans Commission in January that he embraces the new task, particularly because he’s lost several close military friends to suicide.

“This is near and dear to my heart,” Kirchhoff said. “We’re losing veterans every day to this. And whatever we can do to curb that, we’re all in.”

Many people can guess, he said, the reason Missouri has a higher rate than the national average. 

“But I’d like to know through facts,” he said. “And without having an emphasis on this, we just won’t know.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks in January 2023 to the Missouri chapter of the Federalist Society in the Missouri House chamber. A Clay County Circuit Judge ruled Tuesday that Bailey could be deposed over a possible ethics violation in the state's case against Jackson County over its property assessment process. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey can be questioned under oath about interactions with a Jackson County official that appear to  have violated legal ethics rules, a judge ruled Tuesday. 

The order forcing Bailey to sit for a deposition — which legal experts interviewed by The Independent agreed was highly unusual — stems from meetings he and one of his deputies had with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith. The attorney general’s office is currently suing the county over its property assessment process.

Under Missouri Supreme Court rules, attorneys are not to communicate about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another lawyer without the consent of the other lawyer. Both Bailey and Travis Woods, an assistant attorney general, discussed the case with Smith, according to Clay County Circuit Judge Karen Krauser’s order.

“The Missouri Attorney General’s Office is not exempt from the requirements of the state ethical rules, and this court finds that Travis Woods…violated the Rules of Professional Conduct,” wrote Krauser, who is handling the case after Jackson County judges recused themselves.

Krauser’s order came in response to a request for sanctions, including the ability to question Bailey, filed by attorneys representing Jackson County. She did not grant other sanctions that were requested, including disqualifying the attorney general’s office from the case.

“Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and his office have exhibited a blatant disregard for the Rules of Professional Conduct in this case,” the motion filed by Jackson County says, “and their actions are sanctionable. Based on what we know so far, their actions were not innocent mistakes.” 

Both Jackson County and Bailey’s office declined comment. Smith did not return a request for comment.

In a filing in opposition to Jackson County’s, Bailey’s office accused the county of grasping for straws and said the rules don’t support “granting these radical requests.”

“This court should reject defendants’ latest attempt to distract from the facts and legal claims brought by the state government,” the state’s filing says.

Chuck Hatfield, a longtime Jefferson City attorney who served as chief of staff to former Democratic Attorney General Jay Nixon, said a lot of judges would be troubled by the meetings between the attorney general and Smith. 

Jackson County’s lawyers, Hatfield said, should have been informed.

“It almost looks like they intentionally kept it from (Jackson County’s lawyers),” Hatfield said, “and that’s quite unprofessional. And the judge appears to think it was unethical, and that seems like a valid judgment to me.” 

Hatfield said he wasn’t aware of a Missouri attorney general being deposed since John Ashcroft, who served in the late 1970s and early 1980s before going on to become Missouri governor, a U.S. senator and finally U.S. attorney general under President George W. Bush. 

“This is really unusual,” Hatfield said of Bailey’s impending deposition. 

Bailey filed a lawsuit in December over Jackson County’s property assessment process. It named as defendants Jackson County and its legislature; County Executive Frank White Jr.; director of assessment Gail McCann Beatty; the Jackson County Board of Equalization; and Tyler Technologies, a software company hired by the county. 

The lawsuit accuses Jackson County of failing to comply with the law when it assessed properties in 2023, resulting in an average 30% increase in value across hundreds of thousands of properties. The lawsuit says more than 90% of residential properties saw an increase in property value, and values increased by at least 15% for three-quarters of properties in the county. 

The increase in property value means owners will have to pay more in property taxes each year.

The attorney general claims Jackson County failed to notify owners of the property value increases and their right to a physical inspection — which is required before the assessor can increase a home’s value by more than 15% — in a timely manner. The county didn’t conduct all the required inspections before hiking values more than 15%, the lawsuit says. 

Jackson County has denied the accusations and accused Bailey of waiting too long to file the case since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. Beyond that, the county argues, the attorney general can’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission has attempted to resolve the issue first.

Attorneys for Jackson County filed a motion for sanctions against the attorney general last month, citing the meetings Smith had with Bailey in April and Woods in May. 

“Based on what is known today, it is clear the Attorney General’s Office has been working with Sean Smith on trial strategy against Jackson County,” the county’s filing said.

The attorney general’s office filing in response says Smith has made numerous public statements criticizing the property assessment process.

“He has already testified at trial in this case, and in that testimony made clear that he believes Jackson County’s assessment practices were inappropriate,” the filing says. “He has voted on resolutions that are manifestly adverse to the rest of the county’s position in this case.” 

Even so, the filing says, the attorney general’s office has ceased communicating with Smith, who is running for the U.S. House as a Republican.

Krauser agreed with the county, writing in her order that Smith regularly consults with the county’s lawyers regarding issues central to the lawsuit and has power as an elected official to impact the case.

“This court has the authority to impose sanctions for conduct which abuses the judicial process, which includes violations of professional conduct,” Krauser wrote. 

After oral arguments in the case on Monday, the order says, Bailey’s office provided notes from Woods’ meeting with Smith. The notes didn’t include information subject to attorney-client privilege, Krauser wrote.

Another staffer in Bailey’s office sat for a deposition about the meeting between Bailey and Smith and their respective campaigns but gave little information about the conversation beyond that the two discussed the property assessment case and discussed “preparing a joint statement regarding this lawsuit.”

Smith posted to his campaign social media account that his team visited with Bailey. 

“Both of us feeling great about our races,” Smith said. “Thankful for the efforts of the AG in holding those responsible for our property tax debacle accountable.” 

Will Scharf, who is running against Bailey in the Republican primary for attorney general, said in a statement that the dispute was “yet another example of Andrew Bailey putting politics before his duties as attorney general.” 

“It is absolutely outrageous,” Scharf said, “that this important litigation against Jackson County is now imperiled because Andrew Bailey wanted a quick hit for his campaign.”

This story was updated at 5:38 p.m. to include newly-disclosed filings in the lawsuit.

A federal rule seeks to add protections to a section of the Affordable Care Act that prevent health care providers who discriminate on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation from receiving federal funding, including through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (photo illustration by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is leading a coalition of seven states challenging a rule by the Biden administration that would preempt state restrictions on gender-affirming care. 

Filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri on Wednesday, the states are seeking to block the regulation and prevent the federal government from enforcing similar mandates.

The rule seeks to add protections to a section of the Affordable Care Act that prevent health care providers who discriminate on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation from receiving federal funding, including through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The rule was set to go into effect July 5, with some provisions beginning later. But another coalition of attorneys general succeeded in their petition to block its implementation just two days prior. The judge in that case cited the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn “Chevron Deference,” a precedent that gave regulatory authority to federal agencies when statute is unclear.

Bailey, along with attorneys general from Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Idaho and Arkansas, argues that the rule conflicts with their states’ restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors. Each has varying restrictions on payments for gender-affirming treatment, with Missouri blocking payment for all treatments for medical transition through Medicaid and CHIP.

“… states will be unable to enforce these duly enacted laws and longstanding policies without coming into conflict with the rule,” the attorneys general wrote in the lawsuit.

The American College of Pediatricians joins the attorneys general as a plaintiff. The ACPeds is a group of 400 physicians and other health care professionals in 47 states with a history of anti-LGBTQ advocacy.

“ACPeds members categorically do not provide medical interventions or referrals for, and do not facilitate or speak in ways that affirm the legitimacy of, the practice of ‘gender transition,’” the attorneys general wrote.

The lawsuit alleges that the organization’s pediatricians would suffer “significant financial harm to lose eligibility to participate in federal healthcare programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP.”

One pediatrician in Utah is quoted in the lawsuit saying he would not “self-censor his opinions on transition efforts if the rule goes into effect.”

Predicting his noncompliance with the rule, the Utah pediatrician “faces the prospect of no longer caring for his patients, being fired from his employment and being unable to practice medicine in most settings,” the attorneys general wrote.

The rule violates physicians’ freedom of assembly, the lawsuit states, “by coercing them to participate in facilities, programs, groups and other healthcare-related endeavors that are contrary to their views and that express messages with which they disagree.”

The lawsuit also says it “coerces ACPeds members’ speech.”

“By forcing ACPeds members to tell patients directly, on their walls, and on their websites that they do not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, the rule forces ACPeds members to speak falsely, and it forces ACPeds members to fatally undermine their communication of their own medical ethical standards,” it says.

Beyond questions of constitutionality, the attorneys general allege that the rule goes beyond congressional authorization.

The rule interprets gender identity as protected by both including gender dysphoria as a disability and interpreting sex discrimination to include gender identity. The attorneys general disagree with this application.

Key to the case will be the judge’s interpretation of the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court Case Bostock v. Clayton County, in which a majority of justices ruled that gender identity was protected under Title VII, which is on employment discrimination.

The rule leans on some courts’ interpretation that transfers the Bostock decision to Title IX and the Affordable Care Act, according to its publication in the Federal Register. But the attorneys general cite decisions from judges in red states that do not allow Bostock to apply outside of Title VII.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which is the defendant in the litigation, did not respond to a request for comment.

The St. Louis County office of Express Scripts, one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefit managers (Google Maps).

The federal trade watchdog on Tuesday released an interim report saying that sprawling health care conglomerates are driving out competition in the pharmacy sector and appear to be increasing prices in the process.

The interim report comes after the Federal Trade Commission in 2022 announced that it was undertaking a sweeping investigation of pharmacy middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs.

Each of the largest three PBMs — CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx — is part of a much-larger corporation that also owns a top-10 health insurer. They also own pharmacies, doctors offices and other links in the health chain, prompting the FTC to say they’re “vertically integrated.”

The corporations’ pharmacy benefit managers act as insurers’ representatives in pharmacy transactions. They decide which drugs are covered, they create pharmacy networks, and through an opaque system, they decide how much to reimburse pharmacies for the drugs they dispense.

The three biggest PBMs together are handling nearly 80% of prescription-drug transactions on behalf of insured Americans, the FTC report said. The largest six PBMs manage nearly 95% of all such prescriptions in the United States, it said.

“Amidst increasing vertical integration and concentration, these powerful middlemen may be profiting by inflating drug costs and squeezing Main Street pharmacies,” an executive summary of the report said.

The summary adds that the big PBMs “wield enormous power and influence over patients’ access to drugs and the prices they pay. This can have dire consequences for Americans, with nearly three in ten surveyed Americans reporting rationing or even skipping doses of their prescribed medicines due to high costs.”

For its part, and industry group representing PBMs said the businesses “have a proven track record of reducing prescription drug costs” and that they “recognize the vital role pharmacies play in creating access to prescription drugs for patients.”

JC Scott, president of the industry group, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, said the FTC had treated the PBM industry unfairly.

“Throughout this process, FTC leadership has shown that they have pre-determined conclusions that they want to advance irrespective of the facts or the data, and this report demonstrates an intention to follow through on their agenda regardless of the evidence,” Scott said in a statement.

But many independent and small-chain pharmacies dispute that PBMs have their interests at heart. U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, a Republican from Georgia, is a pharmacist and has long called for the FTC to investigate the PBM industry.

“I’m proud that the FTC launched a bipartisan investigation into these shadowy middlemen, and its preliminary findings prove yet again that it’s time to bust up the PBM monopoly,” Carter said in a statement.

“We are losing more than one pharmacy per day in this country,” he said, “causing pharmacy deserts and taking the most accessible health care professionals in America out of people’s communities. I am calling on the FTC to promptly complete its investigation and begin enforcement actions if – and when – it uncovers illegal and anti-competitive PBM practices.”

Because they control access to so many patients, most pharmacies — especially small operations — feel they have little choice about signing the contracts the big PBMs offer them. For years, they’ve been complaining of declining reimbursements and seemingly arbitrary clawbacks from the huge PBMs. Many have been fleeing the business, saying they’re unable to cover their expenses.

Late last month, for example, news broke that Rite Aid would close hundreds of stores in Ohio and Michigan, with many more likely to close in the other 14 states where the bankrupt chain operates. The company tends to operate in smaller communities and the FTC says pharmacy closures in such communities are particularly harmful to patients.

“PBMs also exert substantial influence over independent pharmacies, who struggle to navigate contractual terms imposed by PBMs that they find confusing, unfair, arbitrary, and harmful to their businesses,” the agency said in a statement accompanying the interim report.

Between 2013 and 2022, about 10% of independent retail pharmacies in rural America closed.

“Closures of local pharmacies affect not only small business owners and their employees, but also their patients,” the agency said. “In some rural and medically underserved areas, local community pharmacies are the main healthcare option for Americans, who depend on them to get a flu shot, an EpiPen, or other lifesaving medicine.”

CVS operates the largest retail chain, so when its PBM decides how much to reimburse pharmacies for drugs, it’s using what the FTC called an “extraordinarily opaque” system to pay its own pharmacies and its competitors for the drugs they dispense.

Similarly, all three of the biggest PBMs operate mail-order pharmacies for expensive “specialty” drugs such as cancer medication. And they often encourage — if not require — patients to get their medicine from them. That has resulted in PBM-affiliated specialty pharmacies controlling 70% of sales in that class of drugs, the FTC report said.

Using mail-order for complex, quickly changing cancer drug regimens has led to horror stories among patients forced to get their drugs that way. Meanwhile, the FTC report uncovered evidence that in at least some instances, PBMs are paying their own companies’ pharmacies more for drugs in those transactions than they do their competitors.

“Our analyses also highlight examples of affiliated pharmacies receiving significantly higher reimbursement rates than those paid to unaffiliated pharmacies for two case study drugs,” it said. “These practices have allowed pharmacies affiliated with the three largest PBMs to retain levels of dispensing revenue well above estimated drug acquisition costs, resulting in nearly $1.6 billion of additional revenue on just two cancer drugs in under three years.”

Such practices have already prompted Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost to sue Express Scripts under the state’s antitrust law, the Valentine Act.

PCMA, the industry group, accused the FTC of using an unrepresentative sample in its analysis.

“Today’s interim FTC report falls far short of being a definitive, fact-based assessment of PBMs or the prescription drug market,” Scott, the group’s president said.

“Members of the commission themselves disagree with the content of the report and the decision to release it,” Scott continued. “This report is based on anecdotes and comments from anonymous sources and self-interested parties, and supported only by two cherry-picked case studies that are implied to be representative of the entire market. The report completely overlooks the volumes of data that demonstrate the value that PBMs provide to America’s health care system by reducing prescription drug costs and increasing access to medications.”

The FTC report also slammed arrangements under which the big PBM’s negotiate huge rebates and other discounts from drugmakers.

Because PBMs control access to so many patients, they have great leverage when they negotiate rebates and other discounts from makers of patented or “branded” drugs. The middlemen control the “formulary,” or list of covered drugs, and manufacturers have to cough up big if they want their products to be on it.

The system of granting huge, non-transparent discounts has already been shown to increase the “list” price of drugs. That’s the amount you would pay if you didn’t have insurance — and often the price on which your copayment or deductible is based.

The FTC said it came across another way the rebate system appears to be costing patients — by locking them out of cheaper generics that would work just as well.

“While this interim report principally focuses on the relationship between PBMs and pharmacies, we share evidence that PBMs and brand pharmaceutical manufacturers sometimes enter into agreements to exclude generic drugs and biosimilars from certain formularies in exchange for higher rebates from the manufacturer,” the report said. “These exclusionary rebates may cut off patient access to lower-cost medicines and warrant further scrutiny by the Commission, policymakers and industry stakeholders.”

FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan in March said that some of the PBMs weren’t cooperating with the investigation. Those problems apparently persist.

“The report notes that several of the PBMs that were issued orders have not been forthcoming and timely in their responses, and they still have not completed their required submissions, which has hindered the Commission’s ability to perform its statutory mission,” the agency said in a statement. “FTC staff have demanded that the companies finalize their productions required by the 6(b) orders promptly. If, however, any of the companies fail to fully comply with the 6(b) orders or engage in further delay tactics, the FTC can take them to district court to compel compliance.”

The story was originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Construction on Interstate 70 begins Monday in Columbia. The $2.8 billion project is expected to be finished by 2030 (Sarah Voyles/Missourian).

Construction crews began work Monday night on an ambitious $2.8 billion project that will expand Interstate 70 to three lanes across Missouri.

Crews are first tackling a stretch from Route J at Millersburg to Route M at Hatton, 7 miles of a 20-mile section that will ultimately add a third lane in each direction from Columbia to Kingdom City.

The overnight schedule is designed to minimize traffic disruptions as the highway work progresses from the center of the state to other portions at the east and west ends of the highway.

The project’s first 20-mile section is expected to be completed by the end of 2027. Subsequent phases include improving stretches of highway from Warrenton to Wentzville and from Blue Springs to Odessa. The entire project is expected to be finished by 2030.

Road crews will first close the westbound lane from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. nightly to lay new asphalt that will strengthen the highway shoulders, said the state’s Improve I-70 central project director, Jeff Gander.

When that portion is done, the eastbound lane will be closed to traffic. Estimated completion is this summer.

First contract for widening I-70 approved by Missouri highways commission

“After they get that shoulder-strengthening done, they’re going to re-stripe the highway to push traffic more toward the outsides, and then they’ll be setting barrier wall all along the inside to barrier off the median so we can perform our work in there,” Gander said.

In addition to adding a third lane each way to the 20 miles between the U.S. 63 and U.S. 54 exits, crews will improve the intersections of U.S. 63 and I-70 in Columbia and between U.S. 54 and I-70 in Kingdom City.

Missouri Department of Transportation plans to begin working on the U.S. 63-Interstate-70 connector this summer, while construction on U.S. 54 will likely not start until 2025, Gander said.

A St. Charles-based contractor, Millstone Weber, was selected to do the first section, which has a $405 million price tag. The contractor intends to avoid impacting local traffic by keeping two lanes open during construction at all times, with the exception of some temporary closures at night.

“What we have committed to for this project is to keep two lanes of I-70 flowing at all peak times, which means during the day,” he said. “There’s a good possibility that they will have a lane closed at night, both eastbound and westbound at the same time.”

MoDOT did preliminary work ahead of Monday’s construction, including pavement coring, as well as subsurface boring where some of the structures will go to prepare for the design.

Since the initiative is a design-build project, highway improvement happens incrementally, Gander said. In this kind of project, the full design plans are completed while the project is underway.

“When we actually award this contract, we don’t have full design plans — we have plans that are probably at, say, 30 percent complete,” Gander said. “Right now, they are hot-and-heavy working on fully designing the rest of the project.”

The project has been on MoDOT’s unfunded agenda for almost 20 years and is the largest interstate construction program since the early 1960s. The expanded highway portion will run from Blue Springs in Jackson County to Wentzville in St. Charles County.

More than 40,000 vehicles travel between Kansas City and St. Louis each day. A third lane will allow for emergency vehicles to access crashes faster and with less traffic back-up, keeping drivers safer and less frustrated, according to MoDOT Director Patrick McKenna in an earlier Missourian report.

Due to the significant highway construction happening around Columbia during the next few years, Gander said it is important for people to pay attention while driving.

Distracted driving is the main issue that highway construction workers must deal with, he said.

“When this project gets really rolling, and we have all the different areas that we’re working on, we could have upwards of around 300 people out there working on a day-to-day basis, including our prime contractor and our subcontractors,” he said.

“Our goal is for everybody to go home safe, so we really need the public’s help for that.”

This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online. 

Fireworks go off before a game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City last year. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said he doesn't think the Kansas City Chiefs want to leave Arrowhead for a new domed stadium in Kansas. (David Eulitt/Getty Images).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said Monday he doesn’t think the Kansas City Chiefs want to leave Arrowhead Stadium for Kansas, though he acknowledged he hasn’t actually talked to the team’s owners.

Speaking to reporters after a bill signing in Kansas City, Parson said he thought the reigning Super Bowl champion wasn’t that interested in building a new domed football stadium.

“I think they really want Arrowhead to stay,” Parson said. “I think it’s a unique arena.”

Parson’s remarks came after he spent the afternoon meeting with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and other area officials to discuss how to keep the Chiefs and Kansas City Royals in Missouri.

Both teams have publicly considered the possibility of leaving for Kansas after Jackson County voters rejected a proposal to extend a 3/8-cent sales tax to help finance a downtown Kansas City baseball stadium for the Royals and upgrades to Arrowhead. 

Last month, Kansas lawmakers expanded a state tax incentive program in the hopes of convincing one or both teams to relocate.

“I’m not too worried about Kansas at this point,” Parson said.

Parson, who leaves office in January, said he expected to see Missouri put forward a plan to keep the teams by the end of the year. Missouri’s plan, he said, could be just as good for the teams — if not better.

First, he said, information on the teams’ plans — including location of stadiums, costs of the project and details of any entertainment district or other development planned around it — needs to be made public. 

With Parson’s impending departure from office, Missouri’s next governor could be left to finalize any plan to keep the teams. Two of the three top candidates for the GOP gubernatorial nomination say they would oppose any incentive package for the Chiefs and Royals. 

Asked if that affects negotiations, Parson said the state has tools at its disposal even now while the Missouri General Assembly is not in session “if we knew what the plan was.” 

“The conversation needs to be had with the Royals — where are you going to put a stadium?” Parson said. “How much money do you need? What’s it going to cost for this? How are we going to pay for this? What incentives does the city have?”

Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson — who will likely become the next speaker of the House — told the Kansas City Star Monday that he expects Jackson County residents will wind up voting again over the stadium sales tax. He also told The Star, following conversations with both the Chiefs and Royals, that it was clear both teams wanted to stay in Missouri.

After Kansas lawmakers passed legislation designed to relocate the teams, Patterson told The Star he thought a second Jackson County vote would be successful.

“I think now with the Kansas option staring us, staring us right in the face, I think that changed the dynamic, and it would be a different vote next time around,” he said.

Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. said in a statement after meetings with Parson that the two had a “productive conversation centered on the pride these teams bring to our community and the importance of developing a fair and sustainable plan for the future.” Before White can support a new stadium proposal, he said, “it must offer clear and significant benefits to the taxpayers of Jackson County,” something he argues the sales tax does not.

White said he’s hopeful that the state will continue to support the effort to keep the teams in Missouri even after Parson leaves office.

“Together, we can find a solution that ensures the Chiefs and Royals remain a proud part of Jackson County without compromising the financial well-being of our community,” White said.

The Royals’ Kauffman Stadium and Arrowhead sit next to each other and share the parking lot of the Truman Sports Complex in east Kansas City.

The teams’ plans for the Jackson County sales tax were criticized by some, including White, as vague and incomplete. 

But Kansas lawmakers saw in the failed Jackson County vote a chance to lure the teams across the state line. They claimed Missouri had “dropped the ball” and it was up to Kansas to keep the teams in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Last month, Kansas lawmakers expanded the state’s Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond to help finance up to 70% of the cost for one or both teams to move to Kansas. The expanded program could yield hundreds of millions of dollars for the stadiums.

STAR Bonds are issued to help pay the construction costs and then repaid by the sales tax collected at the project site. Normally, STAR Bonds, which are meant to help build tourist and entertainment venues, are limited to 50% of the project costs. 

The legislation, signed by Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly last month, was criticized by Missouri officials who considered it a violation of an agreement Kelly and Parson reached in 2019 to stop using economic incentives to move companies and jobs back and forth across the state line.

Neither the Chiefs nor the Royals were available to comment.

This story was updated at 8:48 a.m. with comments from Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson and Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. 

Gov. Mike Parson, seated, holds up legislation he just signed offering a tax break to private developers expanding the National Nuclear Security Administration's south Kansas City campus. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

Developers planning to expand a Kansas City facility manufacturing nuclear weapons components will get a break on sales tax under legislation Gov. Mike Parson signed Monday.

Parson held a signing ceremony at the site, currently a gravel lot across from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s south Kansas City campus. The expansion is expected to cost more than $3 billion and add more than 2 million square feet of space to the campus.

Lawmakers present Monday predicted the expansion would add about 2,000 high-paying jobs in south Kansas City.

“To have that kind of investment anywhere in the state, especially here, is a big deal for the entire state and a big deal for this community,” Parson said.

For years, Honeywell International Inc. has operated the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plant manufacturing non-nuclear parts for the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

Missouri legislators pass tax break for Kansas City nuclear weapons campus expansion

But proponents of the tax break say the facility needs to expand to accommodate work the NNSA will need to modernize and refurbish the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. 

“You’re talking about securing the country and making sure that this country stays safe,” Parson said Monday.

Lawmakers passed the tax break overwhelmingly this spring, largely citing the potential economic boon of the new jobs. The sales tax exemption on construction materials for the project is expected to divert more than $150 million in state, county, city and Kansas City zoo sales tax revenue over 10 years, according to a fiscal analysis that noted the exact cost couldn’t be verified. 

Legislative staff wrote that the bill’s “fiscal impact could be significant.”

The legislation had support from both Democrats and Republicans and was championed by now-former Missouri Sen. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat.

At the signing event Monday, Razer called the tax break a “no-nonsense piece of legislation.” He said the Honeywell expansion would be “transformational” for south Kansas City, Grandview and surrounding communities.  

“This is high-paying jobs in these communities,” Razer said, “and as Kansas City continues to grow and have a renaissance, we’ve got to make sure that every corner of Kansas City grows and is involved in that renaissance. That’s what’s happening here today.”

Attorney General Andrew Bailey, right, testifies to the House Budget Committee on Feb. 6, where he predicted his office would complete work on 2023 records requests by May (Rudi Keller/MIssouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has nearly completed work on a backlog of requests for records submitted to his office by the public last year. 

That means work can finally begin processing requests submitted this year. 

The 2023 requests were initially supposed to be completed by May. But a spokeswoman for the attorney general said staff turnover, coupled with a huge spike last year in the number of requests for the office’s records, meant the process took longer than anticipated. 

As of last week, there were 15 pending requests left from 2023, said Madeline Sieren, Bailey’s spokeswoman.

Bailey was sworn in as attorney general in January 2023, taking over the office after his predecessor was elected to the U.S. Senate. And from the early months of his tenure, Bailey faced criticism over how his office has handled public requests for records.

Those concerns were amplified by the fact that the attorney general’s office enforces Missouri’s Sunshine Law, as well as Bailey’s involvement in crafting a failed proposal to weaken public records laws while working for Gov. Mike Parson.

There were 224 unfinished records requests still pending when Bailey took over, and last year the number of requests submitted to his office ballooned from 468 in 2022 to 784. 

Five staffers were assigned to work through the backlog, but Bailey’s policy of handling requests on a first come, first serve basis has created massive delays. Newer inquiries that are small and easily dispensed with sit in limbo for months, even up to a year, as staff works on older and more expansive requests.

For example, a request by The Independent in August for three days of Bailey’s official calendar — typically turned around in a matter of days by other government agencies — wasn’t completed for 10 months.

Sieren said the attorney general’s office is currently projecting new requests will take 60 days to complete. She has also noted the office does not charge for any public records requests, a practice that differs from nearly every other state agencies. 

But that’s done little to soothe criticism. 

By allowing requests to pile up, and forcing the public to wait months for records that could be quickly provided, the attorney general is not abiding by the Sunshine Law, said Bernie Rhodes, a First Amendment attorney who has represented numerous media outlets, including The Independent.

“Complying with the Sunshine Law is not optional,” he said. “The law states that, ‘each public governmental body shall make available for inspection and copying by the public of that body’s public records.’ The word ‘shall’ is mandatory.”

If government transparency were actually important to Bailey, Rhodes said, he would dedicate the resources needed to ensure his office is complying with the law. 

“Choosing to file papers with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Donald Trump is optional, not mandatory,” he said, referencing Bailey asking the court to delay the former president’s sentencing for 34 felonies until after the November election. 

“Every lawyer working on that matter,” Rhodes said, “could be working on complying with the Sunshine Law.”

Rhodes notes he’s still waiting on a request he made in March for a copy of the office’s sunshine log — a list or spreadsheet that most government offices maintain that documents pending records requests.

This sort of narrow request historically can be turned around in a matter of days.

 Rhodes is still waiting. 

Meanwhile, an identical request was filed in August by Jeff Basinger, a Columbia attorney running as a Democrat for the Missouri House. While Rhodes hasn’t received his records, Basinger got a copy of the attorney general’s sunshine log late last month.

Why didn’t Rhodes get a copy of the same records? 

“Good question,” Rhodes said. “I have no idea why.”

The sunshine log obtained by Basinger and provided to The Independent documents years of requests — from individuals, reporters, political operatives and organizations. 

A frequent inquiry that shows up on the log involves records about companies accused of ripping off customers. The attorney general’s office enforces the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, which protects consumers from deceptive, unethical or illegal actions by businesses.

“Sunshine requests are used by Missourians to investigate problems and fix them,” Basinger said. “Denying prompt access to information negates the opportunity for citizens, journalists and public interest groups to effectively address the subject of their concern.”

(Getty Images)

The largest donors to a tax credit program supporting private school tuition scholarships in Missouri are a Fortune 500 health care corporation, a cable company and the founding family of the Kansas City Chiefs.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. has given the most since 2023 to the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program, dubbed MOScholars, with a $2 million donation last year and $3.5 million pledged this year.

Lamar Hunt Jr. and his wife Rita Hunt, part of the family that owns the Kansas City Chiefs, reserved $800,000 in tax credits last year and $500,000 this year. Hunt Jr. is also the founder of the Kansas City Mavericks hockey team and a philanthropist tied to Catholic ministries.

MOScholars allows taxpayers to give to one of six educational assistance organizations to fund scholarships for private, parochial and homeschooled students. Donors use an application on the State Treasurer’s Office to register the amount they intend to donate with the state, reserving a tax credit in that amount up to half of their tax burden. 

Treasurer Vivek Malek told The Independent this year’s donations are off to a promising start, topping figures from this time last year.

So far, taxpayers have reserved $5 million of the tax credits available this year. Typically, donations are strongest at year-end. MOScholars donors can receive their donation amount back in a tax credit, up to half their tax burden, with the reservations. So donations come nearer to tax time.

Last year, donations looked sparser at this time, and the number of students recorded as a returning MOScholars student was low. This number grew, though, as donations came through at the end of last year with a total of $16.6 million by the end of 2023.

Among those who have given to MoScholars since lawmakers created the program in 2022 are political mega donors, national corporations and hundreds of individuals, according to the Missouri Accountability Portal.

Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield, major political donors in Missouri and advocates for private and charter schools, gave $1 million between two educational assistance organizations last year.

David Steward, founder and chairman of IT provider World Wide Technology, gave $500,000 to a St. Louis-based educational assistance organization.

Charter Communications, which serves customers as Spectrum, gave $334,000 to each educational assistance organization for a total of just over $2 million.

Hobby Lobby Stores gave $300,000.

Herzog Enterprises, a railway construction company once run by political donor Stanley Herzog, gave $250,000 to its nonprofit arm, the Herzog Tomorrow Foundation. Brad Lager, who once served in Missouri’s legislature and now leads Herzog Enterprises, reserved $200,000 in tax credits.

Also included in the list of donors in 2023 is former Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft and his wife Janet. Ashcroft served as governor from 1985 to 1993 before becoming a U.S. Senator and later U.S. attorney general.

Treasurer’s office staff told The Independent that fundraising has been focused on both individuals and corporations. More than half of the office’s expenditures in 2023 were spent on advertising its various programs.

State Rep. Phil Christofanelli, a Republican from St. Peters and sponsor of the bill that created MOScholars, said there has been outreach to corporations through accountant associations.

“We definitely want to work with the larger corporate entities so that they become aware of the program. Corporations are sometimes a little slower to adopt than individual donors and taxpayers,” he said.

There were 1,301 total approved applications for tax credits last year. There have been 161 applications approved in 2024.

This article has been updated to include the source of the donor information.

A series of changes to Missouri's child care subsidy program have created a major headache for day care providers, who say they've been forced to make difficult budget decisions as they wait on money owed to them by the state (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

This spring, the state of Missouri owed Kimberly Luong Nichols $5,000 in backlogged payments for children at her Kansas City daycare who were part of a state subsidy program.

For four years, she’s operated a licensed daycare inside her home, where she currently serves 10 children. Luong Nichols stopped drawing a salary last summer to pay for improvements to her center and two new hires, expecting to draw down a salary again this year. 

When the full subsidy she was owed stopped arriving, she laid off those staff.

And as they’ve done for the past year, her family of six relies solely on her husband’s $53,000 salary. 

They’ve given up little luxuries like going out to dinner and buying fancier shampoo. And they’ve given up bigger luxuries, like vacations. 

When bill collectors started calling, her husband considered getting a second job. On several occasions, she considered doing away with the daycare entirely. But she didn’t, not wanting to leave the families — many of whom have children with developmental disabilities, or who are in the foster care system — with the stress of searching for a new day care. 

Luong Nichols is among thousands of child care providers across Missouri who rely on a state child care subsidy program to keep their daycares afloat.

The subsidy, part of a federal block grant program that is state-administered, helps cover the cost of serving low-income and foster children. 

But since late last year, a series of changes created a major headache for many providers and families, as parents were unable to register their children and providers in the most dire circumstances were left without money to pay their staff.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which oversees the program, has largely blamed a contracted vendor for the months-long backlogs. The system, which launched in December, is still not fully operational. 

“ … There have been a number of unforeseen challenges during the transition, which involves loading family and provider data from the existing state systems into the new (Child Care Data System),” Mallory McGowin, a spokesperson with the department of education said in a statement Wednesday. “The (Office of Childhood) is working hard to mitigate these issues and sincerely apologizes to the child care providers and families affected.”

But similar backlogs plagued the system three years ago, as parents struggled to enroll children and providers had to make serious budget cuts.

The latest problems have forced some daycares to close. Others have shifted from serving vulnerable children who qualify for the state subsidy to only admitting families who can afford to pay on their own. 

Many providers, like Luong Nichols, have weeks where they’re barely hanging on.  

Payment backlogs not new

In Missouri, child care providers can be registered to get a government stipend for every child on subsidy, meaning they receive a partial amount of tuition directly from families, and then the government covers the rest after care has been provided.  

The child care subsidy is a federal program administered by states through the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Families apply for the state to directly pay a child care provider for part of the cost of care.  

Only very low-income families qualify in Missouri, along with foster kids and children with special needs. The maximum income a family can make to qualify is 150% of the federal poverty line, or $46,800 for a family of four.

The average cost of full-time, center-based care for an infant in Missouri was $11,059 as of 2022, according to Child Care Aware. 

There were about 21,000 children receiving the state subsidy as of November, the last publicly available state data. The program shifted from being administered by Missouri’s Department of Social Services to the education department in December. McGowin said the current number is closer to 23,000 children.

Roughly 1,800 of Missouri’s 2,800 licensed and license-exempt providers, including school districts, are contracted to take children on subsidy, Pam Thomas, assistant commissioner for Missouri’s Office of Childhood, said at a State Board of Education meeting last month. 

“We do continue to struggle a bit with our vendor and meeting what our expectations are for an efficient and effective system and making clear what’s needed,” Thomas told the board. “And quite frankly the vendor is not delivering on those results to what I would say are our expectations as a department.” 

The vendor contracted to develop and implement the new system for the subsidy program is World Wide Technology, McGowin said, a large technology services provider headquartered in St. Louis.

Board members expressed concerns with how to move forward as Thomas reassured them that her department was working “around the clock” to urge the vendor to fix the bugs in the system, which spans about nine steps between a family’s application for subsidy and payment to the provider.

“We have to be cautious about how many more changes we add into the system right now,” she said. “ … We can bend it, but we certainly can’t break it, and I think we’re on the verge of that right now.”

Yet this isn’t the first time the state’s handling of the subsidy program has caused widespread problems for providers and families. 

Emails show months-long backlog of payments to Missouri child care providers

In 2021, the state blamed the COVID-19 pandemic and the rollout of a new system used to track attendance, called KinderConnect, for a backlog of thousands of payments. 

In spring 2023, parents reported waiting several months to be approved for the state assistance, leaving them struggling to juggle work and child care. 

State Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Democrat from Kansas City, said she was notified of the current spate of issues a few months ago by legislative staff who’d started hearing concerns from constituents. 

“It feels like way too much time has passed,” Arthur said. “I suspect that child care providers across the state have already closed as a result of these mistakes and it’s totally unacceptable when already providers are struggling. There are already not enough seats available for children who need them.”

Asked last month if she was looking at alternative vendors ahead of the current multi-million dollar contract running out in December, Thomas, with the education department, said she wasn’t opposed. 

However, on Wednesday, McGowin, said the department is not currently planning on finding a new vendor. The subsidy payment issues – 60% of which came from technical issues, according to the state – are expected to be resolved by the end of July. 

Missouri pays providers for services after they’re performed, rather than in advance. This, coupled with the fact that providers are paid based on attendance rather than enrollment for children in the subsidy program, makes budgeting nearly impossible for providers who take low-income and foster children.

“We’re really relying on the state and DESE to really prioritize solving these system challenges so providers can be paid quickly,” said Casey Hanson, director of outreach and engagement at the child advocacy nonprofit Kids Win Missouri. 

Hanson has spent hundreds of hours with child care providers over the past several years. She knows what’s at stake.

“They’re some of the most resilient people,” she said. “They care about children, they care about the future of our state more than almost anyone.”

‘Our own personal pandemic’

Tina Mosley was among the providers who made the difficult decision to stop taking children on subsidy. 

For 28 years, she has owned and operated Our Daycare and Learning Center in St. Louis, which is licensed for 10 children. It sits in the Normandy school district where the median household income is less than $39,000, and more than 56% of students in public school have SNAP benefits, according to 2021 data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Every other provider she knows in the area accepts children on subsidy. And they’re all in the same predicament.

“Every one of my colleagues and friends, the state is behind on paying them,” Mosley said. “To the right of me, to the left of me, across the street from me, behind me.”

By only taking private paying families, and by ceasing to collect a salary, Mosley said she’s been able to continue employing her two staff, both of whom are young mothers. And while they no longer take children on subsidy, they still service lower income families, she said. 

As a result, she’s not left waiting on payments from the state. A handful of home and center-based providers she knows in the St. Louis area already closed because of the lag.

Several months ago, when most of her children were from the subsidy program, she was helping parents sign up for state benefits as the system transitioned over. She recalls parents sharing screenshots of hold times on the phone with the state surpassing an hour before they had to hang up and return to work, unable to get the immediate help they needed.

“Early child care right now, we feel like we’re in our own personal pandemic,” Mosley said. 

But unlike during the COVID-19 pandemic, when government bodies and communities showed up in stride to keep child care providers in business, Mosley said it feels like most people have now turned their backs.

Luong Nichols, in Kansas City, has considered doing what Mosley has done: stop opening her services to families on subsidy.

In an April email to a staffer in Arthur’s office, she lamented her situation. The system had two of her kids on subsidy listed as private pay. A glitch wouldn’t let her submit attendance. She hadn’t heard back on her help ticket. 

“I am due to renew child care subsidy next month and really considering not doing it,” she wrote in an email she shared with The Independent. “Payments are still not correct, they owe me all of February and past corrections. Now we are about to end March and that will be added.”

After sending this email, Luong Nichols went on to interview at a local school district. She ultimately turned down the job offer, unable to part with the children in her care, including foster children, kids with behavioral difficulties and low-income children.

“I have single moms and foster children that have been kicked out of other daycares or gone through many placements before they landed on my door. And the kids that I take care of, they’re like family.”

Instead she continued to spend hours on the phone during nap time begging anyone to make her business whole again. She called the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the governor’s office. She even called the White House. 

“I’ve had to take on an extra load of work just to fight for something that I’m entitled to,” she said. 

As of Wednesday, she said her payments were caught up through May. She credited her persistence, and assistance from Arthur’s staff, for speeding up the payment.

At the same time, Luong Nichols has seen three area centers and four private daycares shutter. She directs most of the blame at the department of education.

“DESE has pushed the industry to the point of no return right now,” she said. ”We’re not going to have enough child care providers in the state of Missouri by the end of this year to take care of subsidy children.” She said it will move to private paying families only. 

Hanson, with Kids Win Missouri, said there isn’t currently enough data to know the reality of the child care landscape. 

In response to a Sunshine request submitted by The Independent last month, the education agency said they do not currently track the number of backlogged payment resolution requests. 

“The reality is, yeah, there are providers that will close,” Hanson said. “That’s why we continue to advocate that we need more state level funding in this space to really maintain a supply.”

Othel Moore died at the Jefferson City Correctional Center in December while restrained and in isolation (Caspar Benson/Getty Images).

Four former Missouri correctional officers face murder charges and a fifth is charged with involuntary manslaughter for the December death of a man incarcerated at the Jefferson City Correctional Center.

Othel Moore, 38, was pepper-sprayed in the face multiple times, had his face improperly covered by a hood that blocked his nose and mouth and left unattended in a cell for more than 30 minutes, documents filed Friday in Cole County Circuit Court state.

Moore, who suffered from asthma, screamed at officers that he could not breathe as he was being transported to the cell, the documents state. He died on the morning of Dec. 8.

Cole County Prosecuting Attorney Locke Thompson charged Justin Leggins, 34, of Cadet, Jacob Case, 31, of Desloge, and Aaron Brown, 24, and Gregory Varner, 34, both of Park Hills, with second degree assault and second degree murder.

Warden of Missouri prison replaced after investigation of inmate death

Thompson charged Bryanne Bradshaw, 25, of Jefferson City with involuntary manslaughter in the second degree.

Leggins was hired by the department in 2022, according to information on the Missouri Accountability Portal. Case worked for the department in 2014 and 2015 and returned in 2020. Brown was hired in 2021. Varner worked for the department from 2014 to 2016 and returned in 2019. Bradshaw started in 2018.

All five had been arrested or surrendered to authorities by Friday afternoon, Thompson said.

No information was available indicating whether the officers have hired attorneys.

Four corrections officers were fired in March during the investigation of Moore’s death. The warden of the Jefferson City Correctional Center was terminated as an employee of the department earlier this month. 

The autopsy of Moore ruled his death was due to “positional asphyxiation” and the death was determined to be a homicide, documents filed with the case state.

“The sheriff’s department did a very thorough investigation and when we set down and reviewed all the evidence available, that is what led us to those charges,” Thompson said in an interview with The Independent.

The charges, highly unusual in an inmate death case, were first reported by the Associated Press. Thompson said he has some cases of inmate-on-inmate violence pending, but no other cases involving correctional officers assaulting inmates.

“Right now we have two offender-on-offender homicides, and we have had those in the past as well,” Thompson said.

In a press release, Thompson said Moore’s death was linked to a Corrections Emergency Response Team operation to sweep one of the housing units for contraband. Moore was pepper sprayed twice during the operation before being placed in a spit hood, leg wrap and restraint chair and transferred to a separate housing unit, where he was left in the hood, wrap, and restraint chair for approximately 30 minutes. 

The probable cause statements for each of the five describe their role in Moore’s death.

Leggins was present outside Moore’s cell during the operation. Moore spoke to another inmate and Leggins told him to remain silent. 

“The victim looked back over his shoulder without moving any other part of his body and asked the suspect why he had to be quiet,” Sgt. Greg Henson of the Cole County Sheriff’s Department wrote in the probable cause statement on Leggin’s charges. “lt was at this point Leggins raised a ‘fogger’ canister of pepper spray and deployed it from a very close distance into the face of the victim.”

The spraying violated department policies that the inmate had to be a danger to the officer or other inmates, Henson wrote. 

“This unwarranted reckless behavior inflicted undue suffering and pain on the victim,” Henson wrote.

Case pepper sprayed Moore in the face as he lay on the ground.

“During the initial interview Case stated he pepper sprayed the victim in the face while he was on the ground at the top of the staircase for not following directives to stop resisting,” Det. Aaron Roberts of the sheriff’s office wrote in the court documents.

Brown placed the mask on Moore’s face, Deputy Merideth Freeeman wrote in his probable cause statement. He claimed Moore was spitting at corrections officers, which other officers denied.

“Brown placed the spit mask on the victim’s head without allowing him the opportunity to decontaminate from the pepper spray even though the victim was fully restrained and cooperative at the time,” Freeman wrote, noting that he placed it improperly, blocking Moore’s nose and mouth.

Varner supervised the placement of Moore into a restraint device while masked.

“During my interview with Varner, he confirms that by the time the victim reached the bottom level after being sprayed multiple times, he was yelling that he couldn’t breathe, and that the victim was saying he had asthma,” Henson wrote in a probable cause statement.

Bradshaw was the highest ranking officer in the unit where Moore was taken in restraint. When he arrived at about 7:50 a.m. that morning, he was in distress.
“Sgt. Bradshaw stated that when Moore arrived he was yelling and screaming and although she said she couldn’t understand what he was saying, she said he could have been saying he couldn’t breathe or was in distress,” Henson wrote. “Additionally, Bradshaw said she knew Moore from previous encounters, and didn’t think he would be making up medical issues if that’s what he was trying to relay when yelling.”

Moore was placed in a locked room, restrained and masked. He was not checked on until he was unresponsive about 8:20 a.m. that day.

Prison reform activist Michelle Smith had not heard about the charges when contacted Friday.

“The fact that they’ve absolutely been charged, yes, that’s amazing,” Smith said. “I appreciate it. I think that it is necessary, and you know, it will serve to get the information out to the public.”

Smith organized a vigil in January to highlight the growing number of deaths among inmates. Moore’s death was one of 135 in Missouri’s state prisons in 2023, according to Missouri Prison Reform . The number of deaths have been rising even as prison populations fall.

From 2012 to 2014, department data shows, there was an average of 31,442 incarcerated people in state prisons. Deaths averaged 89 per year. Over the period 2020 through 2022, with an average of 23,409 incarcerated people in state prisons, deaths averaged 122 per year.

Many of the deaths are natural, but they also include increasing numbers of overdose deaths.

The Moore investigation should not end with the criminal charges, Smith said. The way prisoners who told his family about his death were treated needs to be addressed as well, she said.

“The person who called the sister and told her he was killed, they put him in the hole,” Smith said. “They retaliated against several men and put them in the hole who were talking about it.”

Rep. Brenda Shields. R-St. Joseph, is leading a special committee that seeks to set a performance-based formula for higher education funding (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

A Missouri House committee began a new phase Tuesday of a years-long process to create a formula to fund the state’s higher education institutions.

Led by state Rep. Brenda Shields, a Republican from St. Joseph, the Special Interim Committee on Higher Education Performance Funding is hoping to pick a performance-based formula that would determine funding while allotting for institutions’ unique missions.

Shields sponsored legislation in January pushing for the switch in higher-education funding, which passed a committee but was never debated by the full House. 

The pressure to establish a formula stems from a 2022 appropriations bill that gave the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development $450,000 to commission “a study which provides recommendations to the governor and General Assembly on public higher education performance funding models.” The department has been working with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems since and has created reports on higher-education funding and efficiency.

“It is a long haul to make this happen if we do the testing correctly,” Shields told the committee Tuesday afternoon.

She predicted the first year of implementation would be 2027, and she aims to have a model by January that the committee can “run simulations with.”

Committee members commented that it was a challenge to create a formula for higher education — especially when term limits place a ceiling on legislators’ experience.

“I’m concerned about the technicality of what we are talking about here that is beyond my experience and perhaps ability to understand,” said state Rep. John Black, a Marshfield Republican.

Black noted that he, as well as Shields and committee member state Rep. Kevin Windham, have two years remaining in the House.

“The legislature will never understand some of these parameters at a level necessary to implement a good program. We are going to have to give over some authority to the department,” he said.

He said they will have to “convince” fellow House members to give power to the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development.

Windham, a Democrat from Hillsdale, said they will need the Senate’s authorization.

Shields suggested expanding the group to a joint committee, incorporating senators.

Leroy Wade, deputy commissioner of the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, described a process of cooperation between the committee, the department and higher-education institutions, with the department serving as a liaison and source of manpower for the calculations involved.

Many of the state’s colleges sent a representative to talk to the committee Tuesday, answering what they wanted out of the funding model.

Mun Choi, president of University of Missouri System and chancellor of its flagship campus in Columbia, said his ideal formula would reward “strong outcomes such as high graduation rates and high future earnings.”

He said it should also account for pricier degree programs, comparing the cost of educating an engineering student versus a history major.

“The formula should also reflect the unique missions of all of the public universities in the state,” he said. “In fiscal year 2023 the University of Missouri System spent $600 million in expenditures to support research that led to discovery but also had impact to the region and the state.”

Elizabeth Kennedy, chair of the Council on Public Higher Education in Missouri and president of Missouri Western State University, said lawmakers should consider historic underfunding.

The Council on Public Higher Education in Missouri has 10 member schools, including the state’s two historically Black universities, Harris-Stowe State University and Lincoln University. A federal report recently showed Missouri, among other states, has been underfunding its historically Black land-grant university.

Windham said funding imbalances are a challenge as the committee discusses performance funding.

“I find it hard to talk about performance funding when I think about how institutions have been underfunded, some worse than others in the state,” he said. “The institutions that have seen significant investments in the past from the state will likely do better than most.”

Kennedy said the committee has the opportunity to study this.

Kimberly Beatty, chancellor of Metropolitan Community College, said the funding model must account for the differences between four-year institutions and community colleges. She said the current way colleges are funded has left state aid out of valuable programs.

“We do the apprenticeship programs. We have (certified nurse assistant) programs, manufacturing, welding, and all of those are apprenticeship programs,” she said. “None of those apprenticeship programs or their enrollees are considered in the current funding model.”

She said non-credit programs, which provide workforce training, provide workforce development for Missouri but are not funded at the state level.

“We’d like to see the value of workforce programs included in the funding model, whether those are credit programs or non-credit programs,” she said.

Beatty said around 20% of students are currently not counted towards full-time enrollment, as funded currently.

Full-time enrollment is one metric among many that may be incorporated into the formula. Currently, performance funding is not in effect in the budget process.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona speaks with families at the Mattie Rhodes Center in Kansas City, Missouri, in September (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Federal judges in Kansas and Missouri on Monday blocked the full implementation of a student-loan forgiveness program proposed by the Biden administration that was set to launch July 1.

The SAVE Plan, an acronym for Saving on a Valuable Education, has been partially rolled out. The provisions already in effect may remain, United States District Court for the District of Kansas Judge Daniel Crabtree ruled Monday. But elements set for July 1, like reducing payments to 5% of borrowers’ income instead of 10%, are on hold while litigation challenging the program moves forward.

A separate ruling out of the Eastern District of Missouri will block only loan forgiveness. The SAVE Plan offered forgiveness for those who borrowed less than $12,000 and have been paying for more than 10 years, with an additional year for each $1,000 additional borrowed.

Both judges wrote that the SAVE Plan, which uses the Higher Education Act to authorize approximately $475 billion in loan forgiveness, is beyond the law’s legislative intent.

“The court is not free to replace the language of the statute with unenacted legislative intent. Congress has made it clear under what circumstances loan forgiveness is permitted, and the (income-contingent repayment) plan is not one of those circumstances,” United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri John Ross wrote.

The rulings are the result of lawsuits filed by two coalitions of attorneys general: one led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and the other by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, representing a combined 18 states.

Crabtree dismissed eight of the 11 states represented in Kobach’s lawsuit earlier this month, finding that Alaska is the only state that can claim harm in Monday’s ruling over “$100,000 in lost (federal family education) loan interest over two years.”

Ross determined that Missouri, through quasi-governmental loan servicer MOHELA, has standing. MOHELA, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, gave Bailey standing in a U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned an earlier version of loan forgiveness last year.

Ross wrote that the allegations of harm to MOHELA are “substantially similar to, if not identical to,” those argued in last year’s Supreme Court case.

MOHELA has routinely distanced itself from Bailey’s litigation against loan forgiveness.

Bailey, in a press release, lauded the Missouri ruling as a win for Missourians without large amounts of student-loan debt.

“Only Congress has the power of the purse, not the president,” he wrote in a statement. “Today’s ruling was a huge win for the rule of law, and for every American who Joe Biden was about to force to pay off someone else’s debt.”

Kobach also emphasized the judge’s ruling of a lack of Congressional authorization in the SAVE Plan.

“Kansas’s victory today is a victory for the entire country,” he said. “As the court correctly held, whether to forgive billions of dollars of student debt is a major question that only Congress can answer. Biden’s administration is attempting to usurp Congress’s authority. This is not only unconstitutional, it’s unfair. ”

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said the Department of Justice “will continue to vigorously defend the SAVE Plan.”

“We designed SAVE to cut undergraduate loan payments in half, avoid interest growth for borrowers making zero-dollar or low payments, and allow at-risk borrowers to reach forgiveness faster,” he wrote in a statement. “Under SAVE, nearly 8 million Americans — one out of five borrowers — have breathing room from bills that, too often, compete with basic needs.” 

Cardona said Republican elected officials are trying to block the plan “even though the department has relied on the authority under the Higher Education Act three times over the last 30 years to implement income-driven repayment plans.”

He promised a continued push from the federal government for student-loan forgiveness. The SAVE Plan is the department’s second iteration of forgiveness, of which three have been announced. Bailey and Kobach wrote a letter to Cardona in May with “significant concerns” about the latest plan, which has yet to be implemented.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly at a campaign event in 2022 (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector).

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly on Friday signed legislation that offers hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals to relocate from Missouri. 

The legislation, an expansion of one of the state’s tax incentive programs, could help finance up to 70% of the cost for one or both teams to build a new stadium in Kansas.

“We know that modernizing our economic development tools provides the opportunity to increase private investment into the state,” Kelly said in a news release announcing she had signed the bill along with an income tax cut for Kansas residents.

Missouri lawmakers criticize Kansas attempt to poach Royals, Chiefs

Both bills passed the Kansas Legislature earlier this week. Lawmakers argued during a special legislative session this week that Kansas needed to offer the Chiefs and Royals incentives to stay in the Kansas City area after voters in Jackson County, Missouri, rejected a 3/8-cent sales tax for the teams. 

Extending the sales tax would have helped finance a new Royals stadium in the Crossroads Arts District of downtown Kansas City. The Royals currently play at Kauffman Stadium next door to the Chiefs in the Truman Sports Complex, where both teams have had venues since 1973. 

The sales tax would have also financed upgrades to the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium.

The teams’ plans for the Jackson County sales tax were criticized by some as vague and incomplete. Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. has said he is open to discussions to help keep the teams in Kansas City, Missouri, but wants to see a “complete and transparent plan that offers tangible benefits to our taxpayers.”

Kansas lawmakers, arguing Missouri had “dropped the ball,” expanded the state’s Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program to help finance up to 70% of the cost of the stadiums, which would have to hold 30,000 fans and cost at least $1 billion.

STAR Bonds are issued to help pay the construction costs and then repaid by the sales tax collected at the project site. Normally, STAR Bonds, which are meant to help build tourist and entertainment venues, are limited to 50% of the project costs. 

Bonds for the stadiums wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years, compared to the normal 20.

And both projects would be eligible to use funds from the state’s legalization of sports betting and the liquor taxes paid at the stadiums to help repay the bonds.

Neither team has pledged to move to Kansas, but both the Chiefs and the Royals welcomed the legislation when it passed the Kansas Legislature on Tuesday.

Missouri currently spends $3 million annually on the Truman Sports Complex, part of a deal cut in 1989 to secure financing for construction of the St. Louis stadium now referred to as The Dome at America’s Center.

Missouri’s current fiscal year budget also includes $50 million from general revenue for “stadium and ground modifications, transportation, marketing, and additional event support” around Arrowhead for the FIFA World Cup.

Missouri legislative leaders have signaled they may respond to Kansas’ efforts to poach the Chiefs and Royals after the August primary, though no plans are currently in place.

Margie Vandeven, who is leaving her position as the Commissioner of Education, spends one of her final days in her office Commissioner Karla Eslinger will serve solo at the helm of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven will leave her position with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education at the end of the month, ending her 19 years of work in the department.

She announced her departure in October, saying it was the “right time to move on personally and professionally.”

An educator since 1990, Vandeven was appointed commissioner in 2015. She was ousted briefly between December 2017 and November 2018 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens stacked the board to force her out. After Greitens was forced to resign a few months later in order to avoid impeachment, the board voted to reinstate Vandeven

“Margie went through something that I never thought I’d see in my political life — with the Greitens administration,” State Board of Education president Charlie Shields, of St. Joseph, said during the state board’s June 11 meeting. “The idea that you had a governor that tried to influence the State Board of Education, tried to influence the selection of a commissioner, that wanted change for no other reason than political expediency.”

He said Vandeven “never, ever cracked during that,” applauding her for “grace under pressure.”

Next, Vandeven will work as an education chief with the Missouri Department of Conservation and help with education research at Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank at Stanford University.

She has been working alongside incoming commissioner Karla Eslinger, who will be serving solo beginning July 1. Eslinger, who recently resigned from the state senate, has served as a teacher, assistant commissioner and an advisor to federal education officials.

In her last days in her office, Vandeven spoke to The Independent about the issues that will persist long after her tenure.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: A big problem for a lot of districts, both in Missouri and nationwide, is attendance. What’s Missouri doing to work on this?

A: The thing with attendance is that the issues are very different depending upon where you are. Local context matters on attendance. It is a national issue right now, and we certainly saw an increase post-pandemic.

We are really focusing on getting a highly trained teacher in every classroom, which helps attendance rates because we know that that relationship between the student and the teacher is key. If they have a different substitute teacher in front of them every single day… it can be intimidating.

We are looking at learning just a little bit differently and talking about more competency based learning, project based learning, keeping our students very engaged and putting our career counselors in place to say, “You need to know this and understand this because it will help you go on this particular pathway that you’re choosing.”

We are meeting with parents and helping them understand that school is a little bit different today than it might have been when they were in school. People depend on you being there. We do a lot of group projects. We do a lot of collaborative teaming… It is making sure parents are aware of the disruption that occurs when students are out and helping educate on what is considered an illness that is severe enough that students should stay home and when is it appropriate to send them back to school. 

There are a lot of different efforts that are taking place. I had a meeting today with the Department of Mental Health to really talk about how we better address some of these mental health issues that our students are feeling.

Q: I always hear that Missouri students can’t read at grade level. Can you tell me about this problem?

A: I think what they’re referring to are the National Assessment for Educational Progress scores, and those have been relatively stagnant across the nation for the past decades. So that’s what they’re referring to when they talk about reading scores.

The main shift that we’re seeing is that the science of reading has been just so studied and better understood now. We know better how to teach reading.

We’ve been working with our educator-preparation programs. We’ve been working with our teachers who are in the classroom today, and we’ve been looking at high-quality instructional materials. We have been looking at measuring students earlier.

If we say we need students to be proficient in reading by grade three, because if you look again at the data, it will tell you that students who are proficient in reading by grade three then read to learn. So, waiting until grade three to get a statewide temperature check on that doesn’t make as much sense.

We have kindergarten through third-grade reading assessments, but we’re really focusing on getting that statewide metric for grade two so that they’re assessed early and then interventions are provided early.

Early intervention is key. So working with that, I think we’re gonna see the big, big shifts in the future.

Q: Has the state done an inventory of which districts have science-based reading curriculum?

A: We have not done a complete inventory as a state but that is because curriculum is a local decision. However, our school districts are all, to my knowledge, really working on the science of reading.

It would be hard to do the state assessments and plans in today’s environment with a curriculum that does not support the science of reading.

Q: As Gov. Mike Parson leaves office, what should people know about working with him, especially with the budget process?

A: I feel very fortunate to have worked with Gov. Parson. He has made it clear from the start that his emphasis was on workforce development and infrastructure, and education falls right into that.

He believes that investing in our children is investing in the future of the state of Missouri. And so working with the budget process, the State Board of Education approves (the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) budget. Then, we take it to the governor’s budget, we see what they’re going to put in, and then it goes through the legislative process. It’s a pretty lengthy process. But I do think you can really get a sense of where people’s priorities are when you look at where they’re putting their funding. We’ve seen significant increases in funding for education, and for our students, which genuinely is an investment in the state’s future.

Q: What are your hopes for the next governor?

A: I hope that we can stay united and committed to educating our kids. We can get a lot more done when we’re focusing on the same things together.

I always say this, “Great teachers matter.” And you need great teachers in public schools; you need them in private schools; you need them in charter schools, and you need them in virtual schools. Great teachers matter. 

Early learning matters, no matter your ZIP code. Making sure families have access to that opportunity matters. So, I really hope that the next governor can find some of those areas that are genuinely common ground and focus more on bringing people together and moving towards those goals.

Q: Have you seen a trend of politicization of K-12 education?

A: I’ve absolutely seen an increase in the politicization of education throughout my tenure, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when that occurred. But we certainly have seen it. And that’s not just in Missouri, that is across the nation.

People do realize how important education is for our students and how important it is for this country, so that has garnered quite a bit of attention from both sides of the aisle. I still believe that we can get much more accomplished when we focus on the big issues.

We need politicians, and we need them to be involved in education. But we don’t want it to be a politicized football, where you’re just battling back and forth. We need to be focusing on what it is that we want to accomplish as a state and move those initiatives forward.

Q: Do you have any tips for focusing on the big issues?

A: Both sides of the aisle should be at the table together. I always say that’s one of the greatest things about our State Board of Education. It was written in the constitution that there can’t be more than four (of eight) of any party. Then they develop these personal relationships with one another.

If you’ve only talked to like minded people, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to fully understand solutions to issues. When you do that, you find out there are more commonalities than differences. I just truly believe that.

Q: Missouri is the only state that I know of with the schools for the disabled model. Do you think this will continue to be the state’s model for high intervention?

A: We’re doing a study right now. We are the only state that does it this way. We’re studying to make sure that it is the best way to serve the students and their families, and that’ll be coming out shortly.

It really requires change over time. This has been in place for over 50 years. So I think it is time to really look at the model. And if it’s working in some places, that’s great. If it can be improved in others, let’s take a look at that. But what we want to really do is make sure that we’re serving the students and their families well.

Q: Some lawmakers have proposed different methods of accreditation and accountability. What arguments would you make in favor of the current model, the Missouri School Improvement Plan 6 (MSIP6)?

A:  There is a place for statewide state standards. You have to have something in place.

When we develop our state standards, we get input from people from all across the state to say: this is what every third grader should know, this is what every fifth grader should know. We really do it for backwards design to say this is what every graduate should know, and be able to do in the state of Missouri. And then you go back, what do they need to know here all the way down to kindergarten, right? It shouldn’t matter where you live in our state, the expectation should be that they’ve acquired these particular skills, and how you go about doing that should be at the local level.

MSIP gives that great flexibility where it says, “These are your standards.” And it gives local districts flexibility on how to get there.

The general public and taxpayers do want to know how students are performing against those standards, so I do think there is certainly a place for a third-party provider to come in and provide that information. The state board has been given that authority and has used it consistently from the first MSIP to MSIP6 to focus on ways to provide improvement.

If they choose to go to a different accrediting model, I would not go for multiple models because you can’t compare apples to apples, then. And there’s got to be a base understanding of where we are in these measures.

Q: In MSIP6, the distribution of districts among scores seems to be more of a bell curve with fewer high achievers compared to MSIP5.

A: What happened in MSIP5 is there were a number of changes in assessments, a number of things that were passing legislation that said you can’t penalize districts. S we had a lot of districts at the very top of the chart.

MSIP6 provides a reset. So often you will see a bell curve at the start of any kind of a reset. That’s sometimes what happens. It is just a much more even distribution of where districts really fall within measurement against those standards.

Q: Do you think the scores needed for accreditation might change because of this different distribution?

A: It could change some. They have multiple years to make sure that they’re showing some improvement. The first year that you run these systems, you’re typically going to see a number of districts that say, “Okay, what do we need to move forward,” and then they are able to do that.

One of the big things with MSIP 6 is that we have a growth model that’s in place. Now, that gives equal credit for both individual student growth and their status. That has been a significant shift.

Q: What do you think Commissioner Eslinger will bring to the table?

A: She has so much wisdom, and she’s got a strong drive about doing the right things for kids. With her background of being an educator, of having experience in the state capitol, she is a people person. She is committed to doing the right things for our students.

I really couldn’t be happier with the choice. I think she’s gonna do a great job.

Q: Is there anything else we should know?

A: It has been an honor working here. I really, really have found this to be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Fireworks go off before a game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri last September. Kansas lawmakers passed legislation that would offer incentives if the Kansas City Chiefs relocate from Arrowhead to Kansas and build a new stadium (David Eulitt/Getty Images).

State and local officials from Missouri denounced  Kansas legislators’ attempt to lure the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals across the state line, saying they would take steps to keep both teams.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, in a statement on Tuesday, said the city and state would continue negotiations with the teams that Missouri and Kansas City have “welcomed, funded and supported … since the 1960s.” 

“We remain in the first quarter of the Kansas City stadium discussion,” Lucas said. 

Kansas lawmakers on Tuesday passed legislation meant to help finance new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals in an attempt to relocate one or both teams from Missouri. The legislation, an expansion of the state’s existing Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program, could yield hundreds of millions of dollars for each stadium.

It comes after Jackson County, Missouri, voters in April rejected the extension of a sales tax to help finance a new downtown Kansas City baseball stadium for the Royals and upgrades to the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium.

Kansas lawmakers who supported the STAR Bond legislation said it was necessary to keep the teams in the Kansas City area.

“We’re in jeopardy of Kansas City losing those franchises,” Kansas Sen. Jeff Pittman, a Leavenworth Democrat, said during debate on the bill Tuesday. “Missouri has dropped the ball. We now have an opportunity to make an offer.” 

Kansas Democratic lawmakers dined with Kansas City Royals on eve of stadium vote

After Kansas lawmakers’ vote, Missouri legislators said they hoped and expected to see the state put forward a plan. 

“It’s a wakeup call to Missouri that there are other states that are willing to do whatever it takes to get the teams,” Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, said in an interview Thursday.

Patterson, who is in line to become speaker of the House next year, said he expected to see Missouri put together a plan after this summer’s primary elections and before the Missouri General Assembly returns for its legislative session in January. He said it was possible legislators would be called back to Jefferson City for a special session but didn’t think it was necessary.

The Kansas legislation would help finance up to 70% of a stadium project — with a minimum $1 billion price tag and 30,000 seats — by issuing bonds to be repaid with the state sales tax collected in the STAR Bond district. Liquor taxes from the district and funds from the state’s legalization of sports betting also could be used to repay the bonds.

The offer remains in place for a year and is limited to National Football League or Major League Baseball teams in states adjacent to Kansas. 

Kansas’ attempt to poach the teams was seen by several Missouri lawmakers as a violation of a truce the two states reached five years ago to stop offering incentives to move businesses back and forth the state line in the Kansas City area. 

But Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, didn’t see it that way.

“The border war was really focused on businesses like AMC Theatres, which went back and forth, back and forth,” Kelly said. “We never discussed teams.”

For years, the two states engaged in an economic development “border war,” offering incentives to companies that jumped the state line, spending taxpayer funds while largely not creating any new jobs. 

“Today’s vote regrettably restarts the Missouri-Kansas incentive border war, creating leverage for the teams, but injecting even greater uncertainty into the regional stadium conversation,” Lucas said Tuesday. 

In a statement Tuesday, Jackson County, Missouri, Executive Frank White Jr. urged state and local governments to abide by the border war truce “and refrain from engaging in a counterproductive stadium bidding war.”

“We must focus on common sense over politics,” White said. “Our resources should be used wisely to improve the lives of our residents, not wasted on bidding wars that only serve to drain public funds and divide our region.”

White said in order to agree to subsidies for a stadium he expects “a complete and transparent plan that offers tangible benefits to our taxpayers.”

“My office remains open to conversations with the Royals, Chiefs, lawmakers, and other stakeholders, but any proposal must meet this standard and make sense for our community,” he said.

Missouri Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg Republican, said the border war “didn’t benefit anyone” and saw Kansas’ push to relocate the teams as a violation. 

He said he wanted to see the Missouri Department of Economic Development make an offer to keep the teams, but he didn’t support the idea of lawmakers being called back to Jefferson City for a special session and didn’t want a package that could put taxpayers on the hook. 

“We want to keep the Kansas City Chiefs and KC Royals in the state of Missouri, but we can’t saddle taxpayers with billions of dollars in debt to help finance stadiums,” he said. 

Hoskins, who is running in the GOP primary for secretary of state, said he thought the Kansas plan was based on lofty revenue expectations and that the stadiums wouldn’t generate enough activity to pay off the bonds without additional assistance from Kansas taxpayers. He didn’t want to see Missouri put forward a similar plan.

“Missouri taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for financing stadiums for billion-dollar corporations and multimillion-dollar athletes,” he said. “It’s hard enough being a Missourian right now just trying to keep your own money in your pocket, let alone financing stadiums for a billion-dollar industry.” 

Patterson called the border war talk “somewhat irrelevant.” 

“It’s obvious that Kansas is going to act,” he said, “and I think we should focus on acting ourselves and not crying about some sort of truce that may or may not have been agreed to regarding the teams.”

Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City (Getty Images).

Brady Singer of the Kansas City Royals throws in the first inning against the Houston Astros at Kauffman Stadium in April (Ed Zurga/Getty Images).

LAWRENCE, Kansas — On the eve of a vote that could yield $750 million for a new Kansas City Royals baseball stadium in Kansas, a team executive met with several Democratic state lawmakers at a local steakhouse.

Brooks Sherman, chief operating officer for the Royals, and lobbyists hosted lawmakers at the Six Mile Chop House and Tavern on Monday “to talk about the Royals interest in Kansas,” according to an email from a lobbyist inviting Kansas House and Senate Democrats.

Outside the restaurant, lawmakers said they weren’t concerned about the idea of their votes on legislation worth hundreds of millions of dollars being influenced over dinner.

“It happens,” said Sen. Marci Francisco, a Lawrence Democrat. “Most of the discussions in the legislature go on behind closed doors.”

The meal came the night before lawmakers were expected to vote on whether to expand a state tax incentive program to help finance a new stadium for the Royals or the Kansas City Chiefs to lure the teams from Missouri.

Chiefs, Royals ask Kansas for incentives to allow teams to leave Missouri

The bill, which was discussed in an informational hearing Monday, would enhance the state’s existing Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program to provide up to 75% of the project’s cost for a professional football or baseball stadium project with a minimum $1 billion investment. STAR Bonds are issued to pay for the construction and repaid by the increased state sales tax revenue at the project site.

Normally, STAR Bonds, which are intended to help pay for tourism and entertainment destinations, are only authorized to finance up to 50% of a project. Debt on a stadium constructed under the expansion wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years instead of the normal 20.

The project could also receive a boost from liquor taxes generated in the STAR Bond district and revenues from a fund Kansas created when it legalized sports betting.

The Chiefs shut down a city block near the Capitol in Topeka for a rally at the Celtic Fox restaurant at lunchtime Tuesday.

On her way into the restaurant, Francisco said she wasn’t supporting the current bill but would be interested to know whether the Royals would support a standalone deal. She wasn’t sure what level of impact dinners with lobbyists have on lawmakers’ overall support.

Francisco said she was uncomfortable that revenue information from the project would not be released and that there was not enough public testimony on the legislation.

Rep. Jerry Stogsdill, a Democrat from Prairie Village, said it was “par for the course” for lawmakers to get lobbied at evening events. He said he has discussed issues with lobbyists and asked for information but that in his eight years in the Legislature he has never been influenced to change his vote on an issue.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a single person in there tonight that is going to be persuaded to vote against their conscience and against their constituents,” he said.

Stogsdill said he imagined he’d vote for the legislation and thought a stadium would be an economic boon to the community around it.

Sen. Ethan Corson, a fellow Prairie Village Democrat, said didn’t see Kansas’ efforts to help finance one or both stadiums as competing with Missouri. He’d be fine if the teams stayed in Kansas City, Missouri, but he said the Missouri Legislature is “beyond dysfunctional.”

“I worry about their ability to do anything, really,” Corson said, “so I think this is a chance to put something on the table so, that way, we can say we made a reasonable effort to keep the teams in the metro.”

Rep. Linda Featherston, an Overland Park Democrat, said Monday she declined to attend the lobbying event.

“I don’t want there to be any questions about undue influence,” she said.

Rep. Cindy Neighbor, a Shawnee Democrat, attended Monday’s dinner and recounted the sales pitch in a meeting of House Democrats Tuesday morning.

She said the Royals are looking at three potential sites in Wyandotte County where they could build a 34,500-seat stadium. The team, she said, believes its current home, Kauffman Stadium, is crumbling and that repairs would cost at least $800 million. It also doesn’t have enough office space or room for medical personnel.

Royals executives told attendees that most ticket buyers are from Johnson County, Neighbor said, and that the team is not interested in having conversations about staying where they are.

“The Royals do not feel welcome in Kansas City, Missouri, right now,” Neighbor said.

The Royals declined to comment.

Advocates with PROMO and Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri rally outside of the St. Louis Civil Courts building Monday afternoon (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

ST. LOUIS — A circuit court judge heard arguments Monday over whether the Missouri attorney general’s efforts to access medical records of transgender youth violate privacy protections.

Monday’s hearing was convened at the request of Bailey in the hopes that the court would amend a previous order that requires patients to waive HIPAA rights before their medical records could be shared. If they don’t waive HIPAA, their documents would be exempt from the attorney general’s request for medical records.

HIPAA, which stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects patients from their providers disclosing their personally identifiable health information.

St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Joseph Whyte did not immediately rule following the hearing. Richard Muniz, interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said if the decision is unfavorable, his organization will appeal.

Therapists, social workers face scrutiny in Missouri AG investigation of transgender care

“Our commitment to our patients is that we will fight this as long as we need to,” Muniz told The Independent. “Today, we’ve already signaled that we are going to appeal because we think that we shouldn’t have to turn over documents, especially patient records, but we shouldn’t have to partake in this investigation at all.”

Bailey launched his investigation in March 2023 looking into gender-affirming care of minors after the affidavit of Jamie Reed, who worked at Washington University’s adolescent Transgender Center. In April, another circuit court judge ruled that Bailey may continue his investigation — adding that patients must waive HIPAA rights before their private health information could be shared.

Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, Washington University and Planned Parenthood Great Plains are also arguing against the attorney general’s civil investigative demands.

The April decision, beyond giving patients the ability to protect their medical records, granted Bailey power to investigate Planned Parenthood under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, a state law that allows the attorney general’s office to investigate deceptive marketing practices.

Matthew Eddy, an attorney representing Planned Parenthood said during his arguments Monday that the attorney general’s authority under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act has yet to be fully litigated.

Health care providers are fearful of what the attorney general might do with more information. Prior reporting by The Independent revealed Bailey’s use of the Division of Professional Registration, which is investigating therapists as a result of a complaint from his office.

After the attorney general’s office received a list of minor patients that received care at the Washington University Transgender Center and other documents, therapists and social workers that had written letters of support for patients to go to the Transgender Center had their licenses at risk. As of early May, 16 of 57 cases were still open.

Hearing

Deputy Solicitor General Sam Freeland, representing the attorney general, argued Monday that a federal regulation allows medical records to be released when ordered by the court. He told the judge this exception was “not discussed by the plaintiff.”

“HIPAA has not barred the disclosure of the documents in question,” Freeland argued.

He said Planned Parenthood had the burden of proof to show that HIPAA covers the documents.

Eddy this was “simply not correct.”

“Planned Parenthood has proven the general rule that HIPAA protects disclosure,” he said. “The burden is on the respondent to show that the exception applies.”

Eddy further attacked the premise of Bailey’s investigation, which Freeland argued was not on the table Monday.

He said the attorney general’s civil investigative demands, which Eddy said were titled as an investigation into the Washington University Transgender Center, “had no allegations as to Planned Parenthood’s conduct.”

“He can’t point to a single complaint from a patient, a patient’s parent,” Eddy said.

Eddy said the attorney general “had 54 incredibly broad requests for information.”

“Included in the requests are information that would be deeply sensitive to transgender minors,” he told the judge.

Muniz told reporters one of the requests was for “any document that mentions TikTok,” calling the investigation a “sprawling phishing expedition.”

In press releases, Bailey has expressed a belief that all gender-affirming medical providers are connected.

“I launched this investigation to obtain the truth about how this clandestine network of clinics subjected children to puberty blockers and irreversible surgery, often without parental consent,” he said in a statement following the hearing Monday. “We are moving forward undeterred with our investigation into Planned Parenthood. I will not stop until all bad actors are held accountable.”

Muniz said Planned Parenthood does not have a formal relationship with Washington University, which was the focus of Reed’s affidavit and the beginning of Bailey’s investigation.

Supporters of Planned Parenthood rallied before the hearing, calling the investigation a political attack.

“(Bailey) only wants (the records) so he can politicize gender affirming care and to put a target on transgender and gender-non-conforming patients,” Margot Riphagen, Planned Parenthood St. Louis’s vice president of external affairs, said during the rally.

Katy Erker-Lynch, executive director of LGBTQ advocacy organization PROMO, called the attorney general’s actions “scary.”

“He has pushed credentialing committees of social workers, professional counselors and family and marital therapists to investigate every single provider on the eastern side of the state that has offered a letter of support for a trans or gender expansive kid to receive care,” she said, referencing a Division of Professional Registration investigation that stemmed from the AG’s complaint.

Around 40 people attended the rally, filling the courtroom until a small group were standing in the back. Most wore t-shirts with phrases like “protect trans kids” or “I fight with Planned Parenthood” and filed into the seats behind Planned Parenthood’s lawyers before sitting on the opposing side.

“Thank you,” a few people told Eddy as they walked out of the St. Louis courtroom.

Patrick Mahomes throws pass against the Buffalo Bills during the third quarter in the AFC Divisional Playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium on January 23, 2022 (Jamie Squire/Getty Images).

Representatives of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals urged Kansas lawmakers Monday to expand a tax incentive program to provide the teams millions of dollars to leave Missouri and set up shop in new stadiums across the state line.

“If we want to be major league we’ve got to have major league teams,” Korb Maxwell, an attorney who represents the Chiefs, told lawmakers during an informational hearing at the Kansas Statehouse. “This is the greatest opportunity we’ve had in any generation, and it’s here before us right now.”

Other proponents of the plan were more blunt: If Kansas doesn’t act, a group hoping to lure the teams to Kansas argued, the Kansas City region is at risk of losing its professional football and baseball teams.

“The risk that the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals — our Chiefs, our Royals — could be lured away by other states is not a risk that Kansans want to take,” said Dan Murray, a lobbyist for Scoop and Score Inc., a nonprofit hoping to bring the Chiefs to Kansas.

On the table Monday was a plan to expand the state’s tax incentive program meant to help finance tourism and entertainment destinations. Under the legislation, the teams could receive more than $750 million to help finance stadium projects.

The informational hearing came ahead of a special legislative session that starts Tuesday. Lawmakers can’t take action on the bill until the formal start of the special session.

The legislation would enhance the state’s existing Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program to provide up to 75% of the project’s costs by issuing bonds that would be repaid with the increased sales state tax collections at the project site. Other projects can use STAR Bonds to finance up to 50% of a project.

The bill requires a minimum $1 billion capital investment and limits the eligibility to National Football League or Major League Baseball teams currently located near Kansas. The financing mechanism could be used for both stadiums and training facilities. 

Debt on a stadium constructed under the expansion wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years instead of the normal 20. 

The project could also receive a boost from liquor taxes generated in the STAR Bond district and revenues from a fund Kansas created when it legalized sports betting. 

Gov. Laura Kelly, who has championed enormous economic development projects in Kansas, didn’t commit to supporting the legislation on Monday.

“I’m impressed by the full-court press that has been made to get these teams to consider moving across the river,” she told reporters. “It’s not something I’m going to invest a lot of energy in. I think this is something for the legislature to work through.” 

Kelly’s chief of staff, Will Lawrence, told the joint committee the governor’s office had no concerns with the current version of the bill that would keep her from signing it. 

STAR Bonds have been criticized by some legislators as ineffective, and an audit found that less than one-quarter of the attractions funded through the program met the state’s goal of increasing tourism. There may be some cases, the audit says, where certain projects kept Kansans spending money in Kansas rather than going to Missouri. 

“But we think it’s more often that local visitors simply move existing economic activity from one part of Kansas to another,” the audit says. 

Moving the teams 

Kansas lawmakers launched an effort to lure the Chiefs or Royals — or both — after Jackson County, Missouri, voters in April rejected a proposed extension of a 3/8-cent sales tax to help finance a new stadium for the Royals and upgrades at Arrowhead Stadium. 

Maxwell said the organization had been asked why the legislation needed to be passed in special session rather than when lawmakers reconvene for their normal session in January. 

Because with only a few years left in the Chiefs’ lease at Arrowhead, “time is of the essence,” he said. 

“The time is now,” Maxwell said. “Missouri spoke, Jackson County spoke. They had their opportunity, but now there’s a moment for Kansas to step up.”

The effort to reauthorize the sales tax in Missouri was driven primarily by the Royals, whose executives unveiled plans to move to the Crossroads Arts District in downtown Kansas City in February — less than two months before the vote. It failed with 58% of voters rejecting the proposal.

Earlier this month, Scoop and Score Inc. launched to advocate for moving Chiefs — the reigning Super Bowl champions — to Kansas. The organization’s website implores visitors to sign a petition to “tell legislators to keep the Chiefs in KC!”

The organization has hired 30 lobbyists, including Murray. The Royals have eight lobbyists, and the Chiefs employ former Kansas House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr. and his former aide, Paje Resner, as lobbyists.

Ryckman said Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt could be open to moving the team outside of the Kansas City region. 

“We’re aware of numerous cities that would love to be the home of the Chiefs or the Royals,” Ryckman said. 

Murray urged lawmakers to support the legislation, arguing it has “guardrails, guardrails guardrails” to keep the state and local governments from being on the hook for the bonds.

While an attorney for the Chiefs acknowledged the franchise hasn’t come up with a design or plan for a stadium in Kansas, Murray urged lawmakers to move forward with creating a program. Vetting the details, he said, will be up to the Kansas Department of Commerce with final approval by the Legislative Coordinating Council, an eight-member committee of House and Senate lawmakers that can adopt legislation when the Legislature is not in session.

But a draft of the bill says any agreement between the state and a team would be confidential until after it has been executed. 

The bill was panned by libertarian groups as a handout for corporations that would do little to increase economic activity in Kansas. Dave Trabert, CEO of the Kansas Policy Institute, told the committee there was no way to verify the claims that the stadiums would boost the economy. 

“We asked Scoop and Score to provide their math. ‘Show us how you arrived at a billion dollars of economic activity,’’ Trabert said. “Nothing was forthcoming.”

In an interview, Trabert called the proposal “absurd.”

“This isn’t about economic development,” he said. “It’s about politics. It’s so people can say, ‘Look what I did. Vote for me.’”

States that receive federal funding are required to report prison and jail deaths to the U.S. Department of Justice (Darrin Klimek/Getty Images).

The warden of Jefferson City Correctional Center, where four corrections officers were fired earlier this year following the investigation of a December death of an inmate, has been replaced.

An acting warden has taken over for Doris Falkenrath, Karen Pojmann, spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said in an email to The Independent. Falkenrath is no longer with the department, Pojmann wrote.

“I’m not able to comment on the nature of or reasons for Warden Falkenrath’s separation from the department,” she wrote. 

Falkenrath worked for the department since 1999 and previously held the position of warden at the Fulton Reception and Diagnostic Center. Her last day was Thursday, Pojmann wrote. 

Othel Moore was 38 and being held in the Jefferson City Correctional Center when he died on the morning of Dec. 8. Prison activists at the time described a painful death where his pleas for help were ignored after he was placed in administrative confinement.

The department launched an internal investigation, with a parallel inquiry conducted by the Cole County Sheriff’s Department. The four correctional officers were fired in March because of their conduct at the time of Moore’s death but the department did not release any details about the terminations.

Those investigations have been completed, said Andrew M. Stroth of Action Injury Law Group, one of the attorneys representing Moore’s family. He has not received all the reports, he said.

“Under (Falkenrath’s) command, Othel Moore was unjustifiably killed,” Stroth said. “We also believe that the officers that were terminated are responsible for the tragic and unjustified death of Otto Moore.”

According to accounts provided by Stroth and others, Moore was pepper sprayed, his head was covered with a hood and he was placed in restraints. He could be heard screaming that he could not breathe and inmates described seeing blood coming from his mouth and ears as he was removed from the cell.

The family has not received the surveillance video it has demanded from the department nor has it received a full autopsy report on his death, Stroth said.

“The family is grateful that the warden has been terminated, that the officers involved have been terminated and we look forward to advancing their case in the courts,” Stroth said.

Activists tracking deaths in Missouri prisons have been increasingly trying to raise the alarm as deaths increase at the same time prison populations have declined.

From 2012 to 2014, department data shows, there was an average of 31,442 incarcerated people in state prisons. Deaths averaged 89 per year. Over the period 2020 through 2022, with an average of 23,409 incarcerated people in state prisons, deaths averaged 122 per year.

The numbers continue to increase, said Lori Curry of Missouri Prison Reform. She said Monday that her figures show 135 deaths in custody during 2023, up from 125 in 2022.

Deaths attributed to accidental causes – including drug overdoses – have been a major factor driving the increase. 

So far this year, she said, there have been 66 deaths reported in Missouri prisons through May 31, a rate that would result in more than 150 deaths by the end of the year.

“I’m glad there has been some accountability in this situation,” Curry said. “You know, there were some other employees that were fired that were more directly involved in the situation. However, there are still employees that I believe were involved or should have some accountability.”

Getting information about individual deaths in custody has been extremely difficult, even for family members of the deceased. Willa Hynes of St. Louis won a case in April where the Western District Court of Appeals found the department violated the Sunshine Law when it asserted that records of the death of her son, Jahi Hynes, in 2021 were inmate medical records protected from disclosure.

Jahi Hynes was 27 when he hanged himself with a bedsheet in an isolation cell.

“We find there was substantial evidence from which the trial court could have found the DOC acted with the intent to achieve some purpose by violating the Sunshine Law, namely, to hinder Hynes from pursuing a potential civil claim against the DOC relating to her son’s death,” Judge Edward Ardini wrote.

Willa Hynes has a wrongful death lawsuit against the department pending in Mississippi County, the location of the Southeast Missouri Correctional Center.

Moore, who had been in prison for almost 19 years at the time of his death, was serving a 30-year sentence for second-degree domestic assault, possession of a controlled substance, first-degree robbery and armed criminal action.

Moore’s family hasn’t filed a lawsuit yet but it is coming, Stroth said.

“It’s three law firms and a whole team of lawyers that are representing the Moore family, to pursue justice for this family,” he said.

The courts can’t be the only way to implement changes in the department, Curry said. The corrections agency needs to take further actions to show it is serious about putting an end to unnatural deaths among people in custody, she said.

“I don’t see accountability across the board in this situation,” Curry said.

The feds are stepping in to help Missouri adopt strategies to “mitigate the harm being caused to applicants,” which can include patients forgoing and delaying medical care and prescription drugs (Getty Images).

Missouri’s delays in processing Medicaid applications — among the worst in the nation — have the attention of federal regulators, who will conduct a “focused review” of the problem, according to a letter obtained by The Independent.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in a letter sent to the state May 22 and obtained Friday afternoon under Missouri’s Sunshine Law, said it is concerned the state is not doing enough to “achieve and sustain” compliance with federal rules on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Because of these concerns, the agency will intervene to help Missouri identify strategies to come back into compliance. 

Medicaid applications for low-income Americans are required to be reviewed within 45 days. 

In Missouri, the most recent federal data from February shows 72% of applications took more than 45 days to process — the worst in the country that month. That’s up from 58% in January. 

Nationwide, most applications were processed within 24 hours last year.

The Missouri Department of Social Services, which oversees the state’s Medicaid program, is required to submit specified data to the feds this month to work on strategies for coming back into compliance. If it doesn’t improve, Missouri could be subject to formal compliance actions, including an official corrective action plan, and would be at risk of losing federal funding.

A similar letter was sent to Texas, according to the business publication Modern Healthcare. A CMS spokesperson didn’t immediately answer a question about which other states were included. 

Long processing times can cause low-income patients and those with disabilities to forego medical care and prescriptions. Patients have told The Independent they are delaying medical care during pregnancy because they can’t get enrolled in Medicaid.

The federal government said in the May letter it is concerned “particularly given the prolonged period of the state’s noncompliance.” 

 In December, more than half of Missouri’s applications took longer than 45 days to process. 

As of February, Missouri’s 72% noncompliance rate stands far above other states. The next highest were New Mexico (58%), Alaska (53%) and Texas (46%). 

Tim McBride, a health policy analyst, professor at Washington University in St. Louis and former chair of the board that oversees Missouri’s Medicaid program, said it is “very concerning” just how much Missouri’s issues stand out.

“If we compare the state’s processing time to other states, we appear to really be an outlier,” he said, and “in not such a good way.”

It’s not clear why Missouri can’t meet the 45 day requirement, McBride said. 

“We have heard the problem is understaffing, antiquated computer systems and a problematic call center,” he said. “But more could be done to rectify this.”

In summer 2022, the federal government initiated a formal mitigation plan with the state to get the processing time down.

It worked, but wait times started creeping back up in October, according to the letter. In October, 34% of determinations exceeded 45 days. 

“Although we understand that the state continues to employ the strategies outlined in its July 2022 mitigation plan,” the letter states, “due to the persistent nature of the current backlog, we believe it is critical for the state to review its current processes and adopt additional alternative strategies that will mitigate the harm being caused to applicants.”

Missouri’s social services agency is committed to cooperating with the federal probe and improving the wait times, spokesperson Baylee Watts said, and will submit the data by the deadline.

“The Department of Social Services is actively working to furnish the information needed for CMS’s review process,” Watts said.

“Our goal is always to strive towards continuous improvement when serving Missourians, and we will continue to work with our federal partners to achieve that.”

The letter states that CMS engaged with Missouri staff in January to try to understand and fix the backlog, and that the state attributed the problem to an increase in applications at the time.

From November to mid-January, during open enrollment season for the federal insurance marketplace, the state generally sees an uptick in Medicaid applications.

McBride said that influx in applications “should have been anticipated” around open enrollment.

And the increase in applications hasn’t leveled off as much this year as was expected, officials previously said. McBride said some of the continual increase in applications could be due to people losing coverage and reapplying. 

The state around a year ago began re-checking every Medicaid participant’s eligibility, after a federal COVID-era suspension on annual renewals expired.

‘Perfect storm’: Missouri advocates decry Medicaid application delays, coverage losses

Around 356,000 people have lost coverage in the renewal process, preliminary state data analyzed by the Center for Advancing Health Services Policy and Economics Research at Washington University in St. Louis, shows. Around half of them were children.

Net enrollment, which includes the number of people who got on the program as others were getting removed, fell by 212,203 people. Medicaid participation sits at 1.3 million as of May, down from 1.5 million in June of last year. 

Joel Ferber, director of advocacy at the nonprofit Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, said he’s glad the feds are “finally taking action” to require Missouri to explore more strategies for compliance. 

Legal Services of Eastern Missouri is one of the state’s legal aid programs that provides free legal assistance to low-income and disadvantaged Missourians, including on Medicaid application issues. Advocates for months have noted the intensifying bureaucratic hurdles for Missourians to access and retain coverage, including issues with the state’s online portal to upload eligibility documents.

Ferber has been urging Missouri to pause its disenrollments while it makes improvements.

“Too many are falling through the cracks under the current system,” Ferber said.

Another issue the state identified, according to the letter, was that it “faced shortages in eligibility staff due to the needs of other human services programs, which compete with the state’s Medicaid and [Children’s Health Insurance Program] agency for resources.”

One of those programs competing for the Department of Social Services’ resources is food stamps: A federal court last month ruled Missourians were being illegally denied food aid by the state, in part due to hours-long call center wait times. 

The call center wait time issues seem to cut across all of DSS’ programs  — Medicaid’s average call wait time was the longest in the nation in Missouri as of February, according to federal data, though it’s not the focus of this probe. It was 56 minutes in February.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who is running for governor, speaks at a press event about St. Louis area nuclear waste Wednesday, June 12, 2024 in Florissant. (Clara Bates/Missouri Independent)

Several Republican candidates for Missouri statewide office on Wednesday evening urged stronger state and federal action to clean up St. Louis-area radioactive waste and compensate victims.

Parts of the St. Louis area have been contaminated for 75 years with radioactive waste left over from the effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb during World War II. 

Secretary of state Jay Ashcroft, who is running for governor, Will Scharf, who is running for attorney general and House Speaker Dean Plocher, who is running for secretary of state, attended the news conference outside the Florissant Municipal Court building. They spoke alongside advocates, victims and legislators representing the region.

The press conference preceded an annual update from the Army Corps of Engineers on cleanup efforts at the downtown site, Coldwater Creek, St. Louis Lambert International Airport and Latty Avenue.

And it came as the fight in Washington, D.C. to extend compensation to St. Louis-area residents continues, because the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act failed to get a reauthorization vote in the House and expired Friday.

“Let me tell you, I understand that most people that go to Washington D.C. are not exactly profiles in courage, but if you can’t stand up to stop little kids from getting incurable diseases because of radioactive waste that is left in the ground, there’s something wrong with you,” Ashcroft said. 

“And you know, if it’s not a problem, why don’t we have 10, 20 representatives, 10, 20 senators, come and wade through Coldwater Creek and talk about it?” 

Scharf said he’d been calling members of Congress and urging them to reauthorize RECA with St. Louis area victims included.

“The region has paid enough,” Scharf said, “and it’s time for the games to end and for the people who have been harmed to finally receive the compensation they deserve.”

Plocher said he was there to support Rep. Tricia Byrnes, R-Wentzville, who has been an advocate for compensation and cleanup of the waste and has “brought so much light to something I was completely unaware of.”

“…It’s astounding the cover up, the lack of transparency from the federal government that has befallen this community, all in the name of protecting our national sovereignty to create weapons to help defend us in the war,” he said. “So it’s about time somebody does something about it.”

Byrnes organized the press event. 

 “I do not want to make this about politics,” she said when asked if she has endorsed the candidates who participated in the news conference. 

Byrnes grew up in the area and, as a teen, swam in a quarry she didn’t know was contaminated in Weldon Spring.

The news conference was a last-minute decision and she reached out to the people “who have helped champion it,” including Rep. Chantelle Nickson-Clark, D-Florissant, she said.

In an interview with The Independent, Scharf, who was policy director for former Gov. Eric Greitens, said he first met advocates who work on the radioactive waste issue in 2016.

“I’d like to see a much more vigorous investigation and potentially a lawsuit against the Department of Energy,” Scharf said.  “I want to use every legal tool at my disposal as attorney general to fight for justice for the victims of this region.”

Ashcroft told The Independent he’d been “trying to raise awareness and get the state involved” for years.

If elected, he said, “the governor can help move policy,” pushing for more money in a statewide testing fund, and working with the Missouri congressional delegation to “push the feds to do more work with Congress.” 

“And the last thing the federal government wants is publicity about it. They buried it through multiple ways for 75 years. And one thing that I know I can do, even as Secretary of State is, I can be public about it. I can force them to face the issue.”

Plocher pointed out he didn’t mention his campaign in the news conference and told The Independent he hadn’t come as someone “running for office today. I’m here to be the speaker of the House,” and said he wanted to help Byrnes and Nickson-Clark. 

“The two of them have been working tirelessly,” he added.

‘People are still dying’

Around 80-90 people attended the annual community meeting held at the Florissant Municipal Courts Building Wednesday night. 

The Corps of Engineers has authority, through the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program, over the downtown, Coldwater Creek, airport and Latty Avenue sites. Cleanup of the West Lake landfill is being overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency. 

After World War II, waste from the downtown site was trucked to St. Louis County, sometimes spilling along the way, and dumped at the airport. Decaying barrels released radioactive waste into Coldwater Creek, and despite acknowledging the risk of contamination, the private company that produced the waste thought it was too dangerous for workers to put the material in new barrels.

Eventually, the waste was sold to another private company and moved to a property on Latty Avenue, also adjacent to Coldwater Creek. The material was stored in the open where it continued to contaminate the creek. 

At the meeting, several residents expressed frustration with the government’s progress in cleaning up the sites and a lack of communication.

Ray Hartmann, a Democrat running for Congress in the 2nd District, said he had been to a similar meeting in 2013.

“What reason do these people have to believe you that this is going to be different than it was in 2013?” Hartmann asked.

Col. Andy Pannier, commander of the Corps’ St. Louis District said the agency is trying to make its  actions match its words and see “constant, continuous progress.”

At another point, Pannier added that “There is no property that can wait till tomorrow or the next day or the next day,” which was met with applause.

“There’s only so many we can work on at any given time. And so we try to prioritize that…we try to prioritize the areas that would have the highest risk for potential exposure to the public to be first and then move to the next and the next,” he added.

Pannier said “the timeline that we’re working off of is completion by 2038.”

The Corps has promised signs warning of the contamination but they haven’t been installed, said Deborah Bowles, who said she grew up in Florissant and has come to Corps meetings for years.

“It’s just not hard on our mental health,” she said. “It takes a lot out of us physically to come and try to advocate for this.”

Cleanup is a “huge process…but does it take this long to get signage out?” she asked, adding that people who move to the area may not know the risks.

Pannier said “I know this is absolutely an area of concern for many of you and so I will sit with my team and figure out how we got to what you saw versus what you’re asking.”

Nickson-Clark also raised the issue of sign placement at the news conference.