Grain Belt will be constructed by Chicago-based Invenergy and be a 5,000 megawatt line to move wind-derived power from western Kansas to the Indiana border (Getty Images).

Chariton County cannot block construction of the Grain Belt Express electric transmission line by refusing permission to cross county roads, the Missouri Western District Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

The county can establish rules for how the transmission line crosses its roads, the court ruled as it modified a trial court decision that said the county could make no regulations at all.

“The decision as to whether Grain Belt’s overhead transmission lines for the project would be constructed across Chariton County’s public roads was already made by the (Missouri Public Service Commission) when it issued its Report and Order on Remand granting the (certificate of convenience and necessity) and approving the final proposed route of the project,” Judge Lisa White Hardwick wrote in the unanimous decision of the three-judge panel.

Grain Belt will be constructed by Chicago-based Invenergy and be a 5,000 megawatt line to move wind-derived power from western Kansas to the Indiana border. Half the power it carries will be delivered to Missouri utilities.

At first welcomed by many of the counties it will cross in north Missouri, the line has become controversial with complaints about aesthetics, whether high-voltage lines cause health issues and the power of the Public Service Commission to grant eminent domain power to obtain land for construction.

Republican legislators and agricultural groups tried repeatedly to strip Grain Belt’s right of eminent domain, which would have killed the project. But in 2022, lawmakers passed compromise legislation requiring, in the event of future large transmission lines, greater compensation for landowners and setting a seven-year time limit for companies to build transmission lines after obtaining their easements. 

Grain Belt’s disagreements with Chariton County began in 2014, Hardwick wrote in the decision, two years after it had initially received consent from the Chariton County Commission to cross its county-owned roads. Chariton County withdrew its consent and made it contingent upon the PSC approving the project.

When it received initial approval from the PSC, Grain Belt’s owners tried to negotiate with Chariton County. When it refused again to give its consent, the lawsuit followed.

Associate Circuit Judge Daren Adkins, assigned to the case from Daviess County, ruled that a state law barring counties from adopting ordinances “governing” utilities within their boundaries meant that an older law, requiring utilities to obtain consent from utilities to go “through, on, under or across” its roads could not be enforced.

The decision Tuesday modified that ruling. The law prohibiting an ordinance governing a utility is designed to protect against local rules that are in conflict with state rules, the court said.

But it doesn’t mean the law requiring consent to cross a road doesn’t have any effect, Hardwick wrote. The county can set standards but it cannot withhold its consent, she wrote.

“A fair interpretation is that (law) requires a county commission’s agreement regarding how a utility’s infrastructure will be constructed across the county’s public roads,” she wrote “not whether such utility’s infrastructure will be constructed across the county’s public roads in the first place.”

Overall utility policy is set at the state level, not the county level, she wrote.

“Doing so usurps the authority granted the MPSC in Chapter 386,” she wrote, “and exercises a power granted to the county in a manner contrary to the public policy of this state.”

The Missouri Sheriffs’ Retirement System’s $30,000 contribution to a campaign backing a court fee for sheriffs’ pensions is raising questions about the misuse of public funds. (Getty Images)

The Missouri Sheriffs’ Retirement System last month made a $30,000 investment, hoping for a big return if voters approve a ballot measure imposing a $3 fee on court cases to fund the system’s pensions.

The $30,000 contribution to the Committee to Ensure a Future for Sheriffs & Prosecutors, the committee promoting Amendment 6 on the Nov. 5 ballot, was approved at the system’s Board of Directors meeting in September, executive director Melissa Lorts said Tuesday.

The donation is drawing concern from critics of the proposed amendment — and even lawmakers in support — who question whether the pension board is using taxpayer dollars to support a political campaign.

The fee on court cases could generate about $2 million annually, according to a fiscal note for the legislation putting the measure before voters.

Prosecutors, who would also benefit from Amendment 6, have contributed $50,000 from Missouri Prosecutors Association funds. Sheriffs are the biggest contributors, with $100,000 coming from the Missouri Sheriff’s Association in addition to the donation from the retirement fund.

Amendment would use court fees to fund retirement for Missouri sheriffs, prosecutors

Along with providing the third-largest single contribution to the campaign, the retirement system website is actively promoting passage of the proposal with a box urging a “yes” vote on Amendment 6 and a link to the campaign website.

Lorts is the treasurer of the campaign committee in addition to her duties, which she said are part-time, as fund executive director.

No law is being violated by making the donation, Lorts said.

“I have a legal opinion and these are not public dollars,” Lorts said. “I’m not a political subdivision and they’re not public dollars.”

The legal opinion was not provided in writing, Lorts said. She also said she called the Missouri Ethics Commission and was assured the contribution was legal.

That assurance was not formalized in writing, either, Lorts said.

“My attorney, and I’ve also called Missouri Ethics, says nowhere am I not allowed to do that,” Lorts said. 

Stacy Heislen, acting executive director of the ethics commission, declined to comment on any specific conversations.

“Our practice is to provide an overview of what the statute allows,” Heislen said.

Questions from lawmakers

Leading members of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Employee Retirement weren’t as certain as Lorts that the contributions were unquestionably legal.

State Rep. Barry Hovis, a Cape Girardeau Republican and chairman of the committee, said he would have to know more about the precise source of funds. He said he would ask committee staff to research the question.

“If we think that it’s a Missouri ethics complaint, obviously that report should be made to Missouri ethics to see if they did spend money that’s not viable for a campaign or election,” Hovis said. “I don’t know, I’m just not good enough on the rules to say yes or no on those.”

Hovis, a retired police officer who sponsored the legislation in the Missouri House, said he thinks the fee is reasonable. Sheriffs are vital to the functioning of the courts by serving paperwork, providing security and operating jails, he said.

Another committee member, Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, an Affton Democrat, said he was also uncertain about the legality of the donation and wanted to know more.

“This doesn’t look good, and that’s where I’m at right now,” Beck said. “I would have to talk to some other folks that are a little bit more knowledgeable about this. I personally don’t like the way it looks.”

The fee in question was added to criminal cases in 1983 and expanded to include municipal court cases in 2013. In 2021, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that it was an unconstitutional bar to the courts, which are to be open to all and where “justice shall be administered without sale, denial or delay.”

Amendment 6 would overturn that decision by stating that “costs and fees to support salaries and benefits for” sheriffs, former sheriffs, prosecutors and former prosecutors is part of ensuring “that all Missourians have access to the courts of justice…”

Before the Supreme Court decision, the fiscal note for the legislation states, the fee brought about $2 million annually to the pension fund.

The fund in 2023 paid $3.8 million in benefits to 147 retired former sheriffs, one disabled former sheriff, and 52 spouses. The administrative costs of $244,454.

There are 17 retired sheriffs eligible for a pension but not receiving it and 115 currently in office.

“My board voted to contribute because it is important to the 200 members that are currently receiving a benefit that will lose their benefit if we do not receive our $3 fee back,” Lorts said.

Public money to shore up pension fund

During calendar year 2023, without the fees, the fund received $89,502 in contributions, had $38.4 million in assets and had lost $15 million in value over the previous two years. A large portion of the loss in value was due to refunding the unconstitutional fee and other costs from litigation.

To shore up its finances, lawmakers this year appropriated $5 million in general revenue to the fund, $2.5 million in the supplemental spending bill for the year ending June 30 and another $2.5 million in the current year.

Since Jan. 1, sheriffs have been contributing 5% of their salaries toward the pension fund.

By making the contribution after receiving state tax dollars, the fund could have violated rules governing the use of state appropriations, said Sharon Jones, an attorney from Jefferson City who was a member of the legal team that forced changes in the ballot language for Amendment 6.

“I’m not surprised by it even a little bit,” Jones said of the contribution.

The legal question is a murky one, she said. 

“Our campaign finance laws are pretty Wild West,” she said. “Certainly, there have been attempts over the last couple of years specifically aimed at school boards and county people trying to pass levies to say you can’t campaign for it.”

A state law dating to 1988, and strengthened in 2021, prohibits political subdivisions from using public funds to support or oppose any ballot measure or candidate. No one interviewed for this story could point to a specific state law applying that prohibition to state departments or entities created by state statute.

Federal law does prohibit the conversion of public funds to campaign purposes.

“If the sheriff’s pension goes under, the state of Missouri is on the hook for those dollars,” Jones said.

Regardless of the law, she said, it is an improper diversion of money away from its official purpose.

“It’s still public money, and it’s still money that is supposed to be used on the administration of the pension fund and to make sure that there is enough to pay out what’s owed when the time comes,” Jones said.

Frank Vatterott, an attorney, former municipal judge in St. Louis County and a critic of the fee, said the $3 fee has nothing to do with keeping the courts open. 

Vatterott refused to collect the fee while he was a judge. The roots of the constitutional prohibition on the fee, he said, date back to the Magna Carta, the 1215 document that put protections for individual rights into a legally binding document for the first time in England.

“The administration of justice just means the cost to keep the court going, to pay the court clerk and pay the judge and do the paperwork,” Vatterott said. “This is not the administration of justice. These are retirement funds.”

Vatterott said he has no doubt that the system’s money is public funds. And he’s not in doubt about the law.

“You can’t use public money for advocacy, period,” he said. “I would imagine they’re not that dumb.”

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

Missouri House testimony presented under several aliases should be investigated and prosecuted under laws making it a felony to file false documents with a government agency, state Rep. Del Taylor said Friday.

Taylor, a St. Louis Democrat, said that The Independent’s report that a Columbia restaurant owner is the source of testimony under at least three fake names demands further investigation.

“Let’s take a closer look at who are these people that testified and submitted written testimony, and put some degree of scrutiny to them,” Taylor said in an interview with The Independent.

Written testimony submitted to the Missouri House Special Interim Committee on Illegal Immigrant Crimes included several statements that accused restaurant owners in cities around the state of conspiring to obtain liquor licenses for undocumented immigrants.

Three of the names and email addresses matched emails sent to The Independent beginning in May. Those emails included many of the same accusations sent to the committee, all tied back to officials and restaurants in Dunklin County in southeast Missouri.

False names used in testimony to Missouri House committee studying immigrant crime

Associate Dunklin County Commissioner Ron Huber, named as one of the alleged conspirators in the testimony and emails to The Independent, said he recognized them as among the aliases adopted by Crystal Umfress of Columbia as she targeted businesses he serves as an accountant.

Umfress was charged Sept. 18 in Dunklin County with filing false documents and forgery for impersonating Huber in emails seeking to withdraw liquor license applications for businesses he served. Umfress, owner of Casa Maria’s Mexican Cantina in Columbia, was already facing trial in February on charges of hiring a man to set fire to a Kennett restaurant when the forgery charges were filed.

The committee, formed by the House Republican leadership to document crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, actually found very little evidence that newly arrived people are more likely to commit offenses, Taylor said.

Taylor, a member of the committee, attended all six hearings in cities around the state, he said.

“The fact we had these hearings in the first place was unwarranted and now we have evidence to show that the testimony given that attempted to fuel the Republican anti-immigration rhetoric was falsified,” he said in a statement.

Taylor said the law making it a felony to file a false document with a government agency is one possible avenue for prosecution. Another is the punishment allowed in the Missouri Constitution for “disrespect to the House by any disorderly or contemptuous behavior in its presence during its sessions.”

“I don’t know if it would be the prosecutor from each county where a hearing took place, or the prosecutor here in Jefferson City since it was a House hearing,” Taylor said. “We are looking at a violation of Missouri statute. And I don’t know the jurisdiction, but yes, I would think the prosecutors should go ahead.”

The committee has concluded its public hearings and will prepare a report with recommendations for legislative action. The most pressing need shown by the testimony, Taylor said, is for laws protecting immigrants.

“Our immigrants and visitors are the victims of horrible human trafficking, hate crimes and wage theft,” Taylor said. “We heard that at all six of the hearings, and there were a number of recommendations that were made to offer better protections for our immigrant community.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

State Rep. Lane Roberts, a Republican from Joplin, is chairman of the House Special Interim Committee on Illegal Immigrant Crime. He is shown during a Jan. 18 public hearing on a bill he introduced (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

A Columbia woman charged with using multiple aliases to accuse restaurant competitors of criminal activity also used fake names for testimony to a Missouri House committee alleging a conspiracy to obtain liquor licenses for undocumented immigrants 

Crystal Umfress of Columbia, owner of Casa Maria’s Mexican Cantina, was already facing trial in a Dunklin County arson-for-hire scheme when she was charged Sept. 18 with five new felonies. The new charges, of forgery and filing a false document, also originate in Dunklin County.

The prosecution alleges she impersonated multiple public officials and others to claim that Mexican-born restaurant owners were bribing local public officials to cover-up their immigration status and obtain liquor licenses.

“I can’t speculate on what it is that set the lady off,” said Ron Huber, an associate commissioner of Dunklin County who was a target of the accusations cited in the forgery case. “I’ve never met her before in my life. I don’t know who she is or why she’s out to try to discredit me or anything.”

Huber is also named several times in testimony submitted to the Missouri House Special Interim Committee on Illegal Immigrant Crimes. The committee was established in July to study whether undocumented immigrants are a source of crime and held public meetings in Springfield, Joplin, Kansas City, St. Joseph, St. Louis, and Cape Girardeau.

The written testimony tied to Umfress was submitted to the committee using multiple names and email addresses. The emails allege Huber is at the center of a widespread conspiracy to obtain liquor licenses for Mexican restaurants that in turn serve as fronts for drug dealing and other crimes.

The conspiracy allegedly extends to Columbia, Warrenton, Springfield and other cities. The email testimony claims that undocumented immigrants who cannot legally obtain a liquor license are hiring people to front for their license applications, with officials turning a blind eye.

The submissions also often include a list of links to news stories involving people with Hispanic names, sometimes as victims of a crime, others as the alleged perpetrator of an offense like drunk driving.

Huber said he’s heard Umfress submitted testimony to the committee with false names.

“I’d like to know where that money went if I am supposed to have gotten it,” he said of the bribery allegation.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol, which investigated the forgery case, cannot comment on its work or confirm any connection between Umfress and the accounts which contacted the legislative committee, Sgt. Brad Germann said. The Dunklin County prosecuting attorney could not be reached for comment.

Russell Oliver, Umfress’ attorney, also declined to comment.

Starting in May, The Independent received a series of emails with similar accusations and many of the same links. Three of the email names and addresses for the witness statements are the same as those received by The Independent.

Huber said he recognized several of the names used in the emails as among those that had worked to spread conspiracy theories about him.

One email to The Independent, using the name Marissa Jenkins, identified the sender as a student reporter seeking help, with the signature line “Investigate Report University of Missouri Journalism.” 

A student named Marissa Jenkins was enrolled on a part-time basis during the summer term at MU, university spokesman Christopher Ave stated in an email. She is not currently enrolled.

The legislative testimony emails signed “Marissa Jenkins” do not identify her as a student or as a reporter.

The committee chairman, Republican state Rep. Lane Roberts of Joplin, said he was not aware that any of the testimony submitted by email was from aliases. 

“I do know that we received a number — two, three or maybe four emails — with regard to something in Dunklin County,” Roberts said.

The committee was not set up to investigate specific charges of criminal activity, Roberts said. 

“Our focus is in trying to quantify what kind of crime and how much crime is associated with undocumented workers,” Roberts said. “It’s been very difficult to come up with any kind of way to quantify that.”

Roberts, a former Joplin police chief and former director of the Department of Public Safety, said his response to specific allegations made in testimony is to ask the person reporting the criminal activity to contact law enforcement.

“When somebody alleges some kind of an activity, there’s always a healthy degree of skepticism, because often it’s personal, it’s emotional, and we have to be very careful about taking it at face value,” Roberts said.

Umfress first made news headlines last year when she was charged with paying $1,485 to someone to set fire to Lupita’s Mexican Restaurant in Kennett. She is set to go to trial in February in Butler County, where the case was moved on a change of venue.

Testimony submitted to the legislative committee under the name Maria Garcia in advance of its July 30 hearing blamed the owner of the building and Huber for the fire.

The owner, the testimony states, paid the intermediary who found the person willing to set the fire “$10,000 to start a kitchen fire to Lupitas Mexican and implement (sic) an American owner of a Mexican restaurant in Columbia, Missouri as she was trying to rat the commissioner out for a twenty year operation aiding illegal immigrants with IDs, liquor licenses, and drugs.”

Umfress has had numerous legal and personal issues coming at her at a rapid rate for more than a year. 

On July 1, 2023, she obtained a marriage license to wed her partner at Casa Maria’s, Jesus Celestino Mendoza-Chavez, nine days before the fire hit the Kennett restaurant, which was owned by Mendoza’s brother, KOMU-TV in Columbia reported. 

She was charged in the arson on Sept. 22, 2023. Mendoza-Chavez died Oct. 1, 2023, after sustaining severe injuries in a Sept. 26, 2023, head-on collision in Columbia. She cited the death of her husband in an unsuccessful bid to have her $65,000 bond reduced.

On May 9, the state Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control suspended the liquor license at Casa Maria’s for 52 days after finding a forgery on the application for renewal, KMIZ TV in Columbia reported. Umfress is ineligible for a liquor license in her own name because she has a felony theft conviction on her record.

The Independent on May 16 received the first email, from someone who called themselves Melissa White, making allegations involving Huber and the liquor license conspiracy.

The committee received submissions from “Melissa White,” using the same email address, in advance of two hearings. In the first, for the July 11 hearing, she brought a Columbia competitor into her conspiracy allegations. The second, for the July 30 hearing, said her fiance had been assaulted while at a Columbia restaurant and died the next day.

Umfress’ emails began causing Huber problems about six months ago, he said. He was contacted by the state alcohol regulators about emails purporting to withdraw license applications, Huber said, and more recently from accounting clients.

He asked the prosecutor to be aggressive, Huber said.

“I kind of put some pressure on the prosecutor,” He said. “I said, ‘before you know, nobody really knew what she was doing or whatever, but I’ve started to get phone calls from my clients and I’ll start losing clients.’ That’s going to be a big deal.”

Judge Craig Carter, a Wright County judge serving in Cole County for Missouri's gender-affirming care trial, listens to a nurse practitioner testify Thursday afternoon (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

After three days of battling over scientific papers and expert testimony, the trial of a lawsuit challenging Missouri’s restrictions on gender-affirming treatments on Thursday turned to the impact the law has on patients and providers.

Nicole Carr, a nurse practitioner at Southampton Community Healthcare in St. Louis, said anxiety, fear and depression first increased in transgender patients when Attorney General Andrew Bailey published an emergency rule that established barriers to care in April 2023.

“No one thinks about how these laws affect the actual people they are supposed to protect and they are supposed to serve,” she said.

Patients were crying in the clinic in fear, she testified.

“I’m trying to give them hope that they don’t have to fear being in Missouri, that they don’t have to fear coming to me as a provider, that they can move past this,” Carr said. “It’s sad because I’m referring a lot of people to therapy that, before these rules, were fine.”

She worries about youth in foster care, which she worked with frequently in a previous position. Transgender teenagers in foster care often must wait until they turn 18 to go to the doctor alone for assessment to obtain hormone-replacement therapy.

But if they are on Medicaid, as most are soon after foster care, Missouri won’t pay for the treatment.

“(The law) has impacted the quality of care I can give my patients when I know the solution to their problem is out there and I can’t do anything about it,” she said.

Carr and Southampton healthcare are among 11 plaintiffs hoping to block enforcement of a 2023 law banning gender-affirming medical treatments for minors. Other plaintiffs include parents of transgender children, transgender adolescents, other medical care providers and organizations supporting gender-affirming care.

Their attorneys began putting witnesses on the stand Monday in the Cole County Circuit Court trial scheduled to continue through next week. The lawsuit asks Judge Craig Carter, assigned to the case from Wright County, to declare the law unconstitutional, alleging violations of equal protection, due process and other rights guaranteed by the Missouri Constitution.

Although the law does not ban counseling or the continuation of treatments begun before it passed, several providers ceased all gender-affirming treatments for minors soon after it took effect on Aug. 28, 2023. First University of Missouri Health, then Washington University  in St. Louis, ended their programs, citing the threat of future litigation allowed in the law.

Neither provider is a party to the lawsuit.

Over the first three days of the trial, assistant attorney generals defending the law have repeatedly sought to discredit plaintiffs’ expert witnesses. The painstaking cross examinations have slowed the pace of the trial to two experts per day and led to a late recess on Wednesday.

Carter, however, has declined to limit the cross-examination, despite arguments from plaintiffs’ attorneys that it means the trial will exceed the time allotted to complete it.

During cross-examination, members of the defense team have read scientific articles, news articles and editorials on gender-affirming care. Almost invariably, that leads to objections that the exhibits are new.

Carter has allowed reading as a way to challenge the credibility of witnesses by  showing deficiencies in their testimony, such as bias or poor memory.

“They seem to be reading a lot of newspaper articles and a lot of opinion pieces,” Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for plaintiffs, told reporters. “If they wanted to introduce the opinion of some random person in the United Kingdom, they could have called them.”

During one question to Dr. Armand Matheny Antommaria from Solicitor General Joshua Divine, plaintiffs’ attorney Nora Huppert objected, arguing that it was as if Divine was testifying himself.

It came as Antommaria, a pediatric hospitalist and bioethicist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, answered questions slowly, often with a “yes sir” or “no sir,” correcting Divine’s questions.

“If you go to the key findings, the statement you’ve pulled out is not part of the key findings,” he said, after a question in which Divine asked about a singular sentence of a scientific article. The context is important, Antommaria told him, saying the overall report was the opposite of Divine’s characterization.

Divine also asked  if Antommaria’s religious beliefs or divinity degree should disqualify him as an expert.

“Given the nature of that particular degree, that does not disqualify myself,” he said.

Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, an adolescent medicine physician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and medical director of the hospital’s center for transgender youth health and development, testified about her research linking distress about breast development to depression and anxiety. She also discussed benefits of gender-affirming care she has seen in her clinical experience.

Hal Frampton, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, brought one of the 11 three-ring binders prepared for the Olson-Kennedy testimony to the podium. He flipped through the approximately three-inch binder, presenting studies and articles to question Olson-Kennedy’s research and concluding with videos from talks she gave years ago.

In one talk, she said people “get worked up” about certain surgical procedures that are part of gender affirming care.

Frampton asked if she doesn’t like people that get worked up. Olson-Kennedy said she was emphasizing the difference between gender-affirming surgeries.

“The seriousness of getting a sterilizing surgery is more severe than someone who needs a chest surgery,” she said.

He also asked about an interview she gave in which she spoke about being involved in social justice efforts.

“People being able to get access to medically necessary care is an advocacy issue,” she responded.

The defense is scheduled to begin arguments Monday, with a scheduled final day of Oct. 4.

House Speaker Dean Plocher sits with his attorney, Lowell Pearson, during a March 12 hearing of the Missouri House Ethics Committee (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

A political action committee created to support outgoing Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher’s political career paid attorneys defending him against allegations of misconduct almost $75,000 in late August. 

According to campaign disclosure forms filed earlier this month, a PAC called Missouri United paid David Steelman and his law firm $21,000 on Aug. 23. The PAC paid Lowell Pearson’s law firm $52,000 on Aug. 28.

Missouri United is not required to file another disclosure report detailing its spending until Oct. 15. 

Steelman and Pearson defended Plocher while he was under investigation by the Missouri House Ethics Committee earlier this year. Pearson is Plocher’s attorney in a whistleblower lawsuit filed against him, his chief of staff Rod Jetton and the Missouri House. 

A Cole County judge on Tuesday set Oct. 23 for a hearing in that lawsuit, which accuses Plocher and Jetton of retaliating against the chief clerk of the House after she raised concerns about alleged mistreatment of women and misuse of state funds.

Missouri House chief clerk sues Dean Plocher, Rod Jetton alleging whistleblower retaliation

Plocher was set to run for lieutenant governor this year until shortly before the candidate filing deadline, when he switched and ran for secretary of state instead. 

He ended up finishing fourth in the Republican primary. 

After his loss, Plocher’s candidate committee — Plocher for Missouri — spent the remainder of the $295,000 it had left on hand paying his campaign advisers and settling debt from the campaign. On Sept. 5, the committee was permanently shut down. 

Missouri United, however, remains active and had $56,000 cash on hand as of Sept. 1. 

Plocher’s troubles became public late last year when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of his months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

A complaint against Plocher was eventually filed with the Missouri House Ethics Committee, kicking off a four-month investigation that ended with no formal reprimand. However, the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who led the inquiry said Plocher obstructed the committee’s work through pressure on potential witnesses and refusing to issue subpoenas.

Speaker Dean Plocher accused of ‘absolute obstruction’ in House ethics investigation

In May, a lawsuit was filed in Cole County by Dana Miller, the chief clerk of the House. She claims in the litigation that problems with Plocher began before he was speaker, when she confronted him in May 2022 over several complaints about his treatment of female Republican lawmakers, including a woman who said she considered filing an ethics complaint against him.

When she raised those concerns with Plocher, Miller said he responded by saying: “stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.”

Tensions escalated, Miller said, during Plocher’s efforts to replace the House’s constituent management contract in 2023. When Miller pushed back, she said another lawmaker working with Plocher told her the speaker had repeatedly threatened to fire her.

Miller alleges Plocher pushed to privatize constituent management because it would mean large donations for his statewide campaign and access to communications to the House for campaign use.

In retaliation for her resistance Hernandez wrote, Plocher threatened MIller that he “would take it to a vote” to remove her as chief clerk,  “a warning of possible dismissal.”

Plocher has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and sought to get himself dismissed from the case, arguing that any allegations of wrongdoing amount to “little more than internal political disputes.”

He also argued Miller was not a whistleblower and that any alleged threats against her job were relayed to her by a third party and are therefore hearsay. And he cited a provision in Missouri’s constitution saying members of the General Assembly “shall not be questioned for any speech or debate in either House.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sitting on a surplus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revenue picture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

State Rep. Deb Lavender, D-Manchester, speaks during debate on March 1, 2023, in the Missouri House (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

House Democrats on Wednesday made an unsuccessful push to override Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s veto of $2.5 million in funding for oversight of the state’s nursing homes, with all but eight Republicans voting to sustain the governor’s action.

It is the second year in a row Parson has vetoed funding for nursing home oversight. 

State Rep. Deb Lavender, a Democrat from Manchester, led the effort, arguing that the money would make Missouri’s nursing home residents safer.

“There are complaints that are going unanswered,” Lavender said, adding that one-third of Missouri’s nursing homes have been found to have serious deficiencies.

The additional funding would have helped the state’s long-term care ombudsman program hire more staff to advocate for nursing home residents.

The ombudsman program is composed of staff and volunteers tasked with helping protect and advocate for the interests of nursing home residents. They often serve as liaisons between a resident and the facility when issues arise, investigating and resolving complaints. Ombudsmen can help ensure residents are able to go to the bathroom, take their medications and be fed on time, for instance.

Missouri has consistently had one of the lowest nursing home staffing levels in the country which can contribute to residents not receiving proper care. 

The motion to override Parson’s veto failed by a vote of 56 for and 81 against. All Democrats present voted for the override. All but eight Republicans voted against it. 

“We just wanted to bring voice to the lack of being able to care for our seniors,” Lavender said during a press conference after the vote, adding that it was “no surprise” that a Democrat asking to overrule the Republican governor failed. 

In the scope of a $50 billion state budget, Lavender said, the governor’s decision to strip out the $2.5 million “doesn’t make sense to me.”

“This is twice we put it in,” she said, “and the governor has taken it back out.” 

The state budget signed by Gov. Parson in June left $1.9 billion unspent. 

Parson wrote to lawmakers this summer explaining his veto  that “while this supports the important goal of helping seniors throughout the state, there is insufficient funding from the appropriated source to support this item.” 

Last year, his veto letter noted a general need to ensure a balanced budget and the “financial stability of Missouri.”

Republican state Rep Jim Kalberloh of St. Clair said during the floor debate he was voting against the override to respect that there is “a reason why they did this,” referring to the governor’s office’s veto, but that he supports the funding and wants the legislature to try again next year to pass it.

“We spend a lot of money on a lot of things,” Kalberloh said, “If we can’t protect our elderly and are disabled, then we can think about where our money is going.”

Democratic state Rep. Doug Clemens, of St. Louis responded to Kalberloh, saying: “It’s our job, our responsibility to reflect the needs of our constituency,” rather than the will of the governor. Clemens said he has senior constituents who would benefit from the ombudsman program having more resources.

“And I don’t think it’s worthwhile to let somebody wait another year for us to get our act together,” he said. “…This is a paltry sum compared to the rest of our budget.”

In a report from AARP last year, Missouri ranked 48th in the country for nursing home quality and 46th in nursing home staff levels and turnover.

The most recent federal staffing data, updated in July, showed Missouri residents receive 3.3 hours of daily care, on average. That’s below the federal standard going into effect in the next few years, and was second only to Texas for the worst in the country.

Lenny Jones, state director of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Missouri, which represents nursing home staff, told The Independent in an interview the cut is a disservice to residents and workers, and many of the issues arise from low staffing.

“There should be more eyes on what’s going on in nursing homes, not less,” he said.“So the more opportunities for family members, for residents, to be able to contact the ombudsman and issues around that is important, because that’s really, in many cases, the only voice.” 

Marjorie Moore, executive director of VOYCE St. Louis, an advocacy group for long-term care residents, said she was “really disappointed” in the vote Wednesday but “gratified” that more legislators and Missourians broadly are becoming aware of the need for the program and issues in nursing homes.

“We’re calling on whoever may be governor next year and next year’s legislators to continue this fight and get this funding in,” she said, “because this is an issue that’s not going away in any way shape or form.”

Missouri will have an increasing population of older adults, she said, and “we’re only going to have more people who are going to need those advocates.”

Moore said, despite the state’s failure to bring resources to the level needed, people should know the program is still operating statewide and residents in every nursing home throughout Missouri can contact them with concerns. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monsees said the department would “address that.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City (Tessa Weinberg/Missouri Independent).

Missouri lawmakers will return to Jefferson City this week to consider whether to override any of Gov. Mike Parson’s vetoes. 

And while they are in town, many will also engage in another veto session tradition — raising campaign cash at a parade of parties and fundraisers all over the Capitol City.

Less than two months out from the November election, there are 25 fundraising events scheduled over the course of three days this week, offering everything from “fellowship and coffee” to “live music” to “debate watch and karaoke.”   

The first event takes place Monday night, when nine incumbent Republican senators will be joined by eight GOP nominees for open Senate seats at the Jefferson City office of the Armstrong Teasdale law firm. 

A few of those listed on the Armstrong Teasdale invite are also scheduled to attend another fundraiser at the same time less than a block away at CORK & and Board, which advertises itself as Jefferson City’s “one and only board game pub.”

On Tuesday, another 19 fundraisers are scheduled, kicking off at 1:15 p.m., when House Majority Leader Jon Patterson will be the special guest at an event for five of his fellow Republican representatives at the offices of the Association of Realtors. 

Democrats get into the act by 3 p.m., with seven representatives holding an event at The Grand Cafe. 

Statewide candidates are raising money Tuesday as well, with Republican Denny Hoskins gathering supporters at Bar Vino to aid his campaign for secretary of state at 3:30 p.m. and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Crystal Quade joins members of her caucus in the House at the Millbottom at 6:30 p.m.

Quade’s rival in the governor’s race, GOP Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, is hosting “dessert by the pool” at his Jefferson City home at 8 p.m.

Patterson, who is expected to be the next House speaker, and state Rep. Alex Riley, the leading candidate to replace Patterson as majority leader, will host a fundraiser at 5:30 p.m. at the offices of the Missouri Times, an online compendium of press releases and opinion pieces. That will also be the venue for an 8 p.m. fundraiser for state Rep. Melanie Stinnett of Springfield.

The next morning, GOP Sens. Mary Elizabeth Coleman and Curtis Trent will hold a fundraising event at the Association of Realtors headquarters and nine Republican representatives will gather to raise money at a breakfast event just down the street. 

Veto session officially kicks off at noon on Wednesday. 

A teenager speaks during a Senate hearing during the 2023 legislative session, donning a vest with a transgender flag (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

It has been a year since a state law required Missouri schools to have athletes compete according to their sex as assigned at birth, and few student manuals and school-board policies reflect the change.

Enforcement, which was murky last year, remains unprescribed with many districts stating that they will follow the law without describing how.

The law, which bars transgender athletes from competing according to their gender identity, penalizes noncompliant schools by revoking their state funding. It calls for state education officials to create any rules necessary for enforcement.

But the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education “is not involved in school athletics and activities,” its spokeswoman Mallory McGowin told The Independent. 

The Missouri High School Activities Association (MSHSAA), which is not a state entity, oversees eligibility for extracurricular events.

The association has eligibility standards that schools statewide require their athletes to adhere to in order to compete in MSHSAA-sanctioned events. One such requirement is a semiannual physical, in which doctors clear athletes to compete.

The paperwork provided by MSHSAA for the sports physical asks the student’s sex as assigned at birth and gender identity for the medical history provided to the doctor. The form submitted to schools only includes sex as assigned at birth.

But MSHSAA is not the enforcer of the law, said Andrew Kauffman, the association’s spokesman. Individual schools are.

When asked if MSHSAA has provided guidance to schools, he said it “has advised its (member) schools to follow the law.”

According to the Movement Advancement Project, which maps policies affecting LGBTQ people in the U.S., 25 states ban transgender athletes from participating according to their gender identity.

When a Missouri Senate committee was hearing the bill in 2023, a swath of advocates warned lawmakers that the legislation would harm transgender youth.

“Bills, such as (this one), communicate not just to the LGBTQ community but to all people that our very existence can and should be rejected and devalued,” said Shira Berkowitz, senior director of public policy and advocacy of PROMO, Missouri’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group.

School had brief answers to questions about their policies, with most unwilling to grant requests for an interview.

“We follow the state statute with regard to what gender is listed on a birth certificate and MSHSAA guidelines in terms of student participation in sports based on gender. We have worked effectively with families and student athletes to comply with the state law and we will continue to do so,” Rockwood School District’s spokesperson said.

In a review by The Independent of Missouri’s 10 largest school districts’ student manuals, Rockwood was one of two to cite state law in policies around athletic eligibility.

“The district complies with all relevant state law regarding participation in athletic competitions,” the policy says, citing the section that restricts participation based on sex at birth.

Wentzville School District based its policy on the law, copying phrases out of state statute and noting a loss of funding if the district does not comply.

The other districts lacked mention of the statute, or gender identity, in their athletics eligibility policies.

The policy in North Kansas City High School says: “Participation… can be granted to those who meet the eligibility standards of the school and the state of Missouri.”

MSHSAA is widely pointed to in eligibility policies.

Fort Zumwalt School District, in O’Fallon, determines eligibility “in accordance with the MSHSAA regulations and school district policies and regulations.”

Prior to the state law, there were only five transgender athletes eligible to compete in MSHSAA events.

Child care providers have been struggling to keep their doors open, and in some cases forced to shutter, due to technical issues with the education department’s disbursal of federal funds (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

Missouri legislative leaders are demanding answers from state education officials about a monthslong backlog in a child care subsidy program.

Two House committees — the budget committee and the education committee — have scheduled hearings into the matter next month, and a Republican Senate leader has called for her chamber to launch a similar inquiry.

“I think it is safe to say The Office of Childhood is a massive disaster,” Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, a Republican from Shelbina, wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday, referring to the office within the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that is responsible for administration of the subsidy.

“… instead of creating more child care,” she wrote, “this office is running day cares out of business.”

Child care providers have been struggling to keep their doors open, and in some cases forced to shutter, due to technical issues with the education department’s disbursal of federal funds.

State education officials have largely blamed a contracted vendor for the monthslong backlogs. The system launched in December after the program shifted from the Department of Social Services to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

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

The subsidy, part of a federal block grant program that is state-administered, helps cover the cost for day care owners serving low-income and foster children. Some day cares rely on the program to pay their staff.

O’Laughlin said due to the “incompetence” of the office, she is requesting that Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden appoint an interim committee to look into the issues. 

The technology vendor, along with leadership of the Office of Childhood, parents and child care providers would be asked to testify, she wrote.

The vendor contracted to develop and implement the new system for the subsidy program is World Wide Technology, a large technology services provider headquartered in St. Louis.

In addition to O’Laughlin, House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat running for governor, demanded that her chamber’s leadership create an interim committee to look into the issues surrounding the subsidy. 

The problems administering the program have “escalated to the point of crisis, with families losing access to care,” Quade wrote in a letter last week to House Speaker Dean Plocher, “as some facilities have been forced to close, due in large part to the department’s failure to remit the payments owed in a timely manner.”

The education department has been “less than forthcoming” in communication, she wrote. 

“Since members of the House Democratic Caucus are being inundated with pleas for help from desperate families and struggling providers,” Quade wrote, “I’m certain our Republican colleagues are as well. 

“If the department is unable or unwilling to provide answers, it is our duty to demand them.”

Wednesday, Plocher announced the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee will hold a hearing Sept. 10 to “investigate the causes and impacts of delays” in the state issuing child care payments.

A House Budget Committee hearing was already scheduled for Sept. 11 to discuss child care with the education agency.

“At any hearing that is scheduled with lawmakers,” the education department’s spokesperson, Mallory McGowin, said in an email to The Independent, “DESE plans to be transparent about the challenges that exist, and the work being done to address the issues.”

McGowin said there are currently backlogs in family applications for subsidy assistance, provider contract applications, and in providers’ requests to resolve outstanding payment issues.

And there are ongoing issues getting providers their full payment: “Payments are being processed daily and providers are getting paid,” she said, “though some are not receiving full payment due to ongoing technical issues.”

Regarding the backlog of family applications, McGowin said the department has contracted with a staffing agency and expects it to be cleared by “mid to late September.” The department has also cross-trained additional staff to clear the backlog of provider contract applications. That backlog is expected to be cleared “by early to mid-September.”

Regarding outstanding payment issues, she said the current contractors have doubled their staff working on “issues preventing or delaying provider payments.” DESE has also contracted with an agency to clear the backlog of subsidy payment corrections and hired part-time workers to help process requests for missing payments. McGowin didn’t provide a timeline for the department overcoming the backlog of payment corrections.

“DESE recognizes the importance of subsidy payments to the child care industry and the value the program provides to Missouri’s workforce, in particular for families who provide care to children in foster care,” McGowin said.

McGowin encouraged parents and providers with questions to call the subsidy hotline at 573-415-8605.

“DESE and its contractors, World Wide Technology and MTX, are working hard to address these issues and sincerely apologizes to the child care providers and families affected by this transition,” she said.

UPDATE: This story was updated at 10:20 AM on Aug. 28 to add news of the House education committee’s hearing. It was updated at 12:45 PM to add comment from DESE and clarify the timing of Rep. Quade’s letter.

Missouri is being sued over a new law requiring drugmakers to deliver prescriptions discounted under the 340B program to any pharmacy contracting with a qualified provider. (Mint Images/Getty Images)

Three major pharmaceutical companies and their national lobbying organization are suing Missouri to block enforcement of a new state law requiring them to give medical providers unlimited access to discounted drugs for their pharmacies.

In four federal lawsuits filed over the past month, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Abbvie and PhRMA, the lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry, argue that Missouri lawmakers unconstitutionally intruded into interstate commerce with the bill passed this year.

Under the bill, drugmakers must accept orders to deliver medications to providers eligible for discounts under the 340B program, named for the section of law where it is authorized. The bill allows eligible providers to have an unlimited number of contracts with pharmacies to dispense their prescriptions of drugs purchased under the program.

“Under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, Missouri has no authority to define who has access to 340B-priced drugs,” states the lawsuit filed last week by PhRMA in the Western District of Missouri.

The law takes effect on Wednesday. The plaintiffs in each case have asked for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement, but no hearings on the requests have been scheduled and only one case, filed Aug. 2 by Novartis, has had enough activity for the judge to schedule any proceedings.

Abbvie went first, filing its lawsuit July 22 in the Eastern District  — 10 days after Gov. Mike Parson declined to sign the bill and instead allowed it to become law despite his misgivings. The other three cases are filed with the Western District, which includes Jefferson City.

The lawsuits name Attorney General Andrew Bailey and members of the state Board of Pharmacy, which is responsible for enforcing the law. The board is given authority to investigate violations of the law and the attorney general has enforcement powers through the state Merchandising Practices Act.

“It is difficult to convincingly argue that doing what a federal program requires is an irreparable harm,” Maria Lanahan, deputy solicitor general in the attorney general’s office, wrote in a filing arguing against a preliminary injunction in the Novartis lawsuit. “To the contrary, when Novartis complies with S.B. 751, it is helping covered entities that serve vulnerable populations.”

Bailey’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment on the cases.

The board is relying on Bailey to respond to the lawsuit. The law is self-enforcing and while the board could write rules about how it is to be followed, Executive Director Kimberly Grinston said.

“The board does not have a timeline to promulgate rules and has not made a decision on whether rules would be promulgated,” she said.

The Missouri Hospital Association and the Missouri Primary Care Association have asked to intervene in the Novartis lawsuit and will likely seek to join the other three, hospital association spokesman Dave Dillon said Monday.

“We are evaluating each case and intend to reinforce the work done by the General Assembly on behalf of Missouri’s hospitals, other providers and the communities they serve,” Dillon said.

The 340B program was created in 1992. It had two components — drug manufacturers had to deliver their products at a discount to eligible providers and eligible providers could only use the program to provide prescriptions to patients they treated directly.

Eligible providers included children’s hospitals, as well as hospitals that were sole providers in their community or designated “critical access hospitals” by providing care that would otherwise be absent, and those serving large numbers of indigent patients known as “disproportionate share hospitals.”

Other qualifying providers include federally qualified health care centers — clinics that receive grants to support operations so they can base charges on ability to pay — as well as clinics that serve AIDS patients, black lung victims and other debilitating diseases.

The use of contract pharmacies started in 1996, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began allowing one contractor per provider as recognition that many providers did not have in-house pharmacies. But a change to allow unlimited contracting increased the number of contract pharmacies from 2,321 in 2010 to 205,340 in 2024, according to data from PhRMA provided to The Independent in June.

Nationally, pharmaceutical manufacturers sold nearly $100 billion in discounted drugs in 2021 and 2022. Discounts averaged 60% from regular wholesale prices, the lobbying organization stated.

The pharmaceutical companies focus their criticism on the disproportionate share hospitals, who often contract with for-profit pharmacies to dispense the drugs. Those hospitals account for about 80% of all drugs purchased through the 340B program, $41.8 billion in 2022 and $34.3 billion the year before.

Pharmaceutical companies complain that the discounts are rarely passed on to patients. Instead, insurance companies and consumers pay retail prices and the extra profit is often split between the pharmacy and the provider.

“Make no mistake, the boom in contract pharmacies has been fueled by the prospect of outsized profit margins on 340B-discounted drugs,” AstraZeneca’s lawyers wrote in the complaint filed last week. “In short, the widespread proliferation of contract pharmacy arrangements since 2010 has transformed the 340B program from one intended to assist vulnerable patients into a multi-billion-dollar arbitrage scheme.”

The drugmakers have fought the expansion of contract pharmacies in a variety of ways. When Novartis sought in 2020 to limit the contracts to pharmacies within 40 miles of an eligible provider, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a notice that it considered the limit a violation of the program’s rules.

An advisory opinion on contracting, later withdrawn, said the 340B program required delivery to a pharmacy on “the lunar surface, low-earth orbit, or a neighborhood…”

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania ruled in January 2023 in a case against the federal agency that pharmaceutical companies could impose limits on the number of pharmacies they would allow to purchase the discounted drugs.

After the 2023 ruling, Novartis tightened its rules to allow only one contracted pharmacy per covered provider, but only if the provider did not have an in-house pharmacy. Other manufacturers have imposed variations on the Novartis policies.

State efforts to counter the limits have ramped up in the past two years. Missouri is one of eight states to pass laws requiring drugmakers to deliver discounted medications to contract pharmacies.

Arkansas was one of the first. In March, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld the Arkansas law requiring drugmakers to allow covered providers to have an unlimited number of contract pharmacies.

In the motion to dismiss the Novartis lawsuit, the Missouri attorney general’s office relied heavily on that ruling, writing that it shows federal law does not prevent Missouri from passing a similar law.

The four lawsuits use a variety of legal theories to assail Missouri’s new law. Along with allegations of interfering with interstate commerce and regulating in an area reserved for federal action, the Abbvie lawsuit argues that its property rights are being violated.

“These abuses of the federal 340B program raise obvious concerns because the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from forcing the transfer of property at confiscatory prices to private parties for their own private benefit,” the lawsuit states.

In the filing seeking to intervene in the Novartis case, the hospitals and primary care associations argued that the revenue from profits on 340B medications are essential support for their operations.

“Reducing access to those savings,” the filing states, “means hospitals are unable to underwrite critical but under-reimbursed services lines.”

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.

House Speaker Dean Plocher during the 2023 veto session (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher’s arguments to dismiss a whistleblower lawsuit filed against him earlier this year don’t withstand scrutiny and are an effort to “mislead this court,” attorneys for Chief Clerk Dana Miller wrote in a motion filed this week. 

Miller’s lawsuit, filed in May, accuses Plocher and his chief of staff, Rod Jetton, of retaliating against her after she raised concerns about his alleged mistreatment of women and misuse of state funds.

Plocher sought to get himself dismissed from the case last month, arguing that any allegations of wrongdoing amount to “little more than internal political disputes.”

He also argued Miller was not a whistleblower and that any alleged threats against her job were relayed to her by a third party and are therefore hearsay. And he cited a provision in Missouri’s constitution saying members of the General Assembly “shall not be questioned for any speech or debate in either house.” 

Miller’s attorney, Sylvia Hernandez, wrote in opposing Plocher’s motion that alleged actions taken by the speaker fit the definition of retaliation. 

Missouri House chief clerk sues Dean Plocher, Rod Jetton alleging whistleblower retaliation

He allegedly moved to change hiring and discipline policies for the House in order to sideline Miller, all of which “can be seen as a reprimand, a reassignment of duties, withholding of work, and as a possible demotion,” Hernandez wrote. 

Plocher also targeted other nonpartisan staff for dismissal, Hernandez wrote, in retaliation against the clerk and circulated a memo containing allegations against Miller aimed at convincing the House to remove her. 

All of this came, Hernandez wrote, after Miller disclosed violations of House policy, “gross waste of funds or abuse of authority, waste of public resources, mismanagement, and danger to public safety.”

By justifying his behavior as simply “political disagreements,” Hernandez wrote, Plocher is trying to “mislead this court” by applying the constitution protections for speech during House debate to conversations that took place behind closed doors. 

Plocher, who last week finished fourth in the GOP primary for secretary of state, became embroiled in controversy last September when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of his months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the Legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

A complaint against Plocher was filed with the Missouri House Ethics Committee in November, kicking off a four-month investigation that ended with no formal reprimand. However, the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who led the inquiry said Plocher obstructed the committee’s work through pressure on potential witnesses and refusing to issue subpoenas.

Plocher has denied any wrongdoing. 

Miller claims in her lawsuit that problems with Plocher began before he was speaker, when she confronted him in May 2022 over several complaints about his treatment of female Republican lawmakers, including a woman who said she considered filing an ethics complaint against him.

When she raised those concerns with Plocher, Miller said he responded by saying: “stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.”

Tensions escalated, Miller said, during Plocher’s efforts to replace the House’s constituent management contract in 2023. When Miller pushed back, she said another lawmaker working with Plocher told her the speaker had repeatedly threatened to fire her.

Miller alleges Plocher pushed to privatize constituent management because it would mean large donations for his statewide campaign and access to communications to the House for campaign use.

In retaliation for her resistance Hernandez wrote, Plocher threatened MIller that he “would take it to a vote” to remove her as chief clerk,  “a warning of possible dismissal.”

The chief clerk is a nonpartisan officer elected by the House.

Plocher also fired his first chief of staff, Miller says in her lawsuit, because he “didn’t stop Danagate,” and allegedly sent Jetton to tell her to “back off” if she wanted him to “let it go.”

Missouri state Sens. Denny Hoskins, left, and Rick Brattin, center, confer with Freedom Caucus Director Tim Jones, right. Hoskins and Brattin are Republicans and members of the State Freedom Caucus Network, which aims to push the party further to the right (Elaine S. Povich/Stateline).

The right-wing Freedom Caucus fared well in Missouri’s GOP primaries Tuesday, grabbing its first statewide nomination and displaying the reach of its message in other races.

State Sen. Denny Hoskins of Warrensburg emerged from an eight-person field to get the Republican nomination for Secretary of State.

Freedom Caucus member state Sen. Bill Eigel finished second to Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe in the race for the Republican nomination for governor, garnering 32% of the vote and placing ahead of Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, son of former U.S. Attorney General, U.S. senator and Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft.

State Sen. Rick Brattin, a founding member of the Missouri Freedom Caucus, defeated well-funded primary challenger Dan Houx by a wide margin. And candidates endorsed by the caucus won the GOP nomination in four of the five state Senate races they contested.

With crowded primary fields for a number of the statewide seats, the caucus members were able to garner 25% to 30% of the vote, enough to boost Hoskins to victory and bring Eigel within striking distance of the winner. In Missouri in recent years, winning the Republican nomination for statewide office has been the key to general election triumph.

Freedom Caucus ends filibuster in Missouri Senate without action on its demands

Hard-right conservatives have been a thorny issue for Senate Republican leaders for several years. What was considered to be a gentleman’s agreement to work together in the 2021 legislative session failed to appease the conservatives, who eventually announced they were joining the Freedom Caucus for the 2024 legislative session.

The Freedom Caucus is a national organization, with members in Congress and in state legislatures across the country. The mission of the Freedom Caucus is posted on its website: “We need patriots who will serve in our state capitals to fight federal overreach and stand firm against those — in both parties — who prioritize seizing political power over representing constituents.”

In the Missouri Senate this year, the five members of the Freedom Caucus frequently separated themselves from the other 19 Republicans over legislative priorities, creating a dynamic that led to record-breaking filibusters but not major policy wins.

For example, the Freedom Caucus members refused to approve a historically large state budget. That empowered Democrats beyond their 10-seat Senate membership as Republican leaders needed their votes to pass the budget.

Nonetheless, the primary results show that the Freedom Caucus vision remains powerful among many Missouri conservative voters, even with establishment Republican headwinds.

Patrick McKenna, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation, on Wednesday told the Highways and Transportation Commission that he intends to resign after almost nine years on the job. (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

Patrick McKenna, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation, on Wednesday said he will leave his post after almost nine years on the job.

McKenna announced his decision near the end of a meeting of the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission in Poplar Bluff. He did not give a date for his departure and did not return messages seeking comment on his decision.

“I’ve never been more confident in the future of MoDOT… and with the leadership of the commission,” McKenna said. “It’s been a blessing for me to be a part of this, and it’s also a good time to recognize when it’s time to move on, and that’s what I’ll be doing.”

McKenna did not say whether he will be retiring or seeking other work. He said he had contacted the commission members individually on Tuesday to let them know his intentions.

“I have some family obligations to attend to, and I feel that the department is in good hands,” he told the commission.

McKenna was the deputy commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Transportation when he was hired in 2015. He has presided over a massive expansion of the department’s highway construction program, known as the Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan, or STIP. When McKenna arrived in 2015, commission chairman Dustin Boatwright said during Wednesday’s meeting, the program averaged $325 million annually.

The program approved for the 2025 through 2029 fiscal years averages $4.4 billion annually.

The expansion is partially due to a 2021 increase in the state gas tax, which so far has added 10 cents per gallon to the previous levy of 17.4 cents per gallon. A final step next year will make the tax 29.9 cents per gallon on July 1, 2025.

MODOT has also benefited from increased federal funding under an infrastructure bill approved by Congress in 2021 and appropriations of general revenue, including $100 million a year for low-volume roads and $3.4 billion in one-time allocations for widening Interstate 70 and Interstate 44.

“We have a historic opportunity in front of us with the funding that we have been entrusted with by the General Assembly and the governor, and there’s no doubt in my mind, this team that we have will execute that flawlessly,” Boatwright said.

McKenna has also had friction with the legislature. 

In 2021, the Highways and Transportation commission sued the Office of Administration when Commissioner Ken Zellers refused to allow the commission to implement a pay raise plan that carried a price tag of $60 million. The highways commission wanted to stem turnover at MoDOT and attract new employees.

The raises were not included in the department’s legislatively approved appropriations.

That led six state senators — including state Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin of Shelbina, who has since become Senate Majority Leader and is expected to be Senate President Pro Tem next year, — in a February 2022 letter to the commission, to demand that McKenna either resign or be fired.

The highways commission filed the lawsuit to test constitutional language that is unique to the road fund. The Missouri Constitution states that the money deposited in the fund shall “stand appropriated without legislative action.”

Last year, Cole County Circuit Judge Cotton Walker agreed with the commission that it could use money in the road fund at its discretion. The decision is being appealed but no date has been set for oral arguments.

Commissioner Dan Hegeman, a former senator who signed O’Laughlin’s letter, praised McKenna on Wednesday for his professional demeanor in disputes with the General Assembly.

“He’s got a lot to be proud of as he takes on a new challenge that is going to be great for him and his family,” Hegeman said.

There was no discussion of who will take over as director or whether there would be an interim director during a search. McKenna stated there is a plan but gave no details.

“I know the commission has a plan that there will be no gap in leadership,” McKenna said. “I want the whole team to understand that it’s been an absolute blessing to be here.”

This article has been updated to correct the name of the State Transportation Improvement Plan.

A view of the Missouri Senate chamber from the visitors gallery (photo courtesy of the Missouri Senate).

Every incumbent Missouri senator challenged in Tuesday’s primaries won renomination, but Republican voters rejected sitting House members in five districts.

In the Senate primaries, a big money advantage generally, but not in every case, carried the day. One notable exception was in the 31st District of western Missouri, where incumbent state Sen. Rick Brattin of Harrisonville defeated two challengers with a plurality of the votes.

Brattin took 47% of the vote against state Reps. Mike Haffner of Pleasant Hill and Dan Houx of Warrensburg. Houx spent almost $600,000 from his campaign and joint fundraising PAC, roughly $100,000 more than Brattin and Haffner combined. 

“I am incredibly grateful for the dedication and love that was poured into this campaign from all our supporters,” Brattin said in a news release.

Primaries will test incumbents in year of historic turnover for Missouri Senate

With the primary results, Republicans are assured of having 16 seats of 34 seats in the Senate – 14 incumbents not on the ballot plus two districts where the primary winner is unopposed – while Democrats are assured of four – three incumbents plus state Sen. Angela Mosley of Florissant, who held off the challenge from state Rep. Chantelle Nickson-Clark in the 13th District in a battle between well-established St. Louis Democratic factions.

Democrats hope to pick up as many as three seats, which would give the Senate a 21-13 Republican majority.

In the House, unopposed Republicans are assured of 28 seats in the 163-member chamber, while Democrats have 18 seats where their nominee is unopposed. There are also two Republican districts and four Democratic districts where the nominee faces only minor party competition in November.

Democrats hope to pick up at least three seats from the current 111-52 GOP majority, which would break the two-thirds supermajority in place for more than a decade.

Along with Brattin and Mosley, Democratic state Sen. Barbara Washington defeated her challenger, former state Rep. Brandon Ellington, in the 9th District, which covers the east side of Kansas City and Raytown. Washington won about 79% of the vote and will face Republican Derron Black in November in a district that generally votes 80% Democratic.

And in southwest Missouri, Republican state Sen. Mike Moon of Ash Grove easily turned back the challenge from business owner Susan Haralson of Ozark in the 29th District, taking 77% of the vote. Haralson had made an issue of Moon’s focus on social issues and counted on a redrawn district to have a chance.

The winner will face Ron Monnig, a Democrat from Eagle Rock, in a district where former President Donald Trump took 77.5% of the vote in 2020.

The Republican House incumbents who were defeated Tuesday are state Reps. Chris Sander of Lone Jack, a two-term lawmaker who lost the 33rd District to Carolyn Caton; Tony Lovasco of O’Fallon, a three-term lawmaker who lost the 64th District to Deanna Self; Kyle Marquart of Washington, Missouri, a first term lawmaker who lost the 109th District in Franklin County to the man he beat in 2022 to take the seat, John Simmons, also of Washington; Gary Bonacker of House Springs in Jefferson County, a first-term representative who lost the 111th District to Cecelie Williams of Dittmer; and Lisa Thomas, a two-term member from Lake Ozark who lost to Jeff Vernetti of Camdenton.

Caton and Williams will be unopposed in November.

Sander, one of the only openly gay Republicans in the Missouri House, last year became the target of an effort to censure him by some members of the Jackson County Republican Party after he introduced legislation to repeal the portion of the state constitution that says the only valid marriages are “between a man and a woman.”

During the campaign, Caton criticized Sander for voting against bills to ban gender transition medical procedures for transgender minors and prohibit transgender athletes from competing in school sports according to their gender identity.

“I am the one true conservative in this race, unlike my opponent I have never questioned being a republican,” Caton wrote in one social media post.

The two Senate districts where the primary winner faces no opposition are the 27th District in southeast Missouri and the 33rd District in southern Missouri.

In the 27th, an open seat because incumbent state Sen. Holly Rehder ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor, state Rep. Jamie Burger of Benton defeated Jacob Turner of Jackson, who was making his second bid for office, and state Rep. Chris Dinkins of Lesterville, who had won four terms in the House.

In the 33rd District, open because of term limits, state Rep. Brad Hudson of Cape Fair defeated state Rep. Travis Smith of Dora.

Burger’s campaign and PAC spent almost two times the combined spending of his opponents, but Hudson bucked the trend, spending less than Smith but not falling as far behind in the cash chase as the candidates facing Burger.

In other contested primaries, House Speaker Pro Tem Mike Henderson of Bonne Terre defeated state Rep. Cyndi Buchheit-Courtway in the 3rd District, open because incumbent Sen. Elaine Gannon declined to run again.

“I want to thank Rep. Cyndi Buchheit-Courtway for her service to this community and for running a spirited, positive campaign,” Henderson said in a news release after his victory.

Doug Halbert of Hematite is the Democratic candidate in a district that went about 69% for Trump in 2020.

The other districts where the better-funded candidates lost are the 11th District of Jackson County and the 23rd District in St. Charles County.

In the 11th District, Joe Nicola of Grain Valley, who has run for Congress and Senate in the past, defeated State Rep. Aaron McMullen of Independence and David Martin of Kansas City.

McMullen spent more than $500,000 from his campaign committee and joint fundraising PAC, while Nicola spent about $75,000. 

He’ll face State Rep. Robert Sauls, a Democrat from Independence, who was unopposed in the primary and whose most recent reports showed he had just under $160,000 in his campaign fund and almost $260,000 in his Independence Leadership PAC. 

In the 23rd District – home to defeated gubernatorial candidate state Sen. Bill Eigel – three-term state Rep. Adam Shnelting of St. Charles spent about $240,000 from his campaign committee and joint fundraising PAC to defeat State Rep. Phil Christofanelli of St. Peters, who spent more than $1 million, Dan O’Connell of St. Peters and Rich Chrismer of St. Peters, a former St. Charles County clerk.

The Democratic candidate is Matt Williams of St. Charles, a first-time candidate.

The 23rd District, which is considered competitive based on past voting, is one of the six Democrats must win to meet their goal of 13 seats in the upper chamber.

The 15th District in St. Louis County, open due to term limits, is another district targeted by Democrats. Former state Rep. David Gregory of Chesterfield, who lost a 2022 primary for state auditor, prevailed in a three-way contest against Mark Harder, elected three times to the St. Louis County Council, Jim Bowlin, a two-term mayor of Wildwood. 

Gregory spent about $450,000 on the race, almost double the combined spending by Harder and Bowlin. He will face attorney Joe Pereles, who was unopposed and has amassed a campaign fund of almost $650,000.

The bigger spender won in one of two open seat districts with primaries but the final primary fundraising reports will show who spent more in the other.

In the 21st District of northwest Missouri, two-term state Rep. Kurtis Gregory of Marshall spent almost $700,000 from his campaign committee and joint fundraising PAC to defeat three-term state Rep. Doug Richey of Excelsior Springs, who spent about $375,000. Jim Bates of Liberty is the Democratic candidate in the district that is rated 63% Republican based on voting history.

In the 7th District in Kansas City, state Rep. Patty Lewis scored a 2-1 victory over Pat Contreras, the Democratic nominee for state treasurer in 2016.

The most recent fundraising reports show Lewis had a slight edge in total spending, $292,000 to $267,000.

Joey LaSalle is the Republican candidate in the district, which is heavily Democratic.

This article has been corrected to show five incumbent Republican House members were defeated and that it was Jacob Turner’s second bid for public office.

University of Missouri System President Mun Choi discusses plans to reorganize diversity, equity and inclusion efforts by ending a separate campus division during a Friday briefing with reporters. He was joined by Vice Chancellor Maurice Gipson, who headed the division and is leaving for a new post in Arkansas. (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent)

The University of Missouri will eliminate its division focused on diversity, social equity and inclusion on the Columbia campus, completing the dismantling of administrative structures put in place after protests in 2015 brought national attention to issues of racial equality.

The move coincides with the departure of division Vice Chancellor Maurice Gipson. It is designed to appease Republicans who are showing hostility towards efforts designed to attract and retain students from historically underrepresented groups, Mun Choi, University of Missouri System president and Columbia campus chancellor, said at a briefing with reporters last week.

There have been 13 bills targeting diversity, equity and inclusion filed in the legislature over the past two years Choi noted. During debate on the state budget during 2023, Republicans in the Missouri House added language banning any diversity efforts across state government, language that was deleted before the final budget passed.

One of the leading Republican candidates for governor, state Sen. Bill Eigel, has said he will fire every state employee who works to promote diversity and equity in state agencies, including universities.

“We realize the political situations that have occurred in other universities across the United States, including Texas, and Florida, Utah, and now Alabama, as well as many others,” Choi said.

Choi said the university has lobbied heavily against legislative action.

“We do believe that our proactive approaches in the past have really played an important role when diverting these bills from passing and I will be sharing our plans with elected leaders beginning this week,” he said.

The top goal is to protect the university’s operating and capital appropriations, Choi said.

“As a university we see about $500 million per year in appropriations and $200 million in capital one-time projects,” Choi said. “If we don’t see the $700 million dollars per year, we would have to eliminate every single position at all of the colleges that we have at universities. That is not a risk that I want to take.”

Gipson, hired as vice chancellor in 2020, is leaving to become interim president at Philander Smith University, an historically Black college in Arkansas. The four units of the division will be moved into other offices, which Choi said will make their mission part of the overall mission in each office.

No employees will lose their jobs, Choi said.

Gipson, who joined Choi in the briefing, said he’s confident that the work begun in the division will continue.

“We’ve been inspired and impressed that our colleagues here say, ‘this is going to work, we don’t have to all be underneath, necessarily the same place to get this work done,’” Gipson said.

The division’s units were moved out of the offices where they will return as part of a university commitment following the events of the fall of 2015, when long-simmering grievances about racial issues on campus led to a protest movement called Concerned Student 1950. 

The student group chose a name that reflected the year the first Black student was admitted to the school, which was founded in 1839. It sought to bring attention to overlooked school history that the campus was founded on the wealth of slaveholders and partially built with the labor of enslaved people.

A large group of students created a tent city, a graduate student started a hunger strike and the protests grabbed international attention when the Missouri Tiger football team joined the protest, stating they would not participate in sports until administrators showed they were meeting the demands that included the resignation of then-system President Tim Wolfe.

Other demands included more Black faculty, a plan to increase the retention rates for marginalized students and increased funding and personnel for the student support centers.

Wolfe resigned in November 2015 and the protest ended. In the year between his removal and the announcement that Choi would become the new permanent president, the university established both a campus division and a system vice-presidency focused on DEI efforts.

Choi, who was born in Korea, is the the third non-white permanent president of the university, following Manuel Pacheco, president from 1997 to 2002 and Elson Floyd, who was Black, holding the post from 2003 to 2007.

Choi became campus chancellor in 2020, becoming the first president since the university system was established in the 1960s to hold both jobs.

“This reporting structure in the chancellor’s office is important to cementing the level of support for this work,” Kevin McDonald, then-chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer for the UM System and vice chancellor for inclusion, diversity and equity on the MU campus told the Columbia Daily Tribune in 2016. “I would hope it elevates the level of visibility of the work they have been doing.”

Despite those efforts, Black enrollment on the Columbia campus has fallen from 7.3% of the student body in fall 2015 to 5.3% last fall. The share of Hispanic students has increased to 5.5% from 3.5% in fall 2015 and the share of Asian students has increased from 3% from 2.2%.

The share of white students has remained virtually unchanged at about 77%.

The university anticipates an 11% increase in Black students and a 14% increase in Hispanic students on campus this fall, Choi said.

One specific demand was to increase Black representation among faculty to 10%. Black academics made up 3.5% of tenured and tenure-track faculty on the Columbia campus in the fall of 2023, down from 4.2% in 2018, the target year for the 10% goal.

While the share of Black students and faculty has declined, graduation rates for underrepresented ethnic groups on campus have increased, Choi said. The Columbia campus has the highest six-year graduation rate for Black students among public universities in Missouri, he said, and is near the median of flagship universities in nearby states for Black faculty.

The university began removing the structures put in place following the protests last year after a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled race-based admission policies were unconstitutional.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey ordered universities to “immediately cease their practice of using race-based standards to make decisions about things like admission, scholarships, programs and employment.”

The university responded by ending preferences in a number of scholarships and persuading donors to remove any racial or ethnic criteria from endowed programs. It also stopped requiring applicants for system administration jobs to include diversity statements in their job submissions.

Choi said the university has used those actions as part of its lobbying strategy.

“We do believe that our proactive approaches in the past have really played an important role when diverting these bills from passing,” Choi said, “and I will be sharing our plans with elected leaders.”

There were issues identified with a separate structure that the reorganization will address, Choi said.

“Because the ID division that works on student success programs were operating in an organization that was outside of the rest of the student success organization that’s in the Provost Office, there’s less opportunity to be inclusive, and less opportunities to be collaborative in that process,” he said.

The goal of the reorganization, Choi said, is to preserve the jobs and programs but to make them less visible.

“When you read the headlines that are out there, nationally, DEI is seen as an ideology, and it may be viewed by some as being exclusionary in the name of inclusion,” Choi said. “That is not what we do at the University of Missouri.”

This article has been updated to correct that Mun Choi is the third non-white president of the University of Missouri System.

White and pink buds on dogwood and tulip trees brighten the Missouri State Capitol grounds in Jefferson City (Getty Images).

A federal appeals court on Monday ruled that Missouri’s ban on lawmakers and legislative staff working as lobbyists for two years after leaving office is unconstitutional.

First enacted in 2018 as part of a voter-approved initiative called “Clean Missouri,” the revolving-door law was designed to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption. But the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals found the restriction violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“Missouri had to show that it has a compelling anti-corruption interest and that its lobbying ban is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. It did neither,” said Judge David Stras, writing for a three-judge panel.

The lawsuit was filed by former state Rep. Rocky Miller and legislative assistant John LaVanchy, arguing that the two-year ban not only violates the First Amendment but improperly limits their employment opportunities. It was filed against the Missouri Ethics Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the ban.

Miller, a Republican from Lake Ozark, won four terms in the Missouri House and was re-elected to his final term in 2018 at the same election where voters passed the lobbying ban. About 10 months after he left office in January 2021, he received an offer to work as a paid lobbyist for Presidio, a waste management company with headquarters in his hometown.

Miller registered as a lobbyist after the ban expired. He currently has six active clients, including Presidio.

Monday’s decision overturns a ruling last year by U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Harpool, who upheld the ban as a way to prevent corruption, noting public officials are fully aware that accepting a taxpayer-supported job also includes accepting restrictions on speech.

House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, answers reporters' questions following adjournment of the 2024 legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher is asking a Cole County judge to dismiss him from a whistleblower lawsuit filed earlier this year, arguing any allegations of wrongdoing amount to “little more than internal political disputes.” 

House Chief Clerk Dana Miller filed a lawsuit in May accusing Plocher and his chief of staff, Rod Jetton, of harassment and intimidation. It stems from disputes between Miller and Plocher that emerged last year over an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving a lucrative software contract.

In a motion filed Friday with Cole Circuit Judge Cotton Walker, Plocher’s attorneys argue that the speaker is not a “public employer” that would allow him to be sued by Miller. 

The speaker “had no ability to discipline (Miller) or otherwise demote her,” Lowell Pearson, Plocher’s attorney, wrote in the motion, later noting that Miller, “simply did not suffer any type of ‘disciplinary action’ whatsoever. Indeed, she continues to work as the Chief Clerk of the House today.”

The chief clerk is a nonpartisan officer elected by the House. Miller has worked in state government for 31 years, with 23 years as a member of the House staff. She became chief clerk in 2018. She has said she plans to leave her position as clerk when her term is up in January 2025.

Missouri House chief clerk sues Dean Plocher, Rod Jetton alleging whistleblower retaliation

Pearson also argues that Miller is not a whistleblower and her case instead documents “political disagreements” with Plocher that don’t constitute the basis for a lawsuit.

Plocher, who is running for Missouri secretary of state in the Aug. 6 GOP primary, became embroiled in controversy last September when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of his months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the Legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

A complaint against Plocher was filed with the Missouri House Ethics Committee in November, kicking off a four-month investigation that ended with no formal reprimand. However, the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who led the inquiry said Plocher obstructed the committee’s work through pressure on potential witnesses and refusing to issue subpoenas.

Plocher has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. 

Miller claims in her lawsuit that problems with Plocher began before he was speaker, when she confronted him in May 2022 over several complaints about his treatment of female Republican lawmakers, including a woman who said she considered filing an ethics complaint against him.

When she raised those concerns with Plocher, Miller said he responded by saying: “stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.”

Tensions escalated, Miller said, during Plocher’s efforts to replace the House’s constituent management contract in 2023. When Miller pushed back, she said another lawmaker working with Plocher told her the speaker had repeatedly threatened to fire her.

In the motion to dismiss, Pearson argues that any alleged threats against her job were relayed to Miller by a third party — not Plocher — and are therefore hearsay. 

The lawsuit, Pearson wrote, is simply “a political dispute between two political actors involving political questions. This court should not entertain (Miller’s) attempt to circumvent the political process through litigation and should dismiss the claim against Plocher.”

There have been no filings in the case from Jetton, who is also a named defendant, and no attorney is listed for him. Though the lawsuit was filed in May, plaintiffs have been unable to serve him with a summons to appear before the court. 

A view of the Missouri Senate chamber from the visitors gallery (photo courtesy of the Missouri Senate).

The Missouri Senate could look very different next year.

Only 14 of 34 members are certain to be on hand for opening day 2025 as term limits force out some incumbents and others seek new offices.

Half the Senate is on the ballot every two years, and this year there is a contest in every one of those 17 districts — at least in the primary of the district’s dominant party.

This year’s election will be the first since redistricting for the seats on the ballot this year, adding another element of uncertainty about the outcome. Some incumbents are new to a majority of voters because of map changes and some seats that were safe for one party or another in the 2020 election may not be as certain.

There are 10 districts certain to elect new senators. In the other seven, incumbents face challengers, including four facing one or more primary opponents.

Three other seats that could become vacant are held by state Sens. Karla May, a St. Louis Democrat running for U.S. Senate; Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican running for secretary of state; and Lincoln Hough, a Springfield Republican running for lieutenant governor.

Another thing that could change is the partisan makeup of the chamber. Republicans have enjoyed a supermajority in the Senate — more than two-thirds of the seats — since 2009, and the current 24-10 split is unchanged since 2019.

“There’s more competitive races this year than there have been in a long time,” said Stephen Webber, a former legislator and Missouri Democratic Party chair seeking the 19th District seat being vacated by Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden.

How much of a stranglehold the GOP will have in the Senate will be decided in six districts, five of which are in major metro areas. The political history of all six — the 11th and 17th districts in the Kansas City area, the 1st, 15th and 23rd in the St. Louis region and the 19th in Boone County — gives them only a slight lean for one party or the other.

James Harris, a longtime Republican political consultant, said he sees little chance of the GOP losing the supermajority. The best-case Republican scenario — which concedes a flip in the 19th to Webber, he said — is for Democrats to lose both seats in the Kansas City area and hold the contested seats in the St. Louis region.

That would give Republicans 25 seats in the chamber.

“That is if it’s a great night for Republicans and Trump is just really doing well, which is possible,” Harris said.

Webber began raising money for his race about two years ago and has amassed a campaign treasury many statewide candidates would envy. His candidate committee has raised $542,000 since the beginning of 2023 and had $347,000 on hand on June 30. His joint fundraising committee, Homefront PAC, has raised $453,000 and had $437,000 available.

His Republican opponent has only started raising funds.

Because contributions to Senate candidates are capped at $2,400, most candidates also sponsor a political action committee. A candidate can solicit contributions to the PAC but cannot direct how the money is spent to promote their campaign.

Webber’s fund balances are second only to Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck of Affton among candidates on this year’s state Senate ballot. Beck is seeking a second term in the 1st District in south St. Louis County.

Beck has $434,000 in the campaign account under his direct control and another $504,000 in DougPAC. His opponent, Robert Crump, has not reported raising any money.

“I always run my campaign like I’m down,” Beck said. “I want to do what I need to do to win this. I have an extensive field game together, I’ll be doing mail and I’ll be doing TV, so I’m gonna do all the things that I need to do to win.”

Statewide, Beck said he expects to break the GOP supermajority and hopes to sweep the races that would give Democrats 13 total seats. The Democratic Party’s best year this century was a two-seat gain in 2006. 

“Three are keeps, and three are flips,” Beck said. “That’s what we’re shooting for.”

Initiative petitions to restore abortion rights and increase the minimum wage seem certain to appear on the November ballot. 

“Those two things drive us and help us exponentially,” Beck said. 

Democratic tactics will promote voting for the initiatives and the party’s candidates to protect them, Beck said. It won’t change the outcome in heavily Republican areas, he said, but it will make a difference.

“The areas we’re competing in are in the suburbs, and this is where the message is, and where people are going to be listening when they come out and vote,” Beck said.

Economic issues are what voters are worried about, Harris contends, not abortion rights.

Abortion rights don’t matter “other than to some very progressive people in Webster Groves and the Central West End. It is a rich and elite problem to be concerned with,” he said. “But as you move out of that little bubble, for people making under $100,000, it’s concerns about paying bills and credit card debts going up.”

Breaking the supermajority may be an unreachable goal, said Terry Smith, a professor of political science at Columbia College.

“In the last redistricting process, these districts got drawn up so that they were, with not very many exceptions, pretty red or pretty blue,” Smith said. “The way the districts are drawn, I just see that’s a real stretch.”

Democrats have “captured the narrative” on abortion and it will help them across the state, he said.

“The bottom line is, even if Democrats have a really good year, the best I think they can do is come close to not being in a super minority in the Senate,” Smith said.

Incumbents facing primaries

9th District (Jackson County including east side of Kansas City and Raytown). State Sen. Barbara Washington is being challenged by former State Rep. Brandon Ellington in the Democratic primary. Both Washington and Ellington have reported limited fundraising activity for the campaign, although Washington had about $78,000 on hand in her campaign account at the last full report. The winner will face Republican Derron Black, who also has not raised any significant campaign funds. This district votes about 80% Democratic.

13th District (northern St. Louis County including Jennings, Spanish Lake, Florissant and Old Jamestown). The 13th district is a Democratic primary that has the highest possibility of replacing the incumbent, outside observers said. State Rep. Chantelle Nickson-Clark is taking on incumbent state Sen. Angela Mosley in a test of well-established Democratic factions in St. Louis.

Mosley is promoting a slate of candidates — including two of her daughters — in contested primaries for legislative seats and other positions through her campaign social media accounts. Nickson-Clark is trying to move from the House to the Senate after a single term as a lawmaker.

One of the hottest issues in the race is the education bill passed this year that boosts the minimum salary for teachers, changes the formula for funding public schools and expands a tax-credit scholarship for private schools. 

Nickson-Clark was one of three Democrats who voted in favor of the bill in the House and Chantelle PAC has received two $10,000 contributions from the Quality Schools Coalition, a school choice advocacy group.

In an opinion piece published by the St. Louis-Southern Illinois Labor Tribune, Mosley called the bill a “sham” that was “packed with a few things that most reasonable people agree upon but also include hidden gifts for their special-interest supporters — like the millionaire-funded school-choice advocates.”

The American Federation of Teachers has paid for billboards backing Mosley.

Nickson-Clark has achievements she can counter with. A bill she was the only member to introduce, making it easier for women with breast and cervical cancer to get Medicaid-paid treatment, was included in a broader bill and signed into law.

But she has also had to deal with charges that Antonio Jones, her fiance and campaign employee, was named in a federal drug indictment and is currently awaiting trial. Her campaign continues to employ Jones, who has received $7,100 as a campaign worker since Nickson-Clark formed a committee in 2022.

29th District (Barry, Christian, Lawrence and McDonald counties). One of the Senate’s most conservative members, Mike Moon of Ash Grove, is being challenged by business owner Susan Haralson of Ozark.

Redistricting significantly changed the boundaries after the 2020 election, when Moon narrowly won his primary. Two of the counties Moon won, Stone and Taney, were moved to the 33rd District and two he lost, Barry and McDonald, remain. 

Christian County, home of Haralson, is now the largest population county in the district and Moon has never been on a ballot there.

The only bill introduced by Moon in his 12-year legislative career that has been signed into law limits medical procedures for transgender children. He is better known for lengthy filibusters, where he often reads religious-themed books, and fighting with the Senate leadership over rules of decorum and procedure.

Moon did not return a call this week. But he’s getting help from U.S. Rep. Eric Burlison, who defeated Moon in a primary in 2022, and other lawmakers from the Freedom Caucus faction.

“We’ve got to defend this guy,” Burlison said about Moon at a Springfield campaign event last month. 

Haralson, in an interview, said voters want more than an obstructionist who is fixated on social issues.

“I have never seen Mike very passionate about anything other than social issues,” Haralson said. “Well, there’s a lot more than social issues that we need in Christian County and McDonald County.”

Both candidates are spending modest amounts compared to other races. Haralson said she has found it difficult to solicit funds for her Present Day Conservatives PAC because donors don’t want to anger Moon if he wins. That could cause friction within the Senate, with the PAC associated with Sen. Jason Bean donating $15,000 on July 17 to Haralson’s PAC.

Ron Monnig, a Democrat from Eagle Rock, will face the primary winner in a district where Trump took 77.5% of the vote in 2020.

31st District. (Bates, Cass, Johnson counties). State Sen. Rick Brattin is the chair of the Missouri Freedom Caucus. Like Moon, he is running in a district that is markedly different from the one where he received just under 50% of the vote in a three-way primary in 2020.

Brattin’s home is in Cass County, which retains the largest share of votes in the primary. But two counties Brattin won, Barton and Henry, along with Vernon, have been replaced by Johnson County. That is the home of his best-funded opponent and 5,000 primary voters who only saw him on a 2022 congressional primary ballot, where he was a distant second to the winner, Mark Alford.

State Rep. Dan Houx of Warrensburg has raised $94,000 for his campaign fund and almost $320,000 for H-PAC. The two funds had more than $430,000 to spend as of June 30.

State Rep. Mike Haffner of Pleasant Hill is also a Cass County resident. Haffner has raised a little more than $105,000 between his campaign fund and CLCP PAC, his joint fundraising committee. His funds had about $85,000 on June 30.

Brattin has done better than Haffner but has only raised a little more than a third of the amount donated for Houx’s campaign. His campaign fund held $76,164 and his joint fundraising committee, True Patriot PAC, had $46,258 at the end of the second quarter.

In the spring, Brattin lashed out at both his opponents, who criticized the Freedom Caucus faction in the Senate for disrupting the legislative process.

Harris, who is consulting for Brattin’s campaign, said the Freedom Caucus’ disruptive tactics appeal to conservative voters.

“I think if you’re a conservative voter, you want people that take a gun to a knife fight,” he said. “They’re not really in the diplomacy phase.”

The winner will face Raymond James, a Leeton Democrat, in a district that gave 67% of its vote to Trump in 2020.

Primary only

27th District (Bollinger, Cape Girardeau, Iron, Madison, Perry, Reynolds and Scott counties). ​​State Sen. Holly Rehder is passing up another term in the state Senate to run for lieutenant governor, generating a three-way primary between Jacob Turner of Jackson, making his first bid for office; and two veteran campaigners, state Reps. Jamie Burger of Benton, who has won two terms after being a county commissioner in Scott County; and Chris Dinkins of Lesterville, who has won four terms in the House.

The total spent in the primary will likely exceed $1 million.

Burger has raised $201,734 for his candidate fund since the start of 2023 and just over $250,000 for Bootheel Values PAC. The two funds have spent almost $200,000 so far and had a combined $263,000 on hand on June 30.

Dinkins has raised $204,000 for her campaign committee and almost $50,000 more for Red Hawk PAC. The two committees have spent about $150,000 and had about $140,000 on hand.

Turner has raised $102,276 for his committee, another $60,000 for Faith and Family PAC. Through June 30, the committees had only spent a combined total of about $50,000, leaving $105,000.

33rd District (Douglas, Howell, Ozark, Shannon, Stone, Taney and Texas counties). The seat is vacant because Karla Eslinger, elected in 2020, resigned to take the helm of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education as commissioner of education. The primary between state Reps. Travis Smith of Dora, who is in his second term, and Brad Hudson of Cape Fair, who was elected three times as Stone County assessor before winning his House seat in 2018. The combined fundraising in the race has been less than $250,000, with Hudson holding the edge.

Primaries in competitive districts

11th District (northern Jackson County including Independence, Grain Valley and Sugar Creek). There are three Republicans vying for the chance to represent the hometown of Missouri’s only president, Harry Truman, with a well-funded Democratic candidate waiting for the winner. 

Incumbent state Sen. John Rizzo, a Democrat from Independence, resigned before term limits removed him from office to become executive director of the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority.

State Rep. Aaron McMullen of Independence is the best-funded Republican, raising more than $300,000 by June 30 for his campaign and PAC, with $232,000 available for the final push and more large donations coming in.

Joe Nicola of Grain Valley, who has run for Congress and Senate in the past, has raised almost $90,000 and David Martin of Kansas City has raised less than $10,000.

State Rep. Robert Sauls, a Democrat from Independence, has just under $160,000 in his campaign fund and almost $260,000 in his Independence Leadership PAC. 

Harris said it won’t be enough.

“There’ll be a bump up for Trump,” Harris said. “That’s a little more blue collar area of Jackson County where Trump as the nominee, is kind of an asset to the Republican.”

Sauls is the best counter, Beck said. 

“Robbie Sauls is the only candidate in the state that has won a district that Trump won,” Beck said, noting his 45-vote victory in 2020 for an Independence-based House seat. 

15th District (western St. Louis County including Chesterfield, Wildwood, Manchester and Town and Country). With term-limited Republican state Sen. Andrew Koenig leaving office, the GOP race has attracted three veteran politicians, with the winner facing a Democrat whose campaign fund has raised more than any other Senate candidate this cycle.

The Republican line-up is Mark Harder, who has three terms on the St. Louis County Council, Jim Bowlin, a two-term mayor of Wildwood, and former state Rep. David Gregory, who lost a 2022 primary for state auditor.

All three have shown substantial fundraising support, with Gregory having the slight edge. 

The Democratic candidate will be Joe Pereles, an attorney who was senior vice president of development and general counsel for Drury Hotels Company. Between his campaign committee and Fearless PAC, Pereles has raised more than the combined efforts of the Republicans and had more than $600,000 on hand on June 30.

The district, which voting history shows to be about 54% Republican, is one where abortion will make a difference in the fall, Beck said.

23rd District (eastern St. Charles County including St. Charles, St. Peters and West Alton). Democrats see a chance in the district that sent Eigel to Jefferson City because new boundaries were drawn after the 2020 census, giving it the largest concentration of union workers in the state, Beck said.

State Rep. Phil Christofanelli of St. Peters, who has been elected to four terms, is the best-funded candidate, with more than $660,000 raised between his campaign committee and Gladius PAC. That is more than the other three candidates, three-term state Rep. Adam Shnelting of St. Charles, Dan O’Connell of St. Peters and Rich Chrismer of St. Peters, who was elected to four terms as St. Charles County Clerk.

The voting history has the district at 53% Republican. In his last election, Eigel won with 57% against a candidate who did very little.

Beck said Democrats are working to get funding for Matt Williams, a first-time candidate.

Harris said the blue-collar, pro-Trump vote that will influence the 11th District will help the winner of the 23rd District primary.

Primaries in safe districts

3rd District (Crawford, St. Francois, Ste. Genevieve, Washington, southern Jefferson County): State Sen. Elaine Gannon is not seeking re-election in this district where no Democrat filed in 2016 or 2020.

The candidates are House Speaker Pro Tem Mike Henderson of Bonne Terre and two-term state Rep. Cyndi Buchheit-Cordway of Festus. Henderson has raised nearly $300,000 since the start of 2023 for his campaign and joint fundraising committee, Leadbelt PAC, while Buchheit-Cordway has raised about half that amount.

Doug Halbert of Hematite is the Democratic candidate in a district that went about 69% for Trump in 2020.

7th District (downtown and historic northeast Kansas City and Grandview) The senator elected in 2020, Greg Razer, was appointed to the State Tax Commission in May by Gov. Mike Parson, setting off a primary between Pat Contreras, who a statewide primary for treasurer in 2016, and two-term state Rep. Patty Lewis.

The two are about evenly matched in fundraising, with Contreras having a slight edge. Joey LaSalle is the Republican candidate in the district that is heavily Democratic.

21st District (Cooper, Howard, Lafayette, Ray, Saline, and northeast Clay counties). Two incumbent state representatives are vying for the Republican nomination to replace term-limited state Sen. Denny Hoskins. The district has been significantly changed from 2020, when no Democrat filed, dropping Carroll, Livingston and Johnson counties and gaining Cooper and Clay counties. 

Two-term state Rep. Kurtis Gregory of Marshall has the fundraising edge over three-term state Rep. Doug Richey of Excelsior Springs. Jim Bates of Liberty is the Democratic candidate in the district that is rated 63% Republican based on voting history.

November-only races

1st District (southern St. Louis County). Beck has $434,000 in the campaign account under his direct control and another $504,000 in DougPAC to counter the challenge from Robert Crump, a candidate who has run unsuccessfully in the past for the House and Senate. Crump has not reported raising any money. The district leans slightly Democratic.

5th District (downtown and north St. Louis). State Sen. Steven Roberts is the Democratic incumbent, challenged by Robert Vroman, vice-chair of the St. Louis Republican Central Committee. It is a district that votes 88% Democratic.

17th District (southwest Clay County including North Kansas City, Claycomo, Pleasant Valley and Gladstone) Vacant since Lauren Arthur was appointed to the state Labor and Industrial Relations Commission, state Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern of Kansas City will try to hold it for Democrats against three-term Clay County Commissioner Jerry Nolte. Nurrenbern has amassed a campaign treasury of $320,000, with another $170,000 in the Northland Forward PAC. Nolte had $48,610 on hand on June 30. The district’s voting history is an almost even split between Republicans and Democrats.

Clay County “really is the bellwether,” Harris said. “Republicans can win it or lose it. That county is almost the Wisconsin or Michigan of Missouri.

19th District (Boone County) Rowden must leave office due to term limits and Webber, his 2016 opponent, is trying to flip it for Democrats. Boone County has only given a majority to a Republican in three Senate races since 1960, the last time in 2012. Rowden was elected when the district also included Cooper County. James Coyne is the Republican candidate who replaced Chuck Basye, who withdrew after filing because of a cancer diagnosis. Coyne has raised $3,700 since launching his campaign, according to a report filed Thursday.

25th District (Butler, Carter, Dunklin, Mississippi, New Madrid, Oregon, Pemiscot, Ripley, Stoddard and Wayne counties). Incumbent Republican state Sen. Jason Bean of Holcomb will face Democrat Chuck Banks of Silva, a former presiding commissioner of Jefferson County. This district gives, on average, 77% of its votes to Republicans.

Ada Caldwell, 4, poses with free books she’s received from the Imagination Library. (Courtesy of Tara Caldwell via Columbia Missourian)

In 2023, a federal appeals court ruled that nothing in federal law prevents pharmacy manufacturers from limiting the number of contract pharmacies they will supply with 340B discounted products (Getty Images).

A bill favoring Missouri pharmacies and health care providers in a national dispute with drugmakers will become law without Gov. Mike Parson’s signature.

The legislation, which passed both chambers with veto-proof majorities, bars pharmaceutical manufacturers from limiting where they will deliver drugs purchased at a discount under a federal program intended to help providers serving people in rural and high-poverty areas or with specialized health needs. 

It allows medical providers qualifying for the program, known as the 340B Drug Pricing Program for the section of federal  law where it is found, to enter contracts with an unlimited number of pharmacies to dispense the drugs to their patients.

The bill is “flawed,” Parson wrote in a letter explaining his action, but ultimately is better for patient access and affordability than if he vetoed it.

“Most troubling, the 340B program lacks requirements for cost savings to be passed onto patients and further lacks transparency as to how those cost savings are used,” Parson wrote.

Parson made his decision as he announced action on the last of 26 non-budget bills passed during this year’s legislative session. He had 45 days – until Sunday – to make his decisions and any bill not signed and not vetoed becomes law as if he had signed it.

Parson did not veto any bills.

The stakes nationally in the 340B program are huge, in a medical market with escalating prescription prices and increasing concentration of medical providers in direct employment by hospital groups. Nationally, pharmaceutical manufacturers sold nearly $100 billion in discounted drugs in 2021 and 2022 through the 340B program.

In 2023, a federal appeals court ruled that nothing in federal law prevents pharmacy manufacturers from limiting the number of contract pharmacies they will supply with 340B discounted products. But those limits go only so far, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled when it upheld an Arkansas law – very similar to the bill passed in Missouri – that bans manufacturer-imposed limits on contracts.

“The use of contract pharmacies by covered entities under the program – among other programmatic concerns – is an issue that should be addressed by Congress,” Parson wrote. The legislation, while laudable in intent, “ensures the expansion of a flawed federal program within the state of Missouri.”

Because many health care providers did not have in-house pharmacies when the 340B program was begun in 1992, a change in 1996 allowed a single contractor for each provider. That was expanded starting in 2010 to allow unlimited contracts.

The number of contract pharmacies grew from 2,321 in 2010 to 205,340 in 2024.

Pushing back against the growth, pharmaceutical companies have targeted the program’s use by “disproportionate share hospitals,” generally serving large populations of patients without insurance or on Medicaid or Medicare. Those hospitals account for about 80% of all drugs purchased through the 340B program, $41.8 billion in 2022 and $34.3 billion the year before.

Those hospitals should be required to show how they use the money to help the patients that cannot pay for doctor visits and medications, Nicole Longo, deputy vice president of public affairs at PhRMA, the lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry, said in an interview last month with The Independent.

“They buy low and they sell high,” Longo said. “Patients bear a lot of that cost, and so that’s a major concern of the industry.”

In a statement, Stami Williams, PhRMA spokesperson, said the association agrees that the 340B program is flawed and in need of an overhaul by Congress.

The bill that will become law, she said, “does not help vulnerable patients more affordably access medicines. This legislation is a handout to large hospital systems, chain pharmacies, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).”

The Missouri Hospital Association, in a statement following Parson’s action, said the legislation will maintain access to essential medications. The overwhelming majority in favor of the bill recognized that, said Jon Doolittle, the association’s president.

“In doing so, they rejected artificial limits on pharmacies’ participation, to ensure members of their communities could access their medication and health care services close to home,” Doolittle said. “In addition, they recognized that the 340B program supports services that would not otherwise be available in many communities without the protections added through the legislation.”

The program is essential for keeping rural providers open and giving patients access to prescriptions near their homes, said Joe Pierle, executive director of the Missouri Primary Care Association.

The association represents federally qualified health centers, which serve patients regardless of their ability to pay. The health centers are the second-largest group of providers using the 340B program.

“This whole contract pharmacy (issue) is really about allowing us to contract with local pharmacies so that patients in the Mark Twain National Forest can can drive a mile or two to pick up a prescription instead of having to traverse the hills and mountains down there, which are difficult to navigate, to sometimes go to a different county to get the drugs,” Pierle said.

Criticism of contract pharmacies is a smokescreen, he said.

“Their whole focus,” Pierle said, “was trying to get everybody’s focus off the massive profits that they’re making and the high cost for medications that Missourians are having to pay.”

(Photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's office)

Gov. Mike Parson signed legislation Thursday to make preventing veteran suicide a top priority for the state agency that aids these residents, the Missouri Veterans Commission. 

The suicide rate among Missouri’s veterans is nearly double the state rate and one of the highest in the country.

After three years of trying, Republican state Rep. Dave Griffith of Jefferson City said he was grateful for the governor’s support, along with the unanimous approval of both the House and Senate this spring. 

“I’m hoping that through House Bill 1495 we’re going to be able to take a deeper dive into what some of the causes are and some of the best practices we can learn from other states,” Griffith told the Independent this week.

The bill mandates the commission research procedures, treatment options and any other assistance to reduce the veteran suicide rate.

“The legislation we are signing today continues our commitment to our nation’s heroes that Missouri will remain one of the best places for veterans and service members to live, work, and raise a family,” Parson said in a news release.

In separate budget bills, lawmakers approved $120,000 for the commission to hire one or more people dedicated to the mission. 

Griffith said he spoke with retired Col. Paul Kirchhoff, the commission’s executive director, about next steps this week.

“He said, ‘We’re ready,’” Griffith said of Kirchhoff. “‘As soon as the governor signs the bill, we’ve got applications already on file for people who want to apply for that particular job.’”

Up until now, Griffith said the commission has implemented “as much as they can” to address the issue, while juggling their main duties.

The commission has long had three core missions of managing the veterans’ nursing homes and cemeteries and providing service officers who help veterans with their benefits, Griffith said.

The bill would add a fourth. 

“They really couldn’t devote as much time as they can now,” he said, “so creating that fourth priority for them will allow them to do that. It’s a good day for all veterans in Missouri.”

According to the legislation, the commission must file a report every year on July 1 with the Department of Public Safety and the General Assembly on the recommendations and implementation of its efforts. 

In 2021, Parson established an interagency team to collaborate on suicide prevention, so Griffith said he expected to receive the governor’s full support on the measure.

Kirchhoff told the House Veterans Commission in January that he embraces the new task, particularly because he’s lost several close military friends to suicide.

“This is near and dear to my heart,” Kirchhoff said. “We’re losing veterans every day to this. And whatever we can do to curb that, we’re all in.”

Many people can guess, he said, the reason Missouri has a higher rate than the national average. 

“But I’d like to know through facts,” he said. “And without having an emphasis on this, we just won’t know.”

(Getty Images)

The largest donors to a tax credit program supporting private school tuition scholarships in Missouri are a Fortune 500 health care corporation, a cable company and the founding family of the Kansas City Chiefs.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. has given the most since 2023 to the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program, dubbed MOScholars, with a $2 million donation last year and $3.5 million pledged this year.

Lamar Hunt Jr. and his wife Rita Hunt, part of the family that owns the Kansas City Chiefs, reserved $800,000 in tax credits last year and $500,000 this year. Hunt Jr. is also the founder of the Kansas City Mavericks hockey team and a philanthropist tied to Catholic ministries.

MOScholars allows taxpayers to give to one of six educational assistance organizations to fund scholarships for private, parochial and homeschooled students. Donors use an application on the State Treasurer’s Office to register the amount they intend to donate with the state, reserving a tax credit in that amount up to half of their tax burden. 

Treasurer Vivek Malek told The Independent this year’s donations are off to a promising start, topping figures from this time last year.

So far, taxpayers have reserved $5 million of the tax credits available this year. Typically, donations are strongest at year-end. MOScholars donors can receive their donation amount back in a tax credit, up to half their tax burden, with the reservations. So donations come nearer to tax time.

Last year, donations looked sparser at this time, and the number of students recorded as a returning MOScholars student was low. This number grew, though, as donations came through at the end of last year with a total of $16.6 million by the end of 2023.

Among those who have given to MoScholars since lawmakers created the program in 2022 are political mega donors, national corporations and hundreds of individuals, according to the Missouri Accountability Portal.

Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield, major political donors in Missouri and advocates for private and charter schools, gave $1 million between two educational assistance organizations last year.

David Steward, founder and chairman of IT provider World Wide Technology, gave $500,000 to a St. Louis-based educational assistance organization.

Charter Communications, which serves customers as Spectrum, gave $334,000 to each educational assistance organization for a total of just over $2 million.

Hobby Lobby Stores gave $300,000.

Herzog Enterprises, a railway construction company once run by political donor Stanley Herzog, gave $250,000 to its nonprofit arm, the Herzog Tomorrow Foundation. Brad Lager, who once served in Missouri’s legislature and now leads Herzog Enterprises, reserved $200,000 in tax credits.

Also included in the list of donors in 2023 is former Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft and his wife Janet. Ashcroft served as governor from 1985 to 1993 before becoming a U.S. Senator and later U.S. attorney general.

Treasurer’s office staff told The Independent that fundraising has been focused on both individuals and corporations. More than half of the office’s expenditures in 2023 were spent on advertising its various programs.

State Rep. Phil Christofanelli, a Republican from St. Peters and sponsor of the bill that created MOScholars, said there has been outreach to corporations through accountant associations.

“We definitely want to work with the larger corporate entities so that they become aware of the program. Corporations are sometimes a little slower to adopt than individual donors and taxpayers,” he said.

There were 1,301 total approved applications for tax credits last year. There have been 161 applications approved in 2024.

This article has been updated to include the source of the donor information.

The University of Kansas Health System, which has its primary location in Kansas City, Kansas, has entered a partnership Liberty Hospital in Missouri. News of the deal last fall sparked discontent among some state lawmakers. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

Despite resistance from lawmakers in both Kansas and Missouri, Liberty Hospital has officially joined the University of Kansas Health System, executives announced Monday.

Leaders of the health system announced the completion of the merger Monday in a short video Monday alongside the CEO of Liberty Hospital, located in the Kansas City suburbs north of the Missouri River.

Liberty’s leadership began looking in May 2023 to partner with another health system to help the hospital meet growing demand. It announced in October that it had chosen the University of Kansas. 

Raghu Adiga — who served as Liberty Hospital’s CEO and now is CEO of the Liberty market for KU — said the hospital’s board of trustees evaluated more than 30 potential partners. He said he’s “more than convinced” merging with the Kansas hospital system was the right decision.

“We share a commitment to putting patients first,” Adiga said. “We prioritize our people and believe in providing high quality care close to home. To have a strong community, we need to have strong healthcare. We believe this relationship not only strengthens Liberty Hospital, but the Liberty community and the entire Northland.” 

Missouri lawmakers debate blocking University of Kansas deal with Liberty hospital

Tammy Peterman, president of KU Health’s Kansas City Division, said about 35% of the health system’s patients currently come from Missouri, and KU already has clinics in the state. 

“We knew eventually we would need a way to care for more patients in Missouri and the Northland to keep care close to home,” Peterman said. “…So today is a big milestone for us as well: our very first hospital in Missouri.” 

Health system leaders did not take questions from journalists following the press conference. Asked about the terms of the deal, a spokeswoman for KU said in an email that the health system’s leaders are “celebrating the next couple of days” and were not available to comment.

KU and Liberty’s merger was met with disdain from some lawmakers in both Kansas and Missouri. Former-Missouri Sen. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat, pushed legislation earlier this year to block the deal, calling it “mind boggling” and saying the idea of a Kansas health system owning a Missouri hospital felt “terribly wrong.” 

But supporters of the deal argued Liberty needed a larger hospital partner to be able to grow and make investments in its facilities. A Liberty board member told lawmakers this spring that if the hospital didn’t merge with KU, it could be purchased by a for-profit chain and stop offering some of its services, becoming “little bit more than a triage center.” 

Bob Page, president and CEO of the University of Kansas Health System, said it’s “incredibly difficult in health care today to remain a completely independent hospital” like Liberty.

“They found a new path forward to ensure they could continue to deliver high quality care in the Northland for generations to come,” Page said. “By becoming part of this health system, they will be able to offer some of the most advanced treatments and expertise anywhere in the country.”

Razer’s legislation made it out of a Senate committee but never received a floor vote. 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey also opposed the merger, writing in a letter to Senate leadership in January that the deal was illegal unless the Missouri General Assembly signed off on it. An attorney for Liberty said, however, that the deal was structured to comply with state laws. 

Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, a Republican from Andover, expressed frustration about the merger in a committee meeting in November, saying struggling hospitals in Kansas could have benefitted from a partnership with KU.

And Kansas Sen. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican, filed legislation that would have required KU get permission from the Kansas Legislature before entering a deal that involves acquiring, building, repairing or improving property outside of Kansas. The bill never got a hearing.

In the meantime, the systems were working toward a finalized deal that is expected to include investment in Liberty’s facilities. 

Peterman said over the coming months, KU leadership will learn more about how Liberty operates and how it can be best integrated into the health system. 

“This includes everything from inpatient and ambulatory care to supply chain and branding,” she said. “Ultimately, we want to ensure we are one health system offering a seamless and consistent patient experience.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson delivers the State of the State speech to a joint session of the legislature in January (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

More than 170 items were struck from the Missouri state budget Friday as Gov. Mike Parson cut $1 billion from the spending plan passed this year by lawmakers.

In a statement explaining his cuts, Parson said he vetoed earmarked items that he believes were loaded into the budget for special projects and organizations without considering the future financial stability of the state.

“The use of the veto pen is not something I do eagerly, but today these vetoes represent the elimination of unnecessary pet projects and the protection of the taxpayer dime,” Parson said in a news release announcing his budget actions. “We may be leaving $1.9 billion on the bottom line, but that doesn’t mean we spend for the sake of spending.”

It was the second year in a row Parson cut the budget despite near-record surpluses. 

State budget loaded with earmarks nears deadline for action by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson

One of the biggest cuts was $150 million in general revenue that was part of a $727.5 million plan for expanding Interstate 44 in southwest Missouri. The cut leaves $577.5 million available, with $363 million coming from borrowed money.

Other projects, large and small, that Parson did not approve include grants to not-for-profit organizations, support for local projects and set-asides that targeted a single vendor for a state purchase.

Many of the individual items carried a warning — that the fund being tapped was “grossly overappropriated,” that it was a local responsibility or that the long-term financial health of the state required the cut.

A new education law will cost an estimated $400 million more annually for public schools when fully implemented, with the foundation formula estimated to cost $300 million more in fiscal 2026, Parson wrote in a message repeated several times.

“We have obligations both this year and in future years that must be accounted for today to avoid future budgetary pains tomorrow,” Parson said in the news release.

The budget — $50.5 billion for state operations in the year that begins Monday — has several spending initiatives that Parson did approve. He requested several of them and accepted others added by lawmakers.

• Almost $700 million for roads including the $577.5 million for I-44, $150 million to widen U.S. 67 through Butler County and $40 million for construction on U.S. 65 from Buffalo to Warsaw. 
• Full funding of the state’s 75% share of school transportation costs for the third year in a row. The transportation support has not been fully funded for almost 30 years until the budget surplus started growing.
• A 3% increase in funding for state colleges and universities, plus $367 million in new funding to complete construction projects begun in 2022 or for new campus construction.
• A 3.2% pay raise for state employees.
• A boost in state grants to support teacher pay to make the minimum salary $40,000. In May, Parson signed a bill mandating the $40,000 minimum salary for all districts.
• $1.5 billion in federal grant awards to expand broadband access in rural areas.
• $56 million for public and charter schools to provide Pre-Kindergarten programs to all students qualifying for free and reduced lunch.

Parson left in place initiatives he called for, such as increased rates for child care providers, even if the budget did not fund them at the levels he requested.

Some of the vetoed items have become targets for criticism, including $12.5 million to purchase land for a state park in McDonald County inserted into the budget by state Rep. Dirk Deaton of Noel.

Parson also vetoed $1 million to assist Deaton’s hometown recover from the closure of a Tyson plant. The state has helped plan job fairs and sought to market the Tyson plant site, the veto message states.

“Beyond all of these efforts, the state has been unable to determine the intended use of these specific funds,” Parson wrote.

There were other items vetoed because there was too little information about how the money would be used.

For one, $502,000 to support an historical society that operates a museum and a cemetery, the administration had no information at all.

“The demographic language is not specific enough to identify where this project is located,” Parson wrote.

Some of the items vetoed were repeats from last year. One of those items was $8 million for a law enforcement training center in O’Fallon in St. Charles County. 

“That project is built on a partnership that includes commitments from five different counties from the region,” Parson wrote. “Whereas the state senators that represent the county in which this facility is located voted against (the spending bill), this leads my administration to believe that there is not widespread, regional support for this training facility.”

St. Charles is represented by state Sens. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring and Nick Schroer of Defiance, members of the Freedom Caucus group that disrupted plans for orderly debate on the budget with a 41-hour filibuster.

One of the smaller earmarked items that was vetoed was $38,000 for sales tax refunds sought by state Sen. Mike Moon of Ash Grove. The refunds were for taxes found to be owed when the interpretation of tax law changed because of a court ruling.

None of the items cut were vetoed because the state lacks money. 

On May 31, the general revenue fund held $4.8 billion and there was $1.6 billion in the bank in other funds that could be spent like general revenue. There are also funds set aside for major projects that are not so far along that they couldn’t be stopped, like $600 million set aside for expanding the state Capitol Building.

Parson’s administration put out a two-page summary seeking to dispel the idea that the state has substantial surplus cash. There are large fund balances, the document states, but there are also large pending obligations that will draw down those balances.

”Reductions in revenue and increased ongoing expenditures approved by recent legislation mean we have obligations beyond the current fiscal year that rely on Missouri’s fund balance in the future,” the summary states.

Parson’s budget office projects a $1.9 billion general revenue balance on June 30, 2025. The budget passed by lawmakers spent $50.9 billion total on state operations, with $15.2 million from general revenue.

Parson said in the news release that he cut that to $50.5 billion total for operations and $14.9 billion in general revenue. The budget is based on a projection for $13.1 billion in general revenue receipts.

That means an accumulated surplus must be tapped to fill the gaps on ongoing operations, but there are trends that will reduce the drawdown.

Last June 30, Missouri had a general revenue surplus of $5.1 billion, $1.3 billion more than had been projected when the budget for that fiscal year was written.

Parson’s budget proposal from January projected it would decline to $3.2 billion when the current year ends Sunday and stand at $1.6 billion on June 30, 2025. 

Those estimates were based on a slight decline in revenues this year, but through Thursday collections are up 1.1%, which will add a small amount to the surplus. The state has collected $94 million more in general revenue in the current year, $13.3 billion total so far, than in fiscal 2023.

The estimate for almost flat revenue in the coming year is unchanged, Budget Director Dan Haug said Friday in an email to The Independent.

That would mean approximately $200 million would be available during the coming fiscal year that is not anticipated in the original budget.

The other factor reducing the draw on general revenue and other state funds is understaffing at state agencies, in some cases more than 10% down from authorized strength.

Working to reduce state revenue are pending tax cuts. If this fiscal year ends with revenue exceeding last year’s total by $200 million, it would trigger a reduction in the top income tax rate of 0.1%, to 4.7%, on Jan. 1.

The increase through Thursday isn’t enough to trigger the refund but there are collections to come.

“We won’t,” Haug said, “be able to make that calculation until after we see what final collections will be.”

Gov. Mike Parson discusses his plans for the coming fiscal year's budget Thursday following groundbreaking for a new multiagency state laboratory in Jefferson City. (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent)

Hundreds of earmarked items in the $51.7 billion budget passed by lawmakers this year will be vetoed, Gov. Mike Parson said Thursday, just days before the new fiscal year begins.

Speaking with reporters after groundbreaking for a new multi-agency state laboratory, Parson had two criticisms for the budget plan — it goes overboard on earmarks and shortchanges essential state services.

Parson said the administration’s budget staff had identified more than 600 earmarked items throughout the 16 appropriation bills for the fiscal year that begins Monday.

“We’re going to veto a lot of the earmarks, especially some of them that maybe were not even ready to be done, that just people put different things in there,” Parson said. “There’s gonna be a lot of the those making it across the finish line, but not everybody’s gonna get what they want.”

State budget loaded with earmarks nears deadline for action by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson

The Independent analyzed the budget and found more than 400 earmarked items – with 284 new this year – totaling $2.1 billion in spending. 

Parson called those earmarks “a lot of overspending.” The state services that are not fully funded will require a large infusion of additional cash, he said, but lawmakers won’t have to return this fall to pass a supplemental budget.

“You’ll see one of the largest supplementals at the beginning of next year that you’ve seen,” Parson told reporters.

The state is sitting on a large surplus, but Parson said it is not as large as the fund balances in the treasury would make it appear. The budget passed by lawmakers spends $15.3 billion in general revenue — including $700 million on earmarked items identified by The Independent. 

When they were finished with the budget in May, legislative leaders claimed two achievements – a total $1 billion less than Parson requested in January and ongoing general revenue spending that was less than ongoing revenues.

In legislative language, that means that spending above the expected $13.1 billion in general revenue would be one-time expenses met by tapping the surplus.

When the total after his vetoes is added to the amount of the supplemental budget needed to maintain services, he said, that will no longer be true.

“That was more of a political gesture than it was anything,” Parson said.

The House Budget Committee chairman, state Rep. Cody Smith of Carthage, and the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, state Sen. Lincoln Hough of Springfield, are both running for statewide office.

Even with spending from the surplus, Parson said, the state will have about $1.5 billion in extra cash at the end of the coming fiscal year.

“I’m gonna make sure,” Parson said, “that there’s enough finances available for the next administration.”

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

Attorneys representing transgender minors and health care providers squabbled with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office Wednesday over thousands of documents both sides say are being wrongfully withheld.

At its core, the case seeks to determine whether the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors is lawful. The lawsuit was filed by the families of three transgender minors, Southampton Healthcare, two of Southampton’s providers and two national advocacy organizations, saying the ban could have “extremely serious, negative health consequences” for transgender youth.

The attorney general filed a counterclaim alleging Southampton Healthcare, which provides gender-affirming care, did not fully disclose risks when treating transgender youth.

A trial is scheduled for late September, and attorneys are in the process of deposing witnesses. The deadline to send responsive documents to the other party passed, but both plaintiffs and defendants were unhappy with how much the other side has willingly turned over. 

Therapists, social workers face scrutiny in Missouri AG investigation of transgender care

Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, who is stepping into Cole County Circuit Court for this case, said it would take time to rule on each exception the parties found to requests for discovery.

Jim Lawrence, an attorney for the plaintiffs, argued that the state has withheld documents citing exceptions not backed by state law.

Lawrence told the judge the parties would “be here until next week” if he were to explain every document he is requesting. He displayed a powerpoint with a chart of the objections from the attorney general’s office and the corresponding evidentiary requests.

Peter Donahue, assistant attorney general for special litigation, said the state went through a “burdensome” process of reviewing 100,000 documents that matched search terms in investigatory requests and spent $25,000 taking the time to narrow the lot to what is relevant and not deemed protected — which ended up being 2.6% of those files.

“If the state reviewed 100,000 (documents) and only 2,600 are relevant… That is an impossible fact to digest,” Lawrence said. “That doesn’t pass the smell test.”

Included in the state’s objections were documents protected by “gubernatorial privilege,” Lawrence said. This impacted almost half of the requests for production issued to the office of Gov. Mike Parson.

Gubernatorial privilege, Lawrence argued, doesn’t exist. He said there isn’t legal precedent in Missouri for it.

The idea of an executive privilege was discussed during the attorney general’s investigation of former Gov. Eric Greitens, with many dismissing the excuse as illegitimate.

“They are asking you to be the first court in the state of Missouri to declare gubernatorial privilege,” Lawrence told the judge.

Donahue said he hadn’t seen the privilege successfully invoked in Missouri, but it was “widely recognized across the nation.”

“We are just talking about communications between the governor and his close circle,” Donahue said. “This is not a unique concept in the gubernatorial process.”

Carter asked what types of documents have been withheld from discovery under gubernatorial privilege. Lawrence listed off a handful of examples, including “policies and procedures related to enforcement of the act.”

“Even if (gubernatorial privilege) does exist, it wouldn’t apply to all that,” he said.

Donahue said the objection was an “add-on privilege” for some of the documents, where another exception would have already protected the information from disclosure.

Lawrence tossed an arm up at the admission, then folding his arms and furrowing his brow.

“His argument really goes to why we are here today,” he said. “If you are asserting a privilege and withholding information based upon a privilege, you have to put that.”

It is written in the privilege log, Donahue said. A privilege log is a file that describes the documents withheld and the privileges asserted to protect them.

Lawrence also took issue with claims of attorney-client privilege that protected Jamie Reed, a witness in the case and whistleblower following her work at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Reed’s affidavit alleging quick “medicalization” of transgender minors launched the attorney general’s investigation of gender-affirming care and was a main talking point when lawmakers discussed a ban for minors.

The attorney general isn’t Reed’s lawyer, Lawrence said, so his office shouldn’t argue attorney-client privilege for documents related to her.

Plaintiffs subpoenaed Reed separately and received a letter she sent to the attorney general. That letter should have also been sent by the attorney general’s office responsive to the investigative requests, but plaintiffs didn’t get it, Lawrence said.

Other exceptions include external communications allegedly withheld as work product and many documents sealed under investigative privilege.

Lawrence said they did not receive the responses the public gave to a tip line the attorney general opened to report complaints about gender-affirming care, but that information was compiled for outside sources. Indeed, St. Louis Public Radio requested the responses in a Sunshine Request and received the compilation a year later.

Donahue also argued Southampton was withholding documents. He said he received informational pamphlets from Southampton but wanted medical records of four or five patients that received gender-affirming care as minors.

Planned Parenthood vows to fight Missouri AG push for transgender youth medical records

The judge questioned why he needed these particular documents.

“These documents are relevant to our counterclaim that plaintiffs have been inaccurate about the types of harm that can come from these treatments,” Donahue said. 

He argued gender-affirming care providers weren’t always truthful — a claim patients have disputed when their care is questioned.

“It essentially amounts to snake-oil salesmanship, if true,” he said.

He wanted to get access to records showing what doctors have discussed with patients and letters of support from mental-health professionals, which he said sometimes have “irregularities.”

Complaints from the attorney general’s office about these letters have led to the investigations of 57 health professionals, putting their licenses at risk. As of early May, 16 cases were open in the probe by the Department of Professional Registration.

Jason Orr, another attorney representing plaintiffs, said the state may ask Southampton’s physicians questions but can’t ask for patients’ private records.

“Southampton does not have the ability to waive their doctor-patient privilege, and in fact, they are required to exercise it on their behalf,” he said.

There are currently four cases open between healthcare providers and the attorney general where providers are fighting requests to hand over medical records.

Southampton’s patients are not the plaintiffs in the case at hand, Orr said.

Plaintiffs PFLAG and GLMA, two advocacy organizations, have not been complying with requests for documents, Donahue argued.

He said he hasn’t received anything from the two organizations, despite the deadline already passing.

Orr said the request led to 20,000 documents that attorneys are “working in good faith” to narrow down and deliver. He hoped for it to be ready by the end of the week, complaining that the request was sent one month before the deadline.

“This was an issue that was created in part by defendants’ timing,” he said.

At the start of the hearing Wednesday, Solicitor General Josh Divine mentioned a federal case that may change their proceedings.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a case on Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

There are additional claims in the case before Carter, Orr said.

Carter said to keep him updated if the case will be affected.

“We’re going to keep marching on until we hear something different,” he said.

Half of U.S. states have a restriction on gender-affirming care for minors, with litigation blocking some states’ bans.

House Budget Chair Cody Smith, R-Carthage, made sure his $727.5 million earmark for Interstate 44 was well-publicized when he summarized his budget proposal at a March news conference. The sponsors of other earmarks are not so apparent. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

For years, state Sen. Mike Moon has railed against the unfairness of businesses being told they owe money when the Missouri Department of Revenue revises the list of things covered by the state sales tax.

That happened after 2008, when the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that fitness clubs were places of “amusement, entertainment or recreation” and must charge tax on memberships and class fees. Audits subsequently resulted in tax bills for thousands of dollars that businesses struggled to pay.

Moon has filed bills seeking to force a refund and this year, for the second time, has secured an earmarked appropriation of $38,000 to refund the money paid by a Kansas City fitness club owner. Gov. Mike Parson vetoed a $150,000 appropriation for the same purpose in 2021, arguing that the proposal violates the state Constitution’s ban on “refunding money legally paid into the treasury.”

Moon, in an interview with The Independent, said he won’t be surprised if it happens again.

“I don’t know that the governor will leave it in there,” Moon said. “He has been known to cut it out of that before.”

Moon’s $38,000 proposal is one of more than 400 earmarks, spending more than $2.1 billion, sprinkled throughout the $51.7 billion state budget passed by lawmakers this year. The total includes 284 new earmarked items, worth $1.7 billion, and 124 that are to receive continuing appropriations.

Last year, The Independent identified 275 earmarked items, totaling about $1.1 billion. The number began increasing during the 2021 session, as the size of the growing state budget surplus became apparent.

Parson must take action on the 16 appropriation bills before the new fiscal year begins on Monday. Whether the earmarked items are approved is not a question of money – the state has almost $6.4 billion in surplus funds and revenues through Tuesday have already exceeded estimates for the current fiscal year with three more days for collections.

But despite that surplus, Parson has targeted earmarked funds in his veto messages in each of the last three years. Last year, he cut $550 million from the budget by vetoing or reducing 201 budget items.

The previous year, the veto pen fell on $650 million in spending lines.

In an analysis of the budget, The Independent defined an earmark as an item not originally requested by Parson that is directed to a specific organization or region.

The largest example in this year’s budget is $727.5 million from general revenue and borrowed funds for improvements along Interstate 44 in southwest Missouri. The earmark was inserted by House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith, a Republican who represents Jasper County and is a candidate for state treasurer.

Other big road items include $150 million to widen U.S. Highway 67 through Butler County and $48 million for work on U.S. 65 between Buffalo and Warsaw.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/lrw5K/2/

Some of the items, like Moon’s refund money, are repeats of items Parson vetoed last year. One is $3.4 million for improvements to LeCompte Road on the east side of Springfield.

“This is a local responsibility with minimal statewide impact,” Parson wrote about the project in last year’s veto message, a line that found a place in many vetoes.

There’s money to build hospitals in Kirksville and in Dunklin County, to fund eight local water and sewer projects, to convert a building at the University of Missouri-Columbia to the state Wine and Grape Institute and to pay for a parking lot at the stadium where the KC Current play soccer.

The Urban League of St. Louis is in line for a $1 million grant through the Department of Higher Education and the Boys and Girls Club of Poplar Bluff is in with a $2 million grant from federal COVID relief funds.

Obscure origins

Smith wanted to make sure everyone knew who was inserting the money for I-44 by holding a news conference to announce it. And Moon doesn’t hesitate to say that he sought the money for the tax refunds.

But finding the sponsors of the remaining 406 earmarks is more difficult. Unlike the earmark process in Congress, there are no legislative rules requiring members to make their appropriations requests public.

At their end-of-the-year news conferences, Republican and Democratic leaders in the Missouri House took opposite views on whether lawmakers should have to put their name on earmark requests.

House Speaker Dean Plocher, a candidate for secretary of state, said the legislature as a whole has responsibility for spending. There are no new earmarks that are targeted to Plocher’s St. Louis County district.

“We’re not up here for personal credit,” Plocher said. “I don’t think it’s about bringing money back to your district.”

Every legislator who voted for the budget bills is responsible for the earmarks, Plocher said.

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade of Springfield, a candidate for governor, said lawmakers “absolutely” should have to identify the earmarks they seek. 

The Independent identified eight earmarks targeted to her district, totaling $45.8 million, for items ranging from $250,000 for the Springfield Sports Commission to $15 million for an alliance of health care providers to expand medical training.

“I’m proud when I’m able to bring money home to my district,” Quade said. “I wouldn’t ask for something I was ashamed of that I didn’t think Missourians would be happy with that money going towards.”

The transparency of requiring earmarks to have sponsors, Quade said, would help Missourians understand the legislature.

This year’s budget process, derailed by filibusters and finished with hours to spare under the constitutional deadline, was particularly obscure, with Smith and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Lincoln Hough cutting the final deal on every item behind closed doors.

“We should be responsible and be held accountable to the people of Missouri, and they should know how we’re making those decisions,” Quade said.

For more than 250 of the new earmarks, The Independent was able to identify the House or Senate district where the appropriation is to be spent, either by decoding the legislative language describing the item or assigning it based on the home address of the organization to receive the funds.

Moon said he often has trouble figuring out where a spending item is going.

“When a particular area, a county, is mentioned in a legislative bill, you talk about counties with a certain population, but not not less than or not more than a certain amount, and of course, that's a way around the special law prohibition,” he said.

In Moon’s view, many of the appropriations violate the constitution’s long-standing provision against grants of state money or credit to private entities. He filed constitutional objections, printed in the Senate Journal, specifically questioning 64 earmarked items totaling $131.9 million.

The largest item on Moon’s list is $17.5 million to support the Kansas City organization preparing for the 2026 World Cup matches at Arrowhead Stadium. In Moon’s letters, he encouraged Parson to veto the appropriations.

The constitutional limit only applies to state funds and includes an exception for using federal funds for designated public purposes. Many of the items on Moon’s list for the Department of Social Services use money the state receives for the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, or TANF.

Since the enactment of a federal welfare overhaul in 1996, Missouri has received about $200 million annually as a block grant intended to equal the amount used for cash benefits before the law. 

Because Missouri only paid out $16.5 million in direct benefits in fiscal 2023, the remainder is available for anti-poverty program grants. The earmarks in this year’s budget from TANF funds total $29.4 million.

Spending questions

Some earmarks began taking flak before the final budget votes. 

Democrats criticized $12.5 million to purchase land for a state park in McDonald County in the district of House Budget Committee Vice Chairman Dirk Deaton.

And Northeast Regional Medical Center in Kirksville attacked an earmarked $15 million for Hannibal Regional Healthcare System to construct a radiation oncology center in Kirksville. Northeast Regional’s attorney, Chuck Hatfield, said in a letter sent in April to Hough that the appropriation is improper because it allows Hannibal Regional to open a competing hospital where no need has been established.

Missouri requires medical providers to obtain a Certificate of Need for major capital investments. Hannibal Regional hasn’t even begun the process of obtaining the certificate, Hatfield noted.

“It would be inappropriate for the legislature to provide funding for a project that has not provided or demonstrated need in accordance with Missouri law,” Hatfield wrote.

If the Kirksville facility is not licensed as an inpatient hospital or long-term care facility, it would not need a certificate of need, Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Senior Services, said in an email.

It could need a certificate for capital purchases of $1 million or more, she said.

There are $57 million in earmarked appropriations for hospital construction or capital equipment in the budget plan on Parson’s desk. The largest is $25 million for an acute care inpatient behavioral health center at KC Children’s Mercy and the smallest is $425,000 for a computed tomography scanner at Golden Valley Memorial Hospital in Clinton.

The increased number of earmarks while the state enjoys a large surplus is likely to continue. Requiring legislative sponsors to be public for each item might cut back on the special spending, Moon said.

“It would make it a lot more transparent,” Moon said. “Most people, especially those who are opposed to earmarks, would like it. Those who want earmarks may not be so inclined to like it, though.”

Rep. Brenda Shields. R-St. Joseph, is leading a special committee that seeks to set a performance-based formula for higher education funding (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

A Missouri House committee began a new phase Tuesday of a years-long process to create a formula to fund the state’s higher education institutions.

Led by state Rep. Brenda Shields, a Republican from St. Joseph, the Special Interim Committee on Higher Education Performance Funding is hoping to pick a performance-based formula that would determine funding while allotting for institutions’ unique missions.

Shields sponsored legislation in January pushing for the switch in higher-education funding, which passed a committee but was never debated by the full House. 

The pressure to establish a formula stems from a 2022 appropriations bill that gave the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development $450,000 to commission “a study which provides recommendations to the governor and General Assembly on public higher education performance funding models.” The department has been working with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems since and has created reports on higher-education funding and efficiency.

“It is a long haul to make this happen if we do the testing correctly,” Shields told the committee Tuesday afternoon.

She predicted the first year of implementation would be 2027, and she aims to have a model by January that the committee can “run simulations with.”

Committee members commented that it was a challenge to create a formula for higher education — especially when term limits place a ceiling on legislators’ experience.

“I’m concerned about the technicality of what we are talking about here that is beyond my experience and perhaps ability to understand,” said state Rep. John Black, a Marshfield Republican.

Black noted that he, as well as Shields and committee member state Rep. Kevin Windham, have two years remaining in the House.

“The legislature will never understand some of these parameters at a level necessary to implement a good program. We are going to have to give over some authority to the department,” he said.

He said they will have to “convince” fellow House members to give power to the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development.

Windham, a Democrat from Hillsdale, said they will need the Senate’s authorization.

Shields suggested expanding the group to a joint committee, incorporating senators.

Leroy Wade, deputy commissioner of the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, described a process of cooperation between the committee, the department and higher-education institutions, with the department serving as a liaison and source of manpower for the calculations involved.

Many of the state’s colleges sent a representative to talk to the committee Tuesday, answering what they wanted out of the funding model.

Mun Choi, president of University of Missouri System and chancellor of its flagship campus in Columbia, said his ideal formula would reward “strong outcomes such as high graduation rates and high future earnings.”

He said it should also account for pricier degree programs, comparing the cost of educating an engineering student versus a history major.

“The formula should also reflect the unique missions of all of the public universities in the state,” he said. “In fiscal year 2023 the University of Missouri System spent $600 million in expenditures to support research that led to discovery but also had impact to the region and the state.”

Elizabeth Kennedy, chair of the Council on Public Higher Education in Missouri and president of Missouri Western State University, said lawmakers should consider historic underfunding.

The Council on Public Higher Education in Missouri has 10 member schools, including the state’s two historically Black universities, Harris-Stowe State University and Lincoln University. A federal report recently showed Missouri, among other states, has been underfunding its historically Black land-grant university.

Windham said funding imbalances are a challenge as the committee discusses performance funding.

“I find it hard to talk about performance funding when I think about how institutions have been underfunded, some worse than others in the state,” he said. “The institutions that have seen significant investments in the past from the state will likely do better than most.”

Kennedy said the committee has the opportunity to study this.

Kimberly Beatty, chancellor of Metropolitan Community College, said the funding model must account for the differences between four-year institutions and community colleges. She said the current way colleges are funded has left state aid out of valuable programs.

“We do the apprenticeship programs. We have (certified nurse assistant) programs, manufacturing, welding, and all of those are apprenticeship programs,” she said. “None of those apprenticeship programs or their enrollees are considered in the current funding model.”

She said non-credit programs, which provide workforce training, provide workforce development for Missouri but are not funded at the state level.

“We’d like to see the value of workforce programs included in the funding model, whether those are credit programs or non-credit programs,” she said.

Beatty said around 20% of students are currently not counted towards full-time enrollment, as funded currently.

Full-time enrollment is one metric among many that may be incorporated into the formula. Currently, performance funding is not in effect in the budget process.

Fireworks go off before a game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri last September. Kansas lawmakers passed legislation that would offer incentives if the Kansas City Chiefs relocate from Arrowhead to Kansas and build a new stadium (David Eulitt/Getty Images).

State and local officials from Missouri denounced  Kansas legislators’ attempt to lure the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals across the state line, saying they would take steps to keep both teams.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, in a statement on Tuesday, said the city and state would continue negotiations with the teams that Missouri and Kansas City have “welcomed, funded and supported … since the 1960s.” 

“We remain in the first quarter of the Kansas City stadium discussion,” Lucas said. 

Kansas lawmakers on Tuesday passed legislation meant to help finance new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals in an attempt to relocate one or both teams from Missouri. The legislation, an expansion of the state’s existing Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program, could yield hundreds of millions of dollars for each stadium.

It comes after Jackson County, Missouri, voters in April rejected the extension of a sales tax to help finance a new downtown Kansas City baseball stadium for the Royals and upgrades to the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium.

Kansas lawmakers who supported the STAR Bond legislation said it was necessary to keep the teams in the Kansas City area.

“We’re in jeopardy of Kansas City losing those franchises,” Kansas Sen. Jeff Pittman, a Leavenworth Democrat, said during debate on the bill Tuesday. “Missouri has dropped the ball. We now have an opportunity to make an offer.” 

Kansas Democratic lawmakers dined with Kansas City Royals on eve of stadium vote

After Kansas lawmakers’ vote, Missouri legislators said they hoped and expected to see the state put forward a plan. 

“It’s a wakeup call to Missouri that there are other states that are willing to do whatever it takes to get the teams,” Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, said in an interview Thursday.

Patterson, who is in line to become speaker of the House next year, said he expected to see Missouri put together a plan after this summer’s primary elections and before the Missouri General Assembly returns for its legislative session in January. He said it was possible legislators would be called back to Jefferson City for a special session but didn’t think it was necessary.

The Kansas legislation would help finance up to 70% of a stadium project — with a minimum $1 billion price tag and 30,000 seats — by issuing bonds to be repaid with the state sales tax collected in the STAR Bond district. Liquor taxes from the district and funds from the state’s legalization of sports betting also could be used to repay the bonds.

The offer remains in place for a year and is limited to National Football League or Major League Baseball teams in states adjacent to Kansas. 

Kansas’ attempt to poach the teams was seen by several Missouri lawmakers as a violation of a truce the two states reached five years ago to stop offering incentives to move businesses back and forth the state line in the Kansas City area. 

But Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, didn’t see it that way.

“The border war was really focused on businesses like AMC Theatres, which went back and forth, back and forth,” Kelly said. “We never discussed teams.”

For years, the two states engaged in an economic development “border war,” offering incentives to companies that jumped the state line, spending taxpayer funds while largely not creating any new jobs. 

“Today’s vote regrettably restarts the Missouri-Kansas incentive border war, creating leverage for the teams, but injecting even greater uncertainty into the regional stadium conversation,” Lucas said Tuesday. 

In a statement Tuesday, Jackson County, Missouri, Executive Frank White Jr. urged state and local governments to abide by the border war truce “and refrain from engaging in a counterproductive stadium bidding war.”

“We must focus on common sense over politics,” White said. “Our resources should be used wisely to improve the lives of our residents, not wasted on bidding wars that only serve to drain public funds and divide our region.”

White said in order to agree to subsidies for a stadium he expects “a complete and transparent plan that offers tangible benefits to our taxpayers.”

“My office remains open to conversations with the Royals, Chiefs, lawmakers, and other stakeholders, but any proposal must meet this standard and make sense for our community,” he said.

Missouri Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg Republican, said the border war “didn’t benefit anyone” and saw Kansas’ push to relocate the teams as a violation. 

He said he wanted to see the Missouri Department of Economic Development make an offer to keep the teams, but he didn’t support the idea of lawmakers being called back to Jefferson City for a special session and didn’t want a package that could put taxpayers on the hook. 

“We want to keep the Kansas City Chiefs and KC Royals in the state of Missouri, but we can’t saddle taxpayers with billions of dollars in debt to help finance stadiums,” he said. 

Hoskins, who is running in the GOP primary for secretary of state, said he thought the Kansas plan was based on lofty revenue expectations and that the stadiums wouldn’t generate enough activity to pay off the bonds without additional assistance from Kansas taxpayers. He didn’t want to see Missouri put forward a similar plan.

“Missouri taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for financing stadiums for billion-dollar corporations and multimillion-dollar athletes,” he said. “It’s hard enough being a Missourian right now just trying to keep your own money in your pocket, let alone financing stadiums for a billion-dollar industry.” 

Patterson called the border war talk “somewhat irrelevant.” 

“It’s obvious that Kansas is going to act,” he said, “and I think we should focus on acting ourselves and not crying about some sort of truce that may or may not have been agreed to regarding the teams.”

Missouri is in the middle of a battle between pharmaceutical manufacturers and health care providers over access to discount prescription drugs through the 340B Drug Pricing Program. (Mint Images/Getty Images)

In a battle that pits some of the biggest players in health care against each other, the Missouri General Assembly has come down on the side of hospitals who want unlimited access to discounted drugs for their pharmacies.

On the last day of this year’s legislative session, the Missouri House passed a bill making it illegal for pharmaceutical manufacturers to refuse to supply the discounted medications to qualifying hospitals and health clinics and their contracted pharmacies. 

Pharmacy manufacturers, who are playing defense on similar bills across the country, want Gov. Mike Parson to veto the legislation because the discounted prescriptions are often sold to patients at full retail price. 

The stakes nationally are huge, in a medical market with escalating prescription prices and increasing concentration of medical providers in direct employment by hospital groups. Nationally, pharmaceutical manufacturers sold nearly $100 billion in discounted drugs in 2021 and 2022 through a federal program known as 340B, for the section of law where it is authorized.

With an average discount of about 60%, according to representatives of the drug manufacturers, the wholesale value of the discounted prescriptions over two years is approximately $250 billion. The retail markup adds hundreds of millions more to the total revenue stream.

Much of that revenue goes to the bottom line instead of being passed on or used to cover the cost of care for people who cannot afford it, Nicole Longo, deputy vice president of public affairs at PhRMA, the lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry, said in an interview with The Independent.

“We provide tens of billions of dollars in discounts on medicines each year in the hopes that it improves access to affordable medicines for low income patients,” Longo said. “And we’re not seeing that happening.”

In 2023, a federal appeals court ruled that nothing in federal law prevents pharmacy manufacturers from limiting the number of contract pharmacies they will supply with 340B discounted products. But those limits go only so far, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled when it upheld an Arkansas law – very similar to the bill awaiting action by Parson – that bans manufacturer-imposed limits on contracts.

Many of the restrictions manufacturers are implementing aren’t practical, said Daniel Good, vice president of pharmacy for the Mercy health system. A limitation, for example, to one contract pharmacy per qualified provider – an idea being used by some companies – doesn’t allow Mercy to serve its patients most effectively, Good said.

“Even though we have 58 retail pharmacies, plus specialty infusion pharmacies, there’s not enough of the brick-and-mortar pharmacies that are owned and operated by Mercy to meet the entire footprint that Mercy has,” Good said. “Therefore, we have to have contract relationships with some of those pharmacies in those rural communities in order to meet that need.”

The program

The 340B program was part of a 1992 federal law intended to fix an unintended consequence of changes to Medicaid made in 1990: Pharmaceutical companies stopped giving drug discounts to hospitals serving rural and poorer communities and clinics for people with expensive medical conditions such as AIDS.

It had two components – drug manufacturers had to deliver their products at a discount to eligible providers and eligible providers could only use the program to provide prescriptions to patients they treated directly.

Eligible hospitals were designated as those serving children, those that were the only hospitals in their community, those designated as “critical access hospitals” providing care that would otherwise be absent, and those serving large numbers of indigent patients known as “disproportionate share hospitals.”

Rural hospitals rely on the 340B drug pricing program

Other qualifying providers include federally qualified health care centers – clinics that receive grants to support operations so they can base charges on ability to pay – as well as clinics that serve AIDS patients, black lung victims and other debilitating diseases.

The drugs available at a 340B discount are purchased by the providers and dispensed at in-house or contract pharmacies for outpatient use. The charges paid by patients may or may not reflect a discount from regular pricing, depending on the policies of the individual provider.

The use of contract pharmacies started in 1996, when the Department of Health and Human Services began allowing one contractor per provider as recognition that many providers did not have in-house pharmacies.

In 2010, along with passage of the Affordable Care Act, the allowance for contracts was expanded to allow any number of contracts. That is when use of the program increased exponentially.

The 45 hospitals and clinics enrolled in 1992 grew to 1,191 in 2010 and stands at 2,724 currently, according to data from PhRMA. The number of contract pharmacies grew from 2,321 in 2010 to 205,340 in 2024.

“One disproportionate share hospital in the 340 B program might have 400 contracts with pharmacies across the country and vice versa,” Longo said. “A single CVS that’s on your corner might have 30 contracts with hospitals and clinics, both in state and out of state, through the 340 B program.”

“The lunar surface”

When pharmaceutical companies started pushing back on that growth, the federal department issued an advisory opinion that made it clear it backed unlimited contracting and expected the drug manufacturers to honor them wherever the products were sent.

“The situs of delivery, be it the lunar surface, low-earth orbit, or a neighborhood pharmacy, is irrelevant,” the 2020 advisory opinion, since withdrawn, stated.

In the 2023 ruling that upheld limits on contracts imposed by manufacturers, Judge Stephanos Bibas of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the department improperly interpreted the intent of Congress.

“When Congress’s words run out, covered entities may not pick up the pen,” Bibas wrote. “Plus, Congress’s use of the singular ‘covered entity’ in the ‘purchased by’ language suggests that it had in mind one-to-one transactions between a covered entity and a drug maker without mixing in a plethora of pharmacies.”

If the case was about whether clinics and hospitals enrolled in the 340B program could use contracted pharmacies at all, Bibas wrote, the ruling would go another way. Because many eligible entities do not have an in-house pharmacy, he wrote, contracted pharmacies have to be part of the program.

But manufacturer-imposed restrictions that allow some use of contract pharmacies are acceptable, he wrote.

“Under the three drug makers’ policies at issue, all covered entities can still use the Section 340B program,” Bibas wrote. “Though the covered entities cannot squeeze as much revenue out of it as they once could, drug makers need not help them maximize their 340B profits.”

As the dispute moved through the courts, it also became fodder for state legislatures. Including Missouri. There are 29 states that have enacted bills – including seven this year – that prohibit restrictions on contracts.

Governors in five states – Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi and West Virginia – signed the bill in their states. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed the bill passed in his state this year.

And while the courts have said federal law doesn’t give Health and Human Services the power to bar manufacturer limits, they have also said that same law doesn’t restrict states’ ability to do so.

In a ruling on a bill passed in Arkansas in 2021, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld financial penalties on manufacturers who refuse to deliver 340B discounted medications to contract pharmacies.

“Arkansas is simply deterring pharmaceutical manufacturers from interfering with a covered entity’s contract pharmacy arrangements,” Judge Michael Melloy wrote in the ruling handed down in March.

The money

For many providers, the revenue obtained by selling the discounted drugs at standard prices is the difference between staying open and closing. KFF Health News last month reported that many small rural hospitals aren’t willing to take federal payments to transition facilities to a new “rural emergency hospital” model because they would lose access to 340B discounts.

An obscure drug discount program stifles use of federal lifeline by rural hospitals

State Rep. Rick Francis, a Perryville Republican  who became CEO of Cape Girardeau-based Cross Trails Medical Center on May 20, said the revenue is vital to his new employer, a federally qualified health center. 

Cross Trails has locations in four counties and 11 contract pharmacies.

“The 340B revenues allow us to cover patients who can’t pay for medicine,” said Francis, who voted in support of the bill when it passed the House. “We have plenty of those who need help.”

But those providers aren’t the main target for the drug manufacturers. Instead, they focus criticism on the disproportionate share hospitals. Those hospitals account for about 80% of all drugs purchased through the 340B program, $41.8 billion in 2022 and $34.3 billion the year before.

The New England Journal of Medicine, in a study published in January, found that hospitals marked up 340B medications by 6.5 times as much as private physicians for infusion treatments.

“This study showed that hospitals imposed large price markups and retained a substantial share of total insurer spending on physician-administered drugs for patients with private insurance,” the study concludes.

Those hospitals should be required to show how they use the money to help the patients that cannot pay for doctor visits and medications, Longo said. 

“They buy low and they sell high,” Longo said. “Patients bear a lot of that cost, and so that’s a major concern of the industry.”

The demands for disproportionate share hospitals to cut prices for patients receiving medications obtained with a 340B discount, or to forgo collection efforts on unpaid bills as a requirement for participation in the program, are hollow arguments, Good said.

Other legal requirements prevent having different prescription prices for people with insurance coverage and those who do not, he said.

But Mercy, realizing that the arguments are having an impact on public perception, identifies the programs it funds with 340B revenue, he said. It supports clinics in St. Louis and Springfield, mobile care vans with mammography screening and other services, and behavioral health care, as well as other services.

“We have very specific services that we can tie directly to the money that is saved from 340B, that we’re able to continue or expand our patient care services in those areas,” Good said.

By putting the focus on disproportionate share hospitals, Good said, the pharmacy industry is trying to politically divide users of the 340B program.

“We want to stick together, and we do believe that healthcare will be stronger if we stay together as a group and we maintain the 340B program, so it benefits all and that we don’t abuse it,” Good said.

The Missouri bill

The legislation awaiting Parson’s action has three main components – a requirement that drug manufacturers deliver medications to all contract pharmacies without restriction, enforcement by  declaring a violation to be an unlawful merchandising practice, and punishment meted out by the state Board of Pharmacy for violations.

Sponsored by Republican state Sen. Justin Brown of Rolla, the bill was pared back from its original language that also targeted pharmacy benefit managers and practices in the private insurance market. Brown did not return calls or messages sent by email to his Capitol office.

During House debate on the final day of the session, state Rep. Tara Peters, a Rolla Republican who shepherded the bill through the lower chamber, said provisions on pharmacy benefit managers were removed to make the bill more likely to pass.

The bill is intended to increase access to prescriptions for Missourians, she said.

“Let’s allow Missourians access to pick up their medications closer to home,” Peters said.

Other supporters focused on the program’s benefits for safety-net hospitals and clinics. 

The bill is needed to block drug makers from limiting when and where a provider can provide prescriptions, supporters said. The revenue realized helps patients by subsidizing high-cost services, such as behavioral health care, as well as supporting clinics that provide free or low-cost services.

“There are aspects of this program that are not as we would wish them to be,” said Rep. Mike Stephens, a Bolivar Republican, “but it is vitally important to the small hospitals, to the FQHCs and to many people who can’t afford medicines otherwise.”

There was only nominal opposition to the bill, which passed 28-3 in the Senate and 133-18 in the House, with only Republicans voting against it.

“It’s a problem, in my estimation, of a federal program that has seen significant increases in utilization and at the same time, there are big players that are directly benefiting in a way that most people would not assume,” one of the opponents, state Rep. Doug Richey, a Republican from Excelsior Springs, said in an interview with The Independent.

The bill’s sponsors played on legislators’ sympathy for people struggling with high-cost care, Richey said.

“When you have somebody get up on the floor, and they talk about patient care, the high costs of healthcare and helping people who are needing help, and then you start having anecdotes that are shared about the suffering and the anguish that people have, there is an emotional component to these types of bills that begins to take over,” Richey said.

Francis said the bill fills in gaps in federal law.

“That said ‘you will make these drugs available to these Missouri clinics,’” Francis said. “What it did not say is that big pharma, you can be in charge of dispensing and determining where you’re going to allow these drugs to go.”

Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, speaks during a Freedom Caucus news conference in January, accompanied by, from left, Sens. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, Nick Schroer, R-Defiance, Jill Carter, R-Granby, and Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester. Brattin, Hoskins and Schroer are being sued for defamation over social media posts after the Chiefs’ victory parade shooting. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

The Kansas man suing three Missouri lawmakers for defamation is challenging their assertions that their statements accusing him of being involved in the shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration were made in the course of official business.

In filings Monday in the federal lawsuits Denton Loudermill is pursuing against the three state senators, his attorneys demand a chance to test those assertions. Loudermill’s attorneys – Arthur Benson, LaRonna Lassiter Saunders and Katrina Robertson – filed three almost identical responses Monday to the motions for dismissal by state Sens. Nick Schroer, Rick Brattin and Denny Hoskins.

The three senators are being represented by Attorney General Andrew Bailey and their filings have claimed legislative immunity for their social media posts and that the Kansas federal court where the case was filed has no jurisdiction over them.

“Defendant’s assertion of immunity depends on a facts not conceded by plaintiff: whether or not Defendant was engaged in ‘legitimate legislative activity,’” Loudermill’s attorneys wrote in a response to Schroer’s motion to dismiss the case. “And that factual contention involves issues of whether or not defendant was formulating, making, determining, creating or opposing legislative policy.”

The filings demand a chance to conduct an investigation of the immunity claim if the case cannot move forward without a determination.

No hearings have been scheduled in the case.

Loudermill was detained briefly by law enforcement after gunfire erupted near Union Station in Kansas City as the Super Bowl celebration was ending.

The violence, tied to a dispute among the partiers, led to the death of Lisa Lopez-Galvan and left 22 others injured. Three men, none of whom is an immigrant, face state murder charges for their role in the shootings and three others face federal firearms charges for selling guns involved in the shootings.

Loudermill, who was born in Kansas, was detained briefly because he was too slow to leave the area of the shooting, he told The Independent in an interview earlier this year. 

He was photographed with his hands behind his back, sitting on a curb. An account on X, formally known as Twitter, with the name Deep Truth Intel used the photo and labeled Loudermill an “illegal immigrant” under arrest as the shooter.

It then showed up in posts from the Missouri Freedom Caucus, the group of six Republican state senators who battled with the Senate’s GOP leadership. The post was deleted and replaced with one that affirmatively stated he had nothing to do with the shootings.

Brattin, Hoskins and Schroer, as well as U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, also spread the incorrect information on social media, including the Deep Truth Intel post or a similar post with Loudermill’s photo.

Burchett is also being sued by Loudermill and is challenging the jurisdiction in the federal court in Kansas. Burchett is not claiming any form of official immunity for his post.

In the filings written by assistant attorney general Jeremiah Morgan, Brattin, Hoskins and Schroer have sought to tie their statements to their official duties.

Brattin’s first post linking Loudermill to the shooting, since deleted, demanded “#POTUS CLOSE THE BORDER” and incorporated the deleted Deep Truth Intel post.

That is a policy statement by an elected official, Morgan wrote about Brattin’s post.

“Defendant’s statement, directed at the President of the United States, was a statement on border security at the southern border—an issue of clear national and political importance,” he wrote.

Hoskins’ version on X shared a screenshot of the Deep Truth Intel post and blamed President Joe Biden and political leaders of Kansas City for making the shooting possible.

“Fact – President Biden’s open border policies & cities who promote themselves as Sanctuary Cities like #Kansas City invite illegal violent immigrants into the U.S.,” Hoskins posted.

That post has been deleted, but in a Feb. 14 post without a photo, Hoskins wrote that “information I’ve seen” states “at least one of the alleged shooters is an illegal immigrant and all 3 arrested are repeat violent offenders.”

Hoskins hedged it with “IF THIS IS ACCURATE” and repetition of conservative rhetoric to stop immigration and restrain cities that help immigrants, blaming crime on “catch and release policies of liberal cities.” 

Morgan’s defense of that statement is almost identical to the one raised for Brattin’s post.

“Defendant’s statement, directed at the President of the United States, was a statement on policies related to border security and the rights of citizens protected under the Second Amendment—issues of clear national and political importance and salience,” the filing states.

Schroer was the least certain post about the immigration and arrest status of Loudermill among the three now being sued.

Schroer’s post included a link to one from Burchett stating, over Loudermill’s photo, that “One of the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade shooters has been identified as an illegal Alien.”

“Can we get any confirmation or denial of this from local officials or law enforcement?” Schroer wrote on X. “I’ve been sent videos or stills showing at least 6 different people arrested from yesterday but officially told only 3 still in custody. The people deserve answers.”

That post, Morgan wrote on Schroer’s behalf, is a call for transparency.

“A statement calling for greater government transparency in the investigations surrounding a tragic event is exactly the kind of ‘policy formulati[on]’ that legislative immunity exists to protect,” Morgan wrote. 

The assertions of official business mask the nature of the posts, Loudermill’s attorneys wrote.

“Labeling plaintiff as an illegal immigrant and a shooter was highly offensive to plaintiff and caused him injuries,” they wrote.

All four Republicans being sued by Loudermill have asserted that they did not direct their posts to a Kansas audience and that they have no personal connections to Kansas that gives the federal court there jurisdiction.

Loudermill’s attorneys responded that large numbers of people in Kansas saw the post and that Loudermill sustained the injury to his reputation in the state where he lives.

The entry of Bailey’s office to defend the lawmakers has drawn a sharp rebuke from some quarters. 

On May 16, the day before this year’s legislative session ended, Sen. Mike Cierpiot, a Lee’s Summit Republican and a bitter foe of the Freedom Caucus members, tried to amend the daily journal to read that “it is the opinion of the Missouri Senate that the office of the attorney general should not expend any money from the state legal expense fund” to defend Hoskins, Schroer and Brattin.

And Gov. Mike Parson issued an order last month that no payments related to the lawsuits should be certified from the state Legal Expense Fund “without my approval or a court order.”

Missourians, Parson wrote, “should not be held liable for legal expenses on judgments due to state senators falsely attacking a private citizen on social media.”

Sen. Doug Beck speaks during a Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee hearing in January (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Independence School District recently completed its first school year on a four-day-a-week schedule — a change that made headlines and stirred state officials.

Now, with the passage of a new state law, the district will have to ask voters to keep the four-day week by July 1, 2026. 

Is that enough time to test the concept of the abbreviated week? Dale Herl, the district’s superintendent, told The Independent that he is already seeing benefits just a year into the schedule.

“At one point, we were fully staffed with bus drivers in the school district,” he said. “We were also fully staffed with nurses, and neither one of those has happened during my 15 years within the school district (prior to the four-day week).”

Jon Turner, an associate professor at Missouri State University who researches the four-day school week, is studying the Independence School District. He backed up Herl’s claims about a full roster of bus drivers, adding that a wave of teacher applications was a result of the new schedule.

Independence’s four-day school week draws Missouri auditor probe

“It’s very clear that the four-day school week was a strong reason that Independence application rates were so much higher,” Turner said. “There is something so attractive about the four-day week within personal-life balance between certified educators that there’s no doubt that they’ve reaped the reward.”

Herl said the district’s hiring looks “very different.” More veteran teachers are applying to come to Independence, pulling in educators from affluent communities in the Kansas City area.

Turner, who serves on the board of the Missouri Association of Rural Education, was keenly interested if Independence was attracting teachers from rural communities. He only saw one applicant from a rural area.

Independence is the largest Missouri school district to adopt the four-day week. The shortened week has been part of rural Missouri schools since 2011, and around a third of the state’s schools have adopted the schedule — comprising 11% of Missouri’s K-12 students.

Herl chose the four-day week to help recruit teachers into the district’s open positions. Rural schools may have done so a decade earlier, but Herl said he sees the need growing now.

“I don’t think anyone anymore is immune to the teacher shortage,” he said. “You look at very large school districts across the United States, and they have hundreds and hundreds of teacher openings. We are in a crisis in the United States, but especially in Missouri regarding the teacher shortage.”

During the 2022-2023 school year, almost a quarter of new teachers were not properly certified or were substitute teachers, according to a State Board of Education report. The same report showed that nearly a quarter of student teachers serve as the teacher of record, or primary educator, in the classroom.

State Sen. Sen. Doug Beck, a Democrat from Affton and former local school board member, sponsored the legislation on four-day school weeks that became part of the large education package signed into law earlier this year. He, too, said the core issue was teacher recruitment and retention, pointing out shallow pay for educators and a culture war surrounding teachers.

A four-day week isn’t the solution, he told The Independent.

“Nobody has given me a report that says a four-day school week increases kids’ education or our test scores or anything like that,” he said. “They’ve all said it’s either been a little bit less or almost not noticeable, but that isn’t what we should be striving for in education.”

The State Board of Education in February reviewed a report that concluded that the four-day schedule had “no statistically significant effect on either academic achievement or building growth.” 

Academic achievement looks at one year of scores whereas building growth compares students scores over time.

Beck wanted to make his legislation effective statewide, meaning rural schools would have to take a vote for a four-day week. Instead, Beck’s proposal focused on schools in counties with a charter form of government or in cities with over 30,000 residents, knowing the inclusion of rural schools would draw the ire of some lawmakers and sabotage its chances of passage. 

“The great part about this bill is that if it is a great thing for Independence, when they go for a vote, the people should vote for it,” he said. “It is democracy in action.”

Herl said he received positive feedback from a survey sent to parents about the four-day week. He believes voters would approve the four-day week if it was limited to district parents, but he worries that older voters without any kids attending school may come out against the new schedule.

Turner’s research bares that fear out.  

“Looking at key stakeholders in the community and how they perceive the four-day week, the only group that we found that opposed the four day week were people that no longer have kids at school,” Turner said.

Herl has not thought about what he would do to retain teachers if he had to revert to a five-day week.

The bill that contained the four-day-school-week provisions also included a raise to the formula that funds public schools and other teacher-recruitment initiatives.

“All of the things contained within (the law) is based upon appropriations,” Herl said. “So just because it is in the bill does not mean it’s going to happen. The money has to be appropriated, and the state legislature has a very long history of not fully funding education. So my fear is if things get tight financially in Missouri, then education is just going to be the first thing to get cut.”

He said the incentive written for five-day weeks would give his teachers an extra $500 a year.

“The financial incentive is so small that it’s not going to keep a particular teacher in the profession,” he said.

As he prepares for a future vote, there are a few tweaks planned for the four-day program in Independence, Herl said. But overall, he is enthusiastic about the first year on the schedule.

Danielle Faith Zoll's daughter, Makayla, who is now 2 years old, was the result of her sixth embryo transfer. Zoll, 37, of St. Louis, now runs a nonprofit called Making a Miracle which offers support to other families struggling with infertility (Photo provided by Danielle Faith Zoll).

Danielle Faith Zoll and her husband have one last embryo frozen in Missouri. 

Zoll’s daughter, who is 2 years old, was conceived through in vitro fertilization. But during that pregnancy Zoll developed Hellp Syndrome, an extreme and life-threatening case of preeclampsia. 

After giving birth to her daughter at 35 weeks, Zoll’s doctor advised her not to do so again out of fear that she wouldn’t survive another pregnancy. 

That warning left Zoll and her husband unsure of the best future for their last embryo. And the uncertainty turned to fear after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling in February. 

“Because of all we go through, (embryos) feel like more than just this clump of cells, because it’s this hope that you’ll be a parent one day,” Zoll said. “And you lose so much going through infertility.”

Zoll, like many Americans, was shocked when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled frozen embryos were “extrauterine children.” Several fertility clinics in that state immediately stopped  IVF for fear of being found liable for wrongful death if they accidentally destroyed an embryo.

Floored by the news and the unknown, Zoll reached out to her state senator, Tracy McCreery, an Olivette Democrat. This is scary, Zoll told her. Can you do something?

McCreery would later reference stories like Zoll’s on the Senate floor, but ultimately wasn’t able to push through legislation to protect the procedure. 

A handful of attempts to protect IVF through the legislative process were introduced, but didn’t make it far in either the House or Senate. In part, the reluctance stemmed from a belief that IVF wasn’t in immediate danger, and therefore was an issue for a different year as more urgent matters — and Senate dysfunction — often ruled the day. 

But advocates for IVF say the lack of urgency was a mistake. They believe ambiguity in state law leaves IVF vulnerable to the same conclusion reached by Alabama’s highest court.

McCreery’s bill, which would have excluded IVF from any “unborn children” language in Missouri law, never got a Senate hearing.

“Unfortunately in the legislature,” McCreery said, “there just weren’t people willing to have that discussion.” 

House Majority Leader Jon Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican and a physician, said many Republicans, himself included, are eager to put more protections in place. But in the House, he said IVF legislation came too late in the session to realistically act on what he called a preemptive bill.

“Going forward, protecting Missouri parents’ ability to access in vitro fertilization will be a priority,” said Patterson, who is expected to become speaker of the House next session.  Lawmakers, he said, “need to do everything we can to protect access to IVF.”

IVF, the process of collecting a woman’s eggs, fertilizing them with sperm in a laboratory and transferring resulting embryos to her uterus or freezing them for later, has become increasingly common. It gives people the opportunity to both start families later in life and grow families in spite of illness or infertility.

In 2021, more than 97,000 babies were born thanks to assisted reproductive technology, more than double the number a decade earlier, according to the CDC.

While many Missouri Republicans voiced support for IVF, in the wake of the Alabama ruling a few spoke out against the procedure, arguing families should only create as many embryos as they intend to use, running counter to how the process currently works. 

“I’ve got a group of colleagues that believe that what happened in Alabama could happen in Missouri,” McCreery said. “But like a lot of things in the state of Missouri, people just cross their fingers and hope that there isn’t a problem.”

‘No protection for IVF’

In an attempt to start answering his clients many questions after the Alabama decision came down, Tim Schlesinger, a surrogacy and assisted reproductive technologies attorney in St. Louis, took to a blog post. 

“This case has no direct legal impact outside the State of Alabama,” he assured Missourians. 

In a recent interview with The Independent, Schlesinger said this still holds water. But it also stands alongside another truth in Missouri: “There is no protection for IVF right now.”

He’s carefully watched the ripple effect of the Alabama decision move north. 

He doesn’t believe IVF is at risk of disappearing in Missouri, but without legislation that protects both patients and clinics, he said it’s not impossible for Missourians to find themselves in a situation similar to Alabama.

Schlesinger knows the topic well. Several years ago he litigated the case that set the precedent for defining an embryo as “property of a special character.”

That case, McQueen v. Gadberry, arose from a custody dispute over embryos in a divorce. 

Schlesinger, who represented Gadberry — the ex-husband who didn’t want his ex-wife to use the remaining embryos to create children, and won — said the outcome confirmed patients have the right to decide what to do with their pre-embryos.

But Michael Wolff, a former Missouri Supreme Court chief justice and dean emeritus at St. Louis University School of Law, fears the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a case cited in the McQueen v. Gadberry decision, means the precedent set by the judge’s decision would no longer apply if brought before a court again.

Missouri law states that all life begins at conception.  Wolff interprets conception and fertilization to be one in the same in regards to state law, adding that it would simply take “an overeager prosecutor” for Missouri to find itself in a position similar to Alabama.

“I’m not being an alarmist about this, I’m not being an extremist. I’m not saying that everybody should believe that what the legislature says is true,” Wolff said. “But I think you have to take seriously what the legislature says. They were perfectly serious when they wrote it as far as I can tell.”

After Missouri banned abortion, the state saw 25% drop in OB-GYN residency applicants

Schlesinger is hopeful that if a state court was faced with a case similar to McQueen v. Gadberry today, it would come to the same conclusion it did several years ago, since he said that case wasn’t premised on Roe v. Wade. 

But, he added, there’s no guarantee the judges now sitting on the Missouri Supreme Court would agree. 

“That’s a legitimate concern, and an insightful concern brought up by Judge Wolff, but in my opinion, the overturn of Roe v. Wade should not impact McQueen v. Gadberry,” he said. “Because the reason for the overturn of Roe v Wade was not relevant to what is the character of a pre-embryo.”

Schlesinger said a more immediate impact he’s considering is on doctors. 

“The people who live in Missouri and want to have outstanding fertility care in Missouri might be impacted just by physicians reluctant to expand within Missouri until enough time has passed that they see how efforts in this regard are going to shake out,” he said.

Failed legislative attempt to protect IVF

As Missouri senators debated legislation blocking Planned Parenthood clinics from receiving Medicaid reimbursements, McCreery brought forward an amendment that would exempt IVF from Missouri’s current statute which states that life begins at conception. 

“I assumed wrongly, stupidly, that when the legislature passed a total ban on abortion, that that would be enough. People would feel like they had their Pro-Life credentials,” state Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Democrat from Kansas City, said during the debate. “What I have since realized is, it’s never enough.”

The amendment never made it to a vote, but it fueled much of the Democratic senators’ filibuster that April evening. 

But unlike inside the statehouse, McCreery believes the issue remains largely a nonpartisan one. Conservative voters have reached out asking for her help protecting the procedure. 

After the Alabama decision, Republican state Rep. Bill Allen of Kansas City consulted his priest, who encouraged him to look around the church at the children born through IVF.

“That helped square my faith and politics, I’ll tell ya,” Allen said, adding: “To me it was the right thing to do for Missouri families, and I just wanted to protect it.”

In late February he filed legislation that would have clarified the right to IVF. His bill, like McCreery’s, was never granted a committee hearing.

Allen plans to file the bill again next year, if re-elected.

“There may have been election year politics that got in the way this time,” he said. “But with those removed next year, I’m really optimistic that this can get through as a priority.”

Conservative opposition

While IVF remains a fairly bi-partisan issue, some hold-outs remain.

During a Missouri Freedom Caucus press conference this spring, state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican, decried the current IVF process as the “reckless storage and disposal of human life.” 

Often, several embryos are created at once, in part because many don’t survive to the point of implantation in the womb. It’s common practice to immediately freeze any embryos created, even if the intention is to implant them quickly.

“If you’re getting in vitro fertilization, it needs to be the embryos that are going to be implanted at that particular time,” Brattin said. “I know it’s an expensive process, but creating this huge inventory of life being frozen, I don’t agree with it.” 

He proposed that families create an embryo, and then if unsuccessful, come back and create another one. Brattin could not be reached for comment. 

After the Alabama decision, many Republicans spoke up in favor of the current IVF process. But others, like Brattin, stood by a long-held anti-abortion belief that embryos should not be stored, discarded or used for science.

During a mid-March Senate debate on an education bill, state Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican from Ash Grove, was asked by Arthur if he believed IVF should be allowed. Moon had proposed an amendment which would have required students be taught that life begins at conception.

“If I were the one with the magic wand, I would have discouraged it because now you’ve got how many fertilized embryos out there? And what happens if that facility where they’re housed loses power and they all die? Who’s culpable?” Moon said. “And so I think we’ve created a problem, and we created it. Only God’s supposed to create in that fashion. And we’ve taken it upon ourselves to do it.”

Abolish Abortion Missouri leader Wesley Scroggins, who has endorsed Moon, called IVF “sinful” at a rally in Jefferson City following the Alabama ruling.

The Missouri GOP website, under a page titled “faith and family,” lists support for “the protection of the lives of in vitro fertilized embryos and all other human embryos from the beginning of biological development” just below its support for marriage between “one man and one woman.”

Asked about IVF during a KSDK interview in March, state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold and a leading anti-abortion lawmaker, said Missouri already has some of the most “permissive” IVF laws in the country, so she saw no further need to protect the process through legislation.

She noted that since the passage of the Missouri Stands for the Unborn Act in 2019, there’s been no litigation filed against I.V.F.

“If Missouri was going to do something, they would’ve needed to already address it,” she said.

In the days following the Alabama decision, lawmakers in that state passed a law shielding IVF clinics and providers from civil and criminal liability, raising concerns that while such a law allowed clinics to reopen immediately, it also prevented families from having the ability to sue if something went wrong.

Asked in March if she’d support a law to more clearly protect I.V.F., Coleman said she would be hesitant.

“Because it’s broadly legal right now,” Coleman said. “I wouldn’t want to enact something that would actually make it harder for a family who would receive malpractice in their medical practice to be able to be made whole.”

Lingering effects of Alabama decision

As president of the Midwest Reproductive Symposium International, Dr. Amber Cooper looks forward to discussing emerging technologies and advancing access to care at the annual gathering. 

But this year, the Alabama decision lingered like a shadow over the group. 

“We’ve had to pivot and discuss ‘how do we protect patients, patients’ decisions? How do we protect embryos in storage? How do we protect clinics, particularly in states that are more threatened by some of these political decisions?’” said Cooper, a board certified reproductive endocrinologist and medical director for fertility clinic Kindbody St. Louis, who led this year’s conference, happening this week in Chicago.

She said a lot of misunderstanding around IVF has emerged in mainstream conversations since this spring, including a belief that many patients have numerous excess embryos in storage.

Cooper said it’s lucky if even 20% of the embryos created result in a live birth. 

Creating only one embryo to use at a time is unrealistic, she said, and overlooks considerations including rapidly declining egg pools, patients undergoing cancer treatment and patients with genetic diseases. 

“If we only create one embryo at a time, the success of IVF becomes profoundly lower,” she said. “And in a country where (health plans) don’t often pay for IVF … the access to care, and the affordability becomes the biggest issue of all.“

Cooper said many of her Missouri patients have asked about storing their embryos across the river in Illinois, where reproductive rights are more expansive. Larger nationwide fertility clinics are also considering where to grow and expand. Right now, Cooper said, red states look less appealing than blue ones.

“I think IVF still could be at risk,” Cooper said. “I don’t think we’re quite there yet in Missouri, compared to some other states. But it’s still a state where we are nervous that it could be.”

Legislation, she said, would be the most effective way to alleviate that concern.

The U.S. Senate might take up legislation to protect IVF access on a federal level as soon as this week. Last week, Senate Republicans blocked a bill from moving forward to vote on reinforcing access to contraception. Missouri Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt were among the Republicans who blocked the legislation. 

Another possible protection lies in an initiative petition campaign hoping to ask Missouri voters if they want to legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability. The amendment, if approved for the November ballot, reads, in part: “The government shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom.” 

Waiting and worrying

While IVF has largely faded from the headlines in recent weeks, people struggling to grow their families across Missouri still grapple with concerns sparked by the Alabama news.

Maddie Bobbitt and her husband Jerel have been trying to conceive since December 2019. 

One egg retrieval, six frozen embryos and two miscarriages later, they’re waiting to implant their remaining two embryos in August. 

About one in five married women between the ages of 15 and 49 experience infertility in America, meaning they are unable to get pregnant within the first year of trying, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In St. Louis, where Bobbitt lives, it’s  one in six couples.

“But when you are the one in six, you know, it feels like one in 6 million, it feels like you are the only one,” Bobbitt said.

When news of the Alabama decision came as Bobbitt, 33, was in the thick of IVF, she was filled with rage.

“IVF in and of itself is so unbelievably stressful and heartbreaking, and just very traumatic,” Bobbitt said. “When you add on top of it that we live in a very conservative, red state, that just adds an extra layer of stress and angst and being afraid for my own personal health and wellbeing and safety.”

Jovonna Jones, 35, who is undergoing infertility treatment, considered traveling to Mexico to finish her current round of IVF when she and her husband, Donovan, heard the news. But for now, they’re continuing to see their doctor in St. Louis.

“You really don’t have room for stress,” Jones said. “Because your body needs to be as calm as possible so those follicles can continue to grow.”

So far she and her husband have undergone five IVF cycles. They’ve taken out two loans and hosted numerous fundraisers to afford the $70,000 they’ve paid out of pocket in the hopes of making Jones’ husband a father. 

She has four children of her own from a previous relationship.

Missouri is not among the growing number of states that mandate some form of infertility coverage, despite efforts by some lawmakers to require insurance coverage for the process to help alleviate some of the financial burden that comes with growing a family through IVF

Zoll, the St. Louis mother who petitioned her state senator earlier this year to protect the procedure, watches her daughter play with baby dolls and fiercely hopes she won’t also experience the toll of infertility.

“IVF is one of the most pro life things I’ve ever heard,” said Zoll, who runs an infertility-focused nonprofit in St. Louis called Making a Miracle, “How can you try and take that away? The impact would be just detrimental to so many families, because it’s our right to have children and build them.”

Gov. Mike Parson must act on the $51.7 billion budget approved by lawmakers before the new fiscal year begins July 1 (Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images).

Missouri will enter the new fiscal year July 1 with a near-record cash surplus as state spending falls short of budgeted amounts and revenues meet expectations.

Meeting revenue expectations won’t, however, be enough to trigger an income tax cut dependent on revenue growth, said Jim Moody, a former state budget director. 

“My view is, best case, they end up probably around the last year’s revenues, which would not trigger it,” said Moody, who is also a retired lobbyist who advised clients on state fiscal issues and tax matters.The state took in $13.2 billion in general revenue in the year that ended June 30, 2023. Through Thursday, general revenue receipts were down 0.35% for the current fiscal year — the estimate is for a decline of 0.7% — while a tax cut would occur if revenues increased by $200 million or more.

Gov. Mike Parson must act on the $51.7 billion budget approved by lawmakers before the new fiscal year begins July 1. And while the large surplus and steady revenues mean every item can be funded, Parson last year vetoed $550 million in spending items he said jeopardized the state’s long-term fiscal health.

And Parson may call lawmakers back to add new spending before his term expires in January. If the budget fails to adequately fund state operations, Parson said at a news conference in May that he would not leave it to his successor to fill in the gaps.

And at the first meeting of the State Board of Education after the budget was approved, board President Charlie Shields predicted that the department would need the “mother of all supplemental budgets” to make it through the year. 

At the end of May, the state general revenue fund held $4.9 billion, with other funds that could be spent without restriction adding almost $1.9 billion. On July 1, 2023, the general revenue surplus stood at $5.1 billion, the largest in state history.

Missouri Senate avoids impasse over budget to make constitutional deadline

The general revenue balance is about $1.7 billion more than Gov. Mike Parson’s January budget proposal anticipated would be left on June 30. And while there are some big items left to fund in the current budget – a $300 million transfer to an account for expansion of the Capitol Building being the largest – the balance is unlikely to change dramatically in the final month of the fiscal year.

A large part of the additional surplus is likely due to unspent funds due from staffing shortages across state government. During fiscal year 2023, state agencies only used 87% of the payroll hours allocated in the budget. That helped keep general revenue spending $608 million below budgeted amounts.

The almost flat revenue growth masks changes in the mix of revenues. Sales tax revenues are up more than 9% for the year, while income taxes receipts have declined about 3%. In just the past two years, as income tax cuts have kicked in, the share of general revenue coming from sales tax has increased from $1 out of every $5 to $1 out of every $4.

There are several factors driving growth in sales tax, Moody said. 

The first is inflation, both in wages and prices, he said. Adult use marijuana is a market of more than $1 billion annually and sales tax claims 3% of that amount for general revenue. 

The state began collecting tax on goods sold through the internet last year, and there is some residual spending of COVID-19 relief funds. 

If Parson approves all the spending in the budget plan on his desk, it will consume about $2 billion of the accumulated surplus. If that continues into future years, Moody said, the surplus won’t last until the next recession.

“It’s been 15 years since we had a recession,” Moody said. “So nobody thinks that things can go down.”

A national database run by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, shows that there have been fewer than 100 cases of voter fraud tied to noncitizens since 2002 (Mario Tama/Getty Images).

Missouri’s Constitution has banned noncitizens from voting since 1924. And state law requires individuals to verify they are a U.S. citizen in order to register to vote. 

But GOP lawmakers contend the constitutional and statutory language isn’t strong enough. Instead of saying that “all citizens” can vote, Republicans argue the state constitution should be changed to make it clear that “only citizens” can vote. 

So on the final day of the 2024 legislative session last month, the GOP pushed through a proposal that would, among other things, ask voters to change “all” to “only.” 

“If they become a citizen, then absolutely I would welcome their engagement in our electoral process,” state Sen. Ben Brown, a Republican from Washington, said while presenting the bill to a House committee. “However, what I aim to do is to prevent the dilution of the voice of U.S. citizens.”

Critics painted the proposal as nothing more than “ballot candy” designed to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment and trick voters into signing off on the amendment’s other provision — a ban on ranked-choice voting. 

Marilyn McLeod, president of the League of Women Voters of Missouri, called the proposal a “red herring” at a legislative hearing last month.  

“It’s already against the law,” she said. 

Missouri initiative petition bill, a top GOP priority, dies on final day of session

The idea that noncitizens could be illegally voting has become an election-year talking point for Republicans across the country, often echoing the baseless conspiracy theory spread by former President Donald Trump that millions of undocumented immigrants voted in the 2016 election. 

A nationwide survey by the Brennan Center for Justice found the number of noncitizens suspected to have voted in the 2016 election was only around 30. A national database run by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, shows that there have been fewer than 100 cases of voter fraud tied to noncitizens since 2002, according to a recent count by The Washington Post.

The Ohio Secretary of State’s Office this year announced only 137 suspected noncitizens were discovered to be on that state’s rolls out of roughly 8 million voters. And the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office found that 1,634 noncitizens attempted to register to vote over a 25 year period, but all had been blocked by local election officials. 

Yet in some states, even though noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections, they have been permitted to cast a ballot for local candidates. 

In 16 cities and towns in California, Maryland and Vermont, noncitizens are allowed to vote in some local elections, such as for school board or city council. In 2022, New York’s State Supreme Court struck down New York City’s 2021 ordinance that allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections, ruling it violated the state constitution.

State Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican and a candidate for governor, said the language in the Missouri Constitution designed to prohibit noncitizen voting is similar to other states where the practice is taking place locally. 

He believes Democrats in Missouri could follow suit.

“So do I think that if (St. Louis) Mayor Tishaura Jones thought that there was an opportunity to start engaging noncitizens to vote in local St. Louis city municipal elections, would she do it using the same procedure that’s happened to these other states?” he said. “I absolutely think she would. So for me, it’s important to put these additional protections in the constitution.” 

Already illegal? 

In 1865, Missouri voters approved a new constitution abolishing slavery. The 1865 “Drake Constitution,” written by what were called Radical Republicans, took the vote away from former Confederates and extended it to immigrants who were not yet citizens but who had declared their intent to become one.

The provision rewarded the largest immigrant group in Missouri at the time, Germans, who were among the most anti-slavery, and therefore Radical Republican voters. 

The franchise was taken away from noncitizens in 1924, when newcomers were more likely to come from eastern and southern Europe, in an amendment proposed by a state Constitutional Convention passed with 53.5% of the vote.

In addition to the century-old constitutional prohibition, state law also requires Missourians to declare whether they are a U.S. citizen when registering to vote. And Missouri Secretary of State Jay Aschroft, a Republican and candidate for governor, has repeatedly clarified over the years that state law says “you have to be a citizen to register to vote.”

Much of Missouri’s debate this year about noncitizen voting took place as part of a session-long fight over a Republican push to make it harder to amend the state constitution through the initiative petition process. 

A campaign to legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability submitted more than 380,000 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State’s office, paving the way for the proposed constitutional amendment to potentially land on the November ballot.

In response, Republicans hoped to raise the threshold for amending the constitution from a simple majority statewide to both a majority of votes statewide and a majority of votes in five of the state’s eight congressional districts.

Under that proposal, approximately 23% of voters could theoretically control the outcome, where a vote against an amendment in four districts would be enough to defeat it statewide.

Many Republican proponents of raising the bar for amending the constitution acknowledged its chances of winning voter approval was slim. 

“Raising the threshold is a loser and various states have proven that’s a loser,” Tim Jones, state director of the Missouri Freedom Caucus, said earlier this year. 

So to bolster the amendment’s chances, Republicans added the noncitizen voting provision. 

Senate Democrats refused to allow the proposal to go to the ballot with the noncitizen language, arguing it was deceptive. They staged a 50-hour filibuster that ultimately killed the proposal amid Republican infighting. 

“It’s in there to deceive voters,” state Sen. Karla May, a St. Louis Democrat, said during the filibuster about the noncitizen voting ban. “It’s already law, but they want to trick voters into thinking it’s not law. It’s deceiving language added to the bill.”

Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, seemed to agree, telling a reporter from Nextar Media Group that “it’s already illegal for an illegal to vote in the state of Missouri. We’ve already got that part.”

With the Senate mired in gridlock, the House picked up and passed the rank-choice voting amendment that included noncitizen provision. After months of heated debate over the issue, it was barely mentioned when the rank-choice voting ban was sent to the ballot on the session’s final day.

“It seems like we’ve been wringing our hands for about a week or two on this particular issue,” state Rep. Brad Banderman, a St. Clair Republican, said during the House debate, “but on this day, on this Senate Joint Resolution, the other side of the aisle doesn’t seem to be standing at mics complaining.”

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

A state law requiring secrecy in court filings violates the Missouri Constitution’s requirement for open courts and imposes steep new costs on litigants, especially those pursuing appeals, a lawsuit filed last week argues.

The lawsuit, filed in Cole County by the Missouri Broadcasters Association, two attorneys and William Freivogel, editor of the Gateway Journalism Review, asks for the courts to overturn the law, passed during the 2023 legislative session.

Along with violating Missourians’ rights to courts that are open, the lawsuit alleges that the law violates First Amendment free speech protections in the U.S. Constitution and sections of the Missouri Constitution limiting lawmakers’ powers to expand bills beyond their original scope.

Under the law and rules implementing it, every reference to a witness or victim in every case filing must be censored or the attorney filing it risks sanctions.

“For example, court records cannot even name the victim of a murder case –  even though murder is a terrible crime of great interest to every Missouri community and citizen,” the lawsuit states. “This makes it difficult for citizens and the media to fully follow and understand criminal cases of great interest. And there is no privacy  interest for redacting murder victims’ names, because homicide victims, being deceased, have no personal privacy interest.”

Removing those names can be time consuming and – when lawyers charge hundreds of dollars per hour – expensive, said Dave Roland, one of the attorneys working on the case.

Missouri hides more court information from the public than other states

The rules put additional burdens on prosecutors, defense attorneys and counsel in civil cases to scour their filings for possible violations, Roland said. The task is multiplied many times when preparing cases for an appeal, he said, because a party seeking to overturn a lower court ruling must file a complete copy of the court record – including transcripts of trials and other hearings – with all the prohibited information removed.

Transcripts are already expensive, Roland said.

“Depending on the length of the trial you know, the cost can vary,” he said. “If you have a one day trial, it may only be a couple of hundred dollars for the transcript. If you’ve got a multi-week trial, then it could be thousands of dollars.”

The two attorneys who are parties to the case, Michael Gross and Nina McDonnell, have turned down clients because of the additional cost and time 

“For example, Plaintiff McDonnell recently refused an employment discrimination direct appeal from a 12-day trial because redacting the transcripts would have required time the potential client could not afford, and the firm could not absorb,” the lawsuit states.

Roland’s co-counsels on the case include former Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Wolff, who with Roland will represent Freivogel and the two attorneys, and Mike Nepple, Mark Sableman and Justin Mulligan of Thompson Coburn, representing the broadcasters.

In October, writing for Gateway Journalism Review, Sableman called Missouri the “State of Unnamed Persons.”

The new law hurts the public by hiding information, makes it difficult for attorneys outside the case to evaluate it and leaves people interested in a case unsure about how it was handled, he wrote. 

Even judges writing appellate opinions must follow the rules and leave out any individual identifiers, he noted.

“You can’t tell if ‘Expert Witness’ in one case had been found to lack credibility in a previous case,” Sableman wrote “You can’t tell if Officer D.V. in State v. Smith was found guilty of misconduct in another case. If you know and care about a particular case, you can’t tell if the witnesses you know about were called to testify or considered by the court.”

The broadcasters association joined the lawsuit because court records are a staple of news reporting, said Chad Mahoney, executive director of the association.

“You have to have the facts and the context to give people the whole truth,” Mahoney said. “And now a lot of the context, according to what we’re hearing from some of our member newsrooms, is lost, making it very difficult for them to inform the public about what’s going on.”

The lawsuit not only asks the court to throw out the law requiring censorship of court documents, it also argues that the bill in its entirety violates procedural rules in the constitution for passing bills.

Under those rules, a bill changing court operating rules established by the Missouri Supreme Court must be “a law limited to the purpose.” In addition, bills cannot be amended to change their original purpose and must deal with “one subject clearly expressed in its title.”

The bill that included the court censorship language began in the Senate as a four-page bill changing the dates in one section of state law concerning when a fund to support court automation expires, with a title stating it was about court automation.

When it left the Senate, it was five pages long and included a pay raise for court reporters. The title stated it was about court operations.

When it returned from the House, it was 54 pages long, it altered 29 sections of state statutes and the title stated it was about judicial proceedings. There are at least five provisions that have nothing to do with the courts, the lawsuit states.

State Rep. Rudy Veit, a Wardsville Republican, shepherded the bill through the House. He could not be reached Monday for comment on the lawsuit.

The provision was added on the House floor by state Rep. Justin Hicks, a Lake St. Louis Republican. Hicks could not be reached Monday for comment.

Hicks, a candidate for the GOP nomination to Congress in the 3rd District, has used the courts repeatedly to bury embarrassing information about his past. In 2021, he persuaded a St. Louis County judge to seal the records from a 2010 domestic violence case when a woman accused Hicks, then 17, of choking her.

A consent order signed by Hicks barred him from contact with the woman for a year.

When a potential candidate for Hicks’s House seat published copies of the order and other material from the case online, Hicks sued him and accused him of publishing private information. After initially sealing the case, St. Charles County Circuit Judge W. Christopher McDonough opened it, saying there was no “compelling justification” to keep it closed. The case has since been dismissed.

Because the lawsuit has just been filed, there has been no response from the state. But because the attorney general’s office, which will have to defend the law, has already been troubled by violations in its own court filings, Roland hopes for a quick resolution.

“It is possible, and this is me being optimistic, that the attorney general’s office may recognize that they’ve got a significant constitutional problem on their hands,” Roland said.

In a pending appeal of a $23 million award to HHS Technologies over a breach of contract claim with the state Medicaid system, Bailey’s office had to file the same set of documents three times to get the redactions right, the Kansas City Star reported.

“This illustrates the problem,” Roland said. “If the attorney general’s office is going to get dinged for failing to make proper redactions, it illustrates the problem.”

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.

Sen. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester, answers questions about his legislation expanding MOScholars during a press conference in January. His bill was expanded and signed into law by the end of this year's legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

During Missouri’s 2024 legislative session, 338 bills addressing education were filed: a mix of proposals to change curriculum, increase funding, boost oversight and others.

The House appeared poised to expedite more K-12 legislation by forming a Special Committee on Education Reform in addition to its usual Elementary and Secondary Education Committee.

Chair of the existing education committee Rep. Brad Pollitt, a Republican from Sedalia, told The Independent that the beginning of session was “hot and heavy” for his bill dubbed open enrollment.

The bill, which sought to allow students to enroll in neighboring school districts that opt in to the program, passed the House for the fourth year in a row.

But soon, it was “radio silence,” as he describes it, for his bill.

Pollitt’s bill, like many others, died behind closed doors as lawmakers negotiated what would become just two education bills signed into law this year.

The vehicle

One of the themes among the few hundred bills filed on education was the expansion of tax-credit scholarships for private schools, a program called MOScholars in Missouri.

MOScholars allows taxpayers to donate up to half of their tax burden to scholarship-distributing nonprofits and get a refund come tax time. The nonprofits, who report to the State Treasurer’s Office, give the money to private schools they partner with. Currently, the program is only in the state’s most populated areas.

Sen. Andrew Koenig, a Republican from Manchester, proposed to open MOScholars statewide and allow wealthier families to qualify for the scholarships. He also sought to raise the cap on tax credits for the program.

When his bill made it to the Senate floor, Democrats held a lengthy filibuster, and negotiations began. The closed-door deal brought the originally 12-page bill to over 150 pages.

Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, was a key negotiator for Senate Democrats. She told The Independent that large education changes in Missouri seem to require an omnibus bill, and her job was about balancing policies her caucus favored with changes others demanded.

“I think as a result of this law, what our schools are capable of and the support we are giving our teachers will hopefully be better as a result of some of the changes we’ve made,” she said.

Her priority was changing the formula that funds public schools. A provision added in negotiations will change a multiplier in the formula to slowly switch from funding based on just attendance to splitting between attendance and enrollment. A study commissioned by the state’s education department last year recommended an enrollment-based funding model.

The change to 50% attendance and 50% enrollment is estimated to bring an additional $47 million annually to public education, according to the fiscal note.

“​​I am sure there were great bills that tackled smaller problems,” Arthur said. “But in terms of really trying to address some of the major issues, these were the right provisions to do that.”

Priorities

Pollitt was part of the negotiations, too. Although he has spent years refining his open-enrollment legislation, he knew it wouldn’t make it onto Koenig’s bill. He said his bill “wasn’t a priority on either side of the aisle.”

“The side of the aisle that I’m on wanted educational choice that was more extensive than open enrollment, and the other side of the aisle didn’t want any school choice necessarily,” he said.

He said Senate Democrats could stomach the expansion of MOScholars, since it was already available in Democratic areas, but wouldn’t sit down for a new program in their areas like he was proposing. Arthur confirmed this to be true, adding that the new law’s expansion of charter schools into Boone County was unfavorable but was a long-time priority for Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden — a Republican from Columbia who has announced his retirement from state politics.

When the House was ready to debate Koenig’s bill on the floor (now loaded with the caucuses’ priorities), movement on other K-12 education bills stopped. Some of the bills didn’t move because they were completely incorporated into the larger education package, but others lacked support.

​​“In order to move that big bill, there was a lot of political capital spent on that,” Sen. Jill Carter, a Granby Republican, told The Independent.

She attempted to place her educational priority onto the bill after Senate leaders had completed negotiations and distributed the thick stacks of the legislation.

Her bill sought to remove school accreditation authority from the state’s education department by allowing school districts to use nationally recognized accrediting agencies instead. It also proposed replacing the Missouri Assessment Program, or MAP test, with a summative assessment “that meets federal requirements.”

The legislation received bipartisan support in committee and passed unanimously, but the committee’s vote was never reported on the Senate floor — a step required to come up for debate.

When she attempted to add it as an amendment to Koenig’s bill post-negotiations, she was advised against unbalancing the education package.

Sen. Curtis Trent, a Springfield Republican, told her the bill was “highly negotiated.” He had filed a bill that also sought to change the way school accreditation is done in Missouri, though his approach focused on performance and growth scores. His proposal would focus more on standardized testing, whereas Carter’s had a decentralized approach.

“This is a highly crafted, highly balanced, fine-tuned piece of legislation,” Trent said on the Senate floor. “Inserting it like this in the 11th hour… risks derailing this very important piece of legislation in a way that I don’t believe is fair to the underlying bill sponsor and everyone involved in the process.”

He indicated that he had an amendment to Carter’s legislation, and she withdrew her bill.

Arthur said she didn’t see enough support behind Carter’s bill, so it wasn’t likely to pass.

Both Carter and Pollitt are planning to refile their legislation.

Arthur, who has termed out of the Senate, said she recommends watching how new laws affect education before passing more large changes.

“(Koenig’s bill) is a major education omnibus bill, and it contains a lot of provisions that can shape and reshape education in Missouri,” she said. “I would recommend that the legislature let those things get fully implemented and see how they’re working before moving forward with anything else as substantial.”

Missouri House Chief Clerk Dana Miller speaks Friday outside of the Cole County Courthouse about a lawsuit filed against Speaker Dean Plocher. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

The top staff member of the Missouri House filed a lawsuit Friday accusing Speaker Dean Plocher and his chief of staff, Rod Jetton, of harassment and intimidation during battles over ethics charges and hiring decisions.

House Chief Clerk Dana Miller’s lawsuit follows months allegations about misconduct by Plocher and a House Ethics Committee investigation that ultimately was dismissed as the chairwoman released documents accusing Plocher of obstructed an investigation

In her lawsuit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court, Miller cited the statute protecting whistleblowers from retaliation as the basis of her complaint. Miller, who is a nonpartisan officer elected by all 163 members of the House, said during a news conference that she did not intend to seek another term when a newly elected House is seated in January.

“We have a culture of fear now in that building with the staff that work there, and it’s time for me to speak up and say something,” Miller said.

Neither Plocher nor Jetton could be reached by telephone Friday. The House Communications staff was unable to immediately provide a response to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit seeks an order finding Plocher, a Republican, violated Miller’s rights, to direct him to stop and award her monetary damages for “suffering emotional and mental distress, embarrassment, humiliation, and loss of enjoyment of life.”

The lawsuit, which names the House, Plocher and Jetton as defendants, cites disputes between Miller and Plocher that began last year when the speaker was pushing for the purchase of expensive constituent communication software. In the lawsuit, Miller accuses Plocher of pushing for the purchase because it would mean large donations for his statewide campaign for lieutenant governor and access to communications to the House for campaign use.

Until she opposed the purchase because it was too expensive and duplicated internal House-created systems, she had a good working relationship with Plocher, Miller said.

“I got along with the speaker until I told him no,” Miller said.

Miller has worked in state government for 31 years, with 23 years as a member of the House staff. She became chief clerk in 2018.

“I care about that institution,” Miller said. “I care about the house. I care about the people who work in the house and they just want to be able to do their jobs.”

The lawsuit is being filed, Miller and her attorney, Kevin Baldwin said, because obstruction and intimidation by Plocher and Jetton scuttled an ethics inquiry of Plocher. An investigator’s report detailed how some potential witnesses allegedly refused to speak out of fear Plocher would use his power as speaker to retaliate against them, while others did not appear because Plocher decided who the committee could compel to testify. And Plocher refused to cooperate with the attorney hired to collect evidence for the committee.

Lori Hughes, director of administration for the Missouri House, sent an email March 5 to Ethics Committee Chairwoman Hannah Kelly where she detailed events over several months that she said were designed to intimidate her and other nonpartisan legislative employees. 

“In my over 21 years of state government service, I have never witnessed or even been involved in such a hostile work environment that is so horrible that I am living in fear every day of losing my job,” Hughes wrote in the March 5 email to the committee chair.

In her court filing, Miller goes into deeper detail about the events surrounding the ethics inquiry than had previously been made public.

Plocher’s troubles spilled out into the public in September, when The Independent obtained emails from Miller that stated she was worried Plocher had engaged in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of the months-long push for the contract to a company called Fireside to manage constituent information.

Miller had been pushing back on the purchase plan but Plocher was determined to get it in place.

During a discussion with state Rep. Dale Wright, chair of the Administration and Accounts Committee, the lawsuit states, Wright told her he “had concerns that Speaker Plocher’s push to purchase Fireside was directly related to a large campaign donation” he expected. 

A month after reporting on the software contract, The Independent also reported that Plocher had, on numerous occasions over the last five years, illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

The lawsuit states that Plocher’s demands for reimbursements was another point of contention between him and Miller.

In October, the lawsuit states, Miller met with Plocher’s then-chief of staff Kenny Ross, who told her that Plocher’s campaign consultants, David Barklage and Jon Ratliff, believed she was leaking negative information to the media and wanted her to “back off.” 

Within a month, Ross had been fired. The lawsuit states Ratliff told Ross the reason was “because he didn’t stop ‘Danagate.’” 

Ross has previously declined requests from The Independent to discuss his dismissal.

The allegations in the lawsuit are not based on hearsay or conjecture, said Baldwin.

“Everything that’s in there can be substantiated through emails, recordings, allegations, threats and things that have been said,” he said. “They’re not simply the statements of Dana Miller, but they are supported by documentary evidence.”

Jetton said to Miller in a meeting he was there to make peace between Miller and Plocher, the lawsuit states, and Jetton said Plocher was “seeing a lot of ghosts” and he felt that he could “get things calmed down.”

The relationship soured, Miller said at the news conference, when she tried to protect another employee from retaliation.

“When I took some steps to protect a particular employee who was in a very vulnerable position, that changed and it changed overnight,” Miller said.

The lawsuit details a Dec. 21 meeting between Jetton, Plocher, Wright, House General Counsel Bryan Scheiderer and Danyale Bryant, a staffer of the accounts committee.

At the meeting, the lawsuit states, Jetton said to Bryant “that they needed to ‘choke’ the Chief Clerk’s authority. Bryant said Jetton made a physical choking gesture with both hands as he made this statement. This event particularly concerned Plaintiff given the prior allegations against Jetton for his alleged physical assault on a woman.”

Plocher hired Jetton, himself a former House speaker from southeast Missouri, despite a past that included pleading guilty to assault after a sexual encounter where Jetton was accused of choking a woman until she passed out and admissions from Jetton that he became addicted to alcohol and the power inherent in the speaker’s office.

The lawsuit also describes instances of Plocher’s attitudes toward women, noting that she counseled him in May 2022, when Plocher was House Majority Leader, about complaints from female House members.

“Plaintiff had also overheard Plocher refer to State Representative Sara Walsh as ‘stupid’ in the House Chamber during a session of the House,” the lawsuit states. “Rep. Plocher’s reaction to Plaintiff’s sharing of those concerns was to be dismissive. He replied, ‘They are like an invasive species.’ When Plaintiff expressed her confusion over that statement, then Rep. Plocher clarified, ‘Stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.’”

Walsh, an Ashland Republican, was a House member from 2017 until 2023. In a text message to The Independent, Walsh confirmed that Plocher had called her stupid when she tried to get the House to repeal a fuel tax enacted in 2021.

Plocher “was upset that I introduced the amendment to repeal the gas tax hike and he said I was ‘too stupid’ to draft it myself,” Walsh wrote.

In a statement, Miller said the ethics investigation of Plocher failed because of his obstruction.

“What I have discovered is that the very mechanism that is designed to find the truth has failed,” she said. “You have heard the chair and vice chair speak of obstruction that limited their ability to complete a full and thorough investigation.”

Holly VanOstran, one of the attorneys assisting on the case, said she had worked in human resources and she was appalled by the conditions Miller and other House employees have endured.

‘Things that would never be tolerated in a corporate environment have been allowed to run rampant here,” VanOstran said. “There are politicians who believe that they’re above the law and that they can’t be held accountable for their actions.”

This article has been updated to correct the human resources role held by VanOstran.

Missouri Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick speaks to reporters Jan. 23 about a critical report of the Secretary of State's office (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent).

Independence School District Superintendent Dale Herl feels targeted by the state for moving to a four-day school week.

On Wednesday, Missouri Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick announced a plan to audit the district.

Independence schools aren’t accused of wrongdoing, and no one asked for an audit.

Rather, it’s Fitzpatrick’s first foray into conducting more routine audits of some of the state’s 518 school districts, something he promised during his campaign and inauguration.

Fitzpatrick initially said he wanted to investigate schools teaching about sexuality, gender or “critical race theory” — which has become a catchall term for race- or diversity-related concepts that parents or politicians may find objectionable. So far, he hasn’t emphasized that in the Independence audit.

“The combination of them being a large district that has a four-day week that’s in the Kansas City area was a big factor” in choosing to audit Independence, he said.

The auditor’s office has held expanded power to audit school districts for more than a decade, but has rarely used it. Fitzpatrick’s decision to flex that power comes as a bill further expanding the auditor’s authority to investigate other government bodies without an invitation awaits Gov. Mike Parson’s signature.

The formal announcement of the audit to the school board on May 14 came shortly after Parson signed legislation to require school districts in charter counties and cities over 30,000 in population to seek voter approval if they want a four-day school week.

Independence switched to a Tuesday-through-Friday schedule for the 2023-24 school year to better recruit teachers and other staff. Herl said it’s already been successful.

The law doesn’t affect most of the more than 150 districts in the state that, like Independence, switched to a four-day week, because most of them are rural.

But it requires Independence, by far the largest district in the state to go to a four-day week, to win voter approval or return to a five-day week.

The new law and the audit announcement come as Independence is wrapping up its first school year on the four-day schedule.

“It does feel like we were certainly targeted because we are (on) a four-day school week,” Herl said.

Making audits routine

The state auditor’s job is to check state agencies, circuit courts and local governments for waste, fraud and inefficiencies.

School districts are required to have regular financial audits, conducted by an independent auditor. But audits from the state typically look beyond finances and don’t follow a set schedule.

While the auditor has had expanded power to audit school districts since 2008, school audits have most frequently happened when citizens collect signatures to petition for an audit or in response to specific concerns.

Of six school district and charter school audits completed since 2019, half sprang from citizen petitions, two were requested by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and one was requested by a charter school’s board.

Older audit reports don’t always state why they were initiated, but Fitzpatrick said auditors have conducted an average of one to two school district audits a year since 2008.

The Beacon confirmed those numbers are accurate based on online audit reports when you leave out follow-up reports, charter school audits and higher education audits.

K-12 education is one of the state’s biggest expenses. Fitzpatrick said, “we spent almost none of our audit resources auditing the recipient of those funds.”

He wants routine audits of school districts to become more common and has been adding staff for that work.

“We are going to use more of our discretionary audit resources to do audits of school districts,” Fitzpatrick said. “The role that school districts play in preparing the next generation of Missourians for the workforce is incredibly important.”

Fitzpatrick’s office is also auditing the Kingston K-14 school district in Washington County because of a citizen petition and the Francis Howell school district in St. Charles County because of concerns with “management and efficiency issues,” particularly with recent building projects.

Both districts are on the eastern side of the state, which influenced the decision to add a Kansas City-area district to the mix, Fitzpatrick said.

Costs and benefits

Herl said he expects the audit report will be clean and that it could include useful suggestions.

But the audit is also a burden.

When auditors ask for documents, Herl said, “we need to stop what we’re doing as far as payroll or ending our fiscal year out to make sure that we’re complying with their requests.”

The process is “very cumbersome for our staff,” but “something we’ll gladly do,” Herl said. “If there are things that we could do better, we certainly want to know that.”

Neither Herl nor Fitzpatrick could estimate how many staff hours the audit will take.

Fitzpatrick’s office takes on any direct costs to pay for the audits. He estimated it could use $70,000 to $80,000 worth of staff time from his office.

“That would be what they would be paid regardless of whether we’re (auditing) Independence or some other district or some other entity,” he said.

The report could be public by late 2024 or early 2025, Fitzpatrick said.

If the audit reveals the district is well-run, “that should be something that the community should be happy about, and should instill confidence in the people in charge of the district,” he said.

When auditors get involved, schools are more likely to follow the rules and function in a more austere way, said Dustin Hornbeck, an assistant professor of leadership and policy studies at the University of Memphis.

Hornbeck has studied the expanding role of some state auditors in education, particularly as they’re called on to hold charter schools accountable.

While audits’ impact can be positive, Hornbeck said they’re also conducted by political, partisan officials in states like Missouri where the auditor is elected.

The ability to do performance audits at will could lead districts to wonder whether the auditor is trying to send a message with the timing of an audit, he said.

“It’s fascinating and kind of startling to think that the auditor just gets to pick and choose at random whomever they decide they want to audit,” he said. “You could use it as a political ax to grind or to go after political adversaries.”

In Independence, audit staff are figuring out how to approach an audit without a specific problem area in mind. They’re talking with school board members, surveying upper-level staff and distributing contact information so community members can leave tips.

Questions so far have focused on the four-day school week and finances, Herl said.

There will be some emphasis on curriculum as well, Fitzpatrick said.

Todd Schuler, a Missouri audit manager who presented to the school board, said the final audit report won’t mention any topic unless there’s a recommendation related to it. It won’t rule on whether the four-day week is good or bad, but might examine how the decision was made.

“It’s a bit unusual,” Schuler told the school board. “This is pretty rare that we don’t go out with at least some known issues or concerns.”

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

Sex therapist and social worker Stefani Goerlich sits in her office in Detroit. Goerlich says her hard-won relationships with clients are upended when they move away from Michigan, because most states bar social workers from providing telehealth services across state lines. An increasing number of states are trying to address the problem by empowering social workers to practice in multiple states. (Amy Feick, courtesy of Stefani Goerlich)

Stefani Goerlich, a certified sex therapist and social worker with a private practice in Detroit, sees several dozen clients a month, most of them from underserved and minority backgrounds. She speaks to them about sensitive matters such as gender-affirming care, and building trust takes time.

Those hard-won relationships often are upended when clients move away from Michigan, because most states bar social workers from providing telehealth services across state lines. Finding another therapist who is a good fit isn’t easy, especially since many areas of the country have a shortage of mental health providers.

“It takes them such a long time to find somebody that they feel safe with,” Goerlich said. “To have a spouse get transferred in their job and to lose all of that? Statistically, people are more likely to just stop therapy entirely, because they don’t want to have to go through that again.”

Amid what many Americans are calling a mental health crisis, an increasing number of states are trying to address the problem by empowering social workers to practice across state lines.

Under the Social Work Licensure Compact, social workers can get a multistate license, which clears them to care for patients in a participating state, even if they don’t live there. Social workers must abide by the laws of the state where the patient resides.

Missouri was the first state to approve compact legislation, in July 2023. Since then, 14 other states have signed on. And at least 17 more are considering bills to do the same, according to the nonpartisan Council of State Governments, a nonprofit organization that promotes the exchange of ideas across state lines.

The compact is the result of a collaboration among the council, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Association of Social Work Boards, which develops social work licensing exams. The National Association of Social Workers and the Clinical Social Work Association, both membership organizations for social workers, are partners in the effort.

The Defense Department is involved because military families move frequently, and many of them include social workers. Getting a new license every one or two years is burdensome. The social work compact is one of 10 multistate licensing agreements the Defense Department agreed to fund a few years ago, ranging from teaching to cosmetology, according to Matt Shafer, a deputy program director at the Council of State Governments.

Shafer told Stateline it likely will take one to one and a half years until licenses are issued under the social work compact.

This isn’t the first compact to allow mental health providers to practice across state lines. Thirty-six states have passed legislation to allow psychologists to practice elsewhere by joining an interstate compact known as PSYPACT.

“It works,” Robin McLeod, a senior director at the American Psychological Association, said of PSYPACT. “It allows for people who have specialized practice to provide care, or for people who need specialized practice to receive care.”

For example, McLeod said, a therapist might specialize in serving patients with autism and also speak Arabic. Under the interstate compact, a practitioner could serve more people with those specific treatment and language needs, via telehealth.

However, McLeod noted, therapists practicing under the compact still have to navigate differing state laws. She pointed to Texas, where providers need to be aware of laws prohibiting abortion and gender-affirming medical care.

“Those are times where it can be really tricky,” she said. “If you’re practicing in that state from another state, it’s the Texas health and safety laws that you would have to follow.”

But Alabama Democratic state Rep. Kenyatté Hassell, who sponsored successful compact legislation in his state, thinks the benefits outweigh the potential complications. A 2023 report from Mental Health America, a nonprofit that focuses on issues of mental illness, ranked Alabama 48th among the states in its effectiveness addressing mental health and substance use issues, citing its high prevalence of mental illness and limited access to care.

“I know, as a state, we need to put more money into the health department to deal with mental health, from schools to workplaces,” Hassell told Stateline. “We defunded some of the mental health hospitals that we had in the state. And it became a problem.”

In Colorado, where a bill that would allow the state to join the compact is on the governor’s desk, Democratic state Rep. Emily Sirota — a social worker herself — noted the issue is bipartisan. Compact bills also are awaiting governors’ signatures in Minnesota, New Hampshire and Tennessee, according to the Council of State Governments.

“It’s not a partisan issue to recognize a need in the workforce,” Sirota told Stateline. She said the licensing compact is a way to make connections between patients and social practitioners “more streamlined and more effective.”

For Goerlich, who sees clients in at least four states, anything that can make licensure easier for therapists is a good thing. In addition to Michigan, Goerlich went through the licensing process in Arizona and Ohio so she could continue to treat patients who moved to those states. She also works in Florida, where she says she doesn’t need a full license because she is a registered telehealth provider.

“I went through all the hoops, I got licensed,” she said. “But that ended up costing me money. And I’m fine with it, because I’m able to help people. But if we had something like a compact, I would have been able to see them without needing to do that.”

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

The bill mandates the commission take a deep dive into procedures, treatment options and any other necessary assistance to reduce the veteran suicide rate (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

State lawmakers tasked the Missouri Veterans Commission with a new mission. 

They’ve mandated the commission to make it a top priority to understand why the suicide rate among Missouri’s veterans is nearly double the state rate and one of the highest in the country.

After three years of trying, Republican state Rep. Dave Griffith of Jefferson City said he was grateful to finally get the bill passed earlier this month, receiving unanimous approval from both the House and Senate. 

It awaits the governor’s signature.

“We’ve accomplished a first step,” Griffith told The Independent, “and that is to try and get to the core of why veterans are committing suicide at such an alarming rate, especially in Missouri.” 

The bill mandates the commission take a deep dive into procedures, treatment options and any other necessary assistance to reduce the veteran suicide rate.

In separate budget bills, lawmakers approved $120,000 for the commission to hire one or more people dedicated to the mission. 

Retired Col. Paul Kirchhoff, the commission’s executive director, told the House Veterans Commission in January that he embraces the new task, particularly because he’s lost several close military friends to suicide.

“This is near and dear to my heart,” Kirchhoff said. “We’re losing veterans every day to this. And whatever we can do to curb that, we’re all in.”

The Missouri Veterans Commission has long had three core missions of managing the veterans’ homes, cemeteries and service officers who help veterans with their benefits, Kirchhoff said.

The bill would add a fourth. 

Many people can guess, he said, the reason Missouri has a higher rate than the national average. 

“But I’d like to know through facts,” he said. “And without having an emphasis on this, we just won’t know.”

According to the legislation, the commission must file a report every year on July 1 with the Department of Public Safety and the General Assembly on the recommendations and implementation of its efforts. 

In 2021, Gov. Mike Parson established an interagency team to collaborate on suicide prevention, so Griffith expects to receive the governor’s full support on the measure, he said. 

‘Magic mushroom’ stalled out

But Griffith didn’t see all of his legislative wish list make it over the finish line this session.

He strongly supported a bill to conduct a clinical study on using psilocybin, more commonly referred to  as “magic mushrooms,” to treat PTSD and depression among veterans. 

Last year, the House overwhelmingly approved the measure. But it never made it to a final House vote during the session that ended earlier this month.

“Many of our veterans experience high amounts of PTSD due to serving their country – due to protecting us,” Republican state Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder, who carried the Senate bill, said in January. “There should be no limits for them when it comes to access to mental health treatment, including non-pharmacological treatments.” 

The legislation would have required the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services to provide grants totaling $2 million for the research, subject to lawmakers approving the appropriation. 

The state would collaborate on the study with a Missouri university hospital or medical center operated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Missouri. The focus of the treatment is on patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance use disorders or for those who require end-of-life care. 

Psychiatry researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis were the first in Missouri to give a legal dose of psilocybin in 2019. 

They have been using a brain-imaging technique to learn how psilocybin affects certain networks in the brain. Psilocybin helps people break harmful habits and ways of thinking, which applies to PTSD and psychosis as well, said researcher Joshua Siegel, an instructor of psychiatry at Washington University. 

All antidepressants make the brain’s emotion circuits more “plastic and adaptable,” he said, which makes them more open to change.

“Psilocybin just happens to do that very rapidly,” he said in January. 

Combined with preparation and help from therapists processing the experience afterwards, he said psilocybin successfully helps people choose new patterns of behavior and thinking.

“At this point, there’s a critical mass of studies of clinical trials that have shown positive responses,” Siegel said. “So I think that’s hard to deny.”

Griffith said the House Veterans Committee, which he chairs, has been closely following the research on how psilocybin can be “a useful tool” to deal with veterans’ PTSD and depression. But he’s not sure the rest of his colleagues in the General Assembly “get the full picture.” 

“I think when they hear ‘magic mushrooms,’ they think back to the 60s and 70s to what the hippies were taking to go on a trip,” he said. “They don’t fully realize how a lot of these medicines, under controlled circumstances, can be used to treat some serious mental health issues.”

Petitioners with Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages unload dozens of boxes of signatures on May 1 for delivery to the Secretary of State. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Since being elected Boone County Clerk in 2018, Brianna Lennon’s job verifying initiative petition signatures has been pretty easy, with only a few hundred pages to sort through at most. 

That changed after state lawmakers cut her county in half when they redrew Congressional maps. 

In 2022, after long-fought battles and filibusters over the new congressional map that must be redrawn every decade, Missouri lawmakers ultimately decided to split Boone County and Columbia between the 3rd and 4th congressional districts.

As a result, Lennon’s office went from having a few hundred pages of signatures to verify to more than 15,600 pages across four campaigns this year. 

“We’ve definitely seen that circulators feel differently about Boone County, because we’ve gotten more petition pages than we’ve gotten in years,” Lennon said. “And that’s the case for all the petitions that have been circulated this year.” 

The increased workload for the Boone County Clerk’s office isn’t the only possible ramification of the new congressional map. By splitting Columbia — a Democratic stronghold and a population center — into two districts, some argue lawmakers inadvertently eased the path of initiative petitions that need enough signatures in at least six districts  to get on the statewide ballot. 

This dynamic could be especially important for a campaign seeking to restore abortion access in Missouri, allowing signature gathering resources to be focused on friendly territory of a college town instead of more rural parts of the state that tend to skew conservative.

Three of the four campaigns seeking to put issues on the ballot this year — enshrining abortion in the constitution, mandating paid sick leave and raising the state’s minimum wage, legalizing sports wagering — turned in signatures in all eight of Missouri’s congressional districts. A campaign hoping to authorize a new casino near Lake of the Ozarks skipped the 6th and 8th districts.

“In their effort to stick it to Boone County, what they really did was they empowered Boone County to help issues qualify for the initiative petition,” said Stephen Webber, a Columbia Democrat running for state Senate and a former chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party. “If an (initiative petition) is successful, I think Boone County can be proud that we played a large role in making that happen.”

Not everyone is convinced the Boone County split will make much of a difference.

“Signature collecting campaigns are hard, and you’ve got to go find voters and you’ve got to find a lot of them,” said Sean Nicholson, a long-time progressive activist who has worked on multiple initiative petition campaigns. “It’s hard no matter what.”

While Columbia may have the appeal of being in two districts, Nicholson said that comes with the trade-off of having a lot of renters and students who may not be registered to vote in the county or who haven’t updated their address. 

Redistricting simply made campaigns rethink their strategies.

“The campaigns that win,” he said, “campaign everywhere.” 

‘Most important place for the pro-choice movement’

Earlier this month, three citizen-led campaigns proposing constitutional changes turned in hundreds of boxes filled with thousands of pages of signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office to be verified. If each was successful in getting valid signatures from 8% of citizens in six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts, their issue will be on the statewide ballot later this year. 

But the effort to roll back Missouri’s near-total ban on abortion has gotten by far the most attention. 

In February, while speaking at the Boone County Democrats annual chili supper, Webber made a prediction for the “blue island in the sea of mid-Missouri red.”

“The most important place for the pro-choice movement in 2024 is Boone County, Missouri,” he said, referring specifically to the fact that it now sits in both the 3rd and 4th congressional districts.

According to records obtained by The Independent through Missouri’s Sunshine Law, the abortion initiative petition turned in the most pages of signatures from St. Louis County, followed by Jackson and St. Charles counties. 

Boone County yielded the sixth-highest page count. For the sports betting and casino petitions, it was the fourth-highest page count.

The number of signatures per county or per congressional district is not yet clear, only the number of signatures pages turned in. Those pages can include up to 10 signatures. 

Lennon said Boone County is a compact population center surrounded by rural counties. Now that the county is split in half, the return on investment for initiative petition campaigns is more worthwhile.

‘It’s hard no matter what’

Missouri Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Republican from Columbia, may have been one of the only lawmakers thinking about the initiative petition process in 2022 as he opposed a 7-1 map supported by Missouri Right to Life that would have split the Kansas City district, including it with rural counties in the hopes of flipping those seats for Republicans.

At the time, Rowden said splitting up more populous, liberal areas could make it easier for left-leaning groups to get abortion measures on the ballot by taking advantage of districts’ urban centers. 

Rowden could not be reached for comment this week. 

The 7-1 proposal pushed by the Senate’s conservative caucus was ultimately defeated in favor of a 6-2 map that maintained six safe Republican districts and two Democratic districts in Kansas City and St. Louis.

State Sen. Andrew Koenig, a Republican from Manchester and a member of the Senate Freedom Caucus, said he did not recall the initiative petition campaigns factoring into his decision to vote against the final 7-1 map.

“Honestly just getting something passed was the main goal at that point in time,” Koenig said. “There was a lot of disagreement amongst different senators on how to draw those maps, and so when it came to the (initiative petition) process, that at least never entered my mind on the redistricting part.” 

Koenig added that he thought Rowden’s comments were “a talking point,” lacking merit. 

Whether any of the initiative petition campaigns end up on the ballot remains to be seen, but there’s no denying Boone County is getting a lot more attention this year. 

Missouri initiative petition bill, a top GOP priority, dies on final day of session

Marc Ellinger, a Republican and former attorney for the 2022 campaign to legalize recreational marijuana, said there’s certainly an assumption, whether right or wrong, that Boone County’s going to be “more receptive to abortion rights and therefore more likely to find willing signers.”

Based on initial page counts, the abortion campaign appears to have focused the least amount of its effort on the 6th District in northern Missouri and the 8th District in southeast Missouri. Ellinger said that’s likely because Clay County, which includes some of Kansas City, is now in the 5th District, and because the 8th District is too rural. 

It makes sense for campaigns to flock to populous areas, said Eric Fey, Democratic director of elections for the St. Louis County Election Board. 

There are also challenges. For example, Fey said, in St. Louis, registered voters often don’t know if they live in the city or county, so they will sign the wrong sheet, invalidating the rest of the signatures on it. 

The most accurate petition pages they see often come from circulators outside polling places on election day, Fey said, or those who go door-to-door with a list of registered voters in hand. It’s what can make collecting signatures in more rural areas with lots of homeowners end up with a higher success rate of valid signatures.

Plans to challenge abortion petition

While many Missouri leaders have been speaking about the abortion campaign as if it’s already secured a spot on the ballot, Sam Lee, a longtime anti-abortion activist and lobbyist, isn’t conceding yet. 

He is part of a campaign called Missouri Stands with Women, established to fight the abortion coalition. While they’ve been vastly out-fundraised by the abortion rights campaign, Lee said his group has other tactics in mind. 

Lee pointed out that campaigns with similar signature totals have either failed or been close to failure in recent years. 

In 2022, a ranked choice voting ballot initiative collected more than 303,000 signatures but did not meet the required signature total in any congressional district. The campaign to legalize recreational marijuana collected nearly 400,000 signatures but nearly missed out in the 6th district  with just 806 more than required. 

The abortion campaign announced on May 3 that they turned in 380,159 signatures from every county in Missouri. A breakdown of how many signatures came from each district, which will ultimately determine if they met the threshold needed to qualify, is being determined by each county’s election authorities now. 

If the signatures are verified as sufficient by the Secretary of State’s Office, anti-abortion groups still plan to look at the signatures independently, Lee said. During the Midwest March for Life earlier this month, Susan Klein, executive director with Missouri Right to Life, said they plan to make sure any names she says were scratched out by people who regretted signing are not counted.

“We’re going to scrutinize these and leave all our options open,” Lee said Wednesday. “If we have to file a lawsuit to have courts determine it should not be on the ballot if it’s determined to be a sufficient number of signatures, we’re willing to do that.”

A group of over 200 protesting MU Health's cancelation of transgender minors' prescriptions approaches Columbia City Hall Sept. 15. MU Health backed out of gender-affirming care for minors after the passage of a new state law including broad medical malpractice provisions (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A state investigation of the Washington University Transgender Center in St. Louis expanded to include therapists and social workers across the state who work with minors seeking gender-affirming care.

Documents made public as part of various lawsuits show that Attorney General Andrew Bailey has obtained a collection of unredacted and loosely redacted records of transgender children, including a list of patients that received care at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. 

He is also seeking untethered access to the university’s digital medical records system.

The attorney general’s use of private medical records, and the targeting of therapists and counselors, has interrupted the health care of LGBTQ Missourians and has families worrying about their children’s privacy.

Katy Erker-Lynch, executive director for Missouri LGBTQ advocacy organization PROMO, told The Independent she fears that the pressure will drive health care providers out of the state, especially impacting rural Missourians.

“The attorney general has created a hostile environment for medical providers where they are afraid to stay and practice medicine,” she said. 

The saga began last year when Bailey launched an investigation based on an affidavit from Washington University whistleblower Jamie Reed. Bailey is using the affidavit to question other gender-affirming-care providers like Planned Parenthood, which he has said he hopes to “eradicate.”

The probe involves the Missouri Division of Professional Registration, which oversees medical licensing in the state. According to records obtained by The Independent, the agency interviewed 57 health professionals as part of the inquiry and had 16 cases open as of early May.

While Bailey announced the division would assist in the investigation when he first announced it, therapists did not expect to be included — or have their license to practice put at risk. 

The division’s chief legal counsel, Sarah Ledgerwood, told The Independent that the division and its boards can’t join other officials’ investigations. When asked about Bailey’s investigation, she said the boards “can only complete investigations based on receipt of a complaint.”

Division Director Sheila Solon said last year that she anticipated complaints as part of the attorney general’s investigation.

Kelly Storck, a licensed clinical social worker with a focus on LGBTQ-positive therapy, was interviewed last year and expressed grave concerns about unredacted medical records of minors being in the hands of a state official who has repeatedly opposed gender-affirming care.

When the division contacted Storck for an interview, she hired a lawyer before meeting with the investigator.

During the meeting, she says the investigator had a small stack of unredacted letters Storck had sent the Transgender Center to recommend clients for gender-affirming care.

Storck recalled senior investigator Nick McBroom telling her he wasn’t fully sure what he was doing, saying she was taking the interview more seriously than it was. He questioned why she had a lawyer.

McBroom asked about the process of writing letters of support, Storck said, opening a file with just a portion of the letters she had sent to the Transgender Center. She said she noticed the documents had green underlines added and asked McBroom if they were his edits. He didn’t seem to know the source of the underlines.

After a 30-45 minute interview, McBroom asked her to write up her process. Through her attorney, she declined, and her case was closed soon after.

McBroom declined to speak to The Independent about the case.

“I still have a lot of distrust about who initiated it,” Storck said, “and who was in my documents.” 

Parents of transgender children told The Independent they have heard whispers of other therapists facing investigation.

Multiple providers declined to be interviewed about the investigation out of fear of retaliation. Storck, though, had already faced the attorney general as one of the plaintiffs attempting to block an emergency rule targeting transgender care filed by Bailey last year.

A fight for patient privacy

A legal battle between Washington University and the attorney general’s office shows the records used in the interviews may have directly come from the university itself.

In the attorney general’s office’s response to the litigation, a timeline is laid out of the university turning over three sets of documents. In its second document production, Washington University gave the attorney general a list of patients in a spreadsheet.

“The supplemental production included a spreadsheet titled ‘Transgender Patient data,’” the attorney general’s office wrote. “Which included various workbooks chronicling patient names, encounters and medications, among other information.”

The attorney general’s office has declined to comment about the scope of the investigation and the source of investigative documents. Washington University also declined comment. 

People who have received care at the Transgender Center have asked to be notified if their health records are accessed, but many assume some of their information is already in the attorney general’s hands.

The Independent asked Reed if she provided any of the documents to the attorney general. 

“I cannot definitively say what the therapists are being handed (or) where it came from,” she said. “We just don’t really know where those things directly came from. The one thing I will add is that any documents that were provided to the attorney general’s office from me were redacted.”

Reed said she did not give any documents that would be stored in the electronic health records software Epic. When asked where else the records could come from, she said, “email or shared drive.”

The records investigators had of Storck’s patients included names, something Reed said she redacted before providing to the attorney general.

Becky Hormuth and her 17-year-old son Levi, who was a patient at the Transgender Center, have been hearing about the scope of Bailey’s investigation for months.

They learned that the attorney general’s office had been looking into Levi’s psychologist’s records and heard about other providers that had interviews related to their support for gender-affirming care.

Levi said the attorney general’s work seemed like “complete government overreach.”

Bailey’s actions, like a tip line about gender-affirming care and an emergency rule that sought to limit access to certain procedures and prescriptions, prompted Hormuth to prepare to move out of state.

“It is very invasive, what he’s doing,” she told The Independent. “The state has already basically disrupted our lives. They’ve disrupted our families, our children’s lives with the legislation that has passed. Then for him to continue going on is even more invasive and damaging.”

When lawmakers passed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors that included a provision that allowed broad medical malpractice claims, the Transgender Center stopped providing Levi’s medication.

Hormuth learned from other parents to make her son’s medication stretch, just in case it would be a long time before a refill.

She had requested an appointment with a provider in Illinois prior to the law’s passage, and Levi was on a waiting list. The center told her at the time that they weren’t taking new out-of-state patients because there was already a large influx from multiple states.

But eventually, Hormuth got a call that they were ready to take out-of-state patients. So, she and Levi make periodic trips to Chicago to go to the doctor.

Levi is old enough to receive hormone-replacement therapy at the Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region’s clinics, which accept transgender patients 16 and up for gender-affirming care.

But Hormuth wanted to take her son someplace outside of Bailey’s reach.

“I was absolutely dead set against going to Planned Parenthood locally because I knew that as soon as we would establish ourselves at Planned Parenthood… that (Bailey) was going to come there and start digging through those papers and those personal records,” she said. “I absolutely was not going to give him the chance at any other aspect of our family’s life.”

Both branches of Planned Parenthood in Missouri are also subjects of Bailey’s investigation, according to court filings, despite the attorney general’s office only publicly announcing an investigation into the Transgender Center.

The attorney general is not allowed to investigate medical malpractice claims, but it can look into false advertising under the state’s consumer protection law, known as the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act. 

Bailey used that law to file an emergency rule, which he later rescinded before a court case could decide its bounds, and he is utilizing it again to dig into gender-affirming-care providers.

In a case in the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Bailey’s office admits the investigation into the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital has multiple subjects.

Planned Parenthood Great Plains filed a lawsuit to avoid the attorney general’s civil investigative demands which it argued sought sweeping information about its practice and patients.

In court documents, Solicitor General Josh Divine wrote that the civil investigative demand was looking into the organization and others in addition to the Transgender Center.

“The attorney general is investigating (the Transgender Center) and ‘others in the state’ who ‘may have used deception, fraud, false promises, misrepresentation, unfair practices, and/or the concealment, suppression, or omission of material facts within the scope of the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act,’” Divine wrote. “The attorney general has already made unequivocally clear that (Planned Parenthood) is under investigation.”

Similar arguments are on display in a case between the Planned Parenthood affiliate in St. Louis and the attorney general’s office.

“(Bailey’s) request encompasses hundreds, if not thousands, of patient records concerning treatment decisions, discussions with physicians, mental health assessments and prescription information, among other areas,” Planned Parenthood’s attorney wrote in its lawsuit.

Judges ruled in favor of the attorney general’s office in both cases, which have been recently appealed.

A case filed by Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City against Bailey’s investigative demands also went in favor of the attorney general.

Washington University’s case against the attorney general’s office is yet to be decided.

This fall, the attorney general’s office will defend the state in a case that seeks to reverse a ban on gender-affirming care for minors passed last legislative session.

Storck said the inquiry has compounded anxieties about access to gender-affirming care that patients have following the passage of the ban.

“I really was so afraid that some of my clients were going to be in absolute emergent situations and really struggle to get access to health care,” she said. “My patients have connected with what they need, but it is now an all-day or multiple-day event to get medical care. Previously, they could have gotten it (within two hours).”

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

Legislation that would have banned Missouri from seizing the Social Security benefits of foster children was on the precipice of passing during the final days of the legislative session, but died when GOP infighting caused the state Senate to adjourn early. 

That means the state will continue to take millions of dollars in the next year in benefits and use the money to help pay for foster care. 

“It’s more than disappointing,” said state Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder, a Scott City Republican and one of the bill’s sponsors. “It is a disservice to every taxpayer and voter in this state for our Senate to run the way that it is.”

The result of the practice is that kids who are orphaned or have disabilities are responsible for paying toward the cost of their care in state custody, while foster kids who are ineligible for those benefits pay nothing. 

The legislation would have forbidden that, instead requiring the state to use the benefits for the child’s unmet needs — not routine costs.

Rehder said she was expecting the bill to come up for a vote last Thursday, when the Senate suddenly descended into GOP infighting and adjourned for the day. When the Senate reconvened Friday, it was in session for only 10 minutes before going home for the year.  

“When we have bills that matter to people’s lives — to children’s lives — right there ready to be taken up and passed, and instead of doing that, the actual work that we’ve been sent there to do, we play games and fight and say, if this bill isn’t gonna get done, nothing’s gonna get done. It’s insane,” Rehder said. 

State Rep. Hannah Kelly, a Mountain View Republican and co-sponsor of the bill, said she heard from a foster child earlier this session who told her the bill would affect her personally as a recipient of survivor’s benefits.

“She lost parents, which means the state was taking her money and will continue to take her money,” Kelly said, “because we couldn’t get over ourselves and get past politics and pass a bill.”

Lori Ross, founder and CEO of the nonprofit FosterAdopt Connect, which advocated for the legislation, said the bill’s demise means another year of the state taking money that could otherwise be a valuable safety net for kids.

“By failing to make this change,” Ross told The Independent, “we are preventing our state’s most vulnerable children from accessing a critical means of support when they age out of the system and must navigate the world alone.”

It’s long been a common practice nationally to take foster kids’ benefits, but it’s come under increased scrutiny over the last few years. Several states, including Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon have halted the practice. 

There were 1,426 foster kids receiving benefits in Missouri as of July 2023. The state spent over $9.3 million in seized benefits last fiscal year.

Versions of the bill won approval from both the House and Senate, passing through to the other chamber, so there were two possible vehicles to get the bill to the governor’s desk.

There was no clear opposition to the foster care benefits portion of the bills, though there was some opposition to an amendment tacked onto the version that cleared the Senate regarding child custody, designed to fix a bill passed last year. 

The Senate version of the bill cleared a House committee, but was never brought up for debate in the House. Kelly said “all I know is it got stopped” before coming up for a vote. 

She’s hopeful it will pass next year.

“If you’re an average kid out here, you’re gonna get that money,” Kelly said, referring to the benefits. “But these kids don’t get that money and nobody seems to care that should care. And I hope that changes next year.”

On the Senate side, Rehder said “perhaps it will be a better year for protecting children” next year. But with the chamber’s dysfunction, she said it’s hard to know.

“It’s an excellent policy and you know other states are moving towards this that haven’t already” Rehder said “…We have to fix some things in the Senate. And until we do, I don’t know, I don’t know what any bill’s chances are.”

Jason White, a foster parent from Kansas City, traveled to testify in support of the legislation earlier this year.

The state seized his foster son’s survivor’s benefits, which amounted to around $30,000, White said in an interview with The Independent. Now 20, his son has “zero dollars” and little support to transition to adulthood.

White said this is an issue that affects “thousands of kids with little to nothing” and the reason to take it on is simply “to do the right thing.”

“I’m very disappointed,” White said, “that cheap politics killed this legislation.”

Interns Santino Bono (left) and Alanna Nguyen stand with legislative assistant Dustin Bax after receiving resolutions from the Missouri House of Resolutions to commemorate their service (courtesy of Santino Bono).

In March, the phone in state Rep. Deb Lavender’s office in Jefferson City started ringing constantly, but the calls weren’t for her.

They were for her interns, Santino Bono and Alanna Nguyen.

The interns, along with Dylan Powers Cody, who was interning for state Rep. Peter Merideth, had spent months cross-checking spreadsheets to pinpoint school districts who had not yet claimed pandemic-era federal funds for homeless students.

Those federal dollars are part of the American Rescue Plan and must be budgeted by September. A large part of the interns’ project was calling districts to notify them that they had money that could expire if they didn’t act quickly.

The office got so many calls back from schools about the interns’ project that Lavender’s legislative assistant needed to create a voicemail folder just for them.

So far, they helped districts claim $1.15 million in funds in four months that can be used for a range of services for homeless students — from buying washers and dryers to temporary hotel stays and transit cards.

“We had multiple school districts call back and say, ‘We have twenty grand in the bank that we can use to help homeless students? No one really told us,’” Bono said in an interview with The Independent.

Most of the districts the interns reached had no idea they had funding available, Nguyen said.

“Then, they wanted more information on it,” she said. “Once they got the information on it, they were able to kind of kickstart it up and get things moving along.”

Bono expected the internship might be more menial, including the “intern trope of having to get coffee for people,” he said.

“To know that I could have potentially a much bigger impact on actual students, as a student myself, I’m really proud of that,” Bono said.

Missouri received an infusion of $9.6 million in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 for students experiencing homelessness, and schools were able to start using it in 2022.

But many of those schools had never received federal dollars to support homeless students before.

Tera Bock, director of homeless education for Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said the agency alerted school districts to the funding but that several challenges emerged.

“It is not funding that most districts are used to having, so they usually are supporting their students experiencing homelessness without any funding specific to that,” she said. “The extra funding creates the need for a shift in mindset as far as what they provide for those students.”

School districts have until the end of September to budget the remaining $6.1 million or lose out on it. 

Most schools received a few thousands dollars in federal aid for homeless students. The largest allocation, based on its homeless student population, went to St. Louis City which received $850,000.

The funding is best used for one-time costs, Bock said, like a vehicle to transport students with housing insecurity or to meet emergency needs.

“The district should really consider how they can use it in a way that is not going to create a financial burden in the future whenever they don’t have the funds anymore,” Bock said.

She said rural districts with a smaller population of students experiencing homelessness are the most likely to struggle to spend the money.

Bock has been in her role for a couple months, and the position was vacant briefly.

Part of her job is to contact each district’s homeless liaison, a position every district is federally required to have. But sometimes, the liaisons have multiple positions in schools, and Bock doesn’t hear back from them.

“Especially in the districts where they don’t typically see a large population of homeless students, they get multiple roles, and it just gets lost in the shuffle,” she said.

“We don’t have very many (districts) here in Missouri where that person is completely designated as their entire job for the most part,” she said. “They are wearing lots of different hats.”

Bock said she sends “lots of communication,” so “they should be aware” of the funds but wonders if liaisons are properly connected to district administration to get the money budgeted.

With more communication and activities planned, Bock is not concerned about being able to get more money claimed by districts.

“This is definitely a big piece of what I’m working on right now,” she said. “And our sights are set on Sept. 30.” 

Bock said the interns were “super helpful” in the process.

“There has been good communication whenever they need some backup information to support questions that are coming up,” she said. “So they’ve been great to work with.”

The interns are hopeful schools will continue allocating the funds.

“There’s still a lot to be done by September and session’s ending,” Bono said. “I’m going off to law school. I can’t keep calling school districts. So we’re just hoping that more awareness can be given to school districts to kind of get them to keep working towards this.”

Lavender said the funds might look modest in terms of the state’s overall budget but the impact on students is large. In Webster Groves, she said, the schools “got another $8,000 that I don’t think they knew was sitting there.”

Lavender’s legislative assistant Dustin Bax chimed in: “And $8,000 of backpacks, non-perishable foods, fuel cards — that goes a long way.”

The Missouri House of Representatives commemorates the end of the 2024 legislative session by tossing hard copies of bills into the air upon adjournment (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The final day of the 2024 legislative session lasted less than 10 minutes in the Missouri Senate. 

The lightning-quick adjournment was aimed at avoiding bitter flare ups that plagued the previous day, when a member of the Freedom Caucus tried to amend the Senate Journal to say a “stampeding herd of rhinoceroses” had rumbled through the chamber while another offered an amendment admonishing the attorney general for using taxpayer money to represent Freedom Caucus members in a defamation lawsuit. 

It was a fitting end to a session that included one Republican publicly musing about expelling a colleague from the Senate and another essentially expelling a fellow Senator from their shared Jefferson City apartment. 

The infighting — along with the more typical disagreements between the House and Senate and between Democrats and Republicans — caused lawmakers to head home with a new record for futility, passing fewer bills than the previous low set during the COVID-shortened session of 2020. 

So who were the big winners and losers of the legislative session? 

Winners

John Rizzo 

The Independence Democrat exuded relief on the final day of the legislative session. 

Part of it was that he’s heading home after eight years in the chamber and four as the leader of his caucus. Part of it was that after orchestrating a 50-hour filibuster of changes to the initiative petition process, the bill was finally dead. 

But mostly, Rizzo’s relief stemmed from optimism about the Senate’s future. 

Rizzo built a reputation as a good-faith negotiator who respected the Senate’s traditions and the limitations of his party’s power in a building with GOP super majorities. And for years, as ever-intensifying factional fights within the GOP left the Senate mired in gridlock, he publicly pleaded with Republican leaders to stand up to dissidents he argued weren’t interested in governing. 

He got his wish in the final week of the session, when leadership rebuffed the Freedom Caucus push to cut off debate and kill the Democratic filibuster. 

“There has to be follow up next year,” Rizzo told reporters Friday. “Don’t regress. Keep moving forward. Don’t let the bullies win. I’ve been waiting for it for four or five years. I think they finally did it.” 

Cody Smith 

For the first time in six years as chairman of the House Budget Committee, Smith got what he most wanted this session — a final budget that spends less than the one the governor  proposed in January.

In each of the past two years, as the state surplus built up and a flood of federal COVID-19 relief cash was spent, Smith guided the House to spending plans below the governor’s.

But a familiar pattern would always play out, where the Senate would largely ignore Smith’s efforts, restore the money and add a few million dollars of spending of their own into the kitty. Then, House Democrats and a unified Senate would leave Smith on the outside looking in as the budget was shipped off to the governor. 

It was looking like deja vu all over again this year before the Freedom Caucus hijacked the Senate for 41 hours to demand action on a bill changing the initiative petition process. 

That filibuster kept the Senate from taking up the budget until just before the constitutional deadline. With no time to go to conference to work out differences, the House played hardball and won concessions that trimmed $1 billion from the spending plan. 

Despite Smith’s success, state agencies, the governor and Senate leaders are already questioning whether ongoing programs have enough cash to make it through the fiscal year. 

Parson leaves office in January and has said he would not leave it to his successor to fill in the gaps, making it a near certainty that a special session will be convened at some point this fall to debate a supplemental budget.

Scott Fitzpatrick

In a legislative session where nothing came easy and even bills with wide bipartisan support struggled to get traction, it’s telling that a bill expanding the powers of the Missouri auditor sailed to the governor’s desk with unanimous support.

Rather than having to wait for permission from cities, counties and other local governments in order to launch an audit, the bill will let Fitzpatrick move in if he believes “improper activities” are taking place.

The legislation, and its overwhelming support from lawmakers, is a huge vote of confidence for the first-term auditor. And at 36 years old, with no term limits and every other statewide office occupied by one of his fellow Republicans, the bill expands Fitzpatrick’s authority in an office he seems likely to hold for many years to come. 

‘School choice’ advocates

Two years ago, proponents of “school choice” policies scored historic wins by convincing skeptical lawmakers to create a voucher-like scholarship program for private schools and to boost funding for charter schools. 

They returned this year facing long odds and a buzzsaw of opposition from all sides in their efforts to build on those wins. 

Public school advocates feared taxpayer resources being drained away to benefit private, often religious, institutions. And homeschool families voiced fears about overbearing state regulations.

In the end, in exchange for committing the state to hundreds of millions of dollars of additional spending on public schools, the legislature signed off on expanding the private school scholarship program statewide and allowing charter schools in Boone County for the first time.

Losers

Freedom Caucus

On one hand, the Freedom Caucus got exactly what it wanted this year. 

Despite holding only five of 34 seats in the Missouri Senate, the caucus dominated the legislative session, repeatedly holding up the chamber with procedural hijinks and largely dictating whether bills could find their way to the governor’s desk.

The caucus’ leader, GOP state Sen. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring, referred to the group as the goalie of a hockey team that forgoes the glory of scoring points in favor of stopping the other team. 

“…a lot of the bad things that didn’t happen this session didn’t happen because of the folks you see standing behind me,” Eigel said of his caucus’ work this year. 

Yet those tactics galvanized critics, sinking the group’s top legislative priority — an initiative petition making it harder to amend the constitution — and making life easier for backers of an abortion-rights amendment likely to end up on the November ballot. 

Much of the group’s other legislative priorities didn’t fare much better, with Republicans growing weary of the caucus and unwilling to grant them even small victories. 

Whether or not the 2024 session was a win or a loss for the Freedom Caucus will ultimately be determined by the outcome of the August GOP primaries. Three members are seeking statewide office. Another is being challenged for his seat by a pair of House Republicans. Open Senate seats are shaping up as a showdown over the idea of the Freedom Caucus itself. 

Dean Plocher

The embattled Republican from Des Peres spent most of this final year as speaker under investigation for a litany of alleged misconduct. 

Even when that inquiry was finally dropped, Plocher’s celebration was muted. None of his leadership team showed up to his celebratory press conference, and he continued to be hounded by allegations he obstructed the committee’s work and threatened potential witnesses and legislative staff. 

As the session wore on, Plocher stalled or killed bills carried by his critics and often refused to recognize them to speak during floor debate. He stormed out of press conferences when faced with questions he didn’t like, and endured criticism, and a fair amount of mockery, over a $60,000 remodel of his office that included converting another lawmaker’s office into a makeshift liquor pantry. 

And after raising $1.3 million last year between his candidate committee and PAC, his political fundraising dried up. He took in just $15,000 during the first quarter of 2024. 

Throughout it all, Plocher denied any wrongdoing. And he still has a larger campaign war chest than any of his eight GOP rivals for secretary of state. His exuberance was on display the night the ethics inquiry was dismissed, when he made the same joke over and over again. 

“If the glove doesn’t fit,” he proclaimed to anyone in his proximity, quoting O.J. Simpson’s former lawyer, “you must acquit.”

The process

The 2024 legislative session will be remembered for its futility, with fewer bills finding success than any other year in living memory. 

But that’s not the only remarkable thing about the session that ended Friday. 

An entire session came and went without a single conference committee, the sometimes pro-forma joint House and Senate panels assigned to work out the differences on particular bills. And on the session’s final day, the Senate refused to accept messages from the House, a breach of legislative decorum that contributed to the death of the initiative petition bill. 

But just because legislation didn’t pass doesn’t mean legislative staff could sit around on their hands.

Just to start the session, staff had to prepare hundreds of bills for pre-filing, and hundreds more after it started. In all, a record 3,494 proposals to change state laws or the Missouri Constitution were filed this year, along with unknown thousands of amendments that never came up for debate.

When the Senate was kept up all night by filibusters, staff had to be there, ready to draft amendments and substitute bills. Long hours preparing bills and amendments that weren’t used specifically hard on appropriations staff, especially in the House, where lawmakers had staff draft myriad changes to the budget that they were never allowed to offer. 

On top of the workload, the ethics investigation of the speaker revealed many staffers fearful for their futures. 

“In my over 21 years of state government service, I have never witnessed or even been involved in such a hostile work environment that is so horrible that I am living in fear every day of losing my job,” House Director of Administration Lori Hughes wrote in a March 5 email to the Ethics Committee Chair Hannah Kelly.

Mary Elizabeth Coleman

Senate leadership gave Coleman the job of shepherding two major priorities for the GOP and the anti-abortion movement through to passage this year — a bill banning Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood and another raising the threshold for passing constitutional amendments by initiative petition. 

It was a huge vote of confidence for a first-term senator.

The Planned Parenthood bill made its way to the governor’s desk with only minor turbulence along the way.

By March, with the initiative petition bill out of the Senate and in the hands of the House — and its success looking promising — Coleman jumped into the secretary of state’s race, saying there is “no more important job than protecting the integrity of our elections and our founding documents.”

But around the time Coleman decided to run for secretary of state, she managed to enrage her Democratic colleagues in the Senate by publicly asking the House to restore “ballot candy” to the initiative petition bill, a move seen as a betrayal of the deal cut to get the bill out of the Senate in the first place. 

When it finally returned to the Senate, she was accused of betrayal again — this time from the other side of the ideological spectrum, when the Freedom Caucus decried her decision to send the legislation back to the House for further negotiation.

Coleman noted that the bill was dead either way if Republicans couldn’t muster the votes to end the 50-hour Democratic filibuster. Sending it back to the House, she argued, at least left the door open.

But the House slammed that door shut the next day, and the loudest proponents of the bill heaped much of their scorn onto Coleman.

The Missouri House approved a non-citizen voting provision as part of a Senate bill which will put a question before Missouri voters seeking to ban ranked-choice voting and non-citizen voting (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images).

Arguments over the validity of banning non-citizen voting in Missouri, which is already illegal, were part of what ultimately killed an initiative petition bill prioritized by Republicans this session.

But in the final hours of the legislative session on Friday, the House approved a non-citizen voting provision as part of a Senate bill which will put a question before Missouri voters seeking to ban ranked-choice voting, or ranking candidates in order of preference.

“Missourians don’t want more voter confusion and exhaustion when they go to the ballot box than they already have,” said the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Ben Baker, a Neosho Republican.

If approved by voters later this year, Missouri will officially ban ranked-choice voting and non-citizen voting. It would also confirm that elections only be carried out by paper ballot or “any mechanical method prescribed by law.”

The ranked-choice voting language has a carve-out for any “nonpartisan municipal election” that already has a ranked-choice ordinance in place. This applies to St. Louis. 

An initiative petition campaign in 2022 sought to amend Missouri’s Constitution to change the voting process for the general elections for state offices. In the primary, voters would have still only been able to cast one vote, but in the general election, they could list their preferences. The candidate to win the majority of first-choice votes would win. But if no candidate received a majority, the candidate with the fewest top-choice votes would be eliminated; the remaining votes would be distributed among the candidates left based on preferences. Whoever received a majority of those votes would win.

That proposal failed to gather enough signatures to go to the voters. 

The bill passed on Friday down party lines 97 to 43, with state Rep. Raychel Proudie, a Democrat from Ferguson, and state. Rep. LaKeySha Bosley, a Democrat from St. Louis, voting present. 

Missouri initiative petition bill, a top GOP priority, dies on final day of session

“This is wholly unnecessary,” state Rep. Eric Woods, a Democrat from Kansas City, said Friday of the bill.

That was the resounding cry from Senate Democrats earlier this week, as they filibustered for 50 hours in a successful attempt to stop a plan by Republicans to put a ballot measure before voters in the fall that would raise the threshold for amending the constitution by citizen-led initiative petitions. 

Democrats refused to let the initiative petition bill pass through the Senate as long as it included “ballot candy.” These provisions meant to entice voters into supporting the measure included a question about non-citizen voting and foreign interference.

Despite the hours spent this session debating the merits of the non-citizen language in the initiative petition bill, the topic didn’t immediately come up on the House floor Friday. 

Toward the end of debate, state Rep. Brad Banderman, a Republican from St. Clair, noted the “robust conversation” in both chambers over non-citizen voting the past couple of years, escalating in the final weeks of session. 

“It seems like we’ve been wringing our hands for about a week or two on this particular issue, but on this day,” Banderman said. “ … The other side of the aisle doesn’t seem to be standing at mics complaining 

Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, speaks after adjournment Friday morning. He said changes to initiative petition could be passed if the House acts (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The least productive — and most chaotic — legislative session in living memory came to a close Friday, when the Missouri Senate, mired in factional infighting, threw in the towel eight hours early and the House scrambled to get whatever bills it could salvage across the finish line before the 6 p.m. deadline for adjournment. 

In the end, only 28 non-budget bills found success this year. That’s fewer than the previous low-water mark in 2020, when only 31 bills passed because the legislative session was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“It wasn’t a good session or a bad session,” said Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independent Democrat. “But it was definitely a bizarre session.” 

To be sure, some significant legislation found success. 

A massive education bill signed by Gov. Mike Parson expands a tax-credit program for private school tuition and allows charter schools to open for the first time in Boone County. It also pumps millions into raising teacher pay, among other provisions, and is estimated to cost taxpayers $468 million when fully implemented.

A public safety bill cleared the legislature Friday that would make changes to the juvenile court system and allow the Missouri Office of Prosecution Services to establish a conviction review unit to investigate claims of actual innocence of any defendant, including those who plead guilty.

The bill also includes “Blair’s Law,” which would ban celebratory gunfire within the limits of a municipality. The law is named after Blair Shanahan Lane, an 11-year-old Kansas City girl killed during Fourth of July celebrations in 2011 by a stray bullet shot into the sky.

After years of unsuccessful efforts to make Planned Parenthood ineligible to receive reimbursements from the state’s Medicaid program, the governor signed the bill into law earlier this month. 

“For me, the good far outweighs the bad,” said Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican, “and I’m walking out of here with my head held high.” 

But the legacy of the 2024 legislative session will be the long list of bills that died — and the open GOP warfare that killed many of them. 

The first day of the session in January saw a resumption of years of GOP infighting, with the Freedom Caucus holding court for more than an hour to vent frustrations with the chamber’s Republican leadership.

That dynamic played out again and again through the session, culminating with a 41-hour filibuster earlier this month by Freedom Caucus members that stalled — but did not block — a bill renewing a tax crucial to funding Missouri’s Medicaid program. 

The bad blood between the Freedom Caucus and Republicans loyal to Senate leadership boiled over in the session’s final days. Despite holding 24 of 34 seats in the Senate, Republicans could not muster 18 votes to kill a Democratic filibuster of legislation making it harder to amend the Missouri Constitution through the initiative petition process. 

Thanks to the impasse, the initiative petition bill — a top GOP priority, seen as a method to undercut a likely November ballot measure enshrining abortion rights in the Constitution — died on the session’s final day.

“It is a uniparty,” said Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican and Freedom Caucus member. “That’s what people are fed up and frustrated with, Republicans giving in and caving in. Accepting defeat in the hands of victory, that seems to be the mantra of the Republican Party and brand.”

Rowden said a lot of good work got done this year despite efforts by the Freedom Caucus. 

“I make decisions not based on what people are gonna say about those decisions on Twitter,” he said, “but about what is in the best interest of the state and what’s in the best interest of this institution.”

As the House stripped amendments off of Senate bills in order to send them to the governor, Republicans complained about the gridlock that upended the Senate. 

Every legislative session is unusual, said House Speaker Dean Plocher, but “this has been a less productive year on the other side of the building.”

But contributing to the chaotic session was Plocher, who spent much of the year under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over a litany of allegations of misconduct. The investigation was ultimately dropped, but not before Plocher was accused of obstructing the committee’s work and intimidating potential witnesses. 

But the drama in the House paled in comparison to the Senate. 

State Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican, had no remorse about his role in killing a large swath of bills. Out of every 100 bills filed every year, Eigel said, “probably 90 of them need not pass.”

“So a lot of the bad things that didn’t happen this session didn’t happen because of the folks you see standing behind me,” he told reporters at the Freedom Caucus press conference, adding: “How many tax increases and fee increases didn’t happen because some folks were willing to get more aggressive with the folks that are giving up on their principles?”

Time ran out on a lot of bills with wide support from both parties, including an expansion of child care tax credits that was a big priority of the governor. The legislature also failed to ban child marriage or end Missouri’s practice of taking millions of dollars in Social Security benefits owed to foster kids. 

A wide-ranging women’s health bill — which includes provisions allowing women on private insurance to pick up an annual supply of contraceptives rather than going to the pharmacy every few months — was also a victim of Senate gridlock. 

But the biggest impact of the GOP infighting was likely how much it delayed the state budget process, ultimately resulting in a spending plan most everyone concedes will require lawmakers to return later this year to ensure state agencies don’t run out of money. 

Lawmakers cut hundreds of millions of dollars requested by Parson for the three major public welfare agencies, the departments of Social Services, Mental Health and Health and Senior Services. And Charlie Shields, president of the State Board of Education and a former Senate president pro tem, this week said he expects “the mother of all supplemental budgets, probably in a special session.”

“We’ll be back when the department’s run out of money,” Rizzo said, “because they will.”

Eigel seemed to predict the drama could resume if the legislature returns to allocate more money. 

“We spent billions of dollars in earmarks and the budget that we did just pass. Billions,” he said. “If there was such a need for the basic services of these departments to be funded, maybe we should have cut out some of the fat.”

Three of the five Freedom Caucus members are leaving the Senate after this year due to term limits, and August primaries in those and a handful of other districts will ultimately decide whether the dynamic in the chamber changes. 

Rowden, who is also leaving office this year, said he hopes the departures “provides an opportunity for this chamber to kind of recalibrate.”

In the end, the Senate returned for the final day of the legislative session Friday for only 10 minutes before adjourning for the year. 

For all intents and purposes, the Senate was done the day before, Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin conceded to reporters. But she didn’t want to end on a sour note — with lawmakers taking verbal shots at each other on the chamber’s floor. 

“I like all of my colleagues,” she said. “They are all very bright, though difficult to handle sometimes.” 

And when the Senate adjourned Friday, “everyone hugged each,” O’Laughlin said. “Bill (Eigel) and I hugged each other.” 

Eigel, listening in from the back of the room as O’Laughlin spoke to reporters, shouted out, “Love you, Cindy.”

She didn’t miss a beat.

“Love you, Bill.” 

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this story.

The National Nuclear Safety Administration plans to expand its Kansas City facility, which develops and manufactures the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons. Missouri lawmakers approved a sales tax exemption on construction materials for the private developer building the expansion. It now goes to Gov. Mike Parson. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent).

A proposed expansion of a nuclear weapons parts manufacturer in south Kansas City could get a boost from a tax break Missouri lawmakers passed Friday.

With only hours left in Missouri’s annual legislative session, the state House voted 141-2 to authorize a sales tax exemption for construction materials purchased to expand the National Nuclear Safety Administration campus, operated by Honeywell International Inc. 

The legislation now goes to Gov. Mike Parson. 

State Rep. Chris Brown, a Republican from Kansas City, called the legislation a “win-win.” 

“It’s a small ask on the sales tax exemption,” he said, “and it’s really about economic development. And at the end of the day…it’s about making sure we are keeping our nuclear facilities, our nuclear defenses — keeping them safe, keeping them dependable, and keeping them reliable.”

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to spend more than $3 billion to expand its facilities in Kansas City, where workers produce non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons, according to a fiscal analysis on the bill.

If the administration built the facilities itself, it would be exempt from sales tax as a government entity. But to expedite the expansion, the federal government plans to acquire the buildings from a private developer. Supporters of the legislation argue exempting the private developer will keep the costs on par with what the federal government would pay itself.

The fiscal analysis of the bill says it would divert about a combined more than $150 million in state, county, city and Kansas City zoo sales tax revenue over 10 years, but it says the exact cost couldn’t be verified.

Staff legislative staff wrote that the bill’s “fiscal impact could be significant.” 

Supporters of the legislation — including its sponsor in the Missouri Senate, now-former Sen. Greg Razer — argue the jobs created by the expansion would offset the losses from the sales tax exemption.

Razer told a Missouri Senate committee earlier this year that the National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, plans to add 2.5 million square feet of facilities and hire thousands of employees to help modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. 

“We need to modernize this to keep them safe to ensure that accidents don’t happen,” Razer said, “and that’s what we will be doing in Kansas City.” 

Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher addresses media May 17, the final day of the legislative session. (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri Senate put its dysfunction on display one last time Friday when it adjourned minutes after reconvening, effectively killing efforts to send voters a ballot measure changing the majority needed to pass constitutional amendments.

The decision to quit almost eight hours before the constitutional deadline shows how little tolerance Republican leadership had for remaining in the same room with their factional foes in the Missouri Freedom Caucus.

The motion to adjourn was made by Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, who said that after days of ugly confrontations between senators, “I thought it would be good to end in a more cordial way.”

The Missouri House continued to work on legislation. The only notice taken of the Senate’s absence was a burst of laughter when the clerk announced there were “no messages to be read in from the Senate.”

Just an hour before the Senate quit for the day, House Speaker Dean Plocher held a news conference demanding the Senate do what the House has done several times – pass the proposal to require a majority vote in five of the state’s eight congressional districts as well as a statewide majority to approve constitutional amendments.

“This is not our problem,” Plocher said. “This is not our mess.”

With no chance of an August ballot measure to alter the majority requirements, and an initiative petition legalizing abortion undergoing signature checks, the result could be the GOP’s worst fear – that all the restrictive legislation passed over the past two decades of Republican legislative control could be undone.

If abortion gets on the ballot and wins, the Senate is to blame, Plocher said.

“The burden of abortion falls squarely on the Senate and its leadership,” Plocher said.

Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden rejected that statement, saying the House could vote to place the initiative petition measure on the ballot before the legislature adjourns if it so chooses. 

The election on abortion isn’t lost yet, he said

“The notion that (initiative petition) reform being on the ballot is the magic bullet to make sure that the abortion (initiative) doesn’t pass is ridiculous,” Rowden said. “It’s going to take Republicans and conservatives and folks who disagreed on IP to get out to the ballot and vote against that thing in November.”

One reason the measure failed is unwavering opposition by Democrats to provisions added to the bill that would bar non-citizens from voting on constitutional amendments, something that hasn’t been allowed in Missouri since 1924, as well as banning foreign governments or political parties from sponsoring or spending in support of initiatives.

Democrats filibustered for 21 hours in February before the sponsor, state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican, agreed to remove those provisions, derided by opponents as “ballot candy” intended to entice voters with issues unrelated to how majorities are determined.

When the bill was before a House committee, Coleman urged them to reinstate the provisions and the House did so before returning the bill.

That triggered the longest filibuster in state history, with Democrats holding the floor for 50 hours this week to block the measure from a final vote. It ended only when Coleman agreed to ask the House to remove those provisions or engage in negotiations.

“Republicans wanted to make it harder to amend the constitution,” Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo of Independence said at a news conference. “We recognize they have a supermajority, but we won’t let them trick people.”

The issue isn’t dead, said House Majority Leader Jon Patterson of Lee’s Summit and presumptive speaker when the new legislature meets in January.

Patterson thinks the urgency to change the majority threshold will remain.

“The House has stood firm that we believe in life, that we believe in constitutional (initiative petition) reform,” Patterson said.  

It was clear Plocher at least partially blamed the Freedom Caucus – six Senators when the session began but five when it ended because of disagreements over tactics – for the failure of the proposal changing majorities.

“Reading books on the floor does not solve Missouri’s problems,” Plocher said. 

The Freedom Caucus had the record for a filibuster – 41 hours – for two weeks after members held the floor demanding that the proposal on constitutional majorities be brought to an immediate vote. Members spent much of that time reading books about religion and other subjects.

The 41-hour filibuster ended only when Freedom Caucus members were assured every means to pass the proposal – including a rarely used motion to cut off debate – had a majority of 18 votes, said state Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg Republican. 

“We would not have sat down two weeks ago on (Medicaid provider taxes) if we were confident that we had a deal done,” Hoskins said.

Throughout the debate on the measure changing initiative petition majorities, Republicans have cited recently approved initiatives on legislative redistricting, expanding Medicaid eligibility and legalizing recreational marijuana as examples of an abuse of the initiative process. The proposals were funded in large part by money from outside the state.

“I don’t believe,” Plocher said, “you should be able to buy your way into Missouri and pass laws.”

Rowden, however, said the idea that ballot candy is needed for changes to the majority threshold to pass is “a slap in the face to Missouri voters. Missourians are absolutely smarter than the people in this chamber give them credit for. “

Sen. Rick Brattin of Harrisonville, speaking for the Freedom Caucus at a news conference, defended the ballot candy provisions as giving voters a simpler question, easier to understand than changing the majority as a standalone issue.

“You would have to have a lot of intensive funding to be able to get a message out, because (the initiative petition process) is a very convoluted, difficult thing to explain to voters,” Brattin said. “And we wanted to make sure we’re putting stuff in front of people that’s easy, that doesn’t require $60 million to try to get the message out.”

Jason Hancock of The Independent staff contributed to this report.

This article has been updated to delete an erroneous reference to ballot language.

Sen. Holly Rehder, R-Scott City, prepares for the penultimate day of legislative session Thursday (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Child marriage will remain legal in Missouri for at least another year after Republican House leaders said they don’t have enough time to pass it.

Under current Missouri law, anyone under 16 is prohibited from getting married. But 16 and 17 year olds can get married with parental consent to anyone under 21. 

Under legislation that cleared the Senate with virtually no opposition earlier this year, marriage would be banned for anyone under 18. “It was very surprising that the House has not allowed it to come to the body,” said Republican state Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder of Scott City, who sponsored the bill along with Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Democrat of Kansas City.

“Banning child marriage should not be controversial. When I filed this bill, I had no idea it would be controversial,” Rehder added.

The bill was stalled by a group of Republican critics in a House committee, who said it would constitute government overreach and infringe on parental rights. It finally passed out of committee this week after several of those critics were not present at the vote. 

But House leadership told reporters Friday morning it was too late to place the bill on the House calendar for debate. Session ends at 6 p.m. 

“There’s some interest there, unfortunately the rules preclude us from doing that today,” said House Majority Leader Jon Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican.

Arthur said the failure is “shameful.”

“When I talk to people back home, they’re surprised to learn that minors can get married in the first place,” Arthur said. “And these are the kinds of headlines that my friends who are apolitical or live in different parts of the country send me and say, ‘What is happening in Missouri?’

“It makes us look bad,” she said, “but more importantly, we’re not doing enough to protect young girls who are forced into marriages and their lives are worse in every way as a result.”

Twelve other states have in recent years banned child marriage.

Rehder said she was told only around 20 out of 163 House members were opposed. She also said the House could have voted to suspend its rules to allow the bill to be debated and passed before adjournment, but suggested that House Speaker Dean Plocher refused to let the bill move forward to avoid embarrassing Republicans who are opposed to banning child marriage. 

“We have the votes,” Rehder said,  but it didn’t come up “because the speaker didn’t want to put his members in a bad situation.”

“…Because you shouldn’t be against banning child marriage.” 

Rehder said she’s hopeful the bill will succeed next year, in large part due to the “public pressure” of state and national media. 

“You cannot sign a legal binding contract in Missouri until you’re 18. But we’re allowing a parent to sign a child into a lifetime commitment. It’s ridiculous.”

Rehder attributed some of the opposition to generational differences.

“People who have been against it — the men who have been against it — who talk to me about it have said, ‘Oh, my grandmother got married at 15.’ Well, yes I did too, mine was 40 years ago,” Rehder said. 

“And it didn’t work out because I was operating on not an adult mindset.”

Fraidy Reiss, an activist who founded the nonprofit against forced marriage Unchained at Last was active in testifying in support of the bill in Missouri and has worked nationally to pass similar legislation. Upon hearing the news, Reiss said: “How can legislators live with themselves?”

She added that “dozens of teens will be subjected to a human rights abuse and legally trafficked under the guise of marriage in the coming year,” due to the failure to pass the legislation.

“…How will they explain that to their constituents?” 

Sen. Mike Moon, R-Ash Grove, protests May 16 as the Senate adjourns for the day. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)

The Missouri Senate did nothing but fight during two brief floor sessions Thursday, with Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin stepping in during each to cut off acrimonious exchanges, first with a recess and then with adjournment.

As a result, the Senate considered no legislation on the penultimate day of this year’s session and seems unlikely to find a peaceful way to accomplish anything before they must go home at 6 p.m. Friday.

That leaves only a narrow path for what Republicans call their No. 1 priority for the year – changing the threshold for passing constitutional amendments. Senate Democrats filibustered a final vote on the measure for 50 hours this week before the sponsor, state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, abandoned the attempt. 

Thursday afternoon, the House took up Coleman’s request that it remove items added to the proposal or negotiate over the differences, with the House sponsor, GOP state Rep. Alex Riley of Springfield, asking the House to reject it.

Instead, Riley won a 104-45 party-line vote refusing negotiations and asking the Senate to pass the proposal as it was approved in the House. Because the House had not acted and the Senate adjourned for the day, senators cannot be appointed to negotiate until Friday, too late under the House rules for any conference committee report to come to a vote.

The proposal would change the way votes are counted on constitutional amendments, which currently need only a statewide majority to pass. Under the measure, if approved by voters, that would change by adding a requirement that proposed amendments also win a majority vote in five of the state’s eight congressional districts.

A Democratic filibuster in February stripped Coleman’s proposal down to just the provisions changing the majority threshold. The House revived items removed during the filibuster to bar non-citizens from voting on state constitutional amendments and to outlaw donations or other actions in support of ballot measures by foreign governments and political parties.

During House debate Thursday, Riley acknowledged there is no time for negotiations.

“We put months into this to craft a package that can pass and at this point I stand by that package and I ask the House to join me in that,” Riley said.

State Rep. Barbara Phifer, a Kirkwood Democrat, challenged the provision on non-citizen voting. 

For 100 years, Missouri has barred non-citizens from voting. A constitutional amendment passed by voters in 1924 took away a right that had been in place since 1865 for males who had declared their intent to become citizens.

Riley said there is “a lot of ambiguity” around noncitizen voting. 

“You absolutely don’t have any proof whatsoever,” Phifer said. “It seems to me that the whole thing’s pretty unserious.”

‘Clown show’

The Senate’s morning session became chaotic when state Sen. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring, a leader of the Missouri Freedom Caucus faction, sought to amend the daily journal to brand his GOP opponents as betrayers of their party.

Referring to Thursday’s vote to ask the House for a conference, Eigel offered an amendment to state that just before the action, “the Senate was interrupted by a stampeding herd of rhinoceroses running through the Senate chamber, laying waste to the institution.”

Hard-right conservatives call more moderate members RINOS, or Republicans in Name Only.

O’Laughlin immediately asked for a recess.

When members returned about 2:30 p.m., Eigel withdrew his amendment and it was GOP state Sen. Mike Cierpiot’s turn. 

His proposal to amend the journal drew blood with a direct attack on three members of the Freedom Caucus being sued by Denton Loudermill for defamation for social media posts tying Loudermill to the shootings at the Kansas City Chiefs championship victory parade. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is providing legal defense for state Sens. Nick Schroer of Defiance, Rick Brattin of Harrisonville and Denny Hoskins of Warrensburg.

Cierpiot, of Lee’s Summit, wanted the journal to read that “it is the opinion of the Missouri Senate that the office of the attorney general should not expend any money from the state legal expense fund” to defend Hoskins, Schroer and Brattin.

The explosion that followed is why O’Laughlin stepped in to adjourn.

Sen. Mike Moon was defeated on a motion to table Cierpiot’s amendment, then Eigel jumped to his feet. He said the warring factions had acceded to a ceasefire in order to adjourn the Senate for the final time this session, understanding that little else could be accomplished.

“I thought we were gonna come out here and peacefully adjourn but then there’s got to be another shot by” Cierpiot, Eigel said.

Instead, Eigel said, the personal attacks continue.

“I’m sure he’s got a lot of folks that are going to maybe try to drive this amendment through hatred, because that’s what we’ve actually seen this chamber operate on,” he said.

Eigel was about three minutes into his speech when O’Laughlin made the motion to adjourn. That brought an objection from Moon, who was ignored as the vote was taken. He was left shouting, after the microphones were turned off.

“This is an affront to our rules,” Moon said. “It should not happen.”

Cierpiot was unapologetic for his proposal. The Senate has been an embarrassment because of the Freedom Caucus and taxpayers should not pay for their courtroom defense, he said.

“It’s embarrassing,” Cierpiot told The Independent. “The Freedom Caucus has made it a clown show and with the rules we have, if people are dedicated to be part of a clown show it is hard to shut it down.”

Eigel, in an interview with The Independent, said the venomous floor sessions showed the true personality of the Senate.

“The Senate’s demonstrated once again,” Eigel said, “that it is being driven by petty politics and personal vendettas.”

Jason Hancock of The Independent staff contributed to this report.

State Sen. Rick Brattin, a member of the Freedom Caucus, shouts at his Republican colleagues Wednesday during debate on initiative petition changes (Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

A 50-hour Democratic filibuster forced the Senate’s divided GOP majority to finally yield Wednesday evening, stalling a vote on a bill seeking to make it more difficult to amend Missouri’s constitution.

Democrats have blocked all action in the Senate since Monday afternoon, demanding that the legislation be stripped of “ballot candy” that would bar non-citizens from voting and ban foreign entities from contributing to or sponsoring constitutional amendments, both of which are already illegal. 

The Senate passed the bill without ballot candy in February. The House added it back last month.

Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independence Democrat, on Tuesday said the situation presented an existential crisis for the Senate, as Republicans openly considered a rarely-used maneuver to kill the filibuster and force a vote on the bill. 

“Are the bullies going to win?” Rizzo asked. “Or is the rest of the Senate finally going to stand up for itself and say ‘no more.’” 

He got an answer just before 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, when state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican and the bill’s sponsor, surprised many of her colleagues by asking that the Senate send the bill back to the House for more negotiations on whether to include “ballot candy.” 

Republicans simply didn’t have the votes to kill the filibuster, she said, and Democrats showed no signs of relenting before session ends at 6 p.m. Friday. 

“These policies are too important to play political games with,” Coleman said, adding that going to conference to work out a deal with the House was the only way to keep it alive in the face of unrelenting Democratic opposition. “In a perfect world, we would not be between a rock and a hard place.”

The sudden change in tactics was not well-taken by members of the Freedom Caucus, who argued sending the bill back to the House with only two days left before adjournment puts its chances at risk. 

Tim Jones, a former Missouri House speaker and current director of the state’s Freedom Caucus, wrote on social media Thursday evening that Coleman “effectively killed her own bill today.”

Ultimately, the Senate voted 18-13 to send the bill to conference, with nine Republicans joining nine Democrats in support of the move.

If the bill passes, Missourians would have the opportunity to vote later this year on whether or not to require constitutional amendments be approved by both a majority of votes statewide and a majority of votes in five of the state’s eight congressional districts. 

Right now, amendments pass with a simple majority.

A possible vote on abortion in November is a catalyst behind the battle over the bill, as a campaign to legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability is on the path to the statewide ballot. 

Republicans have said that without raising the threshold for changing the state’s constitution, a constitutional right to abortion will likely become the law of the land in Missouri. 

State Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican and a member of the Freedom Caucus, tipped his hat to the Democrats’ “wherewithal” before scorning some of his Republican colleagues. 

“Unfortunately, this Republican Party has no backbone to fight for what is right for life,” he shouted from the Senate floor. “ … They will have the blood of the innocent on their heads. Shame on this party.”

Coleman’s move also came as a surprise to state Rep. Alex Riley, a Republican from Springfield who sponsored the initiative petition bill in the House. 

“We’re going to have to have some conversations tonight to figure out what exactly it is they have in mind,” he said. “We will be having many conversations over the next few hours.”

House Speaker Dean Plocher said he was pleased to see the impasse broken, adding that the House is ready to work on a final version that can be passed. 

He didn’t promise to remove the “ballot candy” added by the House. 

Fate of ‘game changer’ women’s health care bill in hands of Missouri Senate

Asked if Coleman made a tactical mistake in telling the House to restore the items removed during the first Democratic filibuster, Plocher said he hadn’t spoken to Coleman and declined to speculate on whether the outcome would have been different had she not.

Democrats left the Senate Wednesday evening hopeful they will ultimately get their way.

“This body by and large is a staunch supporter of democracy. That doesn’t just go for one side of the aisle. That goes for both sides,” Rizzo said. “This is not protecting the ballot for Democrats or Republicans or one issue or the other issue that you might like or dislike. This protects the ballot box for Republicans and Democrats alike for the future.”

Rizzo maintained that removing the ballot candy is still the only way Democrats will allow the bill to get through the Senate if it returns from the House. 

“If you haven’t figured that out in the last three or four days, I don’t know where you’ve been,” Rizzo said, adding: “Hopefully sleeping.” 

As the Senate prepared to vote, state Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican and Freedom Caucus member, warned his colleagues not to be optimistic that the Senate will come back Thursday and pass other bills waiting in the pipeline.

“If the hope is that this process is going to somehow lead us back to a place of engaging more legislation besides this, I’m gonna say this very clearly,” he said. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

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

A set of medical provider taxes that fund a large portion of Missouri’s Medicaid program won quick approval Wednesday in the House, two weeks after it took 41 hours for the bill to pass in the state Senate.

The controversies that stalled the bill in the Senate received scant attention during Wednesday’s debate, except for being cited as an example of what to avoid in the future. The bill taxes hospitals, pharmacies, nursing homes and ambulance services to raise about $1.3 billion for Medicaid services and leverage nearly $3 billion in federal matching funds for the $17 billion program.

“This shouldn’t be used as a hostage in a terrorist negotiation,” said House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat.

The renewal bill extends the taxes for five years, one of the longest sunsets since the tax was first enacted in 1991. Since then, the levies have been renewed 17 times, most recently for three years in 2021 during a special session.

For the second time, renewal of the taxes became enmeshed in the debates over abortion and whether Planned Parenthood can receive reimbursements for services covered by Medicaid. Members of the Missouri Freedom Caucus tried, and failed, to delay action on the provider taxes until a bill targeting Planned Parenthood was signed by Gov. Mike Parson and a proposal making it harder to pass a constitutional amendment is finished and set for a vote later this year.

Parson did sign the Planned Parenthood bill, but almost a week after the filibuster ended. And the record set by the Freedom Caucus, by holding the Senate floor for 41 hours, has been surpassed by Democrats this week as they block a vote on the constitutional majority changes.

As he asked for support, House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith, a Carthage Republican, said the bill’s importance to financing Medicaid was the only issue to concern members.

The taxes, he said, “have become an integral part” of the Medicaid program and renewal “is very critical” to balancing the $51.7 billion budget passed last week 

The debate and 136-16 vote took about five minutes. Quade said there was no controversy in the House on the bill. 

“Most of us…  absolutely, desperately want this passed today,” she said.

Roundup’s manufacturer, the multinational Bayer, has faced myriad lawsuits related to the weed killer (Scott Olson/Getty Images).

Time is running out for legislation that would make it harder to sue pesticide manufacturers over claims their products cause cancer, with an unusual coalition of opponents working to ensure they’ve stalled the bill’s progress. 

The bill, critics argue, shields large corporations at the expense of everyday Missourians who have developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma they attribute to the use of pesticides formulated with glyphosate — most prominently, Roundup.

Supporters, including Roundup’s manufacturer, Bayer, say the lawsuits are unfair because glyphosate has been approved by environmental regulators who have determined it is “unlikely” to cause cancer in humans.

“Going through that litigation process and having this patchwork of labeling requirements has cost this company billions of dollars,” said Catherine Hanaway, an attorney for Bayer and former Missouri House speaker, “even when there’s consistent scientific consensus that glyphosate does not cause cancer.”

The legislation cleared the House and has until 6 p.m. Friday to pass the Senate, which has been marked this year by gridlock and dysfunction and is currently bogged down in a multi-day filibuster. 

It pits powerful agriculture and business organizations against trial attorneys that have built an alliance with GOP lawmakers known for bringing the state Senate to a halt: the Missouri Freedom Caucus.

“It’s not a traditional alliance,” said Amy Gunn, president of the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys, “but I appreciate…that there are people on both sides of the aisle that can recognize the importance of not limiting our rights.”

The legislation, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Dane Diehl of Butler, would protect Roundup manufacturer Bayer from lawsuits by plaintiffs who claim the company failed to warn them that glyphosate might be carcinogenic. Bayer maintains that it’s safe, though it has paid billions to settle Roundup claims or pay out jury judgments.

Specifically, the legislation would dictate that pesticides that are registered with the Environmental Protection Agency and carry an approved label consistent with the EPA’s opinion on whether the ingredients are carcinogenic satisfies its duty to warn customers, insulating Bayer from “failure to warn” cases. Bayer argues 

“We believe anything that’s gone through the full regulatory process…and has been deemed safe through multiple studies, multiple endeavors — over time of about 50 years on certain products — that they have fulfilled their duties to warn of the dangers associated with the product,” Diehl said in a Senate committee hearing last month. 

‘This bill is about protecting a corporation over the citizens of our state’

Bayer said it has set aside about $16 billion to deal with Roundup lawsuits, including more than $10 billion it has already paid out in settlements. It has lost other cases at trial. 

Earlier this year, a jury in Philadelphia awarded a plaintiff $2.25 billion. Last year in Cole County, three plaintiffs were awarded $1.56 billion, though a judge later reduced that to $622 million. 

Bayer says the settlements it has paid out don’t represent an admission of wrongdoing. It stands behind the product and says it has won in cases where the court allowed it to present studies that deem glyphosate safe. 

But it’s looking at “several options” for the future of Roundup, said Jessica Christiansen, head of sustainability and stewardship for crop science at Bayer.

“We’ve been pretty clear that the cost and the burden of the lawsuits is not sustainable,” she said in an interview with The Independent when asked if Bayer would pull Roundup from shelves.

Missouri farm groups have backed the pesticide labeling legislation, saying farmers need assurance Roundup will be available for the long term. 

“We feel strongly that pesticides are an essential crop protection tool that provide many environmental benefits by enabling conservation practices,” Jacob Knaebel, a lobbyist for the Missouri Corn Growers Association, told a Missouri Senate committee last month. 

Christiansen, however, said it was “simply not true” that the legislation would provide blanket immunity for Bayer from litigation. She wouldn’t say whether it would shield the company from liability in “failure to warn” cases, but its sponsor and other supporters say that’s the idea. 

Bayer says there are other means by which people can sue, including product failures and warranty claims.

“There’s other ways that people can still file lawsuits, and they have the right to do that, but on this particular issue, we support the science and the labeling should be supported by science as well,” she said. 

Gunn panned that argument. 

“That’s been a talking point for the Bayer people, which sort of begs the question — okay, well then why do you want (the legislation)?” she said. “And the answer is clearly that the vast majority of the successful claims are based on a ‘failure to warn’ cause of action.” 

Melissa Vatterott, policy director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, said the legislation is “not the right thing for Missouri’s people.” 

“The fact that Bayer has lobbied not only legislators in Missouri but in three other states…shows that this bill is about protecting a corporation over the citizens of our state,” she said. 

Prospects for passage 

If the Senate does manage to take up the pesticide labeling bill before Friday’s adjournment, Vatterott said she doesn’t think the bill has enough support to make it to the governor’s desk. 

Efforts to make it harder for Missourians to file litigation against businesses have historically had the support of Republicans, who hold super majorities in both the House and Senate. But in more recent years, those bills have run into GOP opposition. This year, that resistance is led by the Freedom Caucus.

The rise of Republican criticism of these bills comes as trial attorneys have shifted their strategy from supporting Democratic candidates with donations to cutting big checks to Republicans aligned with the Freedom Caucus. 

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry says trial attorneys’ donations have helped “slow down the momentum on tort reform.”

“There is no doubt that the plaintiffs’ bar has taken a very, very active interest in lobbying and attempting to fund campaigns and candidates who are anti-tort reform,” said Brendan Cossette, the chamber’s chief of operations. 

Between 2005 when Republicans took control of the Missouri General Assembly until 2019, Cossette said, the legislature routinely passed “tort reform” legislation.

Cossette said the chamber still has some hope the pesticide bill might pass. 

“There’s always a chance,” he said. “The bill’s never really dead until the end of session…and you never know what dam might break and what bills might start going through.” 

Gunn doesn’t see certain conservative lawmakers’ opposition to the pesticide bill as a product of campaign donations. 

“If you look back over the last number of years, there has been…an alliance based on a mutual respect for the Seventh Amendment,” Gunn said. 

The Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the right to a jury trial in civil cases. 

Should the legislation pass, Gunn said, people who develop cancer they believe was caused by Roundup will call plaintiff attorneys like her.

“And I’m going to say, ‘You know what? You have no cause of action,’” she said, “‘but here’s who you need to call who voted for it, who voted to take away your Seventh Amendment right to have a cause of action.’” 

Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, D-Independence, speaks about the second week of the legislative session in a press conference on Jan. 11, 2024 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

A filibuster in the Missouri Senate set a new record Wednesday morning, as Democrats continued to demand “ballot candy” about non-citizen voting and foreign fundraising be removed from an initiative petition bill before it goes to voters.

The previous modern record for longest filibuster was set earlier this year by the Senate Freedom Caucus, who held the floor for 41 hours. Democrats passed that mark at around 7:30 a.m. Wednesday.

With time ticking down as the legislature is set to adjourn at 6 p.m. Friday, Democrats argue that if Republicans are truly concerned with ensuring only citizens can vote in Missouri elections, there are at least two other bills close to the finish line that include that language.

The GOP could pass those bills, strip the ballot candy out of the initiative petition bill, end the filibuster and allow the Senate to function in its final days, said Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo of Independence.

“We’re more than happy to let that through,” he said.

The longest filibuster in Missouri Senate history happened earlier this year, when the Freedom Caucus held the floor for 41 hours. Democrats will pass that mark around 7:30 a.m.

The bill that inspired this week’s filibuster would ask voters to make it harder to amend the Missouri Constitution through the initiative petition process. But it also includes proposals that would bar non-citizens from voting and ban foreign entities from contributing to or sponsoring constitutional amendments, both of which are already illegal.

Democrats say they will not allow the bill to move forward with even an iota of ballot candy.

“They’re trying to disenfranchise not Democratic voters or Republican voters,” state Sen. Brian Williams, a Democrat from University City, said Tuesday. “They’re trying to disenfranchise Missouri voters.”

The non-citizen voting prohibitions are also included in two bills that would amend the Missouri Constitution to ban ranked-choice voting.

The House passed its version of the ranked-choice voting bill in April, though it hasn’t been heard by a Senate committee.

The Senate also passed its version in April. A House committee approved the bill without making any changes, meaning it could be taken up and sent directly to the statewide ballot at any time this week.

The Senate sponsor of the ranked-choice voting measure, GOP Sen. Ben Brown of Washington, couldn’t be reached for comment. 

But Republicans remain steadfast as of Tuesday afternoon that they want the initiative petition proposal to go to voters with the ballot candy included.

“We want to put something that Republican voters want to vote for,” said Sen. Andrew Koenig, a Manchester Republican and member of the Senate Freedom Caucus. “I think it can look in different ways; however, we don’t want to send this bill to conference. It’s hard to say exactly what’s going to happen, but we’re very limited on what we can do.”

If a compromise can’t be reached, Republicans have one tool at their disposal to end the filibuster: invoking a rarely-used procedural tactic called moving the “previous question.” This immediately ends debate and forces a vote, but Republicans know doing so could have long-term consequences on how the Senate functions.

Moving the “previous question” is still on the table, Koenig said, but it remains a last resort.

Not all Republicans are looking for a showdown over the initiative petition bill. 

Asked Tuesday if he feels any personal urgency to pass the bill, state Sen. Justin Brown, a Rolla Republican, said: “I don’t.”

Senate Democrats have argued invoking the previous question would be an outrage, as  they’ve worked in good faith with Republicans all session — including ending a filibuster of the initiative petition bill earlier this year after ballot candy was removed.

It would be especially outrageous, Democrats contend, because the Senate Freedom Caucus has used the filibuster and other procedural maneuvers to undermine GOP leadership in the chamber and cause gridlock.

A month after Senate Democrats ended a 21-hour filibuster when Republicans agreed to a paired down initiative petition bill, the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman of Arnold, asked a House committee to put the ballot candy back in.

Senate Democrats said they’d been double crossed, so they retaliated by shutting down Senate business for the day.

Rizzo said if the Republicans invoke the previous question, the consequences could last into next session. While he is not returning to the chamber in 2025, Rizzo said Democrats should play by the Freedom Caucus’s rules next year.

“I would definitely try to do everything I could to be the most disruptive,” Rizzo said during his second filibuster shift Tuesday morning. “ … Because there is no reason to go to work if you’re not getting the stuff you want or work in good faith because it’s clearly not rewarded.”

Fate of ‘game changer’ women’s health care bill in hands of Missouri Senate

The Senate gridlock stems from the likelihood that Missouri voters will have the chance to vote to re-establish the constitutional right to abortion later this year. A campaign to legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability in recently submitted more than 380,000 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State’s office, paving the way for the issue to land on the November ballot.

Republicans hope that by raising the threshold needed to pass citizen-led ballot measures, they will be able to defeat the abortion vote. 

In a video posted to social media Tuesday, state Sen. Bill Eigel, a Republican from Weldon Spring, said he’d been up all night “defending liberty.”

“We’re going to make (the Democrats) continue to talk until they’re ready to see initiative petition reform go to the people of this state,” Eigel said. “And we’re going to protect our Constitution. We’re going to protect it from the abortionists who want to enshrine a culture of death into the founding document of the state.”

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this story. 

Missouri State Board of Education members look line by line at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education budget Tuesday morning during their board meeting (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education anticipates asking lawmakers for more money later this year in order to meet the demands of a massive new education law and make up for reduced federal funding.

“My gut is… because you have a lot of federal authority deleted… ​​you’ll see the mother of all supplemental budgets, probably in a special session,” State Board of Education Chair Charlie Shields, of St. Joseph, said during Tuesday’s board meeting.

The budget approved by lawmakers for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is more than $1 billion short of the current year’s appropriation, despite a 3.2% bump in pay for the education department’s employees. 

This is before any possible vetoes or budget withholds by Gov. Mike Parson.

Kari Monsees, the department’s commissioner of financial and administrative services, told the board that a “common theme” of the budget was reductions in federal funding. And that impacts the amount of general revenue required next year, he said.

“Is that normal?” Mary Schrag, a board member from West Plains asked. “Is it considered realistic that we’re not going to use all those federal funds moving forward from year to year?”

Some items usually funded by federal money may be part of a supplemental request, Monsees said. He is most worried about the child-care-subsidy program, which encourages child care providers to serve low-income families.

The budget approved by lawmakers last week gives the department almost $260 million for two child care subsidies — a reduction of $23.4 million from current funding. The amount pulled from the state’s general revenue fund is stagnant between the fiscal years, showing a reduction in federal funding.

“We are seeing the case loads increase to the point where we’re going to need some of that capacity moving forward,” Monsees said. “It lowers the overall state budget by reducing some of those federal funds. The question is, is there enough left there?”

House Budget Chair Cody Smith, a Republican from Carthage, told reporters in a press conference last week that the House consolidated federal fund requests based on how much was used in the previous year. According to budget documents, the program has a projected 92% utilization rate in the upcoming fiscal year. .

The budget, which squeaked through hours before the constitutional deadline, doesn’t include provisions of an omnibus education bill recently signed into law by Parson. 

The bill at its core expands the K-12 tax-credit scholarships called MOScholars. But it also includes public-education priorities like a raise to the base teacher pay and scholarships for future educators. House lawmakers, in a floor debate on the legislation, wondered if there would be enough money in the state’s budget in future years to help districts raise teacher salaries and other costly provisions.

Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge, a board member from Pasadena Hills, noted the law’s projected price tag of $468 million when fully implemented.

“Do you feel like this budget adequately incorporates all the mandates that are outlined in this bill?” she asked Monsees. “There is a lot of concern from the educational community that there are a lot of unfunded mandates in this bill.”

A couple items, like expanding the small school grant program and providing lunch to pre-k students, are unfunded, Monsees said. He anticipates requesting the funding in a supplemental budget.

The mandated raise to teachers base pay doesn’t take effect until fiscal year 2026, he said. The state has been offering an opt-in matching grant program to raise teacher pay to $38,000, subject to annual reappropriation. This year, that amount will bump up to $40,000 before the new law forces districts to raise salaries with a grant program that will also require funds annually.

“The requests that you’re gonna see for fiscal year (2026) will be significant,” Monsees told board members. “It was going to be significant anyway, and (the new law) makes it where it will be an even bigger request.”

Shields also foresees budget woes.

“I think you are two to three years out from having a huge challenge,” he said.

Shields and Monsees agreed that they had never seen a budget process like the one that occurred last week, with closed-door negotiations and without a conference committee where lawmakers openly compromise on the budget.

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this report.

Sen. Lauren Arthur of Kansas City speaks during a 2023 debate in the Missouri Senate (photo courtesy of Senate Communications).

A Democratic filibuster of legislation making it harder for Missourians to amend the state constitution through citizen-led initiatives stretched through the night and into its 15th hour Tuesday morning. 

Though Democrats oppose the changes to the initiative petition process, their filibuster was focused on GOP efforts to include “ballot candy” that would add unrelated issues about immigrants voting and foreign fundraising to the question that would appear on the statewide ballot. 

Unless Republicans agree to ditch all of the ballot candy — which was removed when the Senate originally passed the bill in March — Democrats have vowed to block all action in the Senate until the legislative session adjourns at 6 p.m. Friday. 

“Since it is forever,” state Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, said of the amendment. “This is worth fighting and trying to stop.” 

Republicans show no signs of backing down on the ballot candy, raising the odds that the Senate will be unable to pass anything else before adjourning.

“There is a hope that we are able to find a resolution to move forward so that the rest of session is able to operate,” state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold sponsoring the initiative petition bill.

If the bill clears the legislature, it would go on the statewide ballot, most likely in August. 

Missourians would be asked whether they want to require constitutional amendments be approved by both a majority of votes statewide and a majority of votes in a majority of the state’s eight congressional districts.

Currently, amendments pass with a simple majority.

Republicans have pushed to change the initiative petition process for years, but the effort picked up steam more recently as a campaign to restore abortion access in Missouri advanced closer to appearing on the ballot. 

These lawmakers on the right have said that without eliminating the simple majority, abortion would likely become legal again. Missouri was the first state to outlaw abortion in nearly every circumstance in June 2022 after Roe v. Wade was overturned. 

Democrats say the initiative petition process gives voice to citizens when elected officials aren’t acting on the will of the people.

“There must be some serious concerns that this isn’t the will of the people – the majority of the folks in the state of Missouri want autonomy over their bodies,” said state Sen. Steve Roberts, a St. Louis Democrat. “Otherwise why would you lead a misguided effort to confuse voters to make it more difficult to have their voices heard?”

Threat of the previous question

In addition to the changes to the initiative petition process, the bill being blocked in the Senate would ask Missourians if they want to bar non-citizens from voting and ban foreign entities from contributing to or sponsoring constitutional amendments. 

Non-citizens have been barred from voting in Missouri since 1924. Federal law already bans foreign entities from getting involved.

Arthur said these “are not real threats,” but rather “scary hypotheticals.”

During Senate debate Monday, Democratic state Sen. John Rizzo of Independence said he’s been approached by Republicans trying to negotiate to take some, but not all, of the ballot candy. 

“No,” Rizzo said he told them. “I’m not deceiving voters just a little bit.”Arthur replied that Democrats will only end the filibuster if the ballot candy is completely removed, or if they’re forced to through a “previous question,” a rarely-used procedural maneuver to cut off a filibuster and force a vote on a bill.

The previous question is considered a last resort in the Senate because the response is typically total gridlock as Democrats would use the chamber’s rules to derail the rest of the legislative session. 

During a television interview broadcast Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin referred to the previous question motion as the “nuclear” option, saying she hasn’t made a decision yet whether to use it to pass initiative petition legislation or not. 

But last week, state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican and a member of the Missouri Freedom Caucus, said his party is ready to use “any means necessary” to pass the initiative petition bill.

Republicans have said the change is necessary, arguing Missouri’s constitution is too easy to change, and that passing this amendment would give more voice to rural voters. Democrats say the bill is an attack on the concept of “one person, one vote.”

Senate Democrats on Monday continued to argue that such a constitutional change would make it virtually impossible for citizen-led ballot measures to ever be successful. 

A February analysis by The Independent found that under the concurrent majority standard being proposed by Republicans, as few as 23% of voters could defeat a ballot measure. This was done by looking at the majority in the four districts with the fewest number of voters in 2020 and 2022.

State Sen. Tracy McCreery, an Olivette Democrat, cited this story on Monday afternoon, saying that this outcome “should raise alarms.”

“It will make politicians even more powerful,” McCreery said. “It takes power away from the people and puts way more power into the hands of politicians.”

At about 4 a.m., Rizzo took the floor again for his second filibuster shift this week.

“I don’t see the end in sight any time soon,” he said.

“Unfortunately we have to be here in the last week of session as bills are dying minute by minute, and lobbyists are probably running around somewhere here in a few hours screaming and yelling about why their bills are dying,” Rizzo said. “Because they can’t live without ballot candy.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson begins the annual State of the State speech to a joint session of the legislature on Wednesday with House Speaker Dean Plocher and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe beside him (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

For the second year in a row, the fate of a bill creating new child care tax credits — one of Gov. Mike Parson’s top legislative priorities — is in the hands of a faction of Republicans in the Missouri Senate. 

Designed to help improve access and affordability of child care, the package of child care tax credits has received bipartisan support and was the first bill approved by the House this year. 

But that bill, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Brenda Shields of St. Joseph, stalled in the Senate. Democratic state Sen. Lauren Arthur’s version of the legislation hasn’t fared any better. 

With the legislative session ending at 6 p.m. Friday, and gridlock expected in the Senate, the odds of the bill making it to the governor’s desk are slim. 

A similar dynamic killed the legislation last year. 

“Hope remains,” Arthur said Friday. “But things are still up in the air.” 

The governor has pushed the legislation as a way to help parents in the workforce, highlighting the proposal in his last two State of the State addresses to the legislature. The legislation has also gained support from child advocacy organizations, chambers of commerce and business groups, and received little opposition in committee hearings this year. 

Casey Hanson, director of outreach and engagement at the child advocacy nonprofit Kids Win Missouri, which has advocated in support of the legislation, said she’s trying to stay optimistic. 

But this session, Hanson said, is looking increasingly like 2023.

“Same roadblocks. Same characters,” she said. “Different year.”

‘It’s welfare’

A proposal by Arthur to add the child care tax credits bill onto another bill as an amendment was shut down by the Missouri Freedom Caucus last week.

State Sen. Bill Eigel, a Republican from Weldon Spring who is running for governor, characterized Parson’s child care priorities as promoting a larger government and making it “a great time to be a Democrat in Jefferson City.”

“…And it’s not to actually protect the rights of the children. In this case it’s to give them something,” Eigel continued. “In this case it’s, well, we want to give away free child care.”

State Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican and a member of the Freedom Caucus, also spoke in opposition to the proposal, saying “government created all the regulations that literally decimated the child care industry” and now government is trying to “swoop in” to fix a problem it caused.

State Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican from Ash Grove, later piled on.

“I think it is welfare,” Moon said, adding that he and his wife decided she would stay home with their children years ago. “We should be establishing an environment so our families can take care of themselves and their children on their own dime.”

Eigel has alluded to a potential compromise between the Freedom Caucus and the sponsors of the child care tax credits legislation. Arthur said she has been in ongoing conversations with him about finding a compromise between his desire for personal property tax cuts and her child care tax credits. 

But she admitted their idea of a reasonable middle ground will likely be very different.

“I’m frustrated that I have to defend legislation that working families are desperate for,” Arthur said. “Meanwhile my male colleagues get on the floor and decry the idea that government is going to play any role in trying to make child care more affordable and available.” 

But the likeliest roadblock to the legislation finally heading to the governor’s desk is a Senate bill hoping to make it more difficult to amend the state’s constitution by way of citizen-led initiative petition. 

That top priority for Republicans is likely to cause strife between parties in the last week of session, potentially halting any other legislation from moving forward. 

Democrats have vowed to filibuster the legislation as Republicans threaten to invoke an unpopular and rarely-used tactic called moving the “previous question” to force a vote on the bill. 

If Republicans do that, Arthur said Friday, “ultimately they’re deciding that nothing else is going to get done.”

‘I can’t find care’

As the Senate runs up against the session deadline, emails supporting her child care tax credits bill continue to pour into Shields’ inbox.  

“It’s not affordable for me to go to work,” some say. Others send pleas: “I can’t find care.”

Those who have been able to find affordable child care lament that the quality of care isn’t up to their standards. Other Missourians relayed stories of their child care provider closing their doors with less than 30 days notice, leaving them scrambling to find a new provider.

Shields often cites a 2021 U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation study that found lack of accessible and quality child care forced many Missouri parents to change or leave their workplace. The foundation determined this workforce disruption cost the state more than $1.3 billion annually. 

She feels for those families. Thirty-five years ago, Shields said, she faced a similar choice between her career and being a mother. She wanted both, and, thanks to a last-minute child care opening in St. Joseph, she got both. 

An investigation of child care spending by The Independent and MuckRock last year found that almost half of Missouri’s children under age five, or about 202,000 children, live in child care deserts, with one or fewer child care openings for every three children. 

The average cost of full-time center-based care for an infant in Missouri was $11,059 as of 2022, according to Child Care Aware. Meanwhile staff at child care facilities often make just over minimum wage, presenting a challenge to hiring and retention. 

“If we want to grow our economy,” Shields told The Independent on Wednesday. “It requires us to help people get back to work.”

Her bill would add three tax credits: 

• The “Child Care Contribution” tax credit would let those who donate to child care providers receive a credit equal to 75% of their donation, up to $200,000 in tax credits. 
• The “Employer Provided Child Care Assistance” would encourage partnerships between businesses whose employees need child care and providers by allowing employers to receive tax credits equivalent to 30% of qualifying child care expenditures. 
• The “Child Care Providers Tax Credit” would allow child care providers to claim a tax credit equal to the provider’s employer withholding tax and up to 30% of a provider’s capital expenditures on costs like expanding or renovating their facilities. 

Kids Win Missouri recently embarked on a community project highlighting child care needs in several counties across the state. This included Shields’ hometown of St. Joseph.

There, in surveying community members and providers, they found that there are only enough child care slots available for 29% of infants and toddlers, and 69% of pre-kindergarteners and 53% of other preschoolers. Families in the county, on average, put at least 20% of their income toward child care costs. 

To survive this “massive societal crisis,” said Hanson, with Kids Win Missouri, it will take everyone, especially as the state approaches a fiscal cliff leaving it without the same levels of COVID-era federal funding in place now.

Child care subsidies 

Parson’s push to expand access to child care also included higher payments for subsidized care. To fund it, Parson asked lawmakers for an extra $51.7 million in the coming year, which followed a $78 million boost to funding in the current year.

Ultimately, the increase was funded, but not in the way the governor requested.

The budget includes language authorizing increased rates, House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith said in a news conference after the budget was passed.

The additional funding sought by Parson was based on every eligible parent using their benefits, Smith said. Instead, the budget allows higher rates by assuming that some money would otherwise be unspent.

If demand for the subsidy increases, lawmakers will have to return to the table to discuss ways to continue funding the increase in the future.

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade said Democrats are still trying to calculate whether there are funding shortfalls.

Quade said despite child care being a persistent issue, the legislature failed to address the shortage in a meaningful way.

“We know there are too many Republicans in positions of power in this state who do not believe that I have a voice in this room, that I should not be elected, standing here as a mother, and I should be at home,” Quade said. “And I’m tired of them telling us that.”

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed.

Sen. Holly Rehder, R-Scott City, presents a resolution on the Senate floor Feb. 12 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Lawmakers trying to ban child marriage in Missouri hope a last-minute push in the legislative session’s final days can overcome opposition from some Republicans that put the bill’s chances in doubt. 

A bill outlawing 16 and 17 years old from getting married stalled in a House committee when a handful of Republicans voiced opposition. There are five days left before lawmakers adjourn for the year.

Republican state Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder of Scott City told The Independent last week that a last-ditch effort to save the legislation could take place as early as Monday, when she expects it to be added as an amendment to another bill. 

“There’s more opposition than I thought there would be,” she said. “But you know, I think that overall, it’s generational, and I haven’t had any women opposed come and talk to me about this.”

Under current Missouri law, anyone under 16 is prohibited from getting married. But 16 and 17 year olds can get married with parental consent to anyone under 21.

Those in favor of the ban argue child marriage is coercive and can transform into forced marriage, especially because children lack the legal rights of adulthood. Almost all minors married to adults are girls, data shows, and child marriage is associated with higher rates of dropping out of high school and later poverty.

But while Rehder’s bill, which she co-sponsored with Democratic state Sen. Lauren Arthur of Kansas City, sailed through the Senate nearly unanimously, it is stuck in a House committee due to critics who say a ban constitutes government overreach and would clash with parental rights. 

Fraidy Reiss, an activist who founded the nonprofit against forced marriage Unchained at Last and has been active in testifying in support of the bill in Missouri, called the opposition “horrifying.”

“How can anybody be opposed to legislation that costs nothing, harms no one and ends a human rights abuse?” Fraidy said in an interview with The Independent. “It is shameful it has not already passed and shameful that we’re coming up against the end of the legislative session. And we still don’t know for sure whether legislators are going to do this.”

Proponents hope to tack on the child marriage ban as an amendment to another of Rehder’s bills that deals with children. Rehder said she wants a roll call vote on the amendment, rather than a voice vote, which would show exactly how many and which legislators are opposed.

Republican state Rep. Jim Murphy of St. Louis chairs the House committee where the child marriage ban is stuck. He told The Independent that he supports ending child marriage but doesn’t have the votes to advance the bill to the full House. 

Murphy said he was “surprised” that changing the minimum age of marriage from 16 to 18 got as much pushback as it did. 

State Rep. Dean Van Schoiack, Republican of Savannah and the vice chair of the committee, was one of the voices in opposition.

“It’s government intrusion in people’s lives,” he said in an interview with The Independent on Friday. 

Asked what would be lost if 16 and 17 year olds couldn’t get marriage permits anymore, Van Schoiack replied, “Liberties that people currently have.”

“After what’s been through the press and what people are doing, I’m not changing my position now,” he said. “I don’t typically change my mind very easily.”

Other lawmakers who voiced concerns about the bill in committee include GOP state Reps. Ben Baker of Neosho and Mitch Boggs of LaRussell.

Rehder said the concerns about government overreach are “ridiculous” because the state government already sets a minimum age, “so why not set it at the age of when you’re an adult?”

“To me, a parent should not be signing their child into a lifetime commitment. That’s a decision you make for yourself as an adult,” said Rehder, who got married at 15 and has said she didn’t realize at the time she was not operating under an adult mindset.

Until the legislature voted to raise the minimum marriage age to 16 in 2018, Missouri had among the most lenient child marriage laws in the nation — making it an especially popular state for 15-year-olds to travel to be married.

Despite the 2018 change, Missouri law still does not align with international human rights standards, which set the minimum age at 18. 

Fraidy said around 70 minors every year are entered into marriage in Missouri.

“There’s no input required from the minor when they’re married — it’s their parent signing a form. There’s no recourse for a teen that doesn’t want to marry.

“And then once they’re married, they’re trapped because they can’t even file for divorce. So it’s about ending this nightmarish legal trap,” Fraidy said.

Missouri would join 12 states that have in recent years banned child marriage if the legislation passes.

Rehder said she hopes the House will attach the ban to a wide-ranging bill about children that bars the state from seizing foster children’s Social Security benefits. That bill will be handled by Republican state Rep. Wendy Hausman, Rehder said. Republican state Rep. Chris Dinkins, who is handling the House version of the child marriage bill, will be working to help Hausman get the amendment on, Rehder said. 

Timing is critical, as any changes to the bill would require it to return to the Senate, which has been bogged down in gridlock for much of the legislative session. 

All bills must be approved and sent to the governor by 6 p.m. Friday. 

Republicans want to ensure that only U.S. citizens can vote, but the Missouri Constitution and voting requirements from the secretary of state’s office already outline that requirement (Getty Images).

There’s been a steady push by Republicans this legislative session to regulate voting laws in Missouri.

It isn’t new, but it’s been gaining steam.

The bills seek to regulate — or restrict — provisions around who can vote and how, the way votes are counted and other matters related to election security.

Almost all aim to address concerns that either don’t exist or to prevent changes from ever happening.

Republicans want to ensure that only U.S. citizens can vote, but the Missouri Constitution and voting requirements from the secretary of state’s office already outline that requirement.

Republicans want to ban foreign governments from funding constitutional amendments, but the Missouri Constitution addresses foreign influence in elections as well.

Republicans want to ramp up election security by creating a new division that would investigate claims of election fraud, but such division already exists and has been active for more than 10 years.

Republicans want to ban ranked-choice voting, but the voting practice is not established in state law. St. Louis practices a version of it for local elections.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that is often cited by Republicans, has ranked Missouri sixth nationally in its Election Integrity Scorecard.

What is driving Republicans to pursue these voting measures?

For one lawmaker, it’s about election integrity. For another, it’s about being proactive.

Opponents say these efforts are driven by “anti-immigrant bigotry” and a desire for “consolidation of power.”

Justifying causes

Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg Republican, has been vocal all session about amending the Missouri Constitution to clarify that only U.S. citizens can vote in Missouri. He takes issue with language in the state constitution that he believes isn’t clear enough on who can and cannot vote in the state.

Article 8 Section 2 of the Missouri Constitution states that “All citizens of the United States … over the age of eighteen who are residents of this state … are entitled to vote.” Hoskins wants “All” changed to “Only” to tame the possibility of noncitizens voting in elections.

But opponents say the constitution is unambiguous on the issue and point to what they believe is behind this rhetoric.

“That just taps into this whole anti-immigrant bigotry fueled by (former President Donald) Trump and is kind of the norm in our American society today,” said Rep. David Tyson Smith, a Democrat from Columbia.

“You keep pushing this envelope, like, ‘How far can I push this?’ and that leads to other things,” Smith added. “And that’s dangerous.”

Hoskins might get his wish later this year if a proposal aiming to increase the threshold needed to approve constitutional amendments gets one more affirmative vote in the Senate.

In addition to the threshold requirement, the proposal, sponsored by Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold, would ask voters whether the constitution should be changed to reflect that only U.S. citizens can vote on constitutional amendments and to ban constitutional amendments sponsored by foreign governments.

The proposal has been a focus of Democrats who claim the intention of the two latter provisions is to mislead voters and act as a distraction.

“It takes away from the conversation — and that’s the point of it,” said Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, a Democrat from Independence.

Rizzo, now in his 14th and final year in the legislature, said the push behind Coleman’s proposed changes to the threshold for approving constitutional amendments is driven in part by a desire for Republicans to consolidate power.

“They have had the supermajority for so long now that the only thing left for them to take away is the ability for people to go around them,” he said. “It just drives them crazy that there is an ability for people to have a voice in government that doesn’t go through them.”

Hoskins has an opposite point of view.

“What we’ve seen is, since Missouri has become a more red Republican state, the minority and out-of-state special interests have come in and sponsored some ballot measures in order to try and get something passed,” Hoskins said.

“So it seems like the liberal special interests are, since they can’t get stuff through the legislature because we have supermajorities of all Republicans … they’re coming in and trying to bypass the legislature and put something on the ballot,” he said.

Out of all the proposals by Republicans this session aimed at regulating voting, Coleman’s has drawn the most opposition and scorn. But it isn’t the only one.

Preemptive or premature?

Ranked-choice voting does not occur in Missouri. It’s a practice where voters rank their preferred candidates on one ballot so their votes can be redistributed among top vote getters until a winner is declared after receiving a majority of the vote. Yet Republicans want it banned, saying it’s too confusing.

“I don’t see a good justification to insert a great deal of chaos into the ballot box,” said Rep. Alex Riley, a Springfield Republican.

Riley said he fears ranked-choice voting would create unnecessary turmoil for voters who might not follow the necessary steps needed to fill in a ballot.

The proposal to ban ranked-choice voting, sponsored by Sen. Ben Brown, a Republican Washington, is one vote away from being placed on the ballot and has received increased attention this session partly because, similar to Coleman’s bill, it would also ask voters whether the state constitution should be amended to allow only U.S. citizens to vote.

But whereas Coleman’s proposal only addresses constitutional amendments when referring to the citizenship requirement, Brown’s proposal includes all voting in the state.

Smith, who’s had a front-row seat to discussions regarding voting as a member of the House Elections and Elected Officials Committee, doesn’t see the point.

“We don’t have an epidemic of voting problems in America with undocumented people voting,” he said. “That’s not an epidemic, that’s not a problem, that’s not a crisis.”

Smith is correct as far as Missouri’s concerned.

“I’m not aware of that sort of activity on any kind of a large scale,” said JoDonn Chaney, director of communications for the secretary of state’s office, referring to non-U.S. citizens voting in Missouri.

Still, Republicans say they want to be proactive.

“Putting some additional protections within the constitution itself … whether we have massive numbers of illegal immigrants voting in Missouri, I can’t point to that and say, ‘Yeah, we do.’ I can’t say that we don’t. I think that’d be really hard to tell,” Riley said.

“But, to address that issue going forward … it makes sense to me to put some additional language, some additional safeguards in the state constitution itself,” he said.

Republicans take a similar approach of placing protective measures around foreign governments’ ability to make contributions to election campaigns or ballot initiatives.

Hoskins, a candidate for secretary of state, said he believes foreign interference in elections is occurring in Missouri. But when asked if he could provide an example, Hoskins said he couldn’t because of the complexity of the process.

“I believe that foreign governments would not just give directly to one PAC that is promoting or trying to kill an initiative or something that’s on the ballot,” he said.

“It’s probably funneled through a million different ways, four or five different LLCs or companies or PACs or non-for-profits before it actually got to the place where they bought the ads or radio, TV, social media, newspaper, whatever it is,” Hoskins said. “And that’s where it’s very tough to follow the money trail.”

Elizabeth Ziegler, executive director of the Missouri Ethics Commission, which is charged with overseeing campaign finance reports, said the agency doesn’t have “any final enforcement actions toward contributions (to) campaign finance committees from foreign nationals.”

Article 8 Section 23, paragraph (16) of the Missouri Constitution also provides protections against contributions made by foreign governments, whether they go toward a candidate committee, campaign committee or a ballot measure:

“(16) No campaign committee, candidate committee, continuing committee, exploratory committee, political party committee, and political party shall knowingly accept contributions from:

(a) Any natural person who is not a citizen of the United States;

(b) A foreign government; or

(c) Any foreign corporation that does not have the authority to transact business in this state pursuant to chapter 347, RSMo, as amended from time to time.”

‘People versus politicians’

Peverill Squire, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, said there are two underlying reasons he believes are behind Republicans’ motivation to push measures intended to make it harder to vote.

“First, it is a way to appeal to GOP primary voters,” Squire said. “Republican incumbents want to make sure that they are not vulnerable to a challenge from their right. Second, there is a calculation that making voting harder will hurt Democratic voters more than Republican voters, though that may not prove to be the case.”

This is an election year for state offices and many Republican incumbents who are termed-out in the legislature are running for various statewide offices. As a result, rhetoric on the Senate floor this session has been filled with talk that sounded more and more like campaign speeches.

“Ultimately, this push, it’s more of the national narrative bleeding down into the state,” said Connor Luebbert, a lead advocate for the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition.

Or it just may be a fight between people and their politicians.

“In the baseball game of politics,” Rizzo said, “it’s people versus politicians and the politicians want their home runs to count for double.”

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

House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith, R-Carthage, speaks Friday at a news conference after passage of the $51.7 billion state budget, accompanied by House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

When the final budget votes were over Friday and the constitutional deadline was met, Missouri House Republicans crowed about holding the line on spending while Democrats accused the GOP of failing the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

A budget process that had the least public input in years — with just a pro-forma public hearing in the House and no calls for public testimony by Senate budget writers — left no one pleased with the process. But House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith said he was proud of the $51.7 billion plan that spent less than the $52.7 billion Gov. Mike Parson proposed in January.

“While we have a very good final product, the process left something to be desired,” Smith said at a news conference with other Republicans.

The final votes were taken with about three hours to go before the constitutional deadline for passing a budget. The details of the final 17 spending bills — one to fund programs through June and the remainder to fund next year’s operations and construction — only emerged Thursday when the Senate began voting.

Factional warfare among Senate Republicans meant that chamber never debated the bills produced by the Senate Appropriations Committee. There was no formally appointed bipartisan, bicameral conference committee to negotiate differences between the chambers. 

Instead, Smith and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Lincoln Hough ironed out the details in days of private negotiations. There are usually preliminary talks like that before the conference committee, but the decisions are then aired one at a time and other members can question the result or seek a change.

“This year’s budget process was a complete disaster and a terrible precedent to be set,” House Democratic Leader Crystal Quade of Springfield said at a news conference after the House adjourned. “We cannot allow the new normal for spending taxpayer money to become just two guys writing a budget and secret and then jamming it through the process at the very last minute, full of pork and appeasing lobbyists, but the most vulnerable among us are everyday citizens not being included.”

The budget plan taps the state’s accumulated surplus to spend $15.3 billion in general revenue. By putting a “one-time” designation on $1.35 billion of the $14.6 billion allocated for state operations in the coming year, Smith was able to say the budget uses no more for ongoing programs than the state expects in tax receipts.

The designation is on the $363.7 in general revenue that will be put in a fund for improving Interstate 44, a project Smith, a Carthage Republican running for state treasurer, inserted into the budget. It is also on $336.2 million that funds the Medicaid managed care program.

There are also one-time designations on $580 million in spending from federal and other funds. The smallest is $1,613 for the expense and equipment needs of the Department of Social Services’s Division of Legal Services, paid from federal funds.

“The designation of anything one time is just a signal to the world that we’re paying for it this year and we may not be doing it next year,” Smith said.

Democrats, however, said in many instances it is a false economy.

“Several lawmakers running in Republican primaries for statewide office want to be able to claim credit for imposing big cuts in state spending,” said Quade, a candidate for governor. “But all they really did was lowball the estimated costs of several state programs that everyone who is being honest about the situation knows will require substantially more spending authority to fully fund.”

Before Senate votes on the budget began Thursday, Parson said his budget staff had no idea what was in the final budget crafted by Smith and Hough. If the budget fails to adequately fund state operations, Parson said he would not leave it to his successor to fill in the gaps.

The majority of the cuts to Parson’s January budget proposal were in three departments – Health and Senior Services, Mental Health and Social Services. Total funding for those agencies is $829 million below the amounts requested by Parson. 

One cut was to funding for personal care assistance intended to help elderly people and people with disabilities remain in their home, reduced by $86 million. Another was to the overall managed care budget, which is about $500 million below Parson’s request.

While those cuts were being made, the budget includes almost 300 new earmarked items, costing more than $2 billion, sprinkled throughout the 16 appropriation bills for the coming year. The largest is $727.5 million Smith inserted for I-44 improvements

“Lobbyists got paid and poor people got screwed,” said the House’s second ranking Democrat, Rep. Richard Brown of Kansas City.

On many of the bills, large numbers of Democrats voted “present” to protest the process that produced the budget.