Fulton Reception and Diagnostic Center is one of a handful of Missouri prisons that is not fully air conditioned. Funding was approved to install air conditioning in 2023, but it will take years for the project to be completed (Meg Cunningham/The Beacon).

Missouri lawmakers took a step toward improving conditions in some Missouri prisons last year by setting aside millions to install air conditioning in one of the state’s 17 prisons. That cooler air is still a year and a half away.

That decision came as global temperatures broke summertime heat records. Prisoner rights advocates celebrated the state’s decision to install air conditioning at the Fulton Reception and Diagnostic Center, one of Missouri’s intake correctional facilities.

The Department of Corrections estimates that they’ll be responsible for housing over 20,000 men and women throughout the course of 2024. Of those, up to 9,200 could live in prisons where there is partial or no access to air conditioning in housing units. And as Missouri closes out its third-hottest summer on record, the calls to fully air condition Missouri prisons grow louder.

Those living in the prisons contend the hotter summers make conditions inhumane.

It’s a trend that worries prison reform advocates in Missouri.

“We are extremely concerned about DOC’s ability to cope with what continue to be record-breaking temperatures of extreme heat in Missouri this summer,” said Shubra Ohri, senior counsel at the MacArthur Justice Center.

Of the 17 Missouri prisons, 10 are fully air conditioned. Four have partial access to air conditioning in some administrative areas and some housing units.

The remaining three facilities do not have air conditioning in housing units, mostly because there are no air ducts, the department says.

Missouri lawmakers have taken note. In the state’s 2024 budget, they allocated $14.3 million to install air conditioning at Fulton. The building opened in 1987 and has a capacity for 1,255 men.

It’s commonplace for U.S. prisons to have only partial air conditioning. Many prisons across the country only air condition areas like medical units, visitors’ areas or staff cafeterias.

Last summer, the Department of Corrections responded to complaints of heat inside the Fulton facility with the promise of air conditioning. But the project, which department spokesperson Karen Pojmann called extensive and complicated, won’t be complete until January 2026.

The installation of air conditioning is still in the pre-design phase, budget documents show.

The DOC has alternate ways to cool down prisoners in places without air conditioning. They distribute ice three times a day and offer water and cool showers. Inmates also can purchase fans from the commissary for about $20.

But inmates say those measures fall short. Ice can melt quickly and distribution can be contingent on the amount of staff available, said one inmate at Ozark Correctional Center, which does not have air conditioning.

Fans are available to purchase from the commissary if inmates can afford them outright. Or, inmates can get on a “fan plan” where they pay a few dollars a month to pay off the purchase.

It’s one of the few interventions available. But research shows that at temperatures above 99 degrees, fans can cause more harm than good.

Blowing air that is hotter than the average body temperature can increase sweat evaporation and make it easier for people to fall into a heat-related medical incident, like heat exhaustion or heatstroke, the Environmental Protection Agency found. The agency discourages fans from being used in those instances.

The same problem comes with using misters. In hot and humid conditions, misters can subtract from the body’s ability to use sweat to cool itself.

The difficulty of keeping cool in Missouri prisons

Prisons are particularly difficult to cool, according to Cascade Tuholske, a researcher at Montana State University who co-authored a study about temperatures in U.S. prisons.

They are often built where land prices are low and weather conditions aren’t ideal, Tuholske said. They often lack air flow and are built out of materials, like concrete, that tend to absorb heat, making it more difficult to cool the inside.

From 1982 to 2020, his research found that jails and prisons were exposed to an average of 5.5 more days per year where the wet bulb globe temperature — which accounts for temperature, humidity, wind speed and other factors — exceeds 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

It is difficult to track what medical incidences are related to heat in prisons, said Julie Skarha, a epidemiologist at Brown University who has studied heat-related medical events in Texas prisons. Other health conditions make it difficult to attribute a death or medical event to just one cause, but her research found that deaths rise in prisons without air conditioning.

“It’s never a perfect measurement, but I still see an increased risk of deaths in prisons without air conditioning,” Skarha said. “Even if I am using an estimate of what the temperature someone was actually exposed to. And so I think it’s probably an underestimate in a lot of ways.”

High temperatures can present a risk for people with underlying health conditions or those who are elderly, research shows. And those groups tend to be overrepresented in the nation’s prison population.

DOC statistics show that just over 24% of the state’s inmate population was over 50. The percentage of people over 50 in Missouri prisons has increased 6% from 2014 to 2023.

Age is a data point that stands out in Skarha’s research.

“The risk of dying on a very hot day increases with age,” Skarha said. “And then I also find a delayed effect with suicide. After a really an extreme heat day, suicides increase about two days later, and they increase by 20%.”

Taking psychotropic medications can impact the body’s ability to regulate temperatures in extreme weather. It’s a trend in especially hot states for inmates to occasionally quit taking their medications during periods of extreme heat, which can lead to an increase in suicide attempts.

The head of the union that represents correctional officers in Texas noted in a 2018 report that suicide attempts rose in the summer months as prisoners tried to avoid heat-related illness by pausing their medications.

Last summer, Texas prisons reported 35 employees who had heat-related incidents, but only 14 among prisoners. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has paid out over $500,000 in workers’ compensation claims to employees for heat-related illnesses since 2006.

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

Evergy headquarters in downtown Topeka, Kansas (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector).

Evergy confused and angered its Missouri customers in 2023 when it rolled out time-of-use rates that meant prices would run highest when people use the most electricity.

Missourians, especially those on fixed incomes, complained of high costs and having to choose between things like groceries and their medications or powering their homes during peak hours.

Now, Evergy Missouri West, which has a monopoly on service for much of the western part of Missouri outside of Kansas City, is heading back to its regulator to ask for more from the 340,000 users in the region. (Here’s how you can weigh in.)

Evergy wants the Public Service Commission to OK a 13.99% increase in electric rates, giving the company up to $104.5 million more in revenue a year. In 2023, the company reported $731 million in earnings.

“As people do we pick between: are we eating, or are we paying our power bill?” said Kelly Smith, who showed up to testify at a public hearing in St. Joseph on the proposed rate hike. “My bill is just shy of $300. I work all the time. I’m hardly ever home.  … My thermostat is set to 75 degrees.”

The Public Service Commission held several hearings across Evergy’s coverage area in late July. Dozens of Missourians, including lawmakers, showed up to argue against the rate hike. They shared stories of $700 bills, finding every energy-efficient upgrade to their home they could and making tough choices about which bills to pay.

Just because the company asked for a rate increase doesn’t mean it’ll get what it asked for. The commission started an 11-month review in February. It will decide in December how much rates might go up starting Jan. 1.

Why is Evergy asking for a rate increase?

Evergy argues it needs the higher rates to recoup money it spent on two natural-gas plants and for a range of upgrades to withstand severe weather and surges of demand for electricity.

The upgrades in the grid have already been made, said Gina Penzig, a spokesperson for Evergy.

“We make the investments and the power grid, and then we go to the commission and ask to recover those investments,” Penzig said.  “So we are asking for money that the company has already spent.”

The company is asking for funds to aid in its purchase of part of a natural-gas plant in Pleasant Hill to generate more electricity for the region. It’s also reupping its longtime request to make back some of the cost of transporting power from a natural-gas plant in Mississippi to Missouri, a request the state regulators have previously denied.

Evergy has conducted studies that show transmitting the energy from Mississippi to Missouri is the most cost-effective method of serving some customers. If they can’t recover those costs, Evergy may have to revisit the issue in the future to find another way to transmit that energy, Penzig said.

The rate hike request alarmed some Evergy customers, which drew the attention of lawmakers. They’d already been hearing complaints about the time-based plans mandated by the commission.

“They said that the average customer was supposed to have a rate decrease,” said Rep. Dean VanSchoiack, a Republican who represents parts of the state north of St. Joseph. “I’ve not met that average customer yet.”

He takes issue with how Evergy is passing along the costs of its upgrades to customers, who don’t have the choice of simply switching providers if they can’t keep up with the bill.

“From what I understand right now — 13.99% — it’s mostly to cover the expenses they did upgrading their poles and lines,” VanSchoiack said. “I was in business. You have to make money…but there are certain costs of doing business that you don’t get to expense right away.”

But because utility companies are monopolies, they aren’t faced with the same burdens of a typical business in a free market.

“Utilities are basically glorified construction companies,” said Geoff Marke, the chief economist at the Missouri Office of Public Counsel, a sort of ombudsman. “When they build assets, they make a return on it. So they have a perverse incentive to build as much as they can.”

Evergy says its rates lag its peers across the country. But the OPC said that lacks context.

When Evergy was formed in 2018 from the merger of Kansas City Power and Light Co. and Westar, regulators froze its rates for five years.

In 2018, the Missouri General Assembly passed a law that allowed utilities to access plant-in-service accounting, which spreads out the cost of investments over years. Those costs are typically passed on to the consumer.

“I’d say it’s much less ‘We didn’t ask for anything,’” said John Clizer, the senior counsel for the Office of Public Counsel, “and much more about ‘We delayed asking for a lot of things, but you are still going to pay for all of that.’ They may not have gotten the rate increases, but you’re also seeing all these other increases to certain charges.”

The Public Service Commission’s options 

The Public Service Commission consists of five members and has the power to approve the rate increase as is, deny it or respond with a rate different than what Evergy asked for. The commissioners are appointed by the governor. Gov. Mike Parson has appointed all but one of the current members, who have a staff of over 200 at their disposal.

The commission is structured like its regulatory counterpart in Kansas, the Kansas Corporation Commission. The KCC has three members, also appointed by the state’s governor. They approved a rate increase in November for Evergy’s central Kansas customers, also to cover costs associated with power plant investments and new infrastructure.

The proposed rate increase comes as many Republicans in Jefferson City are looking to regulate the regulator. After frustration over the time-based plans, some lawmakers want to add two more people to the commission and require more varied professions.  Some proposed legislation looks to require some members to have farming or utility backgrounds.

Kayla Hahn is the current chair of the commission. She was most recently Parson’s policy director. Three other members previously served in the Missouri General Assembly. The most recent addition to the commission is John Mitchell, who spent over three decades in various roles at Burns & McDonnell Engineering in Kansas City.

Renew Missouri, a group that advocates for the state to move toward cleaner energy sources, says the most recent appointment is breaking from the traditional model.

“Generally it’s been lawmakers and aides to the governor who are on there,” said James Owen, the group’s executive director. “I think it’s good to see different professions represented there.”

Some lawmakers, like VanSchoiack, want to see commissioners who aren’t necessarily politicians.

“They’re working too much for the power companies, not enough for the people,” VanSchoiack said.

Owen said the commission is “pro-utility.”

“They need to be confronted with the fact this is not just some line on a balance sheet,” Owen said. “It is actually real people who are struggling and suffering.”

VanShoiack isn’t confident that all of the legislature or Republican leadership sees the need to take another look at the structure of the commission.

“We need to be looking at things that really do truly help people,” VanShoiack said. “I think we’d be better off if we did try to focus more on some of these issues and less on the political issues.”

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

The Missouri House chamber during debate on March 12, 2023 (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

When Melissa Viloria was growing up in northeast Missouri, few people in power that looked like her.

Viloria was born in Hawaii to a mother from Missouri and a father who immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines. Her parents moved to Missouri in 1978. They found themselves among the few vocal Democrats of the nearly 3,000 people living in Monroe City.

She’s been involved in politics her whole life, running county Democratic clubs and traveling around northeast Missouri hearing from voters. Now, as Missouri Democrats look to improve their presence statewide, Viloria’s name is on the ballot.

Many of the races Democrats want to challenge are almost guaranteed losses. But it’s part of the party’s strategy to regain ground in Jefferson City, where Republicans have controlled the General Assembly since 2002. It’s a dynamic that makes Missouri one of the least competitive states when it comes to November elections.

“One of the things that we have seen in Missouri over the last decade or decade and a half is that many more state legislative seats were uncontested in the general election,” said Peverill Squire, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri. “The Democrats have done a better job of recruiting candidates and filling their ballot lines this time around.”

Viloria is running in the 4th Missouri House District and is the first Democrat to be listed on the ballot there in over a decade. It will be an uphill battle for her to secure a victory in November, but she believes Democrats need to start somewhere.

“I thought, even if it’s just for representation —  just to run and show others you can — absolutely, let’s try it,” she said.

Viloria is challenging Rep. Greg Sharpe, who was first elected in 2019. She’s one of many Democrats running in races where the odds are stacked against them.

“I don’t think you should go unchecked,” Viloria said. “If you’re not putting in the work, the time and the effort for the job, then you don’t get the job.”

Missouri’s history with uncontested races

It’s common for more partisan areas of the state to be without major party competition on general election ballots in Missouri. The state’s cities, which lean Democratic, often don’t have Republicans on the ballot when it comes to the state House or Senate. And in more rural parts of Missouri, Republicans often run without a Democratic opponent.

The 2022 election was one of the least competitive cycles in recent history: 78 of the state’s 180 legislative races, or 43.3% of the legislature, were contested. That was down from 50% in 2020, a Ballotpedia analysis found.

This November will be different. Across the House and the Senate, nearly 75% of races will have candidates from the two major parties.

It’s no surprise that in a red state Republicans had higher numbers of candidates running without a challenge from a major party. During the last election cycle, 73 Republicans had no Democratic opponent, while 29 of Democrats ran uncontested.

“There are other states where this problem is even worse,” Squire said. “On the Democratic side this year, there has been a national effort to try to get people on more ballot lines, simply to make races more competitive and probably in the end pick up some seats that they might not have before.”

Missouri Democrats for years have been looking to cut into the two-thirds supermajority in Jefferson City. The party sees recruiting a candidate for each race, even the longshot ones, as one path to get there.

“Having somebody to rally around, not only is it good for the candidate, but having a candidate in different communities across the state gives them something to get excited about,” said Alex Johnson, the field director for the Missouri House Democratic Campaign Committee. “That’s not just good for 2024. … It gives us a better launching point for future election cycles.”

With more than half the state’s House races unchallenged in the general election, voters had little reason to even think about the races.

“For voters,” said Squire, the MU political scientist, “it’s a big deal for Missouri to have so many candidates running.”

The importance of choice between candidates got Jess Piper to put her name on the ballot in 2022 for Missouri’s 2nd House District.

“People say, ‘You get what you vote for,’ and you’re like, ‘I don’t have anyone to vote for,” she said.

She garnered online attention during her longshot bid and raised loads of money in the process. Piper still lost her race by over 50 points that November. Now she helps run Blue Missouri, an outfit that raises money for down ballot Democratic candidates in Missouri.

“It might be a cycle, two cycles, maybe even three cycles before we can flip any of these seats,” Piper said. “We give money to them anyway … because we know they’re sticking their neck out and doing something that’s really hard. I think it’s immoral to ask people to do that and not fund them in the process.”

Her conversations ahead of the 2022 election were mostly focused on kitchen table issues:  Schools, health care and infrastructure..

“People just need to hear the message in more than one cycle. They need to marinate it for a little bit,” Piper said. “We’re all going to get our butt kicked the first time. This is how it works.”

The difficulties of running a losing race in Missouri

Democrats have struggled to keep candidates in state legislative races for a variety of reasons. It can be expensive and time-consuming to run a competitive campaign.

And it can be a hard sell for people the Missouri Democrats want to recruit. Many are professionals in high-paying jobs. Convincing them to walk away for a salary of less than $40,000 a year is tough.

Plus, it’s difficult to keep up with voters if there hasn’t been a party presence in the district in the recent past.

November will be the second election since Missouri’s state legislative districts were redrawn following the 2020 Census. Leslie Jones, a Democrat running in Springfield and Republic, is taking on the ballot in a district where the party hasn’t had much power.

“When I first decided to run, I was flat out told by many people that ‘You will not win this,’” Jones said. “I don’t want to listen to that voice. … I’m looking at this as an opportunity for us to go in and get data and see what the district really looks like.”

Without candidates in some of the races, it can be difficult to see how competitive an area really may be. Jones’s district, for example, includes deep red parts of the state. But an Amazon warehouse has brought new workers to the Republic and the Springfield area is booming.

“It’s worth having people run, so that we can see if there is momentum shifting,” Jones said. “We’re not going to get that if people don’t run.”

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

The General Assembly has provided more funding to reimburse Missouri counties for housing those who are awaiting transport to state prisons, but some counties argue it isn’t enough (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon).

The cost of holding someone in a Missouri county jail for those days and months before and after a conviction ultimately falls to the state.

In 2024, the state spent about $50 million to reimburse counties for the cost. But it’s had trouble keeping up with that tab.

That’s left counties stuck with most of the cost, even as the General Assembly has scraped together money to reimburse the expense of holding people in those counties — at a rate that doesn’t really make local governments whole.

It costs one county in southwest Missouri $750,000 a year to hold people on state charges. The reimbursement from the state, $225,000, doesn’t stretch too far.

“There’s over a half a million dollars that the county’s on the hook for,” said state Rep. Donnie Brown, a New Madrid Republican who sponsored a bill to make the state pay counties more for holding its prisoners.

Lawmakers bump county paychecks from state prison system

The state pays counties $22.58 for every day a person who should be in a state prison is in a county jail. Brown said that in his area, it actually costs about $45 a day. In more expensive areas, like Jackson County, that cost can be as high as $120 a day.

The state rate has hovered anywhere from $20 to $22 a day since 1998, depending on how much the legislature chooses to spend. Within state prisons, it costs around $90 per person a day.

“Our law enforcement is trying to put public safety first,” Brown said, “but they’re also having to live on a budget that is, a lot of times, insufficient.”

He sponsored a bill during the 2024 legislative session to get the attention of the budget committees in the House and Senate. With support from counties and the Missouri Sheriffs’ Association, Brown wanted to raise the reimbursement figure to $40.

While his bill didn’t pass, it drew the attention of the budget committees. They increased the pot of money dedicated to paying counties back by $5 million, upping the reimbursement rate to $24.96 a day.

Meanwhile, sheriffs have to navigate an antiquated payment system to get paid by the state for boarding its inmates. For starters, a sheriff must confirm that the county has been holding a person who is technically in state custody. Then the circuit court clerk has to sign off on it. Only then is the reimbursement request sent to the Department of Corrections to pay out.

“The time lag could be significant, but that’s not the Department of Corrections’ fault,” Steve Hobbs, the executive director of the Missouri Association of Counties, said at the bill’s hearing earlier this year. “That’s our fault at the county level, and we’re trying to do things working with Corrections to streamline that process.”

Missouri’s unique standing

A recent report from the Prison Policy Initiative, a criminal justice reform group, found that Missouri incarcerates its residents at a higher rate than the national average. For every 100,000 people in the state, 713 of them are incarcerated. In the United States, the number is 608 per capita.

But it is also the only state that reimburses counties for the fees associated with housing a prisoner before and after that person is convicted of state-level crimes.

In most states, counties only get reimbursed after a state conviction — not for the time someone is locked up waiting for trial.

In 2019, the Department of Corrections surveyed the 49 other states to see if county jails were reimbursed for time spent in jail before a person’s trial. Of the 30 states that responded to the DOC’s survey, none provided county reimbursement for pretrial days.

In 2020, the state auditor’s office took a look at the county reimbursement program. The office found that, of the 61% of sheriffs who responded, 73% of their jail populations were awaiting trial for a felony offense.

That number is higher than the national average. The Prison Policy Initiative also found that 69% of the jail population nationwide were those awaiting a trial.

In 2017, then-Gov. Eric Greitens established the Missouri State Justice Reinvestment Task Force. It concluded that the number of people in pretrial detention and a lack of public defenders drove the rising jail population.

“There are places around the country that have chosen to invest more in their public defense systems, because that’s just another way of coming at this problem,” said Wanda Bertram, a communications specialist at the Prison Policy Initiative.

Some Democratic lawmakers have filed bills in the past to eliminate pretrial reimbursement and raise the rate the state pays after someone is convicted. They’ve had little traction.

Brown expects to file his reimbursement bill again next year to try and raise the prison reimbursement rate closer to $40 a day.

“It’s not like we’re asking the state to totally make the county 100% whole,” Brown said. “We’ve got to help them find another revenue source to make things right.”

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

A program is being piloted in northeast Missouri to build more housing for workers. They hope it will take off across Missouri (Meg Cunningham/The Beacon).

In Kirksville, an entire floor of the hospital sits empty. The community could easily fill beds with patients — if only it could hire nurses and other workers to tend to them.

Just up U.S. 63 near the Iowa border, the Schuyler School District can’t keep teachers on the payroll.

A manufacturer wants to open its doors in the area, but worries about finding workers.

Although the open jobs may suggest otherwise, plenty of people want to live in rural Missouri — if they could find somewhere to live. The housing shortage across the state makes that difficult and thwarts efforts to draw workers and fuel local economies.

In smaller communities, homes are often old and need thousands of dollars in renovations to become livable, or they are newly built and more expensive than what many people can afford.

The rise in institutional investors that own and rent out single-family homes makes things worse, said Paula Hubbard, a real estate agent in Bolivar.

“We face the same dilemma that everyone faces across the country,” Hubbard said.

But in a small town like Bolivar, every housing unit counts.

“We feel it on a smaller scale,” Hubbard said. “The difference of one, two or three houses has a reverberating effect in our community.”

Missouri’s affordable housing dilemma

Missouri’s population is consistently growing, though some parts of the state are seeing more growth than others.

And while the population grows, the supply of affordable housing wanes. A 2020 report from the Missouri Housing Development Commission found a shortfall of nearly 128,000 affordable rental units in the state. For every 100 low-income households in Missouri, only 31 affordable units were available.

The report stated that rural affordable housing projects aren’t perceived as a priority, despite 48% of the agency’s spending going to rural areas.

Another 8,300 affordable units will likely lose their status as affordable housing units by 2030 and consequently no longer qualify for tax credits, said Jeff Smith, the executive director of the Missouri Workforce Housing Association.

When those tax credits — handed out to developers in return for keeping rents low — expire, the landlords can charge higher market rates.

And new housing units aren’t built at a rate that matches the low-income units that sunset.

“At the rate we build through (the program),” Smith said, “we don’t come anywhere close to replenishing the number of units that lapse out of affordability each year.”

In Hubbard’s area, the hospital is in the middle of an expansion. But she’s concerned about where the staffers who will work in that hospital will live.

“As far as entry-level affordable homes, it’s almost impossible,” Hubbard said. “In every instance, it is a struggle to find someone the right house.”

Developers get subsidies for building low-income housing, and they see demand to build new homes for upper-middle class families. In the meantime, those who fall outside of those categories are short on options.

It’s a chronic problem in Missouri. With interest rates high, homeowners don’t want to sell, leaving inventory low. And homebuilders aren’t keen to drop a brand-new development into a small community when they aren’t sure enough people can afford to buy them.

Housing experts point to the idea of the “missing middle housing,” like smaller homes or duplexes that more people can afford. It’s housing that isn’t eligible for tax credits or other construction subsidies. Despite the demand, those styles of homes aren’t popular among developers.

A nonprofit regional planning commission in northeast Missouri thinks it has found a path to catalyze growth.

How northeast Missouri wants to solve its housing shortage

The Northeast Missouri Regional Planning Commission covers six counties in the top right corner of the state, including Adair, where Kirksville is located.

The group conducted a housing needs study and found that the area had the capacity for another 450 housing units. Employers and real estate agents who responded to the survey said they mostly need housing for workers.

To meet that demand and with buy-in from local electric cooperatives, the planning commission created a fund to build homes in the $180,000 to $240,000 range.

The commision wants to start with one home in each of the six counties it covers. The homes will be sold to the first eligible buyer, so bidding wars that drive up the prices won’t be a factor. To minimize the strain on local utilities, they’re building on lots where homes have been demolished or abandoned.

Derek Weber, the executive director of the planning commission there, said that 65% of the homes in the area were built before 1960. Those homes have a median price of $90,000. Another 20% of the homes in the area were built after 2008 and have a median price of $400,000.

That leaves a sizable gap when it comes to affordable homes.

“The middle 10% is your workforce housing,” Weber said, “and there’s just no stock.”

Because Missouri’s regional planning commissions are nonprofits, they and others who use the potential state program to build homes won’t profit when they sell them. Instead, the purchase price of one home goes to building another. And so on. Local lumberyards and construction companies will still get paid, but developers won’t make a profit from the sale of the homes.

Weber stole the idea from Nebraska. In 2017, Nebraska passed a rural workforce housing grant, which created a nearly $30 million fund to distribute to nonprofits across the state to build housing units to help attract workers to rural areas.

The northeast planning commission broke ground on its first project in March. And it wants Missouri to expand the program across the state.

Republican state Rep. Greg Sharpe, who represents the area in Jefferson City, introduced legislation that mirrored Nebraska’s program during the 2024 legislative session.

During a hearing on the legislation, Michael Scheib, the CEO of Tri-County Electric Cooperative, a partner on the project, said that the Schuyler School District and area hospitals are interested in purchasing one of their homes.

“When we sit down with superintendents, they’ll say, ‘We get a teacher for one or two years, but the housing isn’t very good,’” Scheib said. “Schuyler schools are actually thinking about buying one of those houses and making it where a couple of young teachers could live in that house.”

Hospitals are eyeing the same approach when it comes to finding housing for their traveling nurses, he said.

“That’s my neighbors that can’t be served at that hospital because they can’t get nursing,” Scheib said, “because they don’t have places for those nurses to live.”

The planning commission and its partners believe that the undertaking is a way to slowly stir growth in their communities.

“We’re not looking to make a profit. We are looking to grow northeast Missouri,” Weber said during the hearing. “We’re trying to serve our community and create a way to bring a workforce to our region.”

With limited traction on the bill in 2024, Weber thinks next year will bring better luck. After the groundbreaking and as the word spread across the state, other groups like the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning Commission are watching to see if they could mimic the structure.

Despite all of the need for housing across Missouri, Weber said he felt that lawmakers in Jefferson City didn’t realize how bad the problem is.

“From the lawmakers I’ve spoken with, they look at it like it’s not their priority to get involved,” Weber said. “I don’t think they’ve attached the amount of homes we have to the workforce needs.”

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

Missouri State Capitol building in Jefferson City (Getty Images).

Missouri lawmakers gave counties a dose of much-needed clarity in May when they passed a bill aimed at clarifying a 2023 law that lets counties pass a senior property tax freeze, aimed at those 62 and older.

The law passed last year gave counties the power to freeze property tax rates for Missourians who were eligible for Social Security. But the law left room for interpretation — and confusion. For instance, it didn’t include an outline for how counties should go about the freeze or who would qualify.

Counties weren’t sure how to interpret “eligible for Social Security.” Did that mean 62 and older? What about people on pensions, like retired teachers or railroad workers? Were they out of luck?

Some counties thought an annual application would be required, and others wanted to put a cap on home values eligible for the tax break.

As a result, only the state’s larger counties have been bold enough to pass the freeze. Jackson, Platte and Clay counties passed the freeze in the Kansas City area, while St. Louis, St. Charles and Greene counties have passed the freeze in other parts of the state.

In the meantime, smaller counties took a wait-and-see approach — seeing what the General Assembly might yet do and measuring the potential impact on what a freeze would mean for  libraries and school and fire districts.

Lawmakers answered some of those questions this year with a bill sponsored by Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, a Platte County Republican who backed the original bill giving counties the power to freeze rates for seniors.

They also conceded that the freeze law would likely need future updates. But Luetkemeyer, pointing to legislative gridlock, suggested that lawmakers delay making more changes to the bill because it was already so far along in the process.

The clarification bill has yet to be signed by Gov. Mike Parson.

What answers does the bill provide for Missouri’s senior tax freeze?

Counties were largely unsure which property owners could qualify for the freeze. Initially, the bill said that Missourians eligible for Social Security would be able to receive the freeze.

But counties were afraid to open themselves up to lawsuits depending on how they interpreted that language. So lawmakers clarified that part of the bill by changing the language to Missourians 62 and older.

The senior property tax freeze came amid property tax assessments that shocked many Missourians. The 2024 bill also clarified that the freeze wouldn’t work in reverse. If the assessed value of property dropped, so would the tax bill even if the owner had benefited from the freeze.

The bill also makes clear homeowners who are behind on their property taxes won’t be eligible for the freeze until they catch up payments. It also clarifies that if homeowners make improvements that raise the assessed value of their home, their rate will be increased to reflect those improvements.

Previous language also allowed for county residents to petition to pass the freeze if local officials don’t enact it. The new bill would let counties go back and tweak their programs without voter approval.

It also gives counties full control over how to tailor their property tax freezes.

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

The Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

If Kansas City had its way, the local minimum wage would run $17 per hour, grocery stores would only use paper bags and you’d need to pass a background check to buy a gun in town.

But politicians and businesses that see these policy ideas as threats to their authority or their bottom lines, shut off all those policies by using their power to block them.

So instead of playing whack-a-mole at hundreds of city council meetings, lobbyists set up camp in the state Capitol to make it impossible for any town to pass certain laws that reflect local sentiments.

For more than a decade, red states like Missouri have stripped cities of their ability to craft local policies on pesticides, tobacco taxes, workplace protections and affordable housing. The rise of “preemption laws” comes from corporations and politicians who want to keep these decisions under their control.

“Cities are on the frontlines of multiple … crises these days,” said Katie Belanger, the lead consultant at the Local Solutions Support Center, which pushes for local control in cities and counties across the country. “Abuse of preemption today is cutting off local elected officials at the knees.”

This year, Missouri lawmakers are considering new preemption laws that would stop cities from banning landlords from discriminating against tenants who rely on government housing subsidies (like the one Kansas City Council passed in January) and from adopting any regulation of Missouri’s pet stores and puppy mills.

A state reaction to local policies

Missouri lawmakers can block your local city council from taking action on a number of fronts.

For years, Missouri’s larger cities with higher costs of living campaigned to raise the state’s $12.30 an hour minimum wage.

In 2015, St. Louis passed an ordinance setting the city’s minimum wage higher than the state’s.

Court challenges meant workers waited two years to see that raise. Then the Missouri General Assembly and Gov. Eric Greitens barred cities from setting their own minimum wage rules.

“A lot of these things happen because the community wants some kind of regulation,” said Richard Sheets, the executive director of the Missouri Municipal League. “Different communities have different problems and different goals.”

Earlier this year, Kansas City followed the lead of St. Louis by banning  discrimination against tenants with government rental subsidies.

Now, the Republican majority that controls the legislature wants to undo those local ordinances.

“Discrimination against housing choice vouchers is already a huge problem that is not prohibited federally,” said Mallory Rusch, the executive director of the anti-poverty organization Empower Missouri. “The only line of protection that those folks have right now are local ordinances.”

Rusch pointed to the Republican effort to raise the threshold for initiative petitions to pass. The process has been used to amend the Missouri Constitution to pass policies that are popular with voters but unpopular with conservative lawmakers, like marijuana legalization or Medicaid expansion.

“There is no other way to explain (raising the threshold),” Rusch said, “except for to take more power away from the cities.”

Legislature = One-stop lobbying

States and the federal government have passed laws and issued court rulings restricting local officials since the country’s founding. They’ve been used on the federal level to set minimum standards for how states should operate, and states traditionally have used them the same way to limit local officials.

For example, the U.S. Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer ruled in 1948 that state courts cannot enforce racist covenants that ban Black people from owning houses in certain cities or neighborhoods.

In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that state segregation laws were unconstitutional.

Illinois last year passed a law barring cities or school districts from banning books.

Missouri has a preemption law that requires all beer kegs to be tagged with an identification number and recycling information. Another preemption law requires all Missouri massage therapists to have the same licenses across the state.

In states, preemption helps prevent a patchwork of local policies that could create confusion and chaos for state officials or agencies — or for businesses that would otherwise have to meet a dozen different local standards.

But the use of those laws is shifting into new territory, as states pass more restrictions that limit what local governments can do, said Lydia Bean, a senior political reform fellow at progressive think tank New America. The shift creates policy vacuums, where businesses can sometimes operate completely unregulated.

In the past decade, state legislatures have set ceilings rather than floors — limiting how far local politics can trump state law.

“(These states decide,) ‘We’re not going to solve this problem at all,’” she said. “But we’re also not going to let any local cities or counties solve the problem.’”

With a single statewide law, well-heeled interest groups can keep every city and county in a state from making any policy decisions that could hurt their business or water down their culture war wins.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) often pens model legislation on behalf of those groups and sends model bills to state lawmakers to carry in their respective capitals.

It shows up in every state. At least 45 states have laws barring local governments from passing firearm regulations. Another 43 states have laws banning local pesticide regulation, while 41 states preempt local regulations on rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft. Another couple dozen states bar local governments from passing laws on youth access to tobacco products like flavored vapes.

“We’ve always had preemption bills because special interests have always tried to preempt local governments regulating over their industry,” Sheets said. “It’s been a fact of life.”

It’s harder for ordinary people to influence state legislatures than to win over their city council members.

A Kansas City resident can testify pretty easily at a City Council meeting. But if somebody wanted to testify in-person in Jefferson City, they’d probably need to take off work and drive two-plus hours each way.

Constituents in a sprawling state legislative district can live more than 150 miles from their state senator or representative.

It’s pretty easy to run into your city council member in church. It’s tougher to bump into your state senator who lives on the opposite end of the district.

“Citizens aren’t stupid,” Sheets said. “They’re going to make their voice heard at the local level — at the grocery store, at church, on the street. If something that is not popular is presented, it typically doesn’t get passed or stay on the books for long.”

Preemption laws pick up steam in red states across the country

Corporate interest groups have found a powerful ally in the Republican Party, which has been gradually consolidating power in statehouses across the country since 2010.

Every year since the 2010 elections, Republicans have controlled a trifecta (the governor’s office and majorities in the state senate and house) in more than 20 states. Neither party has held that much control over state governments for at least three decades.

And those states — which include Missouri since 2017 — use that power to limit local governments in their typically left-leaning larger cities.

A 2017 national analysis of preemption laws from Boise State University found that most often, preemption laws are used in Republican-led states that have cities with more liberal viewpoints.

“Preemption is a key tool to stifle local innovation and maintain state power,” the report found. “In other words, as states are being pushed by local governments, they are responding by curtailing local authorities in the hopes that it will stop (or at least slow) adoption of progressive policies.”

Local governments can be an important place for politicians to experiment with different policy ideas because they have more flexibility, Sheets said.

A state legislature, on the other hand, might meet for only five months out of the year. And with the Missouri Freedom Caucus disrupting the legislature’s ability to pass bills — even Republican-sponsored ones — those roadblocks make it all the more difficult to remake laws.

“City councils can pass ordinances and laws that don’t work and need to be fixed,” Sheets said. “(Those laws) can be fixed really quickly. But at the state level, when they pass legislation into law that’s wrong, it takes probably eight years to fix it.”

Advocates for local control see state limits on local power as an attack on the most diverse areas of the state, like Kansas City and St. Louis, where city councils and boards are more likely to take actions they see as moves toward racial justice, workers’ rights and affordable housing.

“It’s part of a broader effort to target specific communities and erode our democracy,” Belanger said. “We see abuse of preemption as part and parcel with gerrymandering, court-stacking, eroding voting rights and limiting direct democracy with citizen-led ballot initiatives.”

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

Union Station and downtown Kansas City (Getty Images).

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has essentially invited immigrants to come and fill the local labor pool.

He’s offering officials in New York and Denver help from the crush of immigrants in those cities and welcoming foreign workers to Kansas City.

That quickly sparked accusations that Lucas appeared bent on making Kansas City a sanctuary city, offering harbor to people in the country illegally — in a place where that would violate state law.

After an uproar from anti-immigration politicians in Jefferson City, Lucas made clear his welcome mat only applied to immigrants in the country legally with work visas.

“We need a lot more employees,” the mayor told Bloomberg News. “If there are people who are willing and able to work, then I believe that there could be a place for them.”

Even without a sanctuary city designation, bringing immigrant workers to Kansas City will create chores for the city and resettlement agencies.

Is Kansas City becoming a sanctuary city?

How exactly Kansas City would handle immigrant workers remains unclear. Local lawmakers aren’t considering designating Kansas City as a sanctuary city, which would mean passing ordinances protecting people in the country illegally from deportation or federal prosecution.

But city officials are looking at ways to bolster the metro’s workforce.

Lucas told Bloomberg that he has been in contact with mayors in some large U.S. cities. He said that Kansas City will have a better idea of its capacity after Memorial Day.

Immigrants have positive impacts on their communities through labor and small businesses, said J.H. Cullum Clark, the director of the Bush Institute-Southern Methodist University Economic Growth Initiative.

“It’s totally obvious that the benefits outweigh the costs,” Clark said.

Economic development is a major focus of both Missouri and Kansas City. In the past five years, companies have announced $9 billion in investments in the metro area, Bloomberg reported.

The City Council has already set aside $1 million toward housing, training and language services for immigrants. Research shows that, unsurprisingly, immigrants thrive more when they have help learning English.

But some members of the City Council still have questions.

“I do have concerns about the lack of discussion and planning,” Councilwoman Lindsay French said last week at a meeting of the Special Committee for Legal Review. “I’m really concerned that we haven’t had those discussions internally as a council.”

French said that she wants the council to consult with the nonprofit resettlement organizations — Della Lamb Community Services, Jewish Vocational Service and El Centro Inc. — to get a better idea of their capacity.

An influx of immigrants typically poses a slight drain on local and state budgets, Clark said.

Over time, immigrants and their families improve the finances of the federal government by paying income taxes, Clark said. But there is a near-term cost for states and cities.

“One way or another, they have to sleep someplace and they have to get fed,” Clark said. “That’s a big administrative lift right now for a lot of cities.”

Still, data show that immigrants and their families add more to communities and economies than they take.

What would it mean for Kansas City to bring in workers into the U.S.?

Research shows that places like Kansas City profit from when they welcome immigration.

A report Clark authored ranked Kansas City as the top 23rd metropolitan area for immigrants moving within the U.S.

“Everybody has an image of lots of immigrants in Los Angeles, New York, Miami,” Clark said. “They may not have this image of foreign-born people streaming into Kansas City and doing all kinds of jobs. But that is the case, to a much greater degree than probably most people understand.”

And amid an effort to bolster the local economy, Kansas City’s workforce isn’t keeping up with demand.

Unemployment in Kansas City was at 3.6% in February of this year. In Missouri, it was 3.3% and in Kansas it was 2.7%. Nationally, unemployment was at 3.9% in February.

“My union, they’re begging for people,” said Ralph Oropeza, the business manager at Greater Kansas City Building & Construction Trades Council.

He said fewer people are chasing construction and labor jobs, but projects are booming. He pointed to the planned $800 million mixed-use development at the Berkley Riverfront that is set to break ground later this year.

“There’s going to be a need for laborers,” Oropeza said. “Our doors are wide open for people to apply for apprenticeship, but nobody will.”

Another factor: Kansas Citians are aging out of the labor market. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau found that by 2030, 25% of Missouri’s population will be over 60.

The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency, predicts U.S. deaths will exceed births starting in 2040. Then, immigration will account for all population growth.

That creates a need for workers on two fronts, said Giovanni Peri, a migration and economics researcher at the University of California, Davis. Laborers and health care workers are now increasingly in demand.

“From jobs in restaurants, hospitality, elderly care to more high-tech jobs,” Peri said, “the labor force is shrinking and aging.”

The economy is absorbing foreign-born workers while also generating jobs for those who were born in the U.S., an analysis from the left-leaning, pro-union Economic Policy Institute found, bucking claims that immigrants may be filling jobs that Americans would otherwise be working.

Growth begets growth, Peri said.

For example, say a company wants to build a hotel, but it struggles finding construction laborers and hospitality workers to fill the potential jobs. That’s a net negative for the city when it comes to generating jobs and economic development.

“When there are these bottlenecks and a firm cannot fill some jobs in some areas,” Peri said, “it slows down the growth with the consequence of needing fewer and fewer people in other jobs, too.”

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

The Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City, as pictured September 26, 2023 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Last year, the Missouri General Assembly scrambled to act on an issue popular with voters who turn out in large numbers: property tax cuts for seniors in the form of a tax freeze.

Lawmakers passed a vague directive letting counties freeze property tax bills for seniors, without defining what “senior” meant, who was going to tell the counties how to define that group or how to pay for the change.

Now, feeling pressure from constituents, county expenses are piling up. And with the Statehouse functionally useless as senators eye upcoming elections, clear directions aren’t coming anytime soon.

“We have no idea what to expect,” said St. Charles County Commissioner Mike Elam. “We’re going down a road blindly, and we’re trying to make the best-educated guesses that we can.”

The biggest Missouri counties with the most dollars to spare are spearheading the change. But with more questions than answers, small counties are waiting to learn from the larger population centers.

In line with national trends, Missouri’s population is skewing older.  Estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau found that by 2030, more than 25% of Missouri’s population will be over 60. Senior citizens in Missouri are expected to increase 87% from 2000 to 2030.

Data compiled by the Missouri Census Data Center found that 7% of senior households in Missouri fell into the “cost-burdened” category from 2012 to 2016, meaning they spent 30% or more of their gross income on housing.

How much progress have counties made when it comes to the senior property tax freeze?

All of Missouri’s largest counties have passed ordinances that will eventually freeze real property tax bills for Missourians over 62.

Without clear direction from lawmakers in Jefferson City, some versions look different than others. Counties will ask residents to apply again on a yearly basis, but a few details on that application process will be streamlined.

Jackson County is accepting applications for the program. Officials included a home value cap of $550,000, so residents with home values over that figure won’t be eligible for the freeze. Taxes will freeze at the 2024 rate, with the first credits to be seen by residents in 2025. In Clay County, applications for the freeze will open in 2025.

St. Louis city and St. Louis County followed a similar model and added home value caps of $500,000 and $550,000, respectively. St. Louis County stated on its website that without additional funding to handle the lift of putting the freeze in place, the program won’t be available this year.

But under revisions to the law, which have yet to be finally passed in the General Assembly, adding home value caps would be prohibited.

A lawsuit recently filed against St. Louis County cited the delay in getting the program up and running. The director of the county revenue department asked the County Council for $1.8 million to hire full-time staff and to pay for equipment and software purchases.

St. Charles County was among the first to pass the freeze and estimates that about 38,000 households would qualify for the freeze. They’re doing their best to take a slow and steady approach, Elam said. Between the 2nd and 3rd congressional districts, about 32% of households will qualify, based on data from the Social Security Administration, he said.

“We don’t know how many of them are actually going to apply,” Elam said. “This program was started with very good intentions by state legislators. Practically speaking, it’s always different than it is on paper.”

Elam has no estimate for the cost of imposing the freeze. It’s unlikely that St. Charles County will follow St. Louis County’s lead by hiring full-time staff, though. Temporary additions to the collector’s and recorder’s offices seem like a better fit, he said.

Platte County plans to open applications for the program in September. It intentionally left home value caps off of their ordinance.

“It’s not in state statute,” said Commissioner Dagmar Wood, who is running for Platte County assessor. “We feel like we’re just opening up the county for a lawsuit. We’re going to mirror exactly whatever ends up coming out of Jefferson City.”

Wood estimates spending around $200,000 to put the program in place. The county has already hired a full-time staffer to help with the additional workload, she said, and it plans to spend from $50,000 to $100,000 sending out mailers to let residents know about the program.

That’s something St. Charles County is holding off on for now, Elam said. With so many questions left to answer, they’ll wait to incur large one-time costs  until the provision is more clear. But they are thinking about how to get the word out to Missourians over 62 who may not be as digitally savvy.

“Unfortunately, the ones who really need this are probably the ones who are not paying as much attention and don’t understand the process,” Elam said.

Schools and libraries draw from this money. How do they feel?

Some counties appear hesitant to freeze property taxes for one group out of fear that would limit tax revenue for taxing districts that use property tax revenue, like school districts, libraries or fire departments.

Officials in Boone County were assessing the best way to approach the freeze. Voters gave their approval after it was placed on the April 2 ballot.

Columbia Public Schools estimated a freeze could cost anywhere from 10% to 20% of district revenue, the Columbia Missourian reported. The cost could range anywhere from $3 million to $6 million.

Harrisburg School District Superintendent Steve Combs said nearly one-third of the homes in his Boone County district are owned by residents who would be eligible for the freeze. The district could lose nearly $800,000 in the future.

Boone County Commissioner Kip Kendrick told the Missourian that as the county looked for examples from other states that made similar moves, many local school districts typically went on to ask voters to raise tax levies following the eventual revenue decline. He said that officials eventually may schedule the program for renewal to give them more flexibility to add tweaks in the future.

It’s something Wood is less worried about in Platte County, where the population is growing.

“Our assessment values have gone up, overall valuation on properties has gone up,” Wood said. “I don’t see how this is a negative to taxing districts, except maybe they’re not increasing as fast as they would like.”

Lawmakers expect additional clarification next year 

Even though members of the General Assembly knew they were heading into the 2024 legislative session under pressure to revise the law, lawmakers expect more revisions in coming years.

“I would recommend that we pass this and then come back with a fervor next year and fix whatever needs fixing,” Rep. Darin Chappell, a Rogersville Republican, said.

“And for those of us who are freshmen, let this be a lesson we’ll learn that maybe we ought to pay more attention before we actually pass bills that are improperly written in the first place,” Chappell said.

The revisions would bar homeowners from buying lower-valued property, locking in a lower tax rate and then making improvements to that property under the lower-valued rate. It would also require that anyone 62 or older who is behind on their taxes become current before they are eligible for the freeze.

In the House committee, lawmakers suggested requiring property owners to apply annually, which many counties have already included in their statute. Ultimately, they bypassed the change amid fears that the bill may get stalled in the stalemated Senate.

Elam said smaller counties are watching as more-resourced ones parse through the details. He said the state association of collectors and Missouri Association of Counties are working together to streamline the process, hopefully eliminating some of the administrative burden down the line.

Advocacy group MO Tax Relief Now says it is working with at least 40 counties to put a freeze in place. They estimate that the legislation could save Missourians upward of $500 million if put in place statewide.

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

A rendering of the Royals proposed downtown ballpark (image submitted).

The Royals and the Chiefs had everything.

Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce — fresh off of a Super Bowl victory — endorsed a “yes” vote in ads airing on TV and on YouTube. Endorsements rolled in from the city’s top political players: Mayor Quinton Lucas (belatedly), U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and nearly every union in town.

All in all, the teams spent $3 million trying to convince voters a 40-year sales tax for a downtown ballpark would mean a win for everybody.

From a thorny stadium location and murky financial details to a community benefits agreement that drew criticism from workers groups and economists, the weeks leading up to the vote brought gaffe after gaffe, all in the public eye.

Jackson County voters couldn’t be convinced. With turnout higher than a typical April election and an unprecedented level of early voting, they shot the sales tax down by a 16-point margin.

The theories on what cursed the pitch to voters will pile up like Royals losses this summer, but some reasons already stick out.

‘No’ votes are easier than ‘yes’ votes

Any number of opposition groups will claim that the sales tax failed because of one key reason or another.

But a lot has to go wrong for a referendum to lose by such a wide margin.

In many ways, the stadium sales tax question was so complicated that it was doomed from the start, said Debra Leiter, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

“It wasn’t just a three-eighths cent sales tax,” she said. “It came with a load of baggage.”

If a voter supported funding the Chiefs but not the Royals, they were a “no” vote. If they wanted a downtown ballpark but not in the Crossroads, they were a “no” vote. If they wanted a downtown ballpark in the Crossroads but with a stronger community benefits agreement, they were a “no” vote.

That made it easy to convince voters that the stadium tax was a bad deal.

“The coalition with a small but clear message and less funding ended up winning,” Leiter said. “It’s a good reminder that it’s not just how much you spend. The message that you’re selling really can influence what voters are going to end up doing.”

KC Tenants, the citywide tenants union, managed to hone its message in a way that resonated with voters. The group expanded its reach into eastern Jackson County ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

“People out here have a real bullshit detector,” said Keith Sadler, a leader with KC Tenants who lives in Blue Springs. “People can really hear when the message keeps changing.”

Big price tag, shrinking team leverage for a stadium tax

Part of the problem for some voters rested in the price tag and an awareness that taxpayers have become increasingly weary of subsidizing the stadiums of big-money sports teams.

For a referendum like Question 1, the teams would only want to win by a narrow margin, said Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economics professor at Smith College. Winning by a big margin, he said, would signal that they could have squeezed more tax dollars out of a deal.

“​​If they were to win 60%,” he said, “it means that they haven’t asked for as much as they could have asked for.”

At the same time, teams are losing the sway they once enjoyed with voters and the leverage to score better terms with taxpayers.

Patrick Tuohey, a senior fellow at the anti-tax Show-Me Institute, said teams will need to reevaluate their approach going forward. Public sentiment is shifting, he said, and that will require a new approach from sports teams nationwide seeking public stadium subsidies.

He pointed to Virginia, where the Democratic-controlled legislature last month declined to include any state dollars for an arena that would bring the region’s hockey and basketball teams from Washington, D.C., into Virginia. The package was a top priority of the state’s Republican governor.

It will be difficult for teams looking to make a move to find a friendly destination that’s willing to pay, Zimbalist said.

“(Teams) claim they’re going to be wonderful economic engines — they’re not,” Zimbalist said. “More and more cities are realizing that.”

In Jackson County, anger about 2023’s property tax assessments is still swirling, said Mark Jones, the chairman of the county GOP.

“We’re just not through with the 2023 property tax debacle,” Jones said. “People are still in their appeal process. People have absolutely no appetite for anything to increase taxes.”

A fear-based approach — that the Royals might leave Kansas City for a place like Salt Lake City that’s trying to seduce teams with big subsidies — won’t work for Republicans in Jackson County, Jones said.

“Don’t patronize us with threats,” he said.

What the teams will have to do differently next time to pass a stadium tax

Team owners Clark Hunt and John Sherman will have to go back to the drawing board, Tuohey said.

“The Chiefs and Royals can come back and demonstrate that they’ve listened, they’ve learned a lesson,” he said. “Jackson County doesn’t want the teams to leave. I don’t think the teams will want to leave.”

The cost of moving a team from city to city is high. When Rams owner Stan Kroenke decided to move the football team from St. Louis to Los Angeles, he ultimately had to agree to a settlement of $790 million. That’s real money even for an NFL owner.

When teams inevitably ask for tax money again, they’ll need a better rollout. And elected officials will need to get on the same page, Leiter said, pointing to Jackson County Executive Frank White’s opposition to the measure and Mayor Lucas’ eleventh-hour endorsement.

Tuohey said the Royals and Chiefs may need to revisit the economic argument for stadium subsidies.

“(Teams have) been able to make claims of economic benefit in the past,” he said. “They’ve been able to threaten to leave. That has worked in the past. I think that may not work anymore.”

Translating this momentum into future political movements

The vote saw left-leaning KC Tenants campaigning on the same side as the libertarian Show-Me Institute and some Republicans in eastern Jackson County.

But for other issues, it’s unlikely that Kansas City will see these groups work together again, Leiter said.

Many Jackson County voters, left and right, share a common sentiment: it’s not the time to foot the bill for those who don’t really need the help.

“It’s a unique movement that’s anti-elite,” Leiter said. “There is a lot of skepticism and people are skeptical of how the government is spending money.”

That’s what organizers and political parties are hoping to translate into future elections.

“I know we’re not going to get the entire coalition,” Jones said. “But as much of this coalition as we can that backs this populism, let’s translate that into the fall. … We’re tired of paying the entire bill.”

The KC Tenants group senses that momentum, as well, and is looking at expanding its reach into other parts of eastern Jackson County by propping up a new union in Independence.

The way voters rallied in opposition points to the importance of participating in local politics, Tuohey said.

“You don’t have to be a liberal or conservative to know that the potholes are making you crazy or that you want your trash to be picked up,” he said. “Municipal politics is the least beholden to these broad, vague national things. It’s really just that people want a return on their investment.”

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

Chiefs fans gather in the Power & Light District after the Super Bowl win in 2020. A Kansas City lawmaker wants the Chiefs to make a statement about celebratory gunfire after major wins (Zach Bauman/The Beacon).

As the Kansas City Chiefs get ready for a Super Bowl appearance with the San Francisco 49ers on Feb. 11, Missouri lawmakers advanced a measure to raise the penalty for shooting a gun skyward in celebration.

Kansas City saw more celebratory gunfire on Sunday — an increase from when the Chiefs won the AFC championship a year earlier.

One Kansas City lawmaker who is sponsoring a version of the bill has called on the Chiefs to urge fans to refrain from firing their guns into the sky. Democratic Rep. Mark Sharp said his request has gone unanswered by the team.

Celebratory gunfire poses a problem for law enforcement and communities after big events, especially major holidays like New Year’s Eve or July 4. But in recent years as the Chiefs have consistently had playoff successes, Kansas Citians increasingly point their firearms at the sky and shoot.

The Kansas City Police Department says the gunshot detection service ShotSpotter shows the problem getting worse.

In 2023, when the Chiefs won the divisional round playoff game, ShotSpotter recorded 33 rounds. This year, the detection system recorded 147 rounds. When the Chiefs won the AFC championship in 2023, it recorded 102 rounds. This week, that number rose to 130 rounds.

In 2023, Kansas City broke its homicide record with 182 homicides recorded across the city. But homicides aren’t the only measure of consequences from gunfire, celebratory or not, said Tom Chittum, the current senior vice president at SoundThinking, the company that runs the ShotSpotter system.

“We often use homicide as a measure of violent crime, but it is a very imprecise measure,” Chittum said. “Murders don’t often go undiscovered and they’re very easy to count. But the fact of the matter is the consequences of gun violence go so far beyond homicides.”

Is it possible to deter celebratory gunfire?

It can be difficult for law enforcement and city officials to convince people not to participate in celebratory gunfire if residents don’t truly understand the consequences, said Chittum, who was the chief operating officer for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

A theory called deterrence is helpful in understanding how to reduce celebratory gunfire. The certainty and speed of punishment have been shown the strongest ways to deter crime. The severity of the punishment, on the other hand, is less influential.

“Some distant severe punishment doesn’t have the same effect,” Chittum told The Beacon.

On July 4, 2011, an 11-year-old Kansas City girl, Blair Shanahan Lane, was killed by celebratory gunfire. Since then, lawmakers have been attempting to pass a bill called Blair’s Law, which would raise the penalty for shooting a gun into the sky.

A version of the bill advanced out of a Missouri Senate committee last week.

Shannon Cooper, a lobbyist for Kansas City, testified in support of the legislation.

“You’ve all heard this before, but what I would say is the first day of January, if you looked on social media,” Cooper said, “it was amazing the number of individuals, residents of this state, in our metropolitan area who took it upon themselves to video themselves participating in celebratory gunfire.”

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

Chiefs fans gather in the Power & Light District after the Super Bowl win in 2020. A Kansas City lawmaker wants the Chiefs to make a statement about celebratory gunfire after major wins (Zach Bauman/The Beacon).

Every year — on New Year’s Eve, July 4, when a sports team wins a championship — police and politicians practically beg people not to fire their guns into the air in celebration.

In Kansas City, reports of shots fired go up when the NFL playoffs roll around.

Meanwhile, a proposal to slightly strengthen the misdemeanor penalties for celebratory gunfire in Missouri can’t find its way into statute.

Democratic state Rep. Mark Sharp of Kansas City has tried for years to make the change with Blair’s Law, named for a Kansas City girl who lost her life from a bullet fired randomly skyward.

So he went to the team to tell its fans to leave weapons out of their celebrations.

“The Chiefs — whether they like it or not — they need to have a voice in this,” Sharp told The Beacon. “Two words: ‘Celebrate safely.’ That would go a long way to those same folks shooting their guns off after a Chiefs victory.”

Kansas City set a new record for homicides in 2023. Sharp contends a message from the team could play a role in reducing that number.

Sharp said his requests to the Chiefs have so far gone unanswered. Other lawmakers also think a word or two from the team might save a life.

Missouri House Majority Leader Jon Patterson, a Republican from Lee’s Summit, said it could be helpful for the team to weigh in.

Should the Chiefs join conversations about social issues?

The Kansas City Police Department’s ShotSpotter data says the number of shots fired was higher than the average evening when the Chiefs won playoff games last year. On Jan. 22, 2023, a Sunday night when the Chiefs did not play, the system recorded 15 rounds of gunfire.

The next Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023, when the Chiefs won the AFC Championship, the system counted 102 rounds. Two weeks later, when the team won the Super Bowl, the number went to 476 rounds.

In the past, KCPD and Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas have urged residents to refrain from celebratory gunfire during holidays and events.

“When you shoot your gun in the air, you don’t get to decide where that round goes,” said Sgt. Jake Becchina said during a 2021 press conference ahead of New Year’s Eve. “It will travel, sometimes as many as, if not over, a thousand yards.”

Sports teams and corporations have faced mounting pressures to weigh in on social issues over the past few years, according to Virginia Harrison, a communications professor and researcher at Clemson University.

“The NFL really have been ramping up their corporate social responsibility,” Harrison said. “So things like ‘don’t drink and drive’ that are not necessarily controversial, things they’re not going to get backlash on.”

Still, teams aren’t likely to go out on a limb with messages that could be seen as polarizing, especially when sports are seen as a form of entertainment that should avoid politicized topics.

“There is kind of a balance where we need to address things that are relevant to our fan base in Missouri and Kansas City,” Harrison said of how the Chiefs may view sensitive messaging. “But we can’t go too far in the sense that we’re going rogue almost, and then the NFL is going to take away our ownership or take away our team.”

Sharp said although the team tries to avoid political topics, it’s weighing in on things like sports betting, by backing an initiative petition to legalize it in Missouri and the politicking of their stadium location.

The Chiefs “really need to have a responsibility when it comes to the community,” Sharp said. “Folks spend their entire paycheck to go to these games. We have a dog in the fight. We want the city to be better. Having less crime only helps them in the long run.”

A Chiefs spokesperson declined to comment on whether the team planned to issue a statement on the lawmaker’s request for a statement on celebratory gunfire.

Could a message from the Kansas City Chiefs even make an impact?

Harrison’s research has shown that fans tend to respond more positively to social messages from players than from a team or a sports league. Messages that are authentic to a player’s brand are also more likely to be well-received by fans.

One of Harrison’s studies also showed that fans who are politically neutral or liberal-leaning tend to respond more favorably to messages concerning social issues. In contrast, the study found conservative-leaning fans viewed social activism by the NBA negatively.

A paper assessing fans’ responses to the NFL’s response during 2020 and the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing had similar conclusions.

“Perhaps the use of official team sources exacerbated negative responses because it violated fan’s identities and did not allow for easy dissociation from specific athletes,” the paper concluded.

Another forthcoming study from Evan Brody, a communications professor at the University of Nevada, found that when fans were presented with an NFL collaboration with an LGBTQ+ organization, some fans were initially angered by the collaboration, but not enough to renounce their teams.

“When we then ask them, ‘Is this going to change whether or not you support the NFL, purchasing tickets, watching games or purchasing gear?’ it did not have any effect on people’s willingness to continue to support the NFL,” Brody said.

There is also less risk for teams because fans are unlikely to start supporting a competitor based on these messages, unlike in the corporate world where issuing potentially polarizing messages could drive one’s consumers to the competition.

“You’re not gonna become a Raiders fan or a Broncos fan just because you’re mad at the team,” Brody said.

How would Blair’s Law impact celebratory gunfire?

The issue of celebratory gunfire itself is particularly difficult to pin down, according to Kelly Drane, the research director at Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The way a bullet travels and the often crowded public settings where celebratory gunfire occurs make it hard to track.

“We know anecdotally that it’s a problem because we see these cases,” Drane said. “But it’s hard to know just the full extent of the problem because of the difficulties and tracking this type of violence.”

. Under existing law, firing a gun within city limits with “criminal negligence” — that would include celebratory gunfire — is a misdemeanor with punishment of up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Blair’s Law would double the fine.

Parson has said he supports the change, but he vetoed the legislation last year because it was teamed with another bill he opposed.

Sharp acknowledged that using Blair’s Law to address celebratory gunfire was like “killing an ant with a sledgehammer.”

“I wish we didn’t have to legislate our way out of this,” he said. “But you have to go that far because of how much it hasn’t been policed.”

Drane said laws prohibiting guns from being carried in certain public locations can help with reducing rates of celebratory gunfire.

“If you think about large crowded areas, if people are firing bullets into the air, there’s an even higher risk that people could get hit,” she said.

She said laws that restrict access to guns for younger people or promote safe gun storage could also help reduce the rate of celebratory gunfire.

Drane said the most effective way to prevent crime is for residents to understand that they’ll inevitably be caught for doing so.

“One of the biggest deterrents to crime is knowing that punishment is swift and certain,” she said. “If people don’t think that there’s a high likelihood of being caught, there could be some benefits of just enforcement.”

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

Booking a ride on the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority microtransit app, IRIS. Ridership on public transportation has fallen over the past decade. Officials see microtransit as a potential solution (Meg Cunningham/The Beacon).

For about as long as passengers have stepped onto buses, public transportation in most of Missouri has meant fixed routes and schedules. The idea of on-demand, point-to-point service as a public amenity was unheard of.

Today, those rides are being offered in Kansas City and St. Louis. Smaller Missouri cities are mulling whether microtransit — think publicly funded Uber-like service — could fill some of their public transportation needs.

And rural communities are touting microtransit as a powerful tool for getting people to work and essential appointments.

The growing interest in microtransit comes partly in response to anemic bus ridership. The decline started before the pandemic and accelerated after it hit.

Transit services responded by cutting routes, which meant ever fewer riders. Now communities are exploring whether more Uber-style on-demand rides could meet the needs of their riders — and their budgets.

Reviews of the experiments so far are mixed.

“We’re not in love with how it’s evolved,” said Jessica Gershman, the assistant executive director of planning at Metro Transit St. Louis.

She pointed to the city’s use of the on-demand program as partial fill-in for buses throughout the pandemic. Now, with recruitment of drivers back up, the city is looking at ways to make microtransit fulfill its original purpose: connecting riders to existing routes.

Using a mix of tax dollars and grants to hire private ride services, microtransit touts a low-cost method for extending the reach of public transportation. That could look like pickup service in a suburb to connect riders to the nearest bus line. Or providing cost-effective rides around service zones where a bus may not run frequently enough to meet someone’s needs.

But questions remain about the best way to move people around in cities, especially in less densely populated areas that can’t regularly fill a 35-foot city bus.

Transit systems and solutions differ from one city to the next. The federal government has yet to fully grasp the possibilities and hasn’t issued guidance to communities on how to use integrated systems.

But many people running microtransit programs in Missouri see it as the future. They say there is room for growth, especially in rural areas.

How Missouri uses microtransit as public transportation

In Kansas City and St. Louis, microtransit mostly complements bus routes. Columbia announced in late November that it’s exploring the idea.

“We want it to extend the reach of that bus or rail system,” said Gershman, the St. Louis official. “We’re not looking for a wholesale replacement.”

Microtransit launched in St. Louis in June 2020, shortly after a second version of the program rolled out in Kansas City. Some of the service zones provide rides to bus routes and train lines. In other zones, the public ride hailing gives overnight service for shift workers who can’t get where they need to go solely by bus or light rail.

Even before the pandemic, St. Louis saw ridership drop. From 2014 to 2019, ridership fell 24%. From 2020 to 2021, ridership fell another 42.7%, the largest year-over-year change the Metro system had ever seen.

The city contracts with Via to provide a fleet of minivans, some of which have been retrofitted for wheelchairs. Across the border in Illinois, St. Clair County uses the same contractor to provide continuous microtransit service.

Riders can book on an app, similar to Uber or Lyft, and an algorithm will create a carpool with others who are moving in the same direction. Some rides, like those that connect to other transportation hubs, are free. Others come with a small fee. When moving inside a service zone in Kansas City’s microtransit system, for example, riders pay $3 for a ride.

Kansas City’s newest microtransit program, IRIS, was introduced in the Northland just months before the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority announced it would suspend service in Gladstone. The cost of Gladstone’s bus service had nearly quadrupled, an increase that the city’s budget couldn’t handle.

Instead, Gladstone opted to pay KCATA $7,000 a month for a trial of IRIS. After launching in the Northland, IRIS was expanded to parts of Hickman Mills and south Kansas City.

In a tweet, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said the city was stepping back when it came to covering the cost of transit for nearby cities.

“Kansas City taxpayers have subsidized service for years for a number of surrounding communities and is declining to do so further,” Lucas said.

How efficient can microtransit be?

Kansas City’s microtransit program, IRIS, launched in March. On average, it costs the city about $29 a trip. Kansas City is seeing much of its demand for microtransit come from those traveling into the city from the Northland or Martin City. For the KCATA system as a whole, the cost per passenger in October was $1.88.

Ridership trends often show services peaking about six months after launch, said Tyler Means, the chief mobility and strategy officer at the KCATA. In Kansas City, demand for microtransit is still growing month-over-month.

“Microtransit is expensive per rider, yes,” said Art Guzzetti, the vice president of policy and mobility at the American Public Transit Association. “But it’s happening in places where the alternative is the fixed-route system. That is even more costly when you’re operating a big bus on a scheduled basis.”

But some reports have shown microtransit to be less efficient than running a fixed-route bus system.

According to Transit Center, a group working toward modernized and sustainable public transit solutions, ridership on Los Angeles’ microtransit service was maxing out at about 1,675 rides per week. The city was spending $14.50 per microtransit trip, twice what it spends on the average bus trip.

In Kansas City, the program served about 17,300 rides in October, compared to nearly 1.1 million bus rides.

In both Kansas City and St. Louis, demand for microtransit is still rising.

“It has grown exponentially,” Gershman said. “Every time we’ve increased our service hours or tweaked one of the zones to cover more ground, we’ve seen that demand filled.”

Gershman said the city is using data from microtransit rides to determine where bus routes may need to go as the city rebuilds some of its coverage areas, like in its North coverage zone.

“We see the demand pattern and know that if it increases enough, it should tip back over to mass transit,” Gershman said.

How could microtransit thrive as public transportation in Missouri?

A 2019 economic impact study from the Missouri Public Transit Association found that for every dollar spent on public transit, the investment generated $40 in economic activity.  In Kansas City and St. Louis, every dollar spent generated $33 and $41, respectively.

A soon-to-be published survey from the MPTA found that public transit in 2022 had 47 million rides. Still, a study in 2022 found that available public transit across Missouri falls short of the need in communities by 39 million rides, Kimberly Cella, the group’s executive director, said.

The state hasn’t historically invested heavily in bolstering transit, although a budget surplus let Missouri boost its investment over the past two years.

“We can’t really rely on the state for a lot of transit support,” Gershman said.

Missouri has to think creatively about how to connect rural and urban communities, KCATA’s Means said.

Rural communities “are going to shrink and age, and they’re going to need more services in areas that have just kind of been forgotten about,” he said. “So they need solutions like this to allow them to gain access to the resources they need.”

That’s part of what Kelly Ast, the executive director of New Growth Transit, is hoping to do in 14 rural counties in Missouri. Most are south of Kansas City and two are just outside of St. Louis.

Ast launched a network of volunteer drivers that offers rides to areas across the state. The program, hosted by the West Central Missouri Community Action Agency, began out of a need for rides to medical appointments. Those rides aim to improve access to health care and boost local economies.

What started as an effort to invest in community health prompted Ast to realize that rural Missourians first need better ways to get around.

“I just got really frustrated that it didn’t matter what we offered,” Ast said. “People just couldn’t get there.”

New Growth Transit uses volunteer drivers, often retirees looking for a fulfilling way to spend their time. And they can at least knock 65 cents a mile they drive off of their federal tax bill.

The group started exploring the program in 2019. Ast quickly realized that there was a need to get people to and from work and school. So services expanded. Now, riders just need to call 48 hours in advance to book a ride.

Public transit service times vary in rural areas, but most run from 7 or 8 a.m. to midafternoon, outside the hours of shift work that often dominates rural economies.

“We’re not even close to meeting that demand,” Ast said. “A lot of times, employment transportation is temporary for individuals that do work shift work. They have a vehicle down, they need to save some money to fix the vehicle, so microtransit really is a solution.”

Ast has seen the power microtransit can have as employers move into rural parts of the state or consolidate facilities. Employers are launching similar programs, called vanpools, to help their employees get to and from work.

She pointed to poultry industry employers in Cassville, which sits southwest of Branson near the border of Arkansas, who are tapping the services.

“The attendance is up for those individuals,” Ast said of employers using the service. “There’s just a lot of incentives. They can save money on the commute.”

Missouri’s investment

A report from the state’s supply chain task force recommended the state work with employers to establish dedicated microtransit commuting programs for workers.

The Missouri Department of Transportation is researching best practices for transit systems and employers on microtransit.

Meanwhile, transportation officials want to work more closely with employers on where they set up shop to better tie in with public transit.

“That’s the broader picture, right? We need to look at where we’re developing” worksites, said Cella at the MPTA. “And does that area have access to public transit? Because it’s critical, whether it’s for jobs or education or health care.”

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

Residents along the south edge of Kansas City have organized to block a proposed landfill that they say could erode their property values and threaten their health. (Chase Castor / The Beacon)

Subdivisions, restaurants and retail shops pop up around Lee’s Summit and Raymore amid rising property values as single-family homes spread across what was farmland just a few years ago.

But residents say a proposed 430-acre landfill could threaten that growth.

And they’ve rallied together to block it — raising money and deploying lobbyists to get a state law change that eluded them last year.

The proposed site inside the Kansas City limits sits across the street from some homes. It is less than a mile from a 1,300-home neighborhood in Raymore and 2 miles from an elementary school in Lee’s Summit.

So residents along that south edge of Kansas City have organized to block the landfill that they say could erode their property values and threaten their health.

And they say they’re motivated by what feels like a lack of candor from the owners of the company proposing the landfill.

“We were going to need more than writing letters and making phone calls,” said Jennifer Phanton, treasurer of Kill the Fill PAC. “We would need to unite as a community.”

Politicians and lobbyists at the Statehouse say Missouri has rarely seen so many people become so active over legislation targeted for a narrow geographic area — to keep something out of their collective backyard.

A map featured on Kill The Fill’s website illustrates the proposed landfill site in south Kansas City. (killthefill.org)

Kansas City passed a moratorium on new landfill construction that lasts until June 1, 2024. A Kansas City-commissioned study found that regional landfills are currently at 67% capacity. In the meantime, opponents of burying the city’s garbage in the area have begun lobbying state lawmakers to update a law that would make it harder to channel that solid waste to the site.

One state law requires Kansas City to get approval from cities within half a mile from a proposed landfill. Lawmakers and residents want that barrier stretched to a full mile — effectively blocking the possibility of a landfill at the site in south Kansas City.

Grassroots Kansas City landfill opposition

A Facebook group — now sporting nearly 4,500 members — marked the first step in blocking the landfill. The group shares updates and prompts people to help in the anti-landfill campaign with things like testifying in Jefferson City for the law change.

During the spring legislative session, state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican, and state Rep. Mike Haffner, a Republican from Pleasant Hill, both sponsored bills that would give Kansas City suburbs the right to increase their buffer from any landfill to a full mile.

Nearly 500 people submitted testimony opposing the landfill last spring for identical legislation in the Missouri House and Senate. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have said that the effort marks one of the most successful examples of grassroots organizing they’ve seen.

“They have worked their tails off, gone nonstop trying to raise money, raise awareness,” Brattin said. “(It’s) unlike anything that I’ve seen since I’ve been in the legislature.”

Phanton, who lives in Grandview, had never been involved with politics before. The same was true for many of those she was working with to block the landfill.

“When it comes to threatening your homes, you will go to any lengths to protect your investment and your children,” Phanton said. “This is new for all of us.”

But after spending some time in the Capitol, Phanton realized that it would take more than testifying. The owners of KC Recycle & Waste Solutions, Jennifer and Aden Monheiser, hired at least 17 lobbyists in Jefferson City. Raymore, the city leading the opposition, had three.

The bill broadening the barrier between suburbs and a Kansas City landfill passed the House almost unanimously. Then Republican state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, who represents a district south of St. Louis, blocked a vote on the legislation with a filibuster.

“I do not support the government picking winners and losers in the private sector,” Coleman said at the time. “We should have a serious policy discussion about setting standards for what the rules should be regarding where landfills should be based on actual environmental impacts.”

Brattin and other senators filibustered budget bills in response. Eventually, the dueling filibusters ended after Brattin and other members cut a deal with Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican, and Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican.

But the show of force against changing landfill statutes showed Phanton something: Testimony wasn’t enough.

That meant raising money. And a lot of it. She started a political action committee to hire lobbyists. She tapped the network on Facebook and since then Kill the Fill PAC has raised over $135,000 from more than 740 donors — enough to retain a lobbying firm run by former Missouri House Speaker Steven Tilley.

Lee’s Summit Democratic state Rep. Kemp Strickler said getting a bill to the floor in the state Senate can require help from Capitol insiders.

“To get stuff through the Senate, it takes something additional — the rules are sort of different on that side,” he said. “I don’t know if it’ll be effective or not, but I think there’s so much on the line that I understand why this would be an additional attempt to try to get the attention of some lawmakers.”

The bill had bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. The bill failing in 2023 despite that support is indicative of a larger problem in Jefferson City, Pleasant Hill’s Haffner said.

“The question I get asked all the time is, ‘Why couldn’t you take care of this last year?’” Haffner said. “And it just goes to show the dysfunction that takes place within Jefferson City.”

How lawmakers plan to kill the fill in 2024

Part of the deal Brattin cut with O’Laughlin and Rowden last spring included a pledge that legislation blocking the landfill would be one of the first to make it to the Senate floor in the 2024 session.

As the metro-area delegation worked to raise the issue in the Capitol in 2023, Brattin acknowledged that many lawmakers in the Capitol were unaware of the proposed landfill and parts of state law geared specifically to Kansas City. When combined with the Senate leader’s promise to bring the bill to the floor before infighting can stall it, Brattin said he feels confident some form of legislation can make it to a vote.

So confident, in fact, that he’s considering expanding the radius for approval needed around the landfill site to a mile and a quarter or a mile and a half.

“I don’t see much capability for any shenanigans,” Brattin said. “At least I hope not.”

Haffner plans to introduce legislation identical to what passed the House last year. He’s also introducing another bill to change how the Department of Natural Resources OKs landfills.

Brattin and Haffner plan to file their legislation when bill prefiling for the 2024 session opens in December.

“This statute has not been looked at in years,” he said. “So we are going to revamp it so that it doesn’t happen to another community somewhere else in Missouri.”

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

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).

Inside every major contract Missouri signs with a business sits a clause about boycotting Israel.

All but the smallest companies have to agree not to participate in any movement that aims to boycott, divest from or sanction companies in Israel.

Missouri isn’t alone. At least 36 other states have anti-BDS (boycott, divest or sanction) measures that bar state contractors from refusing to do business in Israel, or otherwise boycotting or divesting from the country or its occupied territories.

As states started passing anti-BDS legislation in 2015, the laws drew protests from First Amendment advocates. They argued that boycotting is protected by the U.S. Constitution. In some court challenges, judges agreed. So states scaled back the reach of their anti-BDS laws.

After at least two years of efforts and scaling back its own law, Missouri passed its version of the legislation in 2020. Since then, a movement once restricted to boycotts of Israel has expanded to other environmental, social or governance (ESG) measures, as Missouri has pioneered, and other states look to follow a similar expansion.

The beginnings of anti-BDS legislation

The BDS movement was formed by the League of Arab States in the mid-1940s. It barred trade with Israel and encouraged boycotting groups that still chose to do business with Israel.

In 1977, the U.S. Congress passed anti-boycott legislation that prohibited American citizens or businesses from refusing to do business with Israel at the request of other foreign governments.

Opponents of the BDS movement, like the Anti-Defamation League, say it is set out to delegitimize Israel’s right to statehood.

The movement lost momentum for a number of decades, but was revived in the United States in the early 2000s. In 2015, states began adopting anti-BDS laws. Illinois was the first state to pass anti-BDS legislation that barred taxpayer-funded pension funds from being invested in companies that boycott Israel. Congress has looked to follow the lead of states by introducing versions of its own, but they have yet to gain traction.

Since then, dozens of other states have passed laws of their own. Kansas passed its law in 2017. And, after failing two years in a row, Missouri passed its law in 2020.

States have a business interest in Israel’s success. Israel’s influence as an ally and trading partner of the United States has grown, with an annual $50 billion exchanged between the two countries for goods and services.

Missouri has a trade relationship of its own with Israel. In 2022, Missouri exported over $131 million in goods and services to Israel. Kansas sent $36.5 million in goods in the same time frame.

Since 1996, Missouri businesses have received more than $58 million in foreign military financing to provide materials for the Israel Defense Forces, according to the Jewish Virtual Library. Those companies include Remington Arms and Evraz Oregon Steel Mills. Missouri and Israel also rely heavily on each other for chemical production for things like fertilizers.

A handful of states, including Kansas and Arkansas, have been sued by the ACLU or other First Amendment advocates. They argue that by prohibiting boycotts, states step on the constitutional rights set out in a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware. 

ACLU attorney Brian Hauss has led some First Amendment challenges to anti-BDS laws. He said that after lower courts issued temporary pauses on some state laws, they were revised by lawmakers so that those legal challenges no longer applied. Originally, many of the state laws barred individuals and companies from boycotting Israel in any way if they wanted to become a contractor of the state.

“After we won those victories, the states modified their laws,” Hauss said. To narrow the law, states then said that these limitations only apply to companies with over 10 employees and contracts over $100,000.

“There was a strategy on the part of those states to evade appellate review of those decisions,” Hauss said. “So that was effectively the end of the road for all of those cases.”

That’s what played out in Kansas in 2018.

The ACLU sued the state, arguing that its law infringes on First Amendment rights for individuals. Kansas lawmakers amended the law after the group represented a contractor with the state’s education department, who said she could not sign the boycott disclosure in good conscience.

A judge in the U.S. District Court for Kansas ruled in favor of the ACLU, offering a temporary halt to the law while it considered arguments of constitutionality further.

“While the Kansas Law may have been passed by the Legislature with flying colors, that showing merely would demonstrate that one state legislature had enacted a statute,” the judge wrote in his opinion. “Such a showing would not place the Kansas Law on the same level as an amendment to our Constitution — the very first amendment adopted by our founders and one ratified by three fourths of our states.”

After the judge issued the injunction, Kansas lawmakers revised the law.

The effects of anti-BDS legislation 

It’s difficult to measure the impact of anti-BDS legislation, Hauss said. Because states looked to narrow the scope of their laws by keeping them limited to large-dollar contracts, that inherently puts more on the line for the companies who may wish to exercise this form of freedom of expression.

“It’s a lot harder in some respects for a company with a very, very large government contract on the line to walk away from the livelihood, not just at the company, but also their workers,” Hauss said.

There have been few examples of states terminating contracts with companies over their refusal to work with Israel. Most famously, the Illinois state pension overseers announced in 2021 that they would divest from Unilever, the parent company of Ben and Jerry’s, over its decision to stop selling their products in the West Bank.

Missouri also launched an inquiry into investment firm Morningstar after it purchased a company with a product that suggested it would be dangerous to do business in the same area. An additional 18 states signed on to the inquiry, and the subsidiary of Morningstar changed its practices. The Missouri attorney general’s office said the investigation is ongoing.

But now, what started as a prohibition on boycotting Israel has morphed into a larger movement taking aim at other political or social causes which are broadly characterized as ESG scores, or ways of measuring environmental, social or governance impact.

“We predicted there’s no way this restriction is limited, ultimately, to boycotts of Israel,” Hauss said. “It will inevitably become a political football for any party in power that wants to suppress protest against whatever groups they deemed sufficient.”

A Texas pension fund, for example, switched investment firms after leaders at the firm publicly recognized a business interest in investing in climate change prevention efforts. In the eyes of some Texas officials who legislate around a booming oil industry, investing in climate change prevention was akin to divesting from those companies.

The move toward anti-ESG policies in state bank accounts and pensions is somewhat new. Missouri considered legislation in the 2023 session that looked to bar state pension funds from being managed by companies that promote ESG.

The legislation failed, but Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft took a new step for states looking to reign in ESG practices. He created a rule, which required no legislative review, that requires financial advisers to obtain written consent on transactions that may consider ESG-minded approaches to investing.

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

County leaders say the property tax assessment freeze is vaguely written and could open them up to lawsuits, depending on how they interpret the law (Meg Cunningham / The Beacon).

The freezing of property tax assessments for Missourians 62 and older looks, at best, fuzzy.

The state adopted a law this year that lets counties give that property tax assessment freeze when homeowners become eligible for Social Security. And it allowed counties to throw in a yearly tax credit to give older residents even more tax relief.

But counties don’t yet fully understand the new rules. Local leaders have called the language “poorly designed” and “very ill-written.”

So far, five counties including Jackson have decided to freeze property assessments under the new law. Commissioners in other counties say they’ll follow suit — when they better understand what they can or can’t do.

Meanwhile, various taxing districts wonder about the cost to their budgets. Capping property assessments for older taxpayers means running schools, libraries, police forces and other public services with less money, or leaning more heavily on younger property owners to make up the difference.

Lawmakers — lobbied by confused local officials — say some clarification could come when they meet again next year.

Losing tax revenue

Jackson, Greene and St. Charles counties — three of the biggest in the state — have passed  versions of the assessment freeze. Lawmakers in St. Louis County refined a proposal last week and will take a final vote this week.

But freezing property assessments comes with a cost: a loss of future tax revenue.

St. Louis County Councilwoman Lisa Clancy said that worries her.

“I am concerned about the impact, mostly to public education and libraries,” she said, “but also to other public safety functions like fire.”

The St. Louis County measure mimics what Jackson County did by limiting the tax break to homes valued at $550,000 or less.

But Clancy worries a home-value cap could make the measure more inequitable. Areas with lower property values already have smaller tax bases to pay for things like schools and fire departments. And she said younger residents shouldn’t be overburdened to spare retirees.

“You’re pitting grandparents against their grandchildren and schools that have been financially struggling for years,” she said.

At the same time, counties worry that giving older homeowners a tax break could make local governments more reliant on younger taxpayers whose property tax burdens will continue to get bigger.

Dennis Ganahl, the managing director of MO Tax Relief Now, which advocates for tax breaks for seniors, said that clarity about the new law could come in revisions from the General Assembly in the spring.

Ganahl said he is in talks with 26 counties about passing an assessment freeze. Another three counties, including Boone and Franklin counties, may put the question to voters.

Instead of automatically freezing a property assessment, he argues that homeowners should submit applications for the tax break.

“If somebody feels they’re too wealthy to apply for the tax-free, they don’t have to,” he said. “But if somebody feels that they do need the tax (break), there will be an application.”

In Jackson County, seniors who want the freeze will need to submit an application heading into the 2024 tax year.

In Greene County, the first in the state to pass a freeze, 90% of the library’s funding comes from property taxes. Regina Greer Cooper, the executive director of the Springfield-Greene County Library District, wants local leaders to wait for legislative revisions.

“There is no way for us to make an educated projection of how much this will affect us,” she said. “It is very vague and unclear as to who is eligible and what kind of credit it may be.”

Who’s eligible for a property tax assessment freeze?

The law lays out a number of tweaks to Missouri tax code intended to provide relief for older homeowners who may be on fixed incomes. It lets counties freeze assessments for a person’s primary residence if they are eligible for Social Security.

But county leaders are unsure who exactly qualifies.

Some counties, like Clay County, say that tying eligibility for the tax break to Social Security eligibility could leave out people on some pensions, like retired teachers or railroad workers. Clay County formed a task force to figure out how they could pass a measure. In Platte County, county lawmakers are discussing a version of their own.

“We definitely want to make sure that all seniors get the opportunity to be able to take advantage of this,” said Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte. “That’s a huge deal to us.”

In the meantime, Clancy said, county commissions that haven’t frozen assessments under the new law feel pressure to act. And older voters traditionally have higher voter turnout.

“We’re getting criticized because we are spending time on it, but the state legislature didn’t,” she said. “There’s so many things about this policy that have left us all across the state interpreting it in different ways.”

But Ganahl, speaking for the group lobbying for property tax breaks for older homeowners, said counties can act now.

“We think the bill is very clear. It says you’re eligible when you’re old enough to apply for Social Security benefits — today that age is 62,” he said. “It does not say that you have to be receiving Social Security. It doesn’t say that only Social Security recipients can receive it.”

But some county officials see a far murkier law that could trigger lawsuits.

“We risk the provisions that are compromises being thrown out and then having to revert back to just the bare-bones, across-the-board tax cut,” Clancy said.

Critics of the law change say it was rushed through the legislature. In Gasconade County in June, the county collector described the law as “kind of rammed through” the General Assembly and “very ill-written.” In Cape Girardeau County in September, the presiding commissioner said the language was “poorly-designed and poorly-executed.”

Even the anti-tax Show-Me Institute has criticisms of the law and the way it was rolled out.

David Stokes, the group’s director of municipal policy, wrote in testimony against a proposal in Camden County.

“This bill is every bit as much of a tax increase on non-senior citizens as it is tax relief for some senior citizens,” Stokes said.

“Giving one sector of the population — senior citizens (and the wealthiest sector at that) — a special tax deal is a terrible idea,” Stokes wrote in another post.

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

Before hiring Aramark, the Department of Corrections was in charge of providing food, dining and staffing services in the state’s prisons (Getty Images).

Missouri volunteer prison labor tends gardens that yield about 100 tons of fresh produce a year.

For the most part, that food goes to local charities.

The prisoners who grow it complain they get little fresh food. Instead, they get a lot of bologna.

They say they’re served portions they consider too small and unappetizing. In some places, they say they don’t get so much as salt and pepper to season it.

Many skip what the prison dishes up and spend what little money they can earn at prison jobs or cajole from their families on things like honey buns and bags of cooked chicken purchased in a commissary.

Gripes about prison food are as old as prisons. Lawsuits and broken contracts with correctional food service providers around the country cite maggots, unpaid labor and inappropriate staff relationships.

In January, Gov. Mike Parson signed the state to a five-year, $45.7 million contract with nationwide food and concessions provider Aramark. Its subsidiary Aramark Correctional Services serves 450 correctional facilities nationwide.

Aramark also serves the statewide corrections system in Nevada. After complaints about small portions, a lack of nutrition and expired food, the Nevada Department of Corrections said in a meeting in late August that it is revamping its food program while Aramark conducts a comprehensive review of its operations.

At first, people held in Missouri prisons welcomed the change of the outside contractor. They got better food and more meal choices.

“It was really good. Like, this is awesome,” C.R., a prisoner at Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, told The Beacon. He asked to be identified by his initials out of fear of retaliation. “We thought, ‘We’re not gonna do a commissary as much, not gonna have to bother our people (for money) as much.”

But interviews with several prisoners and the relatives of others suggest it was a short-lived dining hall honeymoon. Once visits from corporate executives slowed, those people told The Beacon, the quality of the meals deteriorated.

“I don’t even eat in the kitchen because the food is bad, really,” said Gerald Johnson, who’s held at the Jefferson City Correctional Center. “There (have) been a couple of times where the food was good. But when Aramark (corporate leadership) leaves — I’m talking about a week and four days where every meal was bologna.”

Missouri’s contract with Aramark

Before hiring Aramark, the Department of Corrections was in charge of providing food, dining and staffing services in the state’s prisons.

The Aramark contract calls for three meals a day for about 23,500 people at an average of $1.77 per meal. State employees got the option to transfer their employment to the Philadelphia-based company.

Before beginning the Aramark contract, the state was spending $5.69 per prisoner per day for food and staffing. Under the Aramark contract, taxpayers spend $5.31 per prisoner per day for food and staffing.

“If you also take into consideration the considerable inflation-driven recent rise in the cost of food, the savings are significant,” DOC spokesperson Karen Pojmann said in an emailed statement.

It’s unclear where an average of $1.77 per meal stacks up nationwide, said Leslie Soble, who wrote a report, “Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison,” for prison reform group Impact Justice.

“It isn’t specifically about the price per meal,” Soble said, “it’s about what places are doing with that.”

Some prisons in other states may spend less per meal but focus on sourcing local ingredients for a lower rate, while others may be cutting costs in other ways.

“There are places that bake all of their own bread in the kitchen and produce a better quality product for less money than it costs to purchase an ultraprocessed bread product from a big distributor,” Soble said.

Nutrition guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommend that daily menus should reach an average of 2,800 calories and less than 3.5 grams of sodium per person. Aramark is on the hook for three meals a day, seven days a week, including religious or other specialized diets.

The company is also obligated to provide things like salt and pepper with meals, under the terms of its Missouri contract. But C.R., the incarcerated Missourian at the Pacific, Mo., prison, said that in a visit to the facility, one Aramark executive told prisoners the company isn’t contracted to provide those seasonings.

“I understand that you’re a business and have to make money, but they’ve taken salt and pepper away,” C.R. said. “If they put some salt and pepper on it, a lot of the meals would be amazing.”

Aramark is also responsible for supplying cleaning and sanitation supplies. But prisoners who spoke with The Beacon said they are scarce in their facilities. At the Jefferson City prison, the water and ice machine is broken with water running on the ground.

“Where the ice and water comes out, it’s moldy and it smells,” Johnson added. “It’s disgusting.”

Antwann Johnson, another prisoner in Jefferson City, questioned where the money was going after he heard that the kitchen had to get cleaning supplies from another division of the building.

“Where is the funding going?” Antwann Johnson said. “Sometimes we don’t even get adequate chemicals to clean these places and sanitize things properly.”

Complaints about privatized prison food services come up across the country. Michigan signed a three-year $145 million contract with Aramark meant to expire in September 2016. But that state ended the deal a year early after problems including maggots in food and inappropriate relationships between Aramark kitchen staffers and prisoners. Understaffing and staff turnover were also issues. The two parties said that the decision to terminate the contract was mutual.

Once Michigan switched back to a state-run food program, problems with staff diminished, the Michigan Department of Corrections spokesperson told the Detroit Free Press.

In a comment provided to The Beacon, an Aramark spokesperson said the company follows federal and state requirements when it comes to food.

“Our team of registered dietitians worked with the Missouri DOC to develop a menu to meet nutritional guidelines and dietary needs. Our food safety processes and procedures are industry leading; if issues are raised, we work to fix them quickly,” a spokesperson said in an email.

The realities of prison food in Missouri

Some meals have improved and people incarcerated seem to have more variety in the typical rotating menu, according to accounts shared with The Beacon.

But the same people report that some things have declined under Aramark. When the state was running food services, C.R. said, prisoners had access to powdered milk at mealtimes that they could use to help fill up when they had small portion sizes or a meal they didn’t want to eat. Now people are served milk cartons that are spoiled often enough that people have noticed a trend.

“It’s something to fill you up if the meal is kind of shorted,” C.R. said. “We used to get three or four cups of milk, like the small little cups. Now, they give us one eight-ounce carton of milk. Sometimes they’re fully spoiled. Once you take it from the window, they’re not gonna take it back.”

Compared to the general population, people in prison have poorer mental and physical health, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Studies have shown that people who spend time in prison are more likely to have high blood pressure, asthma, cancer, arthritis and infectious diseases.

Despite some facilities operating the gardens, they don’t produce enough to rely on that food to feed the state’s incarcerated population, the DOC said.

“Not every facility has a garden. It’s impossible to predict how much food will be produced in any given growing season, and clear divisions are in place between food service and restorative justice,” Pojmann said, adding that some produce is available for purchase at a commissary.

Breakfast is generally the best meal of the day inside Missouri prisons. Residents are often served eggs, pancakes or oatmeal.  Lunch and dinner draw the most complaints, said Christina Shannon, the fiancee of someone in diagnostic intake at Western Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in St. Joseph.

“He is not a picky eater,” Shannon said. “The portions are so small and at lunch and dinner they have bologna, almost every day they have it for lunch or dinner. At least five days out of the week he does not eat lunch or dinner, he’ll just eat the cake or cookies.”

Shannon’s fiance has access to the commissary every two weeks and access to things like Slim Jim-style meat sticks, but he’s limited in how many he can purchase.

Many prisoners use the commissary to make their own meals. Antwann Johnson said he hasn’t eaten from the kitchen for seven years. His family sends him money so he can shop the commissary to make his own meals. But he’s seen prices go up. For example, a small bag of precooked chicken breasts costs him nearly $7, Johnson said.

He spends on things like chicken, pasta, oatmeal and powdered milk.

“I have a strict diet,” Johnson said. “But not everyone has these resources.”

Prison meals are required to be nutritionally balanced, but that doesn’t always mean they’re appetizing. Prisoners who lean more heavily on the commissary run the risk of having too much sodium in their diets, or not enough of other nutrients.

One study of county jail and commissary diets found levels of vitamin D, magnesium and omega-3s that fall short of dietary guidelines. The commissary sells multivitamins.

One answer is offering healthier commissary items, which the National Commission on Correctional Health Care included in its 2023 position statement on nutritional wellness in prisons. The group accredits facilities across the country, but it doesn’t share the credentials publicly. Barbara Wakeen, a registered dietitian nutritionist at NCCHC, said she most often gets complaints about healthier commissary items because they don’t sell.

Ricky Camplain, an epidemiologist at Indiana University, said commissary food is one of the few places that give a prisoner autonomy, even if the choices aren’t the healthiest. Most times, a registered dietitian designs a menu in prisons to ensure that it is nutritionally balanced, but the same thing doesn’t happen in commissary, she said.

“Almost all food is designed for high shelf life, because they’re selling it kind of like a convenience store,” Camplain said. “If you just eat commissary and avoid the kitchen for 10 years, your sodium levels are going to be extremely high.”

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

From 2018 to 2020, an average of 70 Missouri women died in the year after they gave birth, peaking in 2020 at 85 (File photo/Canva).

Social isolation during the pandemic put Missouri’s Black moms in greater danger that their partner would kill them.

A report from the state’s maternal mortality review board found that from 2018 to 2020, homicide was the third-leading cause of death for Missouri moms. Black women made up 75% of those deaths. Among those homicides, guns were the sole means of death and all of them occurred in Missouri’s urban areas.

Isolation during the pandemic “was basically the perfect storm,” said Dr. Traci Johnson, an obstetrician at University Health and the chair-elect of the state’s maternal mortality review board.

Across those years, an average of 70 women died in the year after they gave birth, peaking in 2020 at 85. That average is up from 61 deaths a year from 2017 to 2019, the last time Missouri analyzed its maternal mortality rate.

In each of the years covered by the report, an average of six Black women were shot by current or former partners. Half those homicides came when the mother had previously suffered domestic violence.

Mental health conditions mark the leading cause of maternal deaths, rising to an average of 25 a year. Early reports showed an average of 17.

MaryAnne Metheny, the CEO of the Kansas City domestic violence shelter Hope House, said the pandemic brought more intense cases of abuse. She also said people trying to impose control on their partners can become more violent when an infant arrives.

“The first year after pregnancy can be a very dangerous time for domestic violence victims,” she said. “During the height of COVID, what we saw in general was that the model or intensity of abuse skyrocketed.”

FBI statistics show Missouri’s aggravated assault rate in 2020 ran far above the nationwide average. It grew from about 360 aggravated assaults per 100,000 people in 2019 to 413 in 2020. Across the United States, that figure jumped significantly less, to about 280 assaults per 100,000 people from 250 in 2018.

Responses to the pandemic exposed holes in the health care system and gave women less access to their doctors and support systems. That made it more difficult for health care providers to have candid conversations about what patients experienced at home.

“You couldn’t get to the physician or the clinician to tell us in a safe way,” Johnson said, “because your visits are telehealth and you might be in the room with the person who’s harming you or threatening you.”

Without confidential visits with doctors, experts say women are less likely to report the violence they face in their homes.

“They may not want to go public with what may be going on at home,” said Tracy Russell, the executive director of Nurture KC. “And so you have to have those trusted relationships.”

Russell also emphasized the importance of mental health support for new fathers in much the way health care providers and community organizers are making strides to support the mental health of new moms.

“It’s time that we invest in that and recognize the responsibility of partners in the family,” she said, “and the importance of partners in the family.”

Plus, Russell said, Missouri’s abortion ban will mean more unwanted pregnancies.

“We’ve not given enough credence to the complexity of that issue,” she said, “and the dynamics that are created as a result of carrying an unwanted pregnancy.”

The role of firearms in domestic violence situations

One study of 11 major cities found the presence of a gun in a home with domestic violence increased the chance of homicide by 500%.

Major cities in Missouri, like Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield, have looked for ways to pass gun safety measures to make their communities safer and reduce homicide rates. But Missouri state law does not allow municipalities to pass their own legislation on the issue.

Russell said cities should be able to pass ordinances addressing gun violence and the needs of their own communities.

“We couldn’t have this conversation if we didn’t talk about unfettered access to guns,” Russell said. “There has to be the means for this to occur, and the inability of the city to be able to adopt its own ordinances, according to community needs, is a problem.”

A February 2023 poll from St. Louis University found that 69% of Missourians favored mental health background checks before someone can purchase a gun. Another 60% favor red flag laws that would allow courts to temporarily remove guns from people deemed unsafe, while 25% oppose them.

In Kansas, people convicted of domestic violence are prohibited from possessing firearms if they have been convicted within the preceding five years.

St. Louis has one of the highest homicide rates in the nation. St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones wants to ban anyone 18 or younger from buying bullets without parental consent, and she wants to ban devices that can turn semiautomatic handguns into automatic weapons capable of firing a burst of bullets with a single pull of the trigger.

Gov. Mike Parson told cities to “stay in your lanes” on gun control.

“Cities can’t just go out there and do what they want to do, and when there is a constitutional issue to it, or state legislature to it, they can’t supersede that,” Parson said last week in response to Jones’ proposals. “…You’ve got to obey the law, is the way I look at it, and there are no exceptions.”

Attorney General Andrew Bailey also wrote a letter to Jones saying the state would “resist any effort to infringe on the right of the people of Missouri to keep and bear arms.”

Housing a top challenge for domestic violence victims 

A lack of somewhere else to live can make it harder for mothers to leave unsafe situations. A report from Rutgers University found that the way the coronavirus amplified poverty made it more difficult for women experiencing domestic violence to find a place to live.

“It can take someone an average of seven times to leave before they’re able to leave for good,” Metheny said. “And often that is because of the obstacles that are in their way.”

It’s a situation where providers and community health organizations see room for policy interventions.

“It’s a policy change, looking at funding and redistribution of funding to places that support pregnant women,” Johnson said. “It’s a choice when the government decides where to put those funds.”

Johnson said taxpayers might be able to protect mothers better by giving them services like transportation, access to safe neighborhoods and quality medical treatment.

“They’re all based on policy decisions,” she said. “If we put funding in that area, then it will make the system less strained for vulnerable patients.”

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

Of the 11 versions of an abortion-rights constitutional amendment submitted to the secretary of state, supporters appear focused on six of them (Astrid Riecken/Getty Images).

The fight over the Missouri abortion ban begins with language.

Eager to once again legalize the procedure in the state after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year made way for the General Assembly to ban it, abortion-rights supporters have been floating 11 versions of a petition to ask voters for a change in November 2024.

They submitted those would-be changes to the state constitution to Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft to sort out what sort of summary could actually show up on ballots.

Ashcroft, a Republican abortion opponent and 2024 candidate for governor, crafted ballot language that supporters found misleading and designed to sink petitions in a public vote. His office’s summaries seemed to invite a challenge that would delay for months any group’s ability to circulate petitions.

The physician who filed the petitions has sued Ashcroft and will face off with his office at a court hearing on Sept. 11.

Meanwhile, abortion-rights groups fight over language themselves while they look for the strongest changes they can make and still convince a majority of Missouri voters to cast “yes” ballots.

Of the 11 versions of the petition submitted to Ashcroft, abortion-rights supporters appear focused on six of them.

One would promise the right to abortion flat out. The others would give state lawmakers room to regulate. Three versions would let the General Assembly ban abortion after fetal viability (a point that’s coming earlier in pregnancy with medical advances). Two other versions would protect the right of abortion at least up to 24 weeks of gestation, three weeks before the end of the second trimester.

In the summary written by his office for the 11 different abortion rights initiative petition proposals, Ashcroft says the measures will allow for “dangerous, unregulated abortions” without requiring a medical license. If the summary language remains unchanged, things like sample ballots would show voters only Ashcroft’s summary, not the full text of the amendment.

Ashcroft contends the petitions are misleadingly worded to hide the extent of what abortion-rights passage would mean.

“My office is committed to protecting voters from misinformation,” he said in an Aug. 18 op-ed  in The Missouri Times, a conservative website. 

In a lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union accused the secretary of state of politicizing what should be essentially a bookkeeping role.

“Missourians want the right to make personal decisions about their reproductive health care … free from government interference,” ACLU spokesperson Tom Bastian said in a statement to The Beacon. “Out-of-touch politicians (want) to suppress the right to vote on reproductive rights.”

Dr. Anna Fitz-James submitted the 11 original petitions to the secretary of state. The ACLU of Missouri is litigating the case in state courts.

In the meantime, Fitz-James and Missourians for Constitutional Freedom stand as the public face of the drive to put a question to voters. Campaign finance records show the group formed in March.

While that group hasn’t commented publicly about the petition campaign, multiple abortion-rights groups are huddling privately to balance their desire to make abortion legal in as many situations as possible against what could actually pass in 2024.

Polling from August 2022 shows that about 48% of Missourians support a constitutional amendment wiping out Missouri’s existing abortion ban. Roughly 40% oppose legalizing abortion.

The competing Missouri abortion legalization proposals

All the versions of the “Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative” start with similar language and lay out broad abortion rights.

They would promise “the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive health care, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions.”

That mimics language that passed in Michigan and that voters in Ohio will consider in November.

The Missouri petitions lay out broad access to abortion. Kathryn Abrams, a law professor and social organizing researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, spent eight months interviewing abortion-rights organizers in Missouri.

The question at hand, she said, was whether the recent past should be the “ceiling or the floor” for Missouri abortion rights.

She said discussions among the activist groups behind the proposals centered around whether to return Missouri to something like when Roe v. Wade — the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that effectively legalized abortion in 1973, and got reversed last year — was the law. Or whether to ask voters for stronger abortion rights.

“A lot of groups in the state …said Roe was never more than the floor,” Abrams said.

Should fetal viability be the standard?

In five of the six versions that those with knowledge of the petitions say appear to be moving ahead, the language would give lawmakers the power to pass laws that regulate abortion at some point in the pregnancy. Three versions allow bans once a fetus is viable — or could likely survive beyond the womb. Two other versions would leave room for bans on abortion beyond 24 weeks into a pregnancy.

The petition that passed in Michigan last year and the Ohio petition up for a vote this fall left room for legislators to ban abortion at the point of fetal viability. The petitions in those states and the proposals for Missouri define fetal viability as the point in pregnancy when clinicians conclude a fetus likely could sustain survival outside of the uterus without the use of “extraordinary medical measures.”

But some of the groups want a ban on any abortion limits. Pamela Merritt, the executive director of Medical Students for Choice, said she won’t back a petition that includes language about fetal viability or 24 weeks of gestation.

“To me, it’s cleaner,” she said. “It’s as clear as that…. Anything else is a solution in search of a problem.”

Merritt said a simpler version would have made it harder for Ashcroft to slow down the signature gathering process — supporters need about 172,000 signatures by mid-May — by arguing about ballot summary language.

“Give him the least amount of words to work with,” she said. “That would have been my recommendation.”

But polling suggests Missourians appear more likely to support something in the middle — abortion access in some cases, but not all.

The August 2022 poll from St. Louis University and pollster YouGov found 58% of respondents supported abortion access at eight weeks and only 40% supported that right at 15 weeks.

Parental consent for minors and protections for clinicians 

Two of the six versions still in play would leave room for laws that insist on parental consent before a minor could obtain an abortion.

But those two versions of the petition would still give a minor an exemption from parental consent if a clinician, “in good faith judgment,” believed seeking that consent put the patient at significant risk of emotional or physical harm. They would also offer a consent exemption if the minor is mature and capable of consenting to an abortion, or at times when obtaining consent would not be in their best interest. The proposals don’t specify how those judgments would be made.

All versions of the petitions also lay out protections for those seeking an abortion and for those providing abortions.

The proposed amendments would bar prosecution of people based on how their pregnancy ends — a miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion. The same concept would apply to abortion providers or those helping someone to get an abortion.

Abortion rights advocates sort out language

Merritt said she’s worried organizers may be tempted to compromise on what she thinks are essential parts of any petition. Just because abortion-rights supporters added certain restrictions, she said, doesn’t necessarily make them good or productive.

Merritt pointed to Ohio. Similar to what Republican lawmakers hope to do in Missouri, lawmakers there asked voters to weigh in on a constitutional amendment, not mentioning abortion, that would raise the amount of support needed for a constitutional amendment to pass. Voters rejected the amendment.

“Everybody who showed up in August knew that they were voting on whether or not Ohioans would be able to determine at a future ballot, abortion or no abortion,” she said.

At the same time, abortion opponents say the language paints things with broad strokes. Ingrid Duran, the state legislative director at the National Right to Life Committee, said she reads the petitions as “intentionally vague.”

While some of Missouri’s versions define things like “fetal viability” or “government,” Duran said she thinks some essential explanations were left out of the conversation, like the mention of “respectful birthing conditions.”

“What the 11 proposals are trying to do is just trying to get all of the fearmongering and concerns that happened post-Dobbs with one broad stroke,” Duran said. “It says respectful birthing conditions and I was like, ‘What does that mean? What is respectful birthing? Respectful to whom?’”

The hearing over summary language is set for Sept. 11, but Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem, who is hearing the case, said those involved should be prepared for an appeal on his decision.

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

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft testifies before a Missouri House committee in 2020 (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

During the 2023 legislative session, Missouri lawmakers looked to follow the lead of other Republican-led states by curbing environmentally minded investing practices, which they disparaged as “woke.”

The attempt to ban state involvement with banks that prioritize climate action or other socially driven investments fell by the wayside. That failure came as a relief to groups as diverse as the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and the state’s Sierra Club chapter.

But now, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has used unusual powers of his office to create new restrictions around investing with a climate sustainability or social justice component and how banks can practice it.

Ashcroft says his rule is the first of its kind, placing Missouri on the cutting edge of how some states might think about regulating ESG, or “environmental, social and governance,” investing. The practice takes into account social concerns and personal beliefs.

Ashcroft is one of the few secretaries of state whose offices manage securities. After the General Assembly failed to pass any legislation related to reining in ESG practices, Ashcroft said, he used his authority to set the new rule.

But the business groups that opposed the legislature’s moves in the 2023 session voice the same objections to Ashcroft’s rule. They say it will create an unneeded burden on banks that operate in Missouri.

The rule, which took effect at the end of July, requires financial advisers and institutions to have clients sign disclosure forms when an investment may consider ESG scores or prioritize elements that may not yield maximum profit.

Ashcroft, a Republican running for governor, said his rule is directed at investors who are “going to make a discretionary trade recommendation, and that recommendation is wholly or in part based on something other than getting the maximum financial return. They need to disclose that and get approval,” he told The Beacon in an interview.

Ashcroft’s requirement was one of many restrictions on ESG investing that the legislature considered this year. According to a report published by Pleiades Strategy, a climate-focused research firm, Missouri Republicans introduced 13 anti-ESG bills in 2023. The bills were eventually funneled into one piece of legislation, HB 863.

Most of that bill focused on preventing discrimination against businesses or entities based on ESG scores — similar to the approach followed by a number of Republican-led states. It was passed in the House, but died in the Senate.

Ashcroft, who has called the legislative session “extremely dysfunctional,” has since rolled out his own measure.

Michael Berg, the political director for the Missouri chapter of the Sierra Club, called Ashcroft’s rule “anti-free market, anti-social responsibility and anti-environmental.”

“There’s no clamoring of Missourians to put these rules in place, and then the legislature saw these bills and rejected them,” Berg said. “It’s interesting. What is the motivation? Why is he pushing it?”

Howard Fischer, a former prosecutor for the federal Securities and Exchange Commission and now a partner at the New York law firm Moses Singer, said the movement against ESG practices first took hold in the South, where some states have a financial interest in the outcomes of the oil and gas industry.

“Part of this is cultural war. The other part is fossil fuel related,” Fischer said. “It’s not really about investment performance. It’s about staking out a position in the culture wars. And to the extent it is about finances, it’s about protecting local industries.”

At least 165 pieces of legislation were filed in 37 states to counter ESG investment practices, according to Pleiades Strategy. Of those, only 22 laws in 16 states were passed during 2023 legislative sessions.

Ashcroft said that while Missouri is taking a unique approach to regulating ESG practices, he believes the state could set the precedent for other secretaries of state who control securities with similar control over investment rules. He speculated that Wyoming, Mississippi and Georgia might follow Missouri’s lead.

Government v. business

Ashcroft said his rule gives people a choice of pursuing investments for maximum profit, or potentially compromising some of that profit to invest in companies that align with their values.

“We didn’t want to preclude people from being able to invest in anything, because once again, it’s their money,” he said.

But the state Chamber of Commerce says the language is vague and its attempts to address it with Ashcroft’s office seemed to go unheard.

“We’ve had pretty extensive conversations with the secretary of state’s office,” said Phillip Arnzen, head of governmental affairs for the chamber. “And they did a slight revision, but it did not address the concerns.”

“This rule, it’s so vague that you could look at it and almost every single transaction, you could say, theoretically, you’re going to need this consent form,” he said.

Fischer, the former SEC prosecutor, said part of the complication is that securities rules are most often set at the federal level. For financial institutions, which are typically risk-averse, Ashcroft’s rule could lead to higher fees and labor costs if disclosures are required on many transactions, or if they have different requirements to meet for different states.

“It’s a lot easier for firms to operate with a federal standard,” Fischer said. “It could mean putting additional expenses on companies’ backs.”

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce made the same criticism.

“This is more burdensome than federal regulations,” Arnzen said. “And then it puts Missouri in a different standard than every other state.”

The rule, 15 CSR 30-51.170, requires written consent for ESG-related transactions either at the beginning of a person’s relationship with their financial adviser, when a broker is advising on a sale of a security or commodity, or when a broker is selecting a third party to manage the investments in someone’s account.

Ashcroft rejected criticism that the rule isn’t clear.

“Are they against telling people and disclosing how their money is going to be invested?” he said.

Missouri’s rulemaking approach is different from ESG restrictions in other states, Fischer said. In Texas, managers of public pension funds testified against a bill barring them from considering ESG criteria. They said it had the potential to cost the state $6 billion over the next 10 years. The bill did not pass.

Missouri’s rule doesn’t span that far.

“Missouri is taking a disclosure-based approach. You’re not supposed to do things without people knowing what you’re doing and making an informed decision, which is actually what an investment adviser is supposed to be doing,” Fischer said.

“It doesn’t actually change things as much as it could,” he added. “It is a significant difference from the more results-oriented approach that some other states have proposed.”

Fischer said that as the conversation surrounding ESG continues, states should consider the hindrances the policies could pose as businesses and states seek to adapt to a changing world.

“The blind spot of a lot of the anti-ESG programs that some state actors are promoting is that if you were telling companies that they cannot consider environmental factors in both investments and operational decisions, then you’re effectively saying that they are precluded from changing as the world changes,” he said. “That means that as the world changes, they are going to be damaged significantly, because they weren’t allowed to adapt to those changes before they happened.”

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

Only 10 of Missouri's 20 adult prisons are air conditioned, creating sweltering conditions for inmates. (Getty images)

As heat waves sweep across the Midwest, incarcerated people in Missouri are increasingly afraid of the rising temperatures inside prisons.

They live in concrete buildings that retain heat. People share close quarters, making cooling all the more difficult. As Earth’s temperatures reach their hottest recorded numbers this summer, people incarcerated in Missouri’s prisons describe conditions as similar to a pizza oven, or like “swimming in a cloud” of humidity.

In 2019, the Prison Policy Initiative put Missouri on a list of “famously hot states” that lack universal air conditioning in prisons. (Kansas is also on the list.)

The Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) says 10 of the state’s 20 prisons are fully air conditioned. Three buildings have no air conditioning in living areas, but it can be accessed in other parts of the buildings. Four other buildings are partially air conditioned for some living areas.

People inside the prisons, though, say the picture isn’t so clear. What the DOC says is air conditioning feels like warm air to the incarcerated people who spoke with The Beacon.

Gerald Boyer is serving his sixth year in Missouri prisons at Missouri Eastern Correctional Center in Pacific, Missouri, which does not have air conditioning. Boyer expects to be released within the next year. He has some health issues and takes medicine, so he was ordered to use a bottom bunk to help him stay cool. He’s thankful he doesn’t have to sleep on the upper bunk.

“I can’t sleep. I’ve never slept all night this summer,” Boyer said. “I imagine being on the top bunk, it’s gotta be five or 10 degrees hotter up there.”

The DOC says it has no plans to add air conditioning at the place where Boyer is held, because air ducts were not included when the prison was built.

Boyer said the building has such high humidity and such poor air circulation that when he takes a shower to cool off he feels like he’s walking into a cloud when he gets out.

“I’ll go take a shower in the evening and because of the lack of ventilation in the bathroom, there’s so much steam in the shower area that once you get out of the shower and dry off, you’re literally dripping immediately, because you’re sweating again,” he said.

“The humidity in here is the same as it is outside. If it’s 90% humidity outside, you’re swimming in a cloud inside.”

Another person at the same facility, who asked to be identified by his initials, J.C., because he said he experienced retaliation the last time he spoke out about prison conditions, described the place as a pizza oven, saying it’s at least 20 degrees warmer inside than it is outside.

“Think of a pizza oven. It’s brick. It stays that temperature, retains that heat,” he said.

J.C. said he was thankful that temperatures had been moderate this year up until recently. “We’ve been blessed by God’s grace,” he said. “But we’ve got hell coming.”

“It hasn’t killed me yet,” he added. “But it might have if I were in my 70s or 80s.”

J.C. said his mom visits him frequently during the summer so he can go to the visitors center, which has air conditioning. Areas where employees gather, such as case managers’ offices and the medical center, are also cooled, he said. In fact, J.C. said, those places are so well chilled that he needs a jacket or extra layers while there.

“If they were to take that air that they have in those three sections of the house and divide it evenly among the housing units, we would be great,” he said.

Without air conditioning, limited options for cooling down

Missouri has tried to provide some relief inside its buildings by distributing ice and personal fans, restricting recreational time and allowing increased access to showers. But people living in the heat for prolonged periods say those mitigation methods do little to keep them cool.

DOC spokesperson Karen Pojmann, who responded to questions from The Beacon by email, said ice is distributed at corrections facilities three times a day. Boyer said that’s typical in the winter. But he and J.C. both told The Beacon that lately they’ve received ice only twice a day, at about 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Boyer said staffers have told him the ice machines are overworked.

Those who are incarcerated can buy a fan from the prison commissary for $20 plus tax, or ask to be put on a “fan plan,” to receive a fan and pay it off over time. Those who don’t work or can’t because of physical limitations have few options for earning money to get a fan without help from family or friends. One person incarcerated at Southeast Correctional Center, who asked to remain anonymous over fear of retaliation, said he submitted his paperwork for the fan plan two weeks ago and still hasn’t received one.

Southeast, in Charleston, Missouri, is one of the prisons that the Department of Corrections says is fully air conditioned, even in the living areas. The person who shared his experience with The Beacon said that those in their cellblock have spent two months complaining about the warm air coming out of their vents. They were told maintenance would be coming to fix the issue, but there have been no signs of improvement.

“There’s several people that are constantly telling the correctional officers to go inside our cells so they can see how it is,” he said. “There’s two inmates here who have had their families calling Jeff City.”

The presence of air conditioning in state prisons isn’t entirely decided by the Department of Corrections. Legislators need to allocate the necessary funding in the state budget. For the 2024 fiscal year, lawmakers approved funding to install air conditioning at Fulton Reception and Diagnostic Center. That project is expected to be completed by next summer, according to Pojmann. There is no immediate plan to add air conditioning to other facilities.

Lori Curry, the executive director of the advocacy group Missouri Prison Reform, said the group sent out a call to action to lawmakers, requesting that they visit a facility with no air conditioning and eat a meal there.

As far as she knows, only one lawmaker took up the invitation. A few others unsubscribed from the group’s email list.

The public health implications of prolonged heat exposure

Prolonged exposure to intense heat is known to have a number of harmful health effects, including increased likelihood of heatstroke. And prison populations are especially at risk, said J. Carlee Purdum, an assistant research professor at the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. Her work centers on how natural disasters and climate change impact the incarcerated population and public health.

“Incarcerated people are more vulnerable than other populations because they are overrepresenting communities that already have diminished access to quality health care,” Purdum said. “And then on top of that, you have an aging population with high rates of chronic illness, and you’re putting them in extreme temperatures. It’s an extremely vulnerable population that’s experiencing those conditions.”

Like Gerald Boyer at Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, many incarcerated people with health conditions take medicine. According to Purdum, many forms of prescription medication can cause negative effects if someone is exposed to the heat for long periods of time.

“One of the key issues is that often people are prescribed medication that can inhibit the body’s ability to regulate temperatures,” Purdum said. “Psychotropic medications, other medications can do that. So people have to choose between taking medications that have been prescribed for their physical health or mental health and surviving the heat.”

James Harvey, who is incarcerated at Moberly Correctional Center, said he came to Missouri prisons from Illinois. Over the years he’s been incarcerated, he’s seen cooling conditions deteriorate.

“We do have big fans on top of the building. They’re supposed to suck the hot air out. My understanding was that those were turned off years and years ago,” Harvey said. “I’ve heard some other inmates say that they have downsized everything, including fans. I came here a year ago from another facility I was at for 12 years. The heat was shocking.”

J.C., at MECC, was once on a committee for restorative justice inside his facility. He said at one point the committee pushed for incarcerated people to have small air conditioning units that would actually blow cold air.

“They were absolutely against that,” he said. He added he’s seen fan sizes become smaller and coolers meant to hold ice become less resilient.

Some public health research has found that fans aren’t the answer in conditions of extreme heat. According to public health guidelines published by the EPA and updated in 2016, the use of fans could actually increase the risk of heatstroke in the event of excessive temperatures.

“Because of the limitations of conduction and convection, using a portable electric fan alone when heat index temperatures exceed 99°F actually increases the heat stress the body must respond to by blowing air that is warmer than the ideal body temperature over the skin surface,” according to the Excessive Heat Events Guidebook. “The increased circulation of hot air and increased sweat evaporation can speed the onset of heat-attributable conditions.”

According to the Department of Corrections, no heat-related medical incidences or hospitalizations were recorded in Missouri last year. But according to recent data analyzed by the Prison Policy Initiative, heart disease-related deaths in U.S. prisons increased by 6.7% for every 10 degrees above the average summer temperature. After a three-day heat wave, deaths by suicide increased by 15% and heart disease-related deaths increased by 7.6%.

Heat-related health risks should concern the broader public, Purdum said. Spending on health care inside prisons is rising as the population gets older and requires more medical care. And once people leave prison, those new health conditions could make it more difficult for them to reintegrate into society.

“For people who are concerned about putting more resources into prisons, when we talk about the cost of not doing it — you have a skyrocketing cost of medical care for incarcerated people, have enormous turnover among staff, because it’s difficult to recruit and retain people when the conditions are so challenging,” Purdum said. “Experiencing that environment year after year, it does have a significant effect on people’s health over time.”

This article was initially published in The Kansas City Beacon, an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest. 

Darian Davis works in the Kansas City Urban Farm Co-op orchard in Swope Park on Friday, July 14, 2023. Davis says competitive grant money could help them address food insecurity through urban farming, but accessing the money is difficult with little resources (Zach Bauman/ The Beacon).

News that the Missouri legislature has authorized $500,000 for urban farming grants ought to be welcomed by small growers like Darian and Nicolette Davis, who run an orchard in Kansas City’s Swope Park to provide fresh fruit to their community.

The couple hatched the idea of the Kansas City Urban Farm Co-op during the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 following the killing of a teenager, Michael Brown, by a police officer. They wanted to respond to that incident by doing something positive for their own community, which led to the launch of their farm in 2016.

Darian Davis sees a systemic injustice in the gap between communities where nutritious food is abundant and others where it is lacking. He describes it as “food apartheid.”

“So we’re talking about kids with single-parent households, a lot of them didn’t have cars, and they’re living off of low-value, high-priced foodstuffs,” he said. “So to witness that, we really started thinking about how serious this problem is. We said, ‘Hey, instead of complaining about it, what can we do to make a difference?’”

The 2024 fiscal year will be the second consecutive year that the state set aside $500,000 to address food insecurity in Missouri’s urban areas. The program began in the 2020 fiscal year with a budget of $200,000. Applications for the program open on Monday.

But for Davis and other small urban growers, even applying for a grant opportunity can be a challenge. Davis and his wife largely operate their orchard on their own, while taking care of a family and owning other businesses. Their financial margin is so precarious he isn’t sure he can take time away from his farming enterprise to attempt to fill out a grant application.

“Right now we’re having to make hard decisions, saying, ‘Man, should I go to work so I can get this guaranteed money?” Davis told The Beacon. “Or should I spend this six hours and not make money for something that I may or may not get? It’s a hard call to make when you’re super broke.”

Navigating funding support can be difficult for small farmers

Darian and Nicolette Davis have looked at state grants and other competitive resources in the past, but don’t have confidence in their grant-writing skills. And even finding someone to help them write grants is difficult with a small budget, Darian said.

“The key missing part that we need is the initial money to get the money,” he said. “That’s the missing piece, because I can reach out to grant writers that have a proven success record, but I’ll have them say, ‘Yes, it’s gonna cost this much.’ Well, I don’t have that much.”

Accessing grant money can be tricky for farmers, according to Ami Freeberg at Cultivate KC, one of Kansas City’s larger urban farming organizations. The reimbursement structure — plus the application and payout timelines — don’t exactly line up with peak growing season, which can make it complicated to apply for the grant and comply with the requirements.

“Pretty much all state and federal grants, and a lot of local government grants, are reimbursable,  which means you have to spend the money before you get back,” Freeberg said.

That’s not a big deal for larger farming businesses like Cultivate Kansas City, Freeberg said. But it’s a challenge for smaller agricultural enterprises.

“If you’re a farmer that’s operating week-to-week, or your cash flow is better in the summer but the awards for these grants are made in the winter, you may have to be making that investment at a time of year that the funds aren’t there,” Freeberg said.

Some of the problem comes down to the timing of the fiscal year, according to the Missouri Department of Agriculture. The fiscal year begins on July 1, in the peak of summer activity for the state’s farmers. Applications must be submitted quickly so they can be reviewed and awarded before mid-October. And projects must be completed by the end of May, according to the program’s website.

“It is just a really quick timeline, from October to December when you’re shutting down a farm for the season, to also be making those infrastructure investments,” Freeberg said. “And it’s also not enough time to go out and seek a loan, if you were to try to access the capital that way, knowing you are getting the reimbursement.”

Despite the hiccups, there are always more applicants for state funds than there is money available, officials said.

Lawmakers and the Missouri Department of Agriculture are aware of the challenges faced by  urban farmers, especially those who operate on a small scale, said state Sen. Barbara Washington, a Democrat who represents Kansas City.

Washington worked with agriculture officials to increase the state’s share of grants to growers. Previously the state chipped in 50% for the projects it approved. Now it will cover 75%, and the urban agricultural businesses will be responsible for 25%.

“I know that there have been some concessions for the urban farming grant program that are a little more lenient than the traditional Department of Agriculture grant funding,” Washington said.

Besides the $500,000 allocated for small grants to combat food insecurity, Washington also secured funding to award larger grants of $250,000 each to two urban farming projects in Kansas City. One is for urban farming educational programs, and the other is for youth entrepreneurship and urban agriculture.

Possible recipients include BoysGrow and Green Acres Urban Farm and Research Project, Washington said.

State support can help improve operations, free up cash for other projects

Farmers who receive grants said the state money can make a big difference.

“You really just have to plan for it,” said Anthony Nealy, the founder of Global One Urban Farming in east Kansas City. “You have to make sure your deadlines and stuff fit for the reimbursement, and make sure you have the capital to even accept the grant, because you pay for everything upfront.”

Support from the state last year allowed Nealy to clear 10,000 square feet of trees. And it freed up resources for Global One to invest in things like youth programs.

Nealy said the educational aspects of his program — where youths learn to grow produce from seed to harvest — can help prepare kids to start their own businesses.

“We gave them things to do as far as learning how to register their name as an LLC with the state, create a mission statement and create the first budget for business,” Nealy said. “And they love it and we’ve had fun with it.”

Nealy said he hopes more money can go toward educational projects and urban farming overall, especially for people of color in Kansas City.

“You have to put the emphasis in place at the state level, that actually looks at helping out Black and Hispanic people, and in the areas of greatest need,” he said.

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

Volunteers from KC Mothers in Charge canvass in Kansas City to raise awareness about gun violence. (Courtesy photo)

With gun injuries now the leading cause of death among children and teenagers in the United States, parents and communities are seeking new strategies to keep children safe. That’s especially the case in places like Kansas City, where children too often become innocent victims of a larger gun violence epidemic.

Young people are now more likely to be injured in a gun assault than an accidental shooting or a suicide attempt, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

And newly released research based on data from St. Louis Children’s Hospital found that most of the child and teenage victims admitted to the emergency room were struck by bullets that had nothing to do with them, fired by people the young patients didn’t know.

“They don’t know why they were shot,” said Dr. Mary Bernardin, an assistant professor of clinical emergency medicine at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, who directed the research.

“This felt like such an extremely common thing that these children would say — that they were just out, doing their thing at the park, walking home from school, and that shots ring out and they don’t know where they were coming from.”

Bernardin’s study, which analyzed data from 2014 to 2017, found that 72% of the children who came into the emergency room with gunshot wounds were shot outdoors by a stranger. In 93% of the cases, the motive for the shooting was unknown. Three ZIP codes within St. Louis city accounted for 40% of the shootings.

Intentional assaults, such as those resulting from disputes or attempted robberies, accounted for fewer than 15% of the pediatric gunshot admissions that Bernardin studied.

“It’s just so unfortunate that they are being brought up in neighborhoods that are so unsafe, and they don’t have any place that they can be outside and play that they’re not at risk for being shot,” Bernardin said. “And it’s really no fault of their own at all. It’s just trying to be outside. And that’s something all children need to be able to do.”

Bernardin’s study did not include hospital data from Kansas City, but a safety expert at Children’s Mercy Hospital said medical workers there see the same trends.

“It’s kind of consistent in the urban core across the nation,” said Laura Kemerling, program manager for Children’s Mercy’s Center for Childhood Safety. “I think we’re in a day and age where we can no longer delineate intent.”

Gunshot victims relive the trauma

A recent study from Pew Research Center found that the number of children and teens killed by gunfire in America increased by nearly half during the pandemic.

The dangers are especially acute in Black neighborhoods. In 2021, 46% of all gun deaths among children and teens involved Black victims, according to the Pew study. Only 14% of the nation’s under-18 population in the U.S. was Black.

“Not all people are affected by this public health problem the same way that Black American children are disproportionately affected,” said Alison Athey, a behavioral and social scientist at Rand Corp., a policy think tank.

The uptick in injuries during the pandemic ties in with the lack of safe places for children in urban areas to gather, she said.

“I think one potential takeaway is that when people don’t have safe places for their children to go, when they don’t have safe places to be, they’re much more vulnerable, both to being victims but also to acting out in those spots.”

As of June 16, Kansas City has reported 82 homicides in 2023. Seven of the victims were younger than 18. In all of 2022, there were 169 confirmed homicide cases across the city, with 10 of the victims younger than 18. Many more children and teenagers were wounded by gunfire or traumatized by witnessing people around them being shot.

Long-term attention to the trauma experienced by young victims should be as important as addressing gun violence from a larger, community-wide perspective, Athey said.

“When we see post-traumatic stress in children, often the way that they remember the incident is by reliving it, by acting it out, because they don’t have the development, really, to experience those memories differently,” she said.

“We need to support a comprehensive approach to figure out not only how to stop that, but how to help those who lose classmates and friends. I think that the prevention approach as well as the response really needs to go hand in hand or we’re going to keep seeing these problems.”

Rosilyn Temple, founder and executive director of the Kansas City chapter of Mothers in Charge, an organization that seeks to reduce violence and support families affected by homicides, said her organization is intensifying its focus on the trauma that children and adults experience from being around gun violence.

“People don’t finish the process of healing when they’ve been shot,” she said. “And how they feel after they’re shot — you’ll hear gunshots all the time. We’re living in a war zone in Kansas City, so you hear it all the time.”

Temple speaks from experience, having lost a son to homicide in 2011. “What happened to me basically destroyed me, so I had to do something in my community,” she said. KC Mothers in Charge started a trauma-informed peer support group in 2021 for those who survived gunshot wounds.

Within Kansas City’s Black community, speaking about emotions or seeking help can be seen as a weakness, Temple said. She wants to try and change that stigma.

“There’s a lot of generational things, things that we have covered up, or ways we have learned behaviors,” she said. “[Growing up] we didn’t see counselors, we weren’t taught to. We were scared to go seek counseling and ways to help people because they said we were crazy.”

The difficult search for solutions

Temple views gun violence as a community problem requiring community solutions. “People … just turn their head and say, ‘It’s not my business.’” she said. “It is your business.”

Bernardin, the University of Missouri professor, said her recent findings about the random origins of childhood gunshot wounds also signal an urgent need for community solutions beyond safety locks and safe storage of firearms.

“If most of these kids were shot outdoors, and are victims of their neighborhood, then what we really need are programs that are focused on the communities to decrease crime,” she said. “We need investment in the communities to help people get out of these cycles of violence, poverty and crime.”

But she added, “That is such an oversimplification. And it’s so complicated because there is not a one-size-fits-all solution.”

It’s also complicated because, in states like Missouri, politicians are unable to reach a consensus on gun safety measures, even ones that have been effective elsewhere.

Kristin Bowen, volunteer coordinator for the Missouri chapter of Moms Demand Action,  said communities can find creative ways to focus on protecting children from guns. She pointed to a 2022 resolution passed by the Liberty school board that promotes and educates district families on safe storage measures.

“We know that securing firearms will protect both kids and adults from unintentional shootings, from gun suicides, and also young people accessing firearms who shouldn’t have access,” she said.

But any gun safety measure in Missouri has to be crafted to avoid running afoul of Missouri laws that have leaned increasingly in the direction of promoting gun access, Bowen said.

“We’re trying to do this advocacy in ways that sort of sidestepped the question around restrictions of local communities,” she said.

Missouri Rep. Peter Merideth, a Democrat from St. Louis whose district includes the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, where a student, a teacher and a gunman died in a shooting last year, spent this year’s legislative session trying unsuccessfully to get the Republican-controlled legislature to consider various pieces of gun safety legislation, including a red-flag provision and permission for cities to pass ordinances that would prohibit those under 18 from carrying firearms.

“Laws are part of the solution,” Merideth said. “Of course, they’re not the entire solution. There is without a doubt a cultural shift that we need, where we don’t worship guns.”

He added, “It seems like we’re teaching kids by example … or by rhetoric, that the solution to keep you safe is having a gun and using it.”

Merideth said he still sees room for moving gun safety measures forward in the legislature if voters continue to be vocal about what is needed in their communities and hold their lawmakers accountable.

“I don’t think it will happen until the day comes that voters actually make somebody pay consequences for their radical support of guns,” he said.

This article was initially published by the Kansas City Beacon.

Under the policing legislation, which passed the House earlier this month, governance of the St. Louis Police Department would be much like the structure in Kansas City (Scott Olson/Getty Images).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon. 

In a vote watched closely in Kansas City, Missourians approved a statewide ballot measure in 2012 to return control of the St. Louis Police Department to the city itself. Just over a decade later, the Missouri legislature is debating multiple pieces of legislation to reverse that decision and put the department under state control.

Proponents say that crime and police understaffing point to significant problems with local control, and that a state takeover would help counter the problems the city and the police department are facing.

Opponents point to Kansas City’s long history with state control of its police department, which they say has done little to curb violent crime or improve staffing issues. They also draw attention to Missouri’s loose gun laws, where they say some changes could improve the safety of all Missourians.

The ongoing debate over the Civil War-era policy of state control of local police showcases the divide between Missouri’s urban areas, where much of the minority population is located, and the more rural and less diverse areas of the state.

The debate this year also emphasizes the legislature’s often combative attitude toward the state’s two largest cities, especially St. Louis. Along with the push to return policing in St. Louis to state control, the legislature and state Attorney General Andrew Bailey are in the midst of efforts to remove St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner.

Under the policing legislation, which passed the House earlier this month, governance of the St. Louis Police Department would be much like the structure in Kansas City.  The mayor would no longer have control over the department, but would serve on a state-appointed board of police commissioners, alongside four other members who are appointed by the governor. The city of St. Louis would still be the primary funder of the police department, and would be required to pay for salary increases.

Missouri Republicans push for state to take over control of St. Louis police department

The state Senate now has the power to make changes to the House legislation. However, a bill sponsored by St. Charles County Republican Sen. Nick Schroer that passed out of a Senate committee in early February is similar to the House version.

In November, Missourians approved Amendment 4, which would allow the legislature to increase minimum funding for any police force controlled by a state board of commissioners. A separate piece of legislation passed in 2022 raised the minimum percentage of city funds that must be allocated to the police force, but there is so far no discussion about raising minimum funding in St. Louis. St. Louis would join Kansas City in being subject to funding mandates from the General Assembly if the legislation were to pass.

Lora McDonald, executive director of the advocacy group More2, said her organization is working to build a voter base to support Kansas City regaining local control. She said that having the state run the police board is impractical for Kansas City and St. Louis, and the cities should be able to unilaterally allocate money for their police forces without state intervention.

“There’s no reason why anybody should want this done in their community. And there’s certainly no reason why anyone in Kansas City, Missouri, should want this,” McDonald said. “We want a bloc of voters built so we can start influencing statewide elections and every local election, so we are not electing any people who are going to fight us over local control.”

The various pieces of legislation in Jefferson City have primarily been sponsored by Republicans who live outside of St. Louis city but reside in St. Louis County or nearby St. Charles County. The St. Louis Police Officers Association supports the change, as does the Ethical Society of Police, a union that represents minority police officers. Newly appointed St. Louis Police Chief Robert Tracy has spoken against the Senate version of the bill, and St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones opposes a change.

“State control of our police department is not going to make our citizens safer,” Jones said in a radio interview. “We will not be able to respond accordingly and swiftly to changes in policy. It’ll bring more politics into public safety. Under the previous state control board, politics was in every decision regarding our police department. And right now, … we just hired a new police chief. We want to give him the opportunity to lead as he has led in other cities.”

Would state control help curb crime?

Republican Rep. Brad Christ, the sponsor of the House version of the bill, represents a district just outside of St. Louis city. He said his bill “takes the politics out of policing.” He and other House members who have introduced similar legislation contend that crime from St. Louis has increased since the city took control of its police force and has spread to their districts, which is why a state-controlled police board is needed.

St. Louis regained control of its police force in 2013. Since then, the city has struggled to reduce violent crime. Its homicide count was 120 in 2013 and 198 in 2022. But numerous cities around the country have struggled with rising crime rates over the last decade. That has been the case in Kansas City, where the police force is governed by a state-appointed board. Police in Kansas City reported 169 homicides in 2022.

Empower Missouri, a social justice advocacy organization, believes that in reducing crime, attempts to address poverty would be more successful than moving control of the police to the state.

“As an anti-poverty organization, Empower Missouri holds a strong belief that crime is often a symptom of poverty,” Mallory Rusch, the group’s executive director, wrote in an online post about state control. “In the City of St. Louis, over 20% of our residents live below the federal poverty line. Communities ravished by poverty can become breeding grounds for drug use and other illegal activities. We can choose to address these issues through policing alone, or we can seek to address the root cause of the issue, working to ensure that every Missourian has an equal opportunity to thrive.”

Rep. Rasheen Aldridge, a Democrat from St. Louis, said during a legislative debate that addressing poverty and improving stability through things like raising the minimum wage would be more impactful for his community.

“It would have been very appropriate, in my opinion, to talk to several residents that live in St. Louis city to figure out how we work together because… a lot of us will say it’s bigger than policing,” Aldridge said, addressing members from outside St. Louis city who introduced the legislation.

“We will not be able, in my area, to police ourselves out of crime,” he added. “You want to talk about crime? You can talk about how we make sure that communities like mine have livable wages. How do you make sure we have stable homes? How do we reverse policies that have been put in place strategically to disinvest in Black and brown communities like mine?”

During debate on Christ’s legislation at the beginning of March, Democrats pointed out that some law enforcement officials have said that Missouri law stands in their way when trying to prevent violent crime. At the beginning of 2022, 60 Missouri police chiefs filed a brief with the courts to support a suit against Missouri’s Second Amendment Preservation Act.  They said the law weakens “law enforcement’s ability to defend and protect Missouri citizens.” A federal judge recently struck down the law.

“Law enforcement tells us again and again that things like the Second Amendment Preservation Act keeps them from keeping their communities safe,” Keri Ingle, a Democrat from Lee’s Summit, said during debate on the bill. “And this body says, ‘Well, we don’t believe law enforcement.’ So I’m really glad today to hear that we’re all listening to law enforcement when it comes to state control.”

Speaking with sarcasm, Ingle continued: “If we’re going to  take hold of another police department, maybe we should listen to the one that we’ve already taken control over, and that we’ve had control over for 100-and-how-many-years. I’m glad to hear that we’ve really decreased violent crime in Kansas City. That’ll be news to my neighbors.”

Officer retention problems

Under some versions of the legislation in play, officers would receive raises and bumps to overtime pay. Some lawmakers believe those types of measures along with state control would help with officer retention.

Officer shortages have plagued police departments across Missouri and nationwide. Rep. Jeff Myers, R-Warrenton, a former Missouri State Highway Patrol officer, said that the “politicization and anti-law enforcement sentiment” have led to the decline of retention in St. Louis.

“While recruitment and retention of law enforcement officers in general is an issue faced by more than just the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, their losses have been exacerbated,” Myers said.

St. Louis police officers just entered into a new contract, with officers set to receive one-year raises from 8% to 12%. City leaders bargained to remove the raises if the police force were to be transferred to state control, although a state-mandated raise is currently included in the House version of the state control bill.

The legislature is considering other measures to help with officer recruitment and retention in Kansas City. So far, the proposals have passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support and would do things like remove salary caps for all ranks of officers. Plans include an emergency clause to “maintain a competitive pay scale to aid in recruitment and retention of Kansas City police officers.”

The Kansas City Beacon is an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest.

Fifth-three percent of Missouri voters signed off on a constitutional amendment legalizing recreational marijuana on Nov. 8, 2022 (Carol Yepes/Getty Images).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon. 

On Nov. 8, Missourians voted “yes” on Amendment 3, which legalized recreational use of marijuana, meaning you’ll now be able to buy weed, like marijuana flower or edibles, in the coming months.

Starting Dec. 8, the state will begin transitioning its medical marijuana licenses to recreational licenses, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to walk into a dispensary and buy cannabis flower right away. The transition process will take until February, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, the agency that manages the state’s marijuana industry.

The transition process can get complicated, so The Beacon compiled a list of frequently asked questions about the process. This page will continue to be updated as the state rolls out program changes, so be sure to check back for the latest updates.

The state is accepting public feedback on the rules for the recreational program until Nov. 25.

Q: When can I buy legal weed in Missouri? 

A: Recreational marijuana should be available by early February 2023. The DHSS will start accepting requests to transition medical facility licenses to full recreational facilities on Dec. 8, and it will have 60 days to approve those changed license requests.

You’ll be able to walk into a dispensary with your ID (to prove you are over 21) and leave with cannabis flower, edibles, prerolls or vapes.

Q: How much marijuana can I have? 

A: Amendment 3’s language allows for consumers to have 3 ounces of dried marijuana flower or its equivalent.

Q: Will I be able to grow my own at home? 

A: Yes. Under Missouri’s medical marijuana law that passed in 2018, Missourians were granted the ability to grow their own cannabis at home if they registered as a patient cultivator.

DHSS will start accepting applications for personal cultivation for recreation as soon as Feb. 6. Once applications are accepted, Missourians 21 and older can cultivate marijuana for personal, noncommercial use at an enclosed and locked facility at their homes. Those licenses cost $150 and are valid for three years.

Missourians will be allowed to have six flowering plants and up to 18 non-mature plants.

Q: Am I allowed to smoke marijuana in public? 

A:  Unless there is a dedicated smoking area for public consumption of marijuana, smoking in public could still make you subject to a civil penalty and a fine of up to $100.

Q: Do I still need my medical marijuana card if I don’t use cannabis recreationally? 

A: No, you don’t need to keep your medical marijuana card, but you can. As of Dec. 8 of this year, all approved medical marijuana cards will be valid for three years. Current medical cardholders will stick to their existing expiration dates. Cards are valid for three years upon the card’s next renewal.

Q: Do I still need to renew my medical card to keep patient status? 

A: Yes, you’ll have to get approval from your physician to submit a patient renewal application. But under the new law, you’ll only have to get your card renewed every three years, instead of every year as the law currently stands.

Q: Do I need a patient card if I am going to grow for myself at home for medicinal purposes? 

A: Yes, you’ll need a medical marijuana card if you’d like to become a patient cultivator for yourself at home.

Q: Are there fees I should know about? 

A: Yes, if you’re still a medical marijuana cardholder or caregiver, renewal and application fees are $27.76 each, but will only need to be renewed every three years. If you’re a patient cultivator, new application and renewal fees are $110.99.

The Kansas City Beacon is an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest.

On Nov. 3, 2022, bipartisan teams at the St. Louis County Board of Elections prepare absentee ballots, so they are ready to tabulate at 7 p.m. on election night (Photo courtesy of St. Louis County Board of Elections).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon. 

Missourians have been casting ballots for nearly two weeks, and election officials have been preparing for months, following intricate state laws associated with the election administration and certification process.

So what does happen to the votes of Missourians once they leave their polling places?

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican, has tried to respond to concerns about security by creating increased transparency in Missouri’s electoral process. Ashcroft has said the 2020 presidential election in Missouri was safe and secure, but he was still a strong advocate for a voting bill that the GOP-dominated legislature passed this year in the name of “election integrity.”

The new bill addressed issues that had been flagged as concerns, like ensuring that ballot tabulating machines cannot be connected to the internet. Also, the entire election process — from when you cast your ballot to when results are delivered to the secretary of state — is managed by a two-person team consisting of one Republican and one Democrat. When election equipment isn’t being utilized, it’s stored and locked away so it cannot be tampered with. After ballots are cast, they are stored and sealed for 22 months after the election.

The Beacon broke down the step-by-step process of how election certification works in Missouri.

1. Ballots are cast

Your ballot is cast as soon as you feed your responses into the tabulating machine. Tabulating machines are not connected to the internet. If your ballot is mismarked, such as casting two votes in one race, the tabulating machine will reject the ballot. Machines are tested at a public test two weeks before Election Day and are sealed afterwards to ensure security.

If your ballot is rejected and you’re still in your polling place, your old ballot would be spoiled, or voided, and you would be able to cast a new one. If you left quickly after feeding your ballot into the machine and did not know it was rejected, a bipartisan team of election judges would redo your ballot and follow your intent. If you over voted in a race and the bipartisan officials cannot tell which candidate you intended to vote for, that race would simply be left blank. Both ballots are kept for record-keeping purposes.

Chris Hershey,  an election commissioner  in Platte County, said machines are programmed to notify of any abnormalities.

“Machines are really calibrated to pretty tight standards. So if there’s a rip or marks on the side, it’s not going to accept the ballot,” Hershey said. “Each one of those ballots is numbered, so it’ll be like ‘spoiled #24’ and then the new ballot is going to be ‘duplicate #24.’”

2. Polls close, election officials start counting

Once the polls close, the election workers shut the ballot tabulating machines down and produce a report of votes cast in each machine. The report contains information like how many ballots were rejected, how many were cast overall and for which candidate or ballot issue.

Election judges record the vote totals in a “statement of returns.” They also record the number of rejected or spoiled ballots and the number of identification certificates signed. The statement of returns is then secured in a box provided by the secretary of state’s office. The returns for each precinct are also put onto a USB drive.

3. Returns taken to county election authority

A bipartisan team will take the USB drive with election results and deliver it to the county election authority, which will use the USB to begin uploading results online.

“There’s this huge push to get results out as soon as possible, like updates every 15 minutes, even though that’s not going to change what the final total is,” Hershey said. “But we do that so that it gives people a sense of where the voting is.”

These results aren’t official, though, as overseas and military voters have until noon the Friday after the election to get their ballots returned.

4. Hand recount

State law requires 5% of each county’s polling places to be recounted by hand to ensure that machines were operating correctly. A bipartisan team will randomly select polling sites to verify that tabulating machines were working properly.

5. Verification board meets

As soon as possible after the election, each local election authority will gather a verification board to check the count and certify the results of the election. In Platte County, this usually happens in the early afternoon on the Friday after the election, once military and overseas voters get their ballots back by the noon deadline.

The verification board can be the board of election commissioners in counties where such a board exists. But some counties don’t have a full board. In those instances, the county clerk and a bipartisan team of two verification judges certify the election. Local political parties recommend the verification judges, and the county clerk must appoint them at least a week before the election.

The verification board checks the tally sheets and statements of returns and compares those records with the Election Day tallies from election judges. If there are discrepancies, the verification board corrects what was submitted on Election Day.  Those numbers become the new record, but both records are kept on file.

If a verification board, bipartisan committee, election authority or secretary of state finds evidence of fraud, it is to be immediately reported to the proper authorities.

6. Announcement of unofficial results

After a verification board has completed its work, it issues a statement announcing the results. The verification board has two weeks from Election Day to certify the returns.

The statement includes statistics such as the numbers of regular and absentee ballots cast in the election. After the statement is issued, the election authority mails or delivers to the secretary of state the report for their jurisdiction, broken down by polling place.

The election cannot be officially certified by local authorities and verification boards before noon on the Friday after Election Day.

7. Secretary of state convenes the board of canvassers

The secretary of state’s office will convene the state’s board of canvassers, which consists of the secretary of state and a panel of judges, to total the results of each election. The official, certified results cannot be announced any later than the second Tuesday in December.

8. Contests to results

Up until 30 days after the official announcement of election results by the secretary of state’s office, any candidate can file a petition in the appropriate circuit court challenging the results. For ballot questions, proponents or opponents of the question may hire counsel to represent them in a contest. The candidate would need to define what parts of the election they’d like to contest, provide facts to support their contest and, in some cases, pay for the cost of the recount.

If the court or legislative body hearing the contest finds there is evidence showing irregularities, they can order a recount of all votes brought into question.

The authority handling the contest notifies other election authorities responsible for the count in that particular contest, and requests all of their records and materials required for the recount. The lead authority can then compare things like voter signatures, test tabulating equipment or recount ballots that were saved for records purposes.

Activists sit in on a July 13 Neighborhood Planning and Development Committee (Zach Bauman/The Beacon).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon. 

The Kansas City Council in late August passed a climate plan intended to drive the city toward a more sustainable future, with goals of becoming “climate neutral” by 2040. Stakeholders from the community worked Kansas City’s 133-page Climate Protection and Resiliency Plan for two years, but it was adopted not as a set policy for the city to follow, but as a road map.

That’s because a 2021 Missouri law ties the hands of cities in some respects as they seek to reduce their dependence on coal-powered electricity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The law, which passed the legislature as HB 734, prohibits cities and municipalities from adopting any policies that remove access to a utility service based on the type of energy it provides.

Missouri’s law prevents cities from changing utility hookup requirements in things like their building codes. For example, a city in Missouri can no longer pass an ordinance banning new buildings from using natural gas.

Called a preemption law, the concept is supported by natural gas utilities nationwide as more cities seek to adopt legislation in an effort to reduce carbon emissions.

Missouri’s gas companies, including Spire, which serves the Kansas City area, testified in support of the 2021 preemption law. But advocates in support of Kansas City’s climate plan across the state say the move is detrimental to the state’s long-term success in mitigating the effects of climate change.

Robin Ganahl, chair of the city’s climate protection steering committee and leader of KC Mothers Out Front, told The Beacon that the threat of the preemption bill was present throughout the climate plan drafting process. She said the committee is confident the proposed plan falls within the state statute.

“We knew that we could not include a strategy in the plan to pass an ordinance to ban natural gas in new buildings,” Ganahl said. “So that was taken off the table as a tool that the City Council could use.”

Groups against the preemption law claimed before its passage that it “would slow down the deployment of clean energy technologies, prevent localities from leading the way on building decarbonization, and keep Missourians hooked on fossil fuels — even if there is strong local support for climate action and clean energy.”

A nationwide trend 

As states like California and Washington act to limit the use of certain types of energy, Missouri and others are moving in the opposite direction. Missouri is one of 20 states that have passed laws preempting cities from restricting access to fossil fuels. Bills introduced in 2021 in Utah and Georgia had almost identical language to the Missouri legislation.

According to an S&P Global report, the 20 states accounted for 30% of U.S. residential and commercial gas consumption in 2019.

Rep. Ron Hicks, a Republican from Defiance, introduced a version of the bill in 2021. He said the bill did not come from a constituent concern, but was inspired by actions taken in other states to scale back on certain forms of utility usage.

“It was not based on a problem that I have in my constituency in my district. No one has come to me and said there’s a problem,” Hicks said during the February 2021 hearing. “What we’re trying to do is just step and stay ahead of situations and just make this a level playing field for all. There’s no way one entity is going to supersede another or anything like that.”

In testimony on Hicks’ plan, the American Petroleum Institute outlined its support for the measure.

“Bans on natural gas would prevent Missouri families from using a domestically produced, clean, affordable and reliable fuel source to heat their homes and cook their food,” the group said in written testimony. “It is imperative that natural gas is able to remain a part of the climate solution and that policymakers and regulators work with the industry to ensure access to reliable and affordable American energy.”

Sanderson, who also sat on the city’s climate protection steering committee, said the preemption law makes it more difficult for cities to address their own issues and contradicts the idea of local control.

“At the city and local level, they’re supposed to be able to pass building codes, have a baseline of energy efficiency,” she said. “That was always their responsibility, but the state legislature ended up coming in and making it so the city can’t legally do that with regards to electrification and gas.”

Potential incentives

The Inflation Reduction Act, a large piece of legislation recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden, is giving climate activists hope of working around Missouri’s preemption law.

The plan will invest $369 billion into energy security and climate change. Biden’s administration says the plan will reduce carbon emissions by 40% nationwide by 2030, create manufacturing jobs in domestic “clean energy” and allocate $60 billion toward environmental justice measures.

Ganahl and Sanderson both said the new federal law will supply cities with extra funding to provide incentives for things like retrofitting homes, installing heat pumps and making other energy-efficient changes.

Sanderson said the committee repeatedly touted the potential of the Inflation Reduction Act and the funding that will come with it as Kansas City’s climate plan was in the works. “We’ve got this opportunity, we’ve got this chunk of change to make switching from gas to electric easier for mid- to low-income houses,” she said.

Ganahl said providing education and incentives around electrification is the best way to encourage long-term planning for metro families.

“People need to know that if they need to replace a stove, water heater, furnace or AC unit even in the next five years, that for climate and affordability they should be looking at modern, efficient electric alternatives like heat pumps, heat pump water heaters and induction stoves,” she said. The city, to the extent it can, should be helping people afford to make that change so that we stay on track to get to net zero by 2040.”

Missouri has entertained other preemption laws to thwart climate-friendly efforts by cities. In 2015, the legislature barred cities from banning or requiring a fee for the use of paper or plastic bags in grocery stores. The legislature overrode then-Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of the measure.

The Kansas City Beacon is an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest.

In 2021, Missouri passed the Second Amendment Preservation Act, which bars local law officials from enforcing federal gun policy and could fine them for doing so (Photo illustration by Getty images).

This story was originally published by The Kansas City Beacon. 

The federal gun safety bill passed with bipartisan congressional support in June was heralded as the first notable piece of federal gun legislation in nearly 30 years. Yet Missouri won’t feel its full impact — yet.

Missouri will benefit from the millions of dollars in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act set aside for mental health, crisis intervention and school safety programs. Retiring Sen. Roy Blunt co-sponsored the mental health component of the legislation.

But the provisions in the bill related to gun monitoring programs or red-flag laws cannot yet be implemented by state law enforcement because in 2021, Missouri passed the Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA), which bars local law officials from enforcing federal gun policy and could fine them for doing so.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Missouri statute in February and the law is currently being challenged in Cole County court by St. Louis city and Jackson County. There isn’t a timeline on when the case could be settled, but until it is, SAPA is in effect in Missouri.

How Missouri’s gun act impacts federal law

Recent tragedies in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, renewed outrage over the country’s gun laws. It led enough Republican senators to cross party lines and pass the new legislation, 65-33. Blunt voted for it; Missouri’s junior Sen. Josh Hawley, also a Republican, did not.

In doing so, Blunt went against the wishes of state legislators who signed a letter asking Blunt not to support the bill.

The new federal law alters a number of statutes surrounding who can buy a gun and how, most notably ending the “boyfriend loophole.” This means people convicted of domestic violence crimes against someone they have a continuing serious relationship with cannot own a gun.

Previously, federal statute only prevented those convicted of crimes against spouses, partners they had children with or partners they cohabitated with from buying a gun. Closing the loophole was a victory for Democrats in Congress who have fought to see that portion of the law changed.

Under Missouri’s Second Amendment act, however, the effect of the closed boyfriend loophole may be less pronounced.

Kristin Bowen, a lead volunteer coordinator for the Missouri chapter of Moms Demand Action, told The Beacon that SAPA could make it difficult to implement the newly closed boyfriend loophole.

“Unfortunately, in Missouri, there is this confusion,” Bowen said. “We do not have, in state statute, laws to protect victims and families from violent domestic abusers having firearms. And while we live currently, right now, under the Second Amendment Preservation law, there is no means for law enforcement, prosecutors, or judges to take action to protect a family, and that’s tragic.”

Dozens of police leaders spoke out against Missouri’s bill last summer, saying its provisions would make collaboration with federal partners and the use of national databases more difficult. A new report by the Missouri Chamber of Commerce cited SAPA as a cause of concern among local law enforcement in the face of rising crime across the state.

In a report by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Missouri was ranked 47th in the country in 2021 when it came to the strength of its gun laws. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that in 2020, Missouri ranked fourth nationwide for its firearm death rate.

Professor Royce Barondes, who teaches firearm law and other subjects at the University of Missouri School of Law, said the scope of SAPA will be more clear as courts weigh in on the judicial challenges to the law.

Courts will evaluate the way the law claims to be applied through judicial rulings before jumping to the conclusion on whether it is unconstitutional, Barondes told The Beacon.

“So that’s exactly the circumstance we have here. There’s a brand new statute, it has some vague language,” which Barondes said spurred “an attempt to invalidate [SAPA] in advance.”

No red-flag laws in Missouri

In terms of funding, the federal bill allocates $750 million over five years to states to implement and run crisis intervention programs, including managing red-flag programs or mental health courts. It’s unclear how much each state will receive.

According to CDC data complied by Everytown, 54% of gun deaths in Missouri were by firearm suicide from 2017 to 2020.

Missouri does not have a red-flag law that would allow judges to remove firearms from someone considered a danger to themselves or others.

Republican senators negotiated funds for states that do not have red-flag laws but do have crisis intervention programs.

The red-flag laws are a sticking point for many.

Parson told the St. Louis Post Dispatch in June that they were his primary concern when it came to the federal bill.

“The main thing I want to make sure is they are letting states make decisions for states. I just don’t want them tying my hands on what we do here in Missouri,” Parson said. “As long as they want to let states decide how they want to handle red flags, that’s OK with me. As long as they let us decide.”

Lawmakers who asked Blunt to revoke support for the bill insisted that “a vote for it will directly enable the spread of confiscation laws throughout the country, and further normalize support for the eventual disarmament of this nation.”

“You may believe your vote on this proposed bill comes at little risk, as Missouri has demonstrated time  and again that our General Assembly would not vote to pass such laws,” they wrote in the letter.

Blunt’s focus stayed on the mental health provisions, which already have been implemented as a pilot program in a handful of states across the country. He lauded the success of the intervention measures in the pilot states.

“The whole idea of crisis intervention, there are opportunities in this law for that to happen,” Blunt said in his remarks on the bill.

“If you’ve got a mental health problem, you’re more likely to be the victim of a crime than you are the perpetrator of a crime. But if those problems get out of control – often suicidal thoughts first before you have homicidal thoughts – but if this system works the way it should, who knows what good you’ve done by just letting people go through their normal lives as contributing citizens with treating their mental health?” he added.

Soccer fans react to the official FIFA World Cup host city announcement on Thursday, June 16, 2022, at the Kansas City Power and Light District in Kansas City, Mo. Credit: (Zachary Linhares/KC Beacon)

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon.

Kansas City has reason to celebrate. After years of constructing a bid to host a portion of the 2026 World Cup, FIFA officials announced that the city will be one of 11 host cities in the United States.

GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium will be the host venue for Kansas City’s portion of the series and will undergo some upgrades to accommodate the games, which Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said will cost around $50 million.

The city’s position geographically and within the national soccer scene uniquely positioned it as an opportune host city, officials said at a party to watch the international announcement. The United States, Mexico and Canada put in a joint bid to host the games.

Kansas City was one of 16 cities in the final running to host at least a portion of the World Cup.  Western region cities hosting games include Vancouver, Canada, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Guadalajara, Mexico.

Other central region cities include Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Mexico City and Monterrey. Eastern region host cities are Toronto, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami and New York.

It’s unclear how many games Kansas City will host. Bid director Katherine Holland said Thursday afternoon that representatives from host cities will soon travel to New York to get more information on hosting the games.

The 2026 World Cup will be a historically significant series; 48 nations will participate in the games, up from the 32 that have in the past participated.

Kansas City began bidding to host the games in 2017, Holland said.

“We drummed up support from states surrounding Kansas and Missouri and the games will be hosted in Kansas City at Arrowhead, but this is really a bid to represent and celebrate the region as a whole,” Holland said. “I think that the investment that has gone into growing the game of soccer over the past decade certainly justifies us being a sort of soccer capital of America.”

Holland pointed to the consistent expansion of the game in Kansas City and recent news that Kansas City’s professional women’s soccer team, the Kansas City Current, will soon open a new training facility and break ground on a stadium to host the team.

Other recent investments in the city, such as the new $1.5 billion terminal at Kansas City International Airport, scheduled to open in 2023, also separated Kansas City from other cities in the running, leaders said.

Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt and Sporting Kansas City principal owner Cliff Illig were honorary co-chairs of the bid team. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, Royals catcher Salvador Perez and Sporting Kansas City captain Matt Besler were honorary bid captains.

World Cup expected to draw massive spending to metro area

Lucas pointed to the job creation that hosting some of the games could bring to the region.

“Our team effort to bring the 2026 World Cup to Kansas City has culminated in today’s success as we prepare to be one of few American cities selected to host the largest sporting event in the world,” Lucas said in a press release.

“The World Cup will bring jobs to our residents, will generate hundreds of millions of dollars for our region, and will illustrate on a global stage what we’ve known for some time: Kansas City is the soccer capital of America. I can’t wait to welcome the world to Kansas City,” the mayor added.

Part of the requirements in submitting a bid included a sales tax exemption for tickets. Missouri Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, D-Independence, sponsored the bill that would do so for Kansas City’s ticket sales.

Any potential loss of revenue, though, would be outweighed by tourism to the area and job creation involved with preparing Kansas City for the cup, Rizzo said.

“[The bill] shows a near $700 million in positive economic impact. To the state of Missouri, it’s just an opportunity for Kansas City to show itself off to the world stage,” Rizzo told The Beacon. “I don’t even know if you can quantify that economically as to what that means for the region. And not just even the city or state, but throughout the entire Midwest.”

A study by the University of Tennessee Knoxville examining the potential impact  estimated 160,000 fans traveling into the Nashville area if the city were to host four games. The study estimated nearly $700 million in visitor spending and $185.5 million in earnings for Tennessee workers.

Rizzo pointed to the investment into Kansas City, supported by the restaurant and entertainment industries, that helped accelerate the metro’s growth.

“I think it’s the perfect culmination of all the things that the city of Kansas City has been working on really truly for the last 20, 30 years,” he said. “The industry that has just fully embraced downtown Kansas City. It is a dynamic town that has reaped the rewards of massive investment.”

Missouri Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican, said in a news conference at Kansas City Power and Light District after the announcement that Kansas City’s successful bid was a result of bipartisan collaboration led by Rizzo and Rep. Jonathan Patterson, R-Lee’s Summit.

“These rock stars up here that helped you… a Republican and a Democrat…who worked together to get this thing done,” Kehoe said. “It’s here because Missouri has great sports fans. We have great sports franchises. From the General Assembly and the governor of the state of Missouri, Gov. Parson, we’d like to welcome the World Cup here in 2026.”

The Kansas City Beacon is an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest.

Missouri was recently ranked seventh in the nation when it came to the number of registered electric vehicle drivers and charging locations, with 6,740 registered electric vehicles across the state and 985 electric vehicle charging stations available (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon.

Beto Lugo-Martinez is a grassroots activist who advocates for clean air. A big part of his work is fighting the expansion of “gas guzzling” vehicles and making sure that historically underserved communities receive infrastructure updates, partly to encourage driving an electric vehicle in Kansas City.

Kansas City is no exception to the growing nationwide popularity of electric vehicles, which are known as EVs. As more affordable models hit the market, Lugo-Martinez, the executive director of the nonprofit CleanAirNow, is focused on ensuring equitable access to infrastructure, including charging stations.

“We can just invest and put charging stations everywhere, but if we’re not really worried about investing in communities that are most impacted, we’ll be missing that mark again,” he said.

Missouri was recently ranked seventh in the nation when it came to the number of registered electric vehicle drivers and charging locations, with 6,740 registered electric vehicles across the state and 985 electric vehicle charging stations available.

Evergy, the utility provider for much of the Kansas City metro, has played a role in the installation of many of the area’s electric vehicle charging stations.  But the region still has gaps when it comes to electrification.

Census tracts with lower median income often lack public charging options, and the disparity is especially clear on Missouri’s side of the metro. Charging location data from the Department of Energy shows a concentration of stations in the Kansas City’s downtown, financial and Power and Light districts, which are among the city’s most affluent areas, based on Census data.

In the area surrounding the Country Club Plaza, another generally high-income neighborhood, public EV charging stations can often be found only a block away from one another.

Also, public electric vehicle chargers are most often found west of Troost Avenue, which has represented Kansas City’s racial dividing line for decades. East of Troost, home to many of the city’s low-income residents, electric vehicle charging appears more sparse, with only a fraction of the charging station availability that residents to the west enjoy.

Waiting game ensues

Under the federal infrastructure law, Missouri can expect to receive $99 million over five years to support the expansion of EV charging in the state. Another $2.5 billion is set aside for states across the country to apply for grants for EV charging.

Electrification infrastructure created some controversy in the Missouri legislature this year. The House passed a bill that would have prevented local governments from requiring owners of buildings to install EV charging stations, unless the cities or counties were willing to foot the bill. Ultimately the bill didn’t progress to a Senate vote.

The Metropolitan Energy Center (MEC) in Kansas City, whose goals are to create “resource efficiency, environmental health and economic vitality,” is fielding some of the money (which will often require a 50% local match) to communities to expand their electrification infrastructure. Much of that work centers around helping cities electrify their vehicles or public buses, which emit pollutants when roving around cities all day. The MEC is also using a small grants program to help municipalities that may not have the funds to match federal dollars.

Miriam Bouallegue, the sustainable transportation manager at MEC, said the nonprofit is trying to assess the needs of the metro as the money flows in.

“How do we define who’s underserved? How do we measure that? How do we target those folks without relying on past definitions that were developed for other types of infrastructure that don’t really relate?” she said.

“Most people that drive an EV are charging their car overnight in their house,” Bouallegue added. “However, if you don’t have a garage, or maybe you do, but maybe your garage was built in the 1940s and has no electricity in it— it’s really more of a shed. Then you might not be able to charge your vehicle as easily or simply as someone who can just pull into their normal spot and plug in.”

Independence, whose utilities are not provided by Evergy like the rest of Kansas City’s, has fewer charging stations than other areas in the metro, but the demand appears to be lower.  Joe Hegendeffer, deputy director of Independence Power and Light, said that many of Independence’s charging stations go unused on a day-to-day basis.

Centerpoint Medical Center’s stations, for example, have high use because the hospital’s staff often plugs in during the day.

“But charging stations at Cable Dahmer [Arena] are real hit and miss,” Hegendeffer said. “Ninety percent of the day when you drive by it, there’s nothing going on there. So they’re not being utilized.”

Lugo-Martinez is working on getting community members specialized training on electrification, so the push can come from the ground up.

“One of the other things that we’ve been looking at is creating some pathways for local community members to get involved in green economy, green energy, and get specialized training around EVs, building infrastructure for it in homes because then that can create that pathway for it,” he said.

Lugo-Martinez said the group is also lobbying lawmakers to provide further rebates or incentives for drivers to switch to electric, so lower-income communities aren’t left behind in the push toward electrification.

A changing electric vehicle landscape

Electric vehicles can save consumers money in the long run. Charging is generally much cheaper than gasoline, and maintenance costs are usually lower compared to gas-powered vehicles.

The initial purchase price of an electric vehicle, however, remains above that of its gas-powered equivalent.

But industry forecasts suggest electric vehicles will become more affordable and commonplace in the years to come, as production volume grows and technology improves.

Bloomberg’s annual Electric Vehicle Outlook report from last year predicts a steep increase in passenger EV sales in the next few years, though China and Europe are likely to continue dominating in that department.

But American automakers have put down large investments in the transition to electric. Ford is aiming for up to half of its vehicle volume to be battery-powered by the end of the decade with a $30 billion investment. General Motors has promised 30 new EVs between 2020 and 2025 in a $35 billion investment.

“That’s a ton of money, a ton of support,” said Nick Voris, senior manager of electrification products and services at Evergy. “That support is going to manifest itself in terms of a greater variety of EVs, which of course are going to appeal to a larger base of customers.”

Federal, state and local governments have also offered tax credits and other incentives to encourage the transition to electric.

In Kansas City, Evergy offers rebates for developers looking to install electric vehicle charging infrastructure on the Kansas side. The utility is awaiting regulator approval for similar incentives on the Missouri side.

Evergy’s Clean Charge Network has also played a key role in Kansas City’s initial build-out of charging infrastructure. By the time the bulk of that project was complete, about six years ago, the utility had placed about 1,000 chargers around the city.

Since then, Evergy has installed a few dozen more, but has largely taken on a supporting role as private developers take responsibility.

“The industry is turning toward private developers, and, more specifically, private developers that are recipients of grant funding,” Voris said. “Those folks are going to be doing the vast majority of public charging station build-outs for the foreseeable future.”

As the public utility for the Kansas City region, Evergy still helps developers in the planning process. Slight tweaks to infrastructure planning can make chargers more energy- and cost-efficient, and Evergy offers guidance in those decisions.

But as private developers focus on bulking up the Kansas City metro’s charging availability, return on investment remains paramount. That gives Evergy the opportunity to fill the void in places where return on investment might not be as great, Voris said.

“Going forward, that is an area that we, the utility, are going to be much more focused on,” he said. “We, as a utility, have an obligation to ensure equitable access.”

Low-income neighborhoods may be less likely to embrace the transition to electric — largely due to a price barrier. A lack of public charging infrastructure in those communities, where multifamily homes are common and garages are less so, adds further impediment.

A Blast Point study last year found that consumers “ready to buy” an electric vehicle landed in the middle- to higher-income brackets, with an average income of $150,000. That group also tends to be college-educated and living in single-family homes, which are more accommodating to private charging than multifamily dwellings like apartments.

Blast Point found that low-income consumers don’t regard electric vehicles as favorably as more affluent drivers do. This group is more likely to not own a vehicle at all, often relying on public transit or other more affordable means of transportation.

Kansas City Councilwoman Melissa Robinson, whose District 3  includes some of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods, said she is continuing to prioritize education and electrification of the city’s fleets, as well as energy-efficient public transportation.

“We’re talking about electrification or electric vehicles where people are making $12,000 to $18,000 a year. How does that make sense? It doesn’t,” Robinson said “So we cannot get around this conversation without talking about having a robust public transit option to help people get from point A to point B.”

Lugo-Martinez said that an equitable infrastructure for electric vehicles has to be part of the overall picture.

“We’re seeing that where there’s wealth, of course it’s easier for them to put these stations in,” he said. “This disinvestment is really still creating that inequitable distribution of infrastructure. Because again, we’re investing in the communities that are OK already and literally catering to them.”

He added: “I would just love to see the utilities step it up, and say, ‘Hey, let’s invest and see what happens.’ I think they just need to take that chance on a community, right? And see what we can do and start from there.”

This story is part of a series on climate change in the Kansas City region produced by the KC Media Collective to support and enhance local journalism so every person in Kansas City can lead a richer life. Members of the KC Media Collective are KCUR 89.3, American Public Square, Kansas City PBS/Flatland, Missouri Business Alert, Startland News and The Kansas City Beacon. 

From October 2020 to October 2021, according to the CDC, 2,131 people in Missouri died from overdoses (Beacon illustration).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon.

In February, Missouri was awarded $458 million in a settlement from the nation’s top opioid producers. Now, as lawmakers and state departments prepare to receive and distribute those funds, advocates hope Missouri will use the money wisely to respond to an opioid crisis that has taken thousands of lives.

The state will receive the dollars from Johnson & Johnson and other major opioid distributors. The payments will be spread over a period of 18 years, with most of the money to be deployed within the first decade. Payments could start appearing as early as this month, according to officials.

Jackson County will get around $13 million total from the settlement and Kansas City will receive $15 million. Clay County was estimated to receive $1.4 million, according to Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office. Missouri met the sign-on requirements to receive the maximum payout, Schmitt’s office said. A full list of the percent allocated of the opioid settlement funds for each city and county that joined is online. 

“This settlement won’t bring our loved ones back, it won’t provide any solace for those losses, but it can bring desperately needed resources to treatment centers, rehab facilities, law enforcement, and others who are on the frontlines of fighting this opioid epidemic in our state,” Schmitt, who is also running for U.S. Senate, said in a news release. 

From October 2020 to October 2021, according to the CDC, 2,131 people in Missouri died from overdoses. That marked an 11.2% increase from the year before.

The Missouri Hospital Association has suggested that part of the increase may be a drop in substance use-related visits to hospitals in the early months of the pandemic. Those visits fell significantly as hospitals reduced care, possibly resulting in lost opportunities for intervention.

The drug distributors deny the claims of wrongdoing made in the litigation. As part of the agreement, they will establish a home for consolidated data from all of the distributors, which will be available to states and territories.

State sets parameters for where funds can go

Much is still unclear about how exactly the state will use the opioid settlement funds. The state’s money will be controlled by its agencies, where it can be accessed through grants. The state will get 60% of the money, and the additional 40% will go to individual counties or localities.

With the opioid settlement came the state’s creation of the Opioid Addiction Treatment and Recovery Fund. Sen. Dan Hegeman, R-Cosby, amended a bill last week that would allow various state agencies, like the departments of Health and Senior Services, Corrections or the judiciary, to have access to the money.

“Under no circumstances shall such settlement moneys be utilized to fund other services, programs, or expenses not reasonably related to opioid addiction treatment and prevention,” the statute specifies. The bill Hegeman amended was placed on a calendar for further action by the Senate as soon as this week.

Missouri participated in a similar settlement with tobacco companies in 1998. But the state’s handling of its payout – about $130 million a year – has been a source of contention, as critics note that few dollars are spent to prevent or offset the harm of smoking.

In fiscal years 2020 and 2021, no settlement funds were used for tobacco prevention or education through the Department of Mental Health. The bulk of the money is used to fund early childhood education programs and Medicaid payments.

For 2021, the national health advocacy group Campaign For Tobacco Free Kids ranked Missouri 49th among the states for effective use of the settlement money. The state allocated .2% of what the CDC recommended it spend on prevention and cessation efforts.

As they await the opioid settlement money, advocates worry that this “once in a lifetime” opportunity to bolster treatment and prevention for substance use disorders may be lost if the money isn’t used properly.

“There’s been this very consistent message out that the states really fumbled with the tobacco settlement,” said Emily Hage, the president and CEO of First Call Alcohol/Drug Prevention and Recovery, an organization based out of Kansas City.

“It’s the reason why cities and counties filed their own suits, so that they could adequately address the needs of their local populations,” she added.

City priorities include housing, support throughout incarceration

According to resolutions passed by the Kansas City Council in early March, priorities for its settlement funds will include: increasing behavioral health services for those who are incarcerated, treatment services for incarcerated Missourians, expanding housing access and providing mental health support for young people who may be at risk of opioid misuse.

Kansas City City Manager Brian Platt has 120 days to present a specific plan for using the opioid settlement funds to the City Council. The city will also assemble a plan for how it will receive and distribute money with the state.

The city declined to comment through a spokesperson.

Hage said it isn’t yet clear how the city, county and state will collaborate when it comes to allocating the settlement over the next two decades, and said she would have prefered to see a “blueprint” in place while the settlements were being hammered out.

“I’m grateful that the state and then the municipalities and local governments are taking time to do some strategic thinking and planning before we start disseminating dollars,” Hage said. “I think the ideal would be a collaborative solution between those two entities. But I think that all really remains to be seen. There isn’t much clarity between the city and the county.”