The Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, Oct. 15, spoke to the Economic Club of Chicago. In this photo, he speaks to attendees during a campaign rally at the Mosack Group warehouse on Sept. 25 in Mint Hill, North Carolina (Brandon Bell/Getty Images).

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump defended his plans for steep tariffs on Tuesday, arguing economists who say that those higher costs would get passed onto consumers are incorrect and that his proposals would benefit American manufacturing.

During an argumentative hour-long interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago, Trump vehemently denied tariffs on certain imported goods would lead to further spikes in inflation and sour America’s relationship with allies, including those in Europe.

“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States, and build a factory in the United States so it doesn’t have to pay the tariff,” Trump said.

Micklethwait questioned Trump about what would happen to consumer prices during the months or even years it would take companies to build factories in the United States and hire workers.

Trump responded that he could make tariffs “so high, so horrible, so obnoxious that they’ll come right away.” Earlier during the interview, Trump mentioned placing tariffs on foreign-made products as high as 100% or 200%.

Smoot-Hawley memories

Micklethwait noted during the interview that 40 million jobs and 27% of gross domestic product within the United States rely on trade, questioning how tariffs on those products would help the economy.

He also asked Trump if his plans for tariffs could lead the country down a similar path to the one that followed the Smoot-Hawley tariff law becoming law in June 1930. Signed by President Herbert Hoover, some historians and economists have linked the law to the beginning of the Great Depression.

Trump disagreed with Micklethwait, though he didn’t detail why his proposals to increase tariffs on goods from adversarial nations as well as U.S. allies wouldn’t begin a trade war.

The U.S. Senate’s official explainer on the Smoot-Hawley tariffs describes the law as being “among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history.” And the Congressional Research Services notes in a report on U.S. tariff policy that it was the last time lawmakers set tariff rates.

Desmond Lachman, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank, wrote last month that Trump’s proposal to implement tariffs of at least 60% on goods imported from China as well as 10 to 20% on all other imports could have severe economic consequences.

“It is difficult to see how such a unilateral trade policy in flagrant violation of World Trade Organization rules would not lead to retaliation by our trade partners with import tariff increases of their own,” Lachman wrote. “As in the 1930s, that could lead us down the destructive path of beggar-my-neighbor trade policies that could cause major disruption to the international trade system. Such an occurrence would be particularly harmful to our export industries and would heighten the chances of both a US and worldwide economic recession.”

CRS notes in its reports that while the Constitution grants Congress the authority to establish tariffs, lawmakers have given the president some authority over it as well.

The United States’ membership in the World Trade Organization and various other trade agreements also have “tariff-related commitments,” according to CRS.

“For more than 80 years, Congress has delegated extensive tariff-setting authority to the President,” the CRS report states. “This delegation insulated Congress from domestic pressures and led to an overall decline in global tariff rates. However, it has meant that the U.S. pursuit of a low-tariff, rules-based global trading system has been the product of executive discretion. While Congress has set negotiating goals, it has relied on Presidential leadership to achieve those goals.”

The presidency and the Fed

Trump said during the interview that he believes the president should have more input into whether the Federal Reserve raises or lowers interest rates, though he didn’t answer a question about keeping Jerome Powell as the chairman through the end of his term.

“I think I have the right to say I think he should go up or down a little bit,” Trump said. “I don’t think I should be allowed to order it. But I think I have the right to put in comments as to whether or not interest rates should go up or down.”

Trump declined to answer a question about whether he’s spoken with Russian leader Vladimir Putin since leaving office.

“I don’t comment on that,” Trump said. “But I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

Journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his new book “War” that Trump and Putin have spoken at least seven times and that Trump secretly sent Putin COVID-19 tests during the pandemic, which the Kremlin later confirmed, according to several news reports.

Trump said the presidential race will likely come down to Pennsylvania, Michigan and possibly Arizona.

The Economic Club of Chicago has also invited Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for a sit-down interview.

Members of KC Tenants held a picket event outside Quality Hill Towers on Oct. 4 (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).

Nearly 200 tenants launched a rent strike at the start of this month over what they see as intolerable living conditions at two large apartment buildings in Kansas City and Independence.

The renters at Quality Hill Towers and Independence Towers are demanding better upkeep, repairs, collectively bargained leases and capping annual rent hikes at 3% across the country for buildings backed with federally secured loans.

The Beacon has put together a guide breaking down who’s involved, what tenants want and what’s at stake.

When was the last tenant strike in Kansas City?

The last high-profile rent strike in Kansas City came in August 1980. More than 500 residents withheld their rent for four days to demand new management at Vista Del Rio retirement complex.

Where can I report issues in my rental unit?

Tenants in Kansas City, Missouri, can report maintenance problems to the city’s Healthy Homes Rental Inspection Program by calling 311 or 816-513-6464 or at the city Health Department at 2400 Troost Ave. Healthy Homes covers complaints like water leaks, pests, mold and lack of heating. The Health Department can investigate and issue citations to landlords.

Residents in Independence can report unresolved issues through the city’s Rental Ready Program by completing and submitting a landlord/tenant complaint form to the Community Development Department. You can do this by emailing blicenses@indepmo.org or going to City Hall, 111 E. Maple Ave. A third-party inspector may then check for code violations. However, unresolved issues in approved properties, including Independence Towers, have raised concerns about the program’s effectiveness.

Tenants in buildings assisted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development can report issues by calling the Multifamily Housing Complaint Line at 1-800-685-8470.

Do Kansas City tenants have the right to strike?

In Missouri, a tenant has no right to withhold rent in most cases. If a tenant withholds rent payments until repairs are completed, the renter may be in violation of their lease and may be subject to eviction. However, there is a narrow exception that allows tenants to make specific repairs and deduct costs from rent, but only if the following conditions are met:

• The condition affects the sanitation, security or habitability of the property and violates city code. If a landlord disputes that, the tenant will need written verification of the violation from city inspectors.
• The tenant must have lived at the property for at least six consecutive months.
• The tenant must be up-to-date on all rent payments.
• The tenant cannot be in violation of the lease.
• The tenant has provided written notice of the problem to the landlord along with the tenant’s plan to fix it. The landlord then has 14 days to respond.
• If the landlord still does not fix the code violation within 14 days of receiving the notice, the tenant can proceed with repairs. In most cases, costs should be kept below $300 or half a month’s rent, whichever is higher.

If these criteria are not met, withholding rent could make a tenant vulnerable to eviction. However, evictions always require a court order, and tenants have the right to fight eviction in court.

What is Fannie Mae?

Independence Towers and Quality Hill Towers were bought through loans backed by the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae. Rather than lending directly to homebuyers, Fannie Mae buys loans from banks and other private lenders.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency regulates Fannie Mae by overseeing its policies and ensuring safe conditions in the properties it backs.

In May, Fannie Mae filed a lawsuit against 728 N Jennings Rd Partners LLC., the owner of Independence Towers. A Jackson County judge appointed Trigild Inc. as the receiver in charge of managing the property. Representatives with the FHFA say that Fannie Mae cannot directly instruct the receiver, but it can provide funding and offer guidance on necessary improvements based on its knowledge of the property.

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

Josh Payne closes the electric fence after 1,000 sheep pass through to a fresh paddock Sept. 3 at the Payne family farm in Concordia. Payne said that moving 1,000 sheep from paddock to paddock is easier than moving a small number (Cory W. MacNeil/Missourian).

Early on a cool September morning, farmer Josh Payne tends to his flock in Concordia, just east of Kansas City.  As Payne opens the gate, about a thousand sheep round the corner and bound into fresh grass.

The pasture the flock grazes was once corn and soybeans, along with the rest of the Payne family farm. Josh’s grandfather Charles Payne cultivated nearly a thousand acres of row crops for decades.

But as Josh Payne took over managing the property about 15 years ago, that wasn’t going to work anymore.

“I found out I’m allergic to herbicide,” he said. “My throat would swell shut three or four times a week during harvest.”

Payne wanted to transition the farm to regenerative agriculture — a movement that aims to revive farmland soil and by extension the ecosystem and the small farm economy.

He hoped that by changing what and how they farmed, it would reduce the need for chemical inputs and farm with nature. Josh told his grandfather they should use cover crops, graze sheep and plant an orchard. But Charles Payne wasn’t having it.

“I’m like, ‘Grandpa, we should do this.’ He’s like, ‘No, we’re not planting trees!’” Josh Payne said. “Literally. His phrase was, ‘I spent my whole life tearing out trees. We’re not gonna go plant them now.’”

Josh said he and his grandfather had similar disagreements, and even arguments, about many changes Josh hoped to make on the farm.

“We went through a really interesting process because I’m stubborn and he’s stubborn,” he said.

Mid-century farm revolution

Charles Payne, 96, came of age during an industrial and chemical revolution in agriculture. Like countless other Midwestern farmers, he heeded the advice from industry and government leaders to “plant fence row to fence row” to increase the production of commodities.

“And that’s what we did … tore out all the fences and hedgerows,” Charles Payne said. “Now I wish I had some of them back.”

U.S. agriculture production tripled in the latter half of the 20th century, due in part to chemical inputs. But that came with an environmental cost — soil degradation, water quality issues and a loss of biodiversity.

The resurgence of regenerative or environmentally sustainable agriculture is partially a response to the industry’s contribution to climate change and its susceptibility to it. There’s now a surge of funding, research and education to figure out how to scale regenerative agriculture and turn away from equipment and chemically intensive ways of cultivating crops.

But University of Missouri rural sociologist Mary Hendrickson said the way Charles Payne farmed was also a result of policy, research and methods encouraged by the industry at the time. Before the ecological consequences were understood, chemical inputs were “miracles” for a farm.

“Everybody who was going to be an advanced, innovative farmer, they were using chemicals for weed control, for pest control, for all of these things,” she said.

Hendrickson said for a certain generation of farmers, their skepticism or resistance to regenerative agriculture is a result of their lived experience. “There’s a reason why somebody who has lived through that transition says, ‘Wait, you want me to go back to what?” Hendrickson said.

The advice Charles Payne’s grandchildren, Josh and his sister Jordan Welch, are getting is sometimes the exact opposite of what he was told in his day.

Hendrickson said this isn’t unique to agriculture. There are many things in life that people do differently than their grandparents’ generation — such as cooking, cleaning or child rearing.

“The things that my mother did to raise me were not in vogue when I was born, and they were (again) 20 years later,” she said.

Generational legacy

Farming isn’t Josh Payne’s first vocation. After teaching English for years, he said he ended up back on the farm “completely accidentally” when his grandfather requested help managing the land about 15 years ago.

“When we got here it was a very, very conventional farm. Everything was commodity, corn and soy. Everything was Roundup ready. Everything was genetically modified,” Josh Payne said. “I call it growing nickels and dimes.”

Payne wasn’t exactly happy row cropping, and he was curious about trying other methods. But when he discovered his allergy to herbicides, it was a catalyst for change.

“Grandpa, I’m either going to have to go back to teaching or we’re going to have to completely change what we do,” he told Charles Payne.

The Paynes now rotationally graze their sheep among 800 chestnut trees — a method called “silvopasture,” which revives the soil by keeping living roots in the ground year round. They planted the trees eight years ago and are completing their third harvest.

Before the flock of sheep was added to the operation, the Paynes cultivated conventional crops in between the orchard rows that are spaced 30-feet apart — a regenerative method called alley cropping. The Paynes are still finding ways to grow and adapt, most recently by adding a produce garden.

Charles Payne has been farming the stretch of land in Concordia since 1956. He said corn, soy and wheat were the “going” crops at the time.

“We had some good years and we had some very poor years too,” he said.

Josh Payne said his grandfather has a deep knowledge of the land and the industry and now acts as a mentor and adviser to his grandkids.

Although he said he’s had to learn to bite his tongue at times during this transition, Charles Payne said he’s happy they are farming.

“That’s a good thing to have your grandkids farming where you left off,” Charles Payne said. “Of course, it’s a different way of farming, but they’re on the farm, and they seem to really enjoy it.”

For Charles and Josh Payne, the elder’s resistance to change and the younger’s desire for change were both motivated by the goal to keep the farm alive. Josh Payne said the markets for sheep and chestnuts are good and support jobs for him and his sister. He said they’re comparable to the markets his grandfather had for corn, soy and wheat decades ago.

“Grandpa, you made the right decisions for your time,” he said. “You were faithful to this land, to this place, to your family … but that just looks different now.”

Rural sociologist Hendrickson said in agriculture communities especially, there exists a generational pressure to farm and to succeed doing so.

“This identity as a farmer and the land and holding that for the next generation was significant for farmers,” she said.

For years farmers heard that to be successful in modern agriculture, they’d have to get big or get out. Payne thinks there’s another option.

“I think people either got to get big or get weird,” Josh Payne said. “We chose to get weird.”

‘The new old way’

Regenerative agriculture starts with the soil. The health of farm ground is connected to the financial viability and resiliency of the farm, said Chuck Rice, a professor at Kansas State University.

“We’ve lost 50% of our soil organic matter with 100 plus years of cultivation in the United States,” Rice said. “So we aren’t taking care of our soils.”

Methods like those Josh Payne has implemented on the Concordia farm revive — or regenerate — the soil and by extension the ecosystem. Regenerative agriculture methods aim to not only restore farmland to its prechemical and industrial state, but to help the land withstand the severe weather threats from climate change.

“Not only is the economy changing, but the climate’s changing,” Rice said. “I think if you’re staying with the same practices … ultimately you’re going to be losing out.”

Reducing or eliminating tillage of the soil, a practice called “no till,” is often the first step for farmers looking to operate more sustainably. Rice said market forces can sometimes jump start changes in the agriculture industry. In order to till fields, farmers need diesel fuel to power their equipment. That gas was highly priced during the 1970s fuel crisis, which made no till more popular, Rice said.

“There was a quick, rapid adoption of no till during that time period,” he said.

Two generations later, no till continues to steadily spread. Rice said Kansas farmers are leaders in no till operation, encompassing about 40% of the state’s farmed acres.

“We still haven’t reached its peak, but it’s one of the more common practices,” Rice said.

Cody Jolliff is a farm historian and the CEO of the Midwest Center for Regenerative Agriculture at Powell Gardens, a botanical garden in Kansas City.

The Powell Gardens’ Midwest Center for Regenerative Agriculture is creating a living laboratory for farmers to come to Kansas City and get hands-on experience in regenerative agriculture methods. Or as Jolliff said, to learn “the new old way” to farm.

He said in many ways, regenerative agriculture is a return to the farming of another era.

“It’s really interesting though, because as we are going to these super modern methods, they also have a lot of resemblance to old methods,” he said.

Before the Civil War, over half of the country’s residents were farmers, Jolliff said, and they worked with small parcels of land in diversified operations. The modern regenerative agriculture movement encourages that same type of farm diversification.

Jolliff said agriculture has changed before and can change again. He points to the success of the 1914 Smith-Lever Act that created the cooperative extension programs that work from land-grant universities to teach farmers across the nation.

“It takes a long, long time for agriculture methods to change,” he said. “This is not going to be an overnight thing. It’s a huge investment right now across the country into these practices.”

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

Diasha White (on the mic) was one of several speakers at the KC Tenants rally outside of Independence Towers on Oct. 1. The tenant union is demanding a national rent cap, a collectively bargained lease and maintenance updates (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).

When you walk into the back entrance of Independence Towers, you’re met with a foyer filled with dust, debris and cobwebs.

Two rust-coated elevators loom against the back wall. Peeling paint and caution tape line the dirt-ridden hallways on either side.

Diasha White said it wasn’t always like this. She’s lived in the building for six years and described the first three as “beautiful.”

But she said everything changed when a new owner purchased the building and a company owned by FTW Investments LLC took over management.

“You knew he was a different type of landlord who did not take care of the property,” she said. “We’ve got holes in our walls with rusted pipes exposed, vermin falling out of those holes, water creating soft spots in the ceilings and mold.”

Independence Towers is owned by a limited liability company, 728 N Jennings Rd Partners LLC. FTW Investments said in a statement it managed the LLC as a service.

After losing hot water for weeks, White joined the Independence Towers Tenant Union in May. That union accounts for 65% percent of the 63 occupied units in the building.

In mid-May, a Jackson County judge appointed Trigild Inc. to manage the property after the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as Fannie Mae, accused the owners of failing to keep up with repairs and payments.

But tenants say that essential repairs have not been addressed. They said Trigild’s Vice President Nancy Daniels has not communicated with the union since a meeting in June.

Trigild Inc. did not respond to The Beacon’s request for comment.

The Independence Towers union — together with the Quality Hill Towers Tenant Union — launched a rent strike Oct. 1 to demand better living conditions. The strike is organized by KC Tenants. The unions are advocating for maintenance improvements, collectively bargained leases and national rent caps on federally backed buildings.

KC Tenants says both properties were purchased with multimillion-dollar loans backed by Fannie Mae in 2021.

The tenant unions want a national rent cap of 3% for all buildings that receive loans backed by Fannie Mae, which is regulated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. They also seek repairs and maintenance for their respective buildings, as well as collectively bargained leases for residents.

Sentinel Real Estate Corp,, which owns Quality Hill Towers, said in a statement that it’s been “working with the union in good faith for more than a year,” respects tenants’ right to organize and is in the process of completing requested repairs.

The Quality Hills Towers strike will ultimately harm tenants because it will make it harder to complete repairs, the statement said.

The company gave tenants until Oct. 3 to submit their rent before issuing a total of $2,750 in late fees to residents in the 55 striking units, according to an Oct. 5 KC Tenants press release.

Tenants said they taped their late fee notices to management’s door and burned several outside their offices.

What are the living conditions?

Many residents at Quality Hill Towers say they love the area because of Case Park, which overlooks the West Bottoms and the Missouri River. But inside, the reality is starkly different.

“Once I moved in (last January), I saw roaches within a week,” said Sarvesh Patel. Patel said he has also dealt with mice. He caught 12 in one weekend last year. His living room lights don’t always work, his bathtub doesn’t drain and his windows won’t stay open.

Before the strike, he paid $910 a month in rent, a 22% increase from what he initially paid, he said at an Oct. 1 rally.

Enrique Rodriguez has only lived at Quality Hill since April, but in just six months, he says he’s dealt with a kitchen sink that backs up with sewage water, peeling layers of paint and infestations of both mice and bedbugs that have left his legs marked with welts.

At the rally, a Quality Hill organizer said that the tenant union, which represents 63% of the 234 occupied units, has withheld over $39,000 in rent from Sentinel.

Twenty-one miles east, residents at Independence Towers face similar disputes with their landlord.

Once off the elevator, the carpet on the ninth floor immediately emits the smell of old, damp fabric and mildew. Chris Carlton, a resident of nearly a year, said that’s because a section of the hallway recently flooded. Along the walls splattered in yellow and white paint, the baseboards are coming loose or completely detached from the wall.

Elliot West and her parents have lived there for eight years. In their previous apartment on the now-condemned 10th floor, their ceiling collapsed. She said management left them there for a month before they were moved.

In their current apartment on the ninth floor, she said, the wallboard in her parents’ bedroom fell onto their bed, and they’re also battling roaches and bedbugs. Although they had to pay $1,000 to treat the infestation, West insists her family wasn’t the cause. She said management told them there was no proof of who was responsible.

Before the strike, White, the tenant who has lived in the building for six years, said she was paying $740 for her two-bedroom apartment. However, through conversations with management, she discovered her rent had been raised to $850 last summer — which she never received notice of.

After losing hot water in May, residents endured weeks without air conditioning in June. Tenants were given portable AC units, but they found this resulted in higher electricity bills.

“I paid $728 for my summer electric bill running the portable AC,” White said. “Usually, my highest bill is $42.”During this time, a 22-year-old resident was charged with first-degree arson after police said she confessed to setting her kitchen on fire, which rendered most of the second floor uninhabitable. Then in late July, a 3-year-old boy fell to his death from an unsecured and broken window on the eighth floor.

Management’s response 

Leaders with KC Tenants said the rent strikes mark the first in its history. They also say these are the first-ever strikes targeting FHFA, the regulator for Fannie Mae. Both buildings were purchased with loans backed by the government-sponsored enterprise.

Together, the unions plan to withhold over $60,000 from their landlords in October, according to a KC Tenants press release. That could potentially impact a landlord’s ability to make mortgage payments on Fannie Mae-backed loans.

At the Quality Hill rally, speakers called for federal regulators to foreclose on Sentinel during negotiations. They want to be involved in finding a new property owner.

The statement from Sentinel said that residents renewing their leases are already seeing annual increases of approximately 3% on average.

“We believe the tenant union’s rent strike is misguided, short-sighted, and has the potential to create negative consequences for the entire property,” the statement said.

Residents at Independence Towers said they want permanent fixes to the plumbing and heating and air conditioning systems, more maintenance staff, monthly pest control treatments, repairs to the parking garage and a moratorium on evictions or lease nonrenewals.

The ongoing issues at Independence Towers have raised concerns about the effectiveness of the city of Independence’s Rental Ready program, designed to ensure rental units are safe and meet health standards.

Despite complaints about building conditions, Independence Towers passed its most recent inspection in December. Brent Schondelmeyer, an Independence resident and former Kansas City Star reporter, told the City Council he’d found that 99% of inspections from May 2022 to May 2023 received a perfect score, based on a checklist of nine health and safety standards.

Critics argue that the inspection process, which relies on third-party inspectors hired by landlords, may not adequately address safety issues.

Independence City Council members are now considering revisions to the Rental Ready program, which they hope to have ready by the end of the year.

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

Both presidential candidates have said they have general plans to tackle the housing crisis (Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — As the cost and supply of housing remain top issues for voters, both presidential candidates have put forth plans to tackle the crisis, in hopes of courting voters ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

The coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020 exacerbated problems in the housing market, with supply chain disruptions, record-low interest rates and  increased demand contributing to a rise in housing prices, according to a study by the Journal of Housing Economics. 

While housing is typically handled on the local level, the housing supply is tight and rents continue to skyrocket, putting increased pressure on the federal government to help. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump agree that it’s an issue that needs to be solved, but their solutions diverge.

The Harris and Trump campaigns did not respond to States Newsroom’s requests for details on the general housing proposals the nominees have discussed.

Promise: millions of new homes

Harris’ plan calls for the construction of 3 million homes in four years.

The United States has a shortage of about 3.8 million homes for sale and rent, according to 2021 estimates from Freddie Mac that are still relied upon.

Additionally, homelessness has hit a record-high of 653,100 people since January of last year, and a “record-high 22.4 million renter households spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities,” up from 2 million households since 2019, according to a study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

“This is obviously a multi-prong approach, because the factors contributing to high rents and housing affordability are many, and my plan is to attempt to address many of them at once, so we can actually have the net effect of bringing down the cost and making homeownership, renting more affordable,” Harris said during a September interview with Wisconsin Public Radio. 

Promise: single-family zoning

Trump has long opposed building multi-family housing and has instead thrown his support behind single-family zoning, which would exclude other types of housing. Such land-use regulation is conducted by local government bodies, not the federal government, though the federal government could influence it.

“There will be no low-income housing developments built in areas that are right next to your house,” Trump said during an August rally in Montana. “I’m gonna keep criminals out of your neighborhood.”

Promise: getting Congress to agree

Election forecasters have predicted that Democrats will regain control of the U.S. House, but Republicans are poised to win the Senate, meaning any housing proposals will have to be overwhelmingly bipartisan.

“How much money is going to really be available without substantial increases in revenue to be able to do all these things that both Trump and Harris are proposing?” Ted Tozer, a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center, said in an interview with States Newsroom. “All the money comes from Congress.”

Many of Harris’ policies rely on cooperation from Congress, as historically the federal government has limited tools to address housing shortages.

“On the Democratic side, there’s a hunger for more action, for more direct government intervention in the housing market than we’ve seen in a long time,” said Francis Torres, the associate director of housing and infrastructure at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Nearly all proposals that Harris has put forth would require Congress to pass legislation and appropriate funds. The first is S.2224, introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, which would amend U.S. tax code to bar private equity firms from buying homes in bulk by denying “interest and depreciation deductions for taxpayers owning 50 or more single family properties,” according to the bill.

The second bill, S. 3692, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chair of the Senate Finance Committee, would bar using algorithms to artificially inflate the cost of rents.

Both bills would need to reach the 60-vote threshold in order to advance in the Senate, whichever party is in control.

Promise: $25,000 down payment assistance

Harris has pledged to support first-time homebuyers, but Congress would need to appropriate funds for the $25,000 down payment assistance program she has proposed that would benefit an estimated 4 million first-time homebuyers over four years.

It’s a proposal that’s been met with skepticism.

“I’m really concerned that down payment assistance will actually put more pressure on home prices, because basically, you’re giving people additional cash to pay more for the house that they’re going to bid on,” Tozer said. “So by definition, they get in a bidding war, they’re going to spend more.”

Harris has also proposed a $40 billion innovation fund for local governments to build and create solutions for housing, which would also need congressional approval.

Promise: opening up federal lands

Both candidates support opening some federal lands for housing, which would mean selling the land for construction purposes with the commitment for a certain percentage of the units to be kept for affordable housing.

The federal government owns about 650 million acres of land, or roughly 30% of all land.

Neither candidate has gone into detail on this proposal.

“I think it’s a sign that at least the Harris campaign and the people in her orbit are thinking about addressing this housing affordability problem really through stronger government action than has happened in several decades,” Torres said.

Promise: expand tax credits

The biggest tool the federal government has used to address housing is through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, known as LIHTC. Harris has promised to expand this tax credit, but has not gone into detail about how much she wants it expanded.

This program awards tax credits to offset construction costs in exchange for a certain number of rent-restricted units for low-income households. But the restriction is temporary, lasting about 30 years. 

There is no similar program for housing meant to be owned.

“It’s an interesting moment, because then on the other side, on the Trump side, even though they diagnosed a lot of the similar problems, there’s not as much of a desire to leverage the strength of the federal government to ensure affordability,” Torres said.

Trump’s record on housing

The Trump campaign does not have a housing proposal, but various interviews, rallies and a review of Trump’s first four years in office provide a roadmap.

During Trump’s first administration, many of his HUD budget proposals were not approved by Congress.

In all four of his presidential budget requests, he laid out proposals that would increase rent by 40% for about 4 million low-income households using rental vouchers or for those who lived in public housing, according to an analysis by the left-leaning think tank the Brookings Institution. 

All four of Trump’s budgets also called for the elimination of housing programs such as the Community Development Block Grant, which directs funding to local and state governments to rehabilitate and build affordable housing. Trump’s budgets also would have slashed the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, which is a home energy assistance program for low-income families.

Additionally, Trump’s Opportunity Zones authorized through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which are tax incentives to businesses and real estate to invest in low-income communities, have had mixed results.

Promise: cut regulations and add tariffs

In an interview with Bloomberg, Trump said he wanted to focus on reducing regulations in the permitting process.

“Your permits, your permitting process. Your zoning, if — and I went through years of zoning. Zoning is like… it’s a killer,” he said. “But we’ll be doing that, and we’ll be bringing the price of housing down.”

During campaign rallies, Trump has often said he would impose a 10% tariff across the board on all goods entering the U.S. He’s also proposed 60% tariffs on China.

Trump said at a rally in Georgia that tariff is “one of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard.”

Tozer said adding trade policies, such as tariffs on construction materials like lumber, would drive up the cost of homes.

Promise: deport immigrants

Trump has argued that his plan for mass deportations will help free up the supply of housing. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump national press secretary, told the New York Times that deporting immigrants would lower the cost of housing because migration “is driving up housing costs.”

The former president has made a core campaign promise to deport millions of immigrants.

Tozer said housing and immigration are tied, because the ability to build houses comes down to workers, and roughly 30% of construction workers are immigrants. 

“By shutting down the border, you’re possibly shutting down your capacity to build these houses,” he said, adding that all those policies are intertwined.

(Joe Raedle/Getty Images).

A month before voters cast their ballots, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report showing a strong labor market with growing wages, a lower unemployment rate, and the addition of 254,000 jobs to the economy.

Eighty-one percent of registered voters say the economy is key to their vote for president this fall, according to a September Pew Research report.

“We saw job creation beating expectations, unemployment rate ticking ever so slightly down, and we saw great wage growth which has continued to outpace inflation,” said Kitty Richards, senior strategic advisor at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic policy think tank. “We don’t have the new inflation numbers for last month, but wage growth is strong and has been outpacing inflation for about 16 months now and those are all really good things.”

The unemployment rate in September was 4.1% compared to 4.2% in August and 4.3% in July. A rising unemployment rate earlier in the year had caused some economists to worry that the Federal Reserve’s decision in the past few months not to cut the federal funds rate was beginning to hurt the labor market.  In September, the Fed decided to cut the rate by half a percentage point, allaying those worries.

The Fed began an aggressive campaign to beat inflation by raising rates in March 2022 and stopped in mid-2023 but the rate remains high and has affected the economy, particularly the housing market, economists say. Inflation has significantly cooled since its peak in June 2022.

“If today’s job report had said that the labor market was softening further, I think a lot of us would be more aggressively concerned about the risks posed to the labor market by high interest rates,” Richards said. “It’s great to see that those risks have not tipped over yet … But there are risks and we need to be really mindful of what it would mean if we started to see the unemployment rate picking up again.”

The report also showed continued job growth in healthcare, government, social assistance and construction last month. Wage growth was strong, rising 4% over the past year.  Adult men saw their unemployment rate fall, at 3.7%, last month. Women, Black people, Asian people, white people, Hispanic people, and teens all had little or no change in their unemployment rates in September.

The prime-age employment-to-population ratio, which is a measure of how well the economy provides jobs for people who are interested in working, remains at a 23-year high in today’s jobs report.

“I think the labor market continues to be healthy and strong and it’s great to see labor force participation and employment-to-population rates staying high,” Richards said. “That’s what we want to see in the kind of economy that is going to drive wage gains for working people and continue some of the gains that we’ve seen since the COVID recession.”

But she added that there is still room for those measures to grow.

“We’ve seen that the economy can outperform what a lot of people thought before we had this really prolonged period of low unemployment coming out of the COVID recession. And I hope that we continue to see this kind of growth,” she said.

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

While a large part of Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s ban on intoxicating hemp products may be on pause, plans are underway to kick it back up next summer, according to a preliminary budget request by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

The department has asked for $877,000 to fund “food inspection and litigation requirements” to implement Parson’s Aug. 1 executive order to ban unregulated psychoactive products. 

Those funds would become available on July 1, if lawmakers approve the request as part of the state budget by May. 

Parson’s executive order “prohibits the sale of foods containing psychoactive cannabis compounds in Missouri, unless originating from an ‘approved source,’” the budget request states.  

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

When the order went into effect on Sept. 1, the governor was hoping to utilize compliance officers at both the state’s Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control  and DHSS’ Bureau of Environmental Health Services to implement the ban.

However, those plans quickly came to a halt when the Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft rejected the emergency rules that would have given the alcohol division the authority to conduct inspections. 

That meant that the state’s food inspectors were left to handle compliance on their own. 

Then the governor asked Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to create a new specialized unit to assist the state’s alcohol and tobacco regulators in cracking down on intoxicating hemp products, Parson announced at a Capitol press conference on Sept. 10. 

However the next day on Sept. 11, state food inspectors showed up to Franklin County VFW Post after receiving a tip that the veterans were serving hemp-derived THC drinks at their bar. 

Commander Jason Stanfield took to social media, saying the state’s “raid” of the VFW Post on 9-11 was disrespectful. 

The incident gave the Missouri Hemp Trade Association a window to request a temporary restraining order, as part of a lawsuit filed in late August to halt the governor’s order.

While the association didn’t get the restraining order, it got assurance from the state that regulators will essentially stop its enforcement efforts.

In response to the temporary restraining order request, Richard Moore, general counsel for DHSS, said in a letter that the state’s health regulators will stop embargoing — or tagging — products simply because they contain hemp-derived THC. 

“In regard to psychoactive cannabis products, the department will focus its efforts on the identification of  ‘misbranded’ products,’” Moore wrote to the Missouri Hemp Trade Association’s attorney, Chuck Hatfield.   

Currently, the compliance effort focuses on just THC products that children could mistake for regular food or candy — not banning all intoxicating hemp products like Delta-8 beverages sold at bars or liquor stores.

When Parson signed his executive order, he said his primary focus was to protect children consuming the products that resemble popular candy, like Lifesavers, or fruity drinks.

“If the department identifies any such misbranded products, it will refer those products to the Missouri Attorney General’s Office for  potential enforcement under the State’s Merchandising Practices Act…” Moore wrote in his letter.

That is expected to change next summer, if the department’s budget request goes through.

The requested funding would allow the department to hire two full-time public health environmental specialists at $125,000 and to contract five more inspectors at $400,000. Of that, two of the contracted positions would be funded on a one-time basis “to stand up the program” at $150,000. 

“The use of contractors for a portion of this work is preferred due to the expected decrease in market availability of this product over time,” it states, “with their services not expected to be needed more than two or three years.”

The total seven inspectors will conduct site visits statewide “to assess retailer and wholesaler inventory for unregulated psychoactive cannabis in foods,” it states. 

The department estimates that 40,000 food establishments and smoke shops and 1,800 food manufacturers could potentially be affected by the governor’s order, the request states, “but the majority of these facilities are at low-risk of requiring investigation.”

“It is estimated that all seven inspection staff can conduct 2,900-3,500 site visits annually,” it states. 

The department also budgeted $160,000 to hire two full-time attorneys, in the event that business owners challenge enforcement actions.  

Meanwhile, the Missouri Hemp Trade Association’s ongoing lawsuit might impact the plan, as well as potential legislation that could give the state even more authority — or, on the other end, loosen regulation on intoxicating hemp products. 

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

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

Fast-casual restaurant Chipotle is experimenting with a work station that has automation assembling salads and bowls underneath the counter while a human worker assembles more complex dishes such as burritos on top. (Photo courtesy of Chipotle)

Though food service workers and economists have long worried about the impact technology would have on the restaurant labor force, pilot programs in several fast-casual restaurants over the last few years have shown it may not have the negative impact they feared, a labor economist says.

Technology plays several roles in food service, but the industry has seen the adoption of touch screens, AI-powered ordering and food prep machines over the last few years. And even more recently, it’s become more likely that a robot is playing a part in your food preparation or delivery.

They may take shape as your bartender, your server or your food delivery driver, but many are like the “collaborative” robots just rolled out in some Chipotle restaurants in California.

The company is testing the Autocado, which splits and prepares avocados to be turned into guacamole by a kitchen crew member, and the Augmented Makeline, which builds bowls and salads autonomously underneath the food line while employees construct burritos, tacos and quesadillas on top. Chipotle said 65% of its mobile orders are for salads or bowls, and the Augmented Makeline’s aim is improving efficiency and digital order accuracy.

The company said it invested in robotics company Vebu and worked with them on the design for the Autocado, and it invested in food service platform Hyphen, which custom made the Augmented Makeline for Chipotle.

“Optimizing our use of these systems and incorporating crew and customer feedback are the next steps in the stage-gate process before determining their broader pilot plans,” Curt Garner, Chipotle’s chief customer and technology officer said in a statement.

The company said the introduction of these robots will not eliminate any jobs, as the crew members are supposed to have a “cobotic relationship” with them. The aim is that crew members will be able to spend more time on either food prep tasks or on providing hospitality to customers.

Ben Zipperer, a low-wage labor market economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said the early fears around automation and robots threatening jobs in the foodservice industry are not being realized. Automation has shown to make workers more productive and effective, he said.

Robots have also been shown to make businesses more efficient and profitable, Zipperer siad, which creates an “offsetting demand factor.” That increased demand and profitability can actually help keep the cost of food for customers more affordable, he added.

When one action is freed up by a robot, the restaurant has more freedom to place workers on other high-demand tasks.

“Either those workers are still going to help produce guacamole, because people want to buy more of it,” Zipperer said of the Chipotle announcement, “or there’s other things that that business is trying to produce but can’t allocate the labor towards, even though they have demand for it.”

Zipperer pointed toward automated food purchasing with the use of touchscreen kiosks, which has been widely adopted in fast food service. In these cases, workers get shifted away from cash registers and toward more back-of-house jobs like food prep or janitorial work.

McDonald’s shows an example of this. The fast food restaurant was one of the earliest adopters of touchscreen kiosks, with thousands of stores using the technology to collect orders by 2015, and screens becoming nearly ubiquitous by 2020.

Last week, the company said the kiosks actually produce extra work for staff, as customers tend to purchase more food than they would at a cash register. The machines have built-in upselling features that cashiers don’t always have time to push with customers, and the introduction of mobile ordering and delivery has created jobs that front-of-house staff are relegated to.

Many fast food CEOs have threatened that raising minimum wages across the U.S. would equate in job loss to autonomous machines and kiosks. And while some franchise owners may take that route, it’s not a trend across the whole country. Jobs at quick-service and fast casual restaurants were up about 150,000 jobs, or 3% above their pre-pandemic levels in August.

As technology takes more of a role in food service production, businesses that want to succeed will find the balance of cost-saving efficiencies and valued work by their employees, Zipperer said.

“As long as there is demand for what that business is producing, that will allow workers to not feel a lot of the negative effects of technology,” he said.

Emily Wright picks flowers growing safely in a garden tunnel Sept. 17 at Three Creeks Farm and Forest in Ashland. Wright saves the tunnels for high value crops such as these flowers, tomatoes and peppers, which are watered through drip irrigation and micro overhead sprinklers. (Cory W. MacNeil/Columbia Missourian)

On harvest days at Three Creeks Farm and Forest in the Missouri River valley, farm owner Emily Wright and her staff collect three varieties of leafy greens from the field.

Two staff members cut the lettuce close to the root, fan the leaves across their hands checking for bugs or wilts, and toss them in a bright orange basket. From there the greens are washed, packed and driven to town for delivery at local restaurants and grocery stores.

Wright co-owns and manages the farm with her partner Paul Weber, who moonlights as a touring musician. They have been growing fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers for nine seasons in a diversified market garden style farm in the Missouri River hills. Additionally, two thirds of their 15-acre farm is a forest.

“I think of it as sort of my long-term outdoor ecological experiment,” she said.

Wright and Weber plant perennials such as fiddlehead ferns and wild leeks throughout the forest. They also grow native trees including paw paws along the forest edge, allowing them to cross pollinate with and be protected by the more mature trees.

Wright calls the smorgasbord of vegetables, fruits, shrubs and trees on Three Creeks Farm and Forest “complex and chaotic” and said the crops benefit by growing among each other.

“I feel like I’ve witnessed an explosion of biodiversity in the past couple of years,” Wright said. “I mostly see it in insect populations, but I also feel like I’ve noticed new bird species and lots more amphibians and reptiles and just generally a lot of life in this valley.”

Operating a farm within its natural ecosystem is a tenet of regenerative agriculture — a movement that aims to revive farmland soils and by extension diverse farms and rural communities.

With climate change threatening farmland and the farm economy, people are looking to regenerative agriculture as a new way forward, specifically using perennial crops that don’t require the intensive annual tillage, planting, fertilizing and harvesting of conventional commodities.

Tim Crews is the chief scientist at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and said many of the commodity crops we eat — corn, rice, barley, oats — are annual.

“Annuals require the termination of all vegetation on the landscape for them to have a chance,” he said. “If you do that on massive landscapes year after year after year, you get soil degradation.”

The Land Institute scientists have been working on sustainable agriculture research and education across the Midwest and Great Plains for decades. They’re developing perennial grains that aren’t as hard on the environment as annuals. Crews said row crops take an environmental toll over time.

“They have no capacity to retain nutrients. Their microbial communities are much less functional than those that exist in mature grasslands or forests,” Crews said. “It’s such a compromised ecosystem.”

But if more perennial crops existed, he said, they could break the food system’s dependency on annual crops and transform farms into something more akin to a natural ecosystem, like a forest.

Regenerative agriculture aims to, in part through perennials, breathe life into depleted soils while also reducing the need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which can have negative environmental consequences.

“The regenerative capacity of perennials is kind of unmatched … there’s economic advantages, there’s lifestyle advantages, there’s wildlife advantages,” Crews said.

Combining farm and forest

There is much to be harvested from trees and shrubs, like nuts or berries, and there are many soil health and ecosystem benefits of having them on the farm.

“Agroforestry is basically offering kind of a toolkit for being able to incorporate some of that ecological design onto a landscape,” said Zack Miller, preserve engagement manager with The Nature Conservancy in Missouri.

The organization is conducting ecosystem restorations across the state. Miller is coordinating a 164-acre agroforestry demonstration project at the Missouri River Center — the former site of riverfront bar and restaurant Katfish Katy’s.

The long-term goal of the project is to both connect people to the Missouri River and its ecosystems and to serve as a living agroforestry laboratory to “demonstrate what these systems could look like and be able to demonstrate their economic returns, how farmers might be able to implement different strategies,” Miller said.

Trees, shrubs and perennials can be integrated sporadically into conventional farms through alley cropping, prairie strips, wind breaks, hedge rows and more. But for agroforestry to be successful, Miller said we’ll have to get used to a messier kind of farm.

“Looking across landscapes and seeing how we have it divvied up and this chunk is for growing this one plant, this chunk is for growing something else,” he said. “But of course, ecosystems don’t function that way. There are no clear borders.”

Three Creeks Farm and Forest intentionally planted perennials with culinary or floral purposes that allow them to sell berries, nuts and fresh cut flowers to groceries and restaurants. Wright also planted a row of smokebush, a perennial shrub, with a dual purpose as a windbreak — blocking dust that gets kicked up from their gravel road.

Wright said she sees plenty of opportunity across the Midwest for conventional row crop farms to incorporate more diverse products in their operations.

“Just carving off those odd little corners that don’t fit the giant industrial tractors and … converting those to vegetable production would have a huge impact on the amount of food that’s being supplied locally,” she said.

Miller said that due to the amount of inputs required — fertilizer, fuel and equipment — the row crop commodity farming that made Midwestern agriculture so bountiful is no longer working.

Biodiversity has plummeted, and so has the ability to make a living in agriculture, Miller said.

“It’s like very simple to say, but the answer to many of our problems is diversity,” he said.

Wright understands how some farmers, due to the pressures of policy and markets, get stuck in a rigid structure.

“There’s not a lot of room for experimentation or adaptation,” she said.

But by operating a small, diverse operation like Three Creeks Farm and Forest, experimentation and adaptation never stops. Wright and Weber recently added fermentation business to the farm, which allows them to offer sauerkraut, pickles and okra to local restaurants.

“One of the reasons that farming is really attractive and engaging for me is just the learning curve never drops off,” Wright said. “It’s like, as soon as we get the hang of things and it gets even the tiniest bit boring, we add something.”

Diversification has not only helped Wright’s farm environmentally, but also economically.

“We don’t really qualify for crop insurance programs so diversification is kind of our insurance, because we do have crop failures every year,” she said.

“We kind of just accept that while one thing might go awry, another thing is going to be flourishing, and that both maintains our livelihood, but also maintains morale.”

This article has been republished from the Columbia Missourian. Read the original article here. 

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Post-harvest employees at BeLeaf Medical’s Sinse facility await union election results on Feb. 6 at the St. Louis Public Library Barr branch (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

It’s been more than seven months since employees of St. Louis-based Beleaf Medical cannabis company held an election to unionize.

The majority of the ballots — 11 of the 16 — have remained closed.

“It’s been quite a while,” said Will Braddum, a post-harvest technician at the company’s Sinse facility in St. Louis. “We’re just like, what is happening? Why is this happening? We’re just kind of in the dark waiting.”

The reason behind the delay is likely that Braddum and his fellow “post-harvest” team members exist in a gray area in national labor law — which could change if their union drive is successful. 

Not long after Braddum and other employees filed their union petition last September, the company argued before the National Labor Relations Board that the employees aren’t manufacturer workers — they’re agricultural workers. 

And agricultural workers don’t have the right to unionize under the country’s labor laws.

But Braddum and his fellow employees — along with the regional director of the NLRB — believe they’re more like workers at tobacco processing plants, who courts repeatedly have found aren’t agricultural workers. 

“I’ve never touched a living plant at work,” Braddum said, who is organizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 655. 

The company has taken this fight all the way up to the national five-member board, asking them to set a national precedent on whether employees who process the dried marijuana plants have the right to unionize. 

And that’s likely why it’s taken so long for the regional director of the NLRB – who twice sided with the employees — to open the ballots, said St. Louis labor attorney George Suggs.

“If this is a unique situation, there’s no reason for [the regional director] to get out front by opening those ballots,” Suggs said. “Ultimately, the board will resolve it.”

But that doesn’t mean the fight would be over, Suggs said. 

If the national board sides with the employees, then the company will likely refuse to bargain in order to land the decision in a federal court. 

“Employers have this ability to string out the results of a campaign,” especially among businesses where there’s lots of employee turnover, Suggs said.

By the time there’s a resolution a couple years down the road, he said, union support has eroded. 

“That’s the tactic,” Suggs said. “That’s what employers have been doing over the 40-plus years that I’ve been practicing labor law.”

A long fight ahead

Over the seven months of waiting, employees have noticed changes in their job descriptions that likely improve the company’s position in the case.

“It just seems like they’re trying to push our jobs more and more in the direction of quote unquote farmers,” said Ahmad “Jxggy” Haynes, a post-harvest technician at BeLeaf Medical’s Sinse facility. 

He said the company has hired temp workers to do the manufacturing work, including packaging, that he and other the union members were doing before.  

The company began hiring temps right after the employees filed a petition to form a union in September 2023, according to a recording of a recent staff meeting led by a company human resources representative and obtained by The Independent .

At the meeting, the HR representative said Beleaf has “burned through” 150 temporary employees since October. He told the temps they shouldn’t expect to be hired on full time anytime soon, but they should still feel part of the team. 

Twice so far this year, NLRB Regional Director Andrea Wilkes – who oversees a swath of six states in the Midwest —  has ruled that post-harvest employees’ work is similar to that of employees in a tobacco processing plant. 

“Removing the veins from tobacco leaves and fermenting the leaves has been held to be outside the definition of agriculture,” under federal labor law, Wilkes wrote in her Jan. 25 ruling.

The company’s response to her decision indicates that union employees likely have a long fight ahead of them.

According to a Feb. 13 letter from Beleaf’s attorney to Wilkes, the company plans on fighting their employees’ unionization efforts all the way to federal court. 

“Although we understand and respect the Board’s recent decision on this issue, we are preserving this issue for presentation to the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit,” the letter states.  

The company can get into court by refusing to bargain with the union, creating “a technical violation,” Suggs said. 

That will lead to filing a petition for review in a federal court, Suggs said, so they can challenge the underlying issue in this case — whether these are agricultural workers — “in front of a bunch of federal judges.”

“That’s become a bigger problem, particularly in the Eighth Circuit,” Suggs said, “because you’ve got a number of very conservative judges who are kind of hostile to the labor movement generally.”

Sean Shannon, lead organizer with UFCW Local 655, said it’s obvious this has been the company’s plan all along.

“They clearly stated their intention to bring this as far as the 8th Circuit Court – which is several steps into the fight – in their original statement,” Shannon said of the company’s February letter. “I feel nothing but clear intent to obstruct this union at all costs, which ironically proves just how much these folks need a union.”

A screen displays logos for streaming services. States are passing new laws to try to make it harder for companies to automatically renew subscriptions, sometimes at higher prices, without consumers’ knowledge or consent (Chris McGrath/Getty Images).

When Tennessee state Rep. Bob Freeman, a Democrat, studied his cable and internet bill last year, he kept seeing recurring charges for app subscriptions he didn’t recognize. Turned out, his 14-year-old daughter had been signing up for subscriptions with introductory rates and never canceling when they rolled over to the full price.

“I would question her bills, and she said, ‘Oh, it’s only $1.99.’ Those were teaser rates,” he said in an interview. To actually cancel, he said, he had to send an email to the company for a follow-up phone call, during which the company representative would try to talk him out of it.

“It was clear it was not meant for convenience. … It was clear it was predatory,” he said.

That experience, plus dealing with his grandmother — who would sign up for apps at $2.99 a month that would then renew for $14 without her knowledge — persuaded him that a new law was needed to ensure greater transparency and consumer protection.

Freeman introduced a bill that would require more notice from companies before subscriptions are automatically renewed.

Originally his bill also would have required companies to get another “yes” from customers — “affirmative consent,” in legislative lingo — before charging consumers’ credit or debit cards. But after strong objections from cable and streaming services, Freeman said, the bill was amended to eliminate that requirement.

“They got all bent out of shape,” he said of the industry.

In April, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed the legislation. State law now requires companies to give “clear and conspicuous notice” to consumers if the automatic renewal will occur more than 60 days after the initial sign-up, and mandates that they clearly communicate when they will begin charging for the service.

About half a dozen other states have enacted similar laws this year. Companies that rely on subscriptions say some of the tougher measures will only annoy and confuse consumers.

Navdeep Sahni, an associate professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, said giving consumers more information about automatic renewals and how to cancel is good for business. He said this means consumers would be more open to trying new things and “not get tricked into getting something they don’t want.”

Sahni said businesses only hurt themselves if customers feel burned by the experience.

But earlier this year at a Federal Trade Commission hearing on a proposed federal rule, Michael Powell, president and CEO of NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, warned that many customers might misunderstand the “click to cancel” measures. A customer “may face difficulty and unintended consequences if they want to cancel only one service in the package,” Powell said, because “canceling part of a discounted bundle may increase the price for remaining services.”

Powell added that “three out of four of the cable and broadband customers who called to cancel end up retaining some or all service after speaking with an agent.”

In an email to Stateline, association spokesperson Brian Dietz said the organization would have no further comment on the proposed federal rule or similar state laws.

In Virginia, the new law, which took effect in July, requires companies to notify consumers of their option to cancel within 30 days of the end of the trial period. The Minnesota measure, which takes effect Jan. 1, stipulates that companies must give customers the opportunity to cancel via a “simple mechanism,” such as a checkbox or submission button.

And a bill sent to California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this month would tighten an already stringent auto-renewal law. Brandon Richards, Newsom’s spokesperson, said the governor has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill.

The laws are designed to help people be more mindful of what they are signing up for. In a March survey by CNET, a consumer-focused website, 48% of respondents said they had signed up for a free trial of a paid subscription and then forgotten to cancel it.

“I’m sure a lot of the time people just don’t get around to [canceling] it,” said Steve Baker, an attorney and former regional director at the Federal Trade Commission. “And they make it hard to cancel. It’s not something you necessarily file a complaint about it. It’s more of a minor annoyance.”

Freeman, the Tennessee lawmaker, said businesses with good products shouldn’t fear the new rules. “If you have a good product, when the teaser rate burns off, [I can subscribe],” he said.

Like Freeman, Utah Republican state Sen. Todd Weiler, who sponsored the auto-renewal bill in his state, was motivated by personal experience. Weiler said he makes a point to record the date when a discounted or free offer expires and full charges kick in.

“I consider myself an intelligent person,” he said. “It’s usually easier to find the cancellation information when you sign up, so I go there and paste it into my calendar. I try to be diligent. But sometimes I still get caught.”

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

Home mortgage rates are posted outside a real estate office in Los Angeles after the Federal Reserve interest rates announcement on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced a half-point cut to its benchmark interest rate in the first rate cut since the early days of the COVID pandemic (Mario Tama/Getty Images).

The Federal Reserve’s first key interest rate cut in four years coincides with another major four-year event: the homestretch of the presidential election.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell downplayed the central bank’s role in the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, in announcing the half-percentage point cut in its benchmark rate. But that didn’t stop the candidates’ campaigns from weighing in, and it could prove a key factor for voters.

“This is my fourth presidential election at the Fed, and it’s always the same. We’re always going to this meeting in particular and asking what’s the right thing to do for the people we serve,” Powell said. “Nothing else is ever discussed.”

The decision to cut for the first time during the Biden Administration indicates the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors believe the economy has beaten the COVID-19 pandemic-induced wave of inflation that has plagued it since mid-2021. The Fed hiked its key rate 11 times between March 2022 and July 2023.

Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. The Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation, rose 2.5% over the past year, according to the latest release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in August. The unemployment rate was 4.2% in August, down from 4.3% in July, but still much higher than 3.5% in July 2023 when the Fed made its last rate hike.

“We now see the risks to achieving our employment and inflation goals as roughly in balance, and we are attentive to the risks of both sides of our dual mandate,” Powell said.

Wednesday’s was the first in what is expected to be a series of key rate cuts. For now, that benchmark rate is 4.75 to 5%

One member of the Fed’s governing board, Michelle Bowman, dissented with the rest of the group, marking the first time a governor has done so since 2005. Bowman preferred a 25 basis point – or quarter percentage point – cut.

Timing of the rate cut

Both campaigns quickly reacted to the news from the Fed.

Trump, speaking at a crypto-themed bar in New York, said the cut should have been smaller.

“I guess it shows the economy is very bad to cut it by that much, assuming they’re not just playing politics,” the Republican nominee said. “The economy would be very bad or they’re playing politics, one or the other. But it was a big cut.”

Harris, in a prepared statement, was forward-looking.

“While this announcement is welcome news for Americans who have borne the brunt of high prices, my focus is on the work ahead to keep bringing prices down,” the Democratic nominee said. “I know prices are still too high for many middle class and working families.”

Sarah Binder, a senior fellow in governance studies at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and author of, “The Myth of Independence: How Congress Governs the Federal Reserve,” said there is a long history of presidents pressuring the Fed, from John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon and Trump, as a president and now as a presidential candidate.

In order to be effective in its role in keeping the economy moving, Binder said, the Fed needs to be trusted as legitimate, and its political support is contingent on doing a good job.

“The Fed doesn’t have the liberty of sitting it out or not doing enough, which can also bring the Fed into politicians’ crosshairs where they really, really don’t want to be,” she said.

Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America, a research group that advocates for full employment, said the Fed should be examining the economic data.

“That’s what they should look at, not where they are in the electoral seasonal cycle,” she said. “I think that’s the case, by and large. I don’t see anything that’s just a real politicization here.”

What a Fed rate cut means for the economy

Many economists and economic advisers have argued for the Fed to cut rates for months to avoid significant damage to the labor market and in the worst case, a recession.

Now, consumers should begin to see lower costs for borrowing money to buy houses, cars and other necessities.

Kitty Richards, senior strategic adviser at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C., said the Fed should not hold back on cutting rates now that inflation is slowing.

“The Fed pursued four back to back 70-basis-point rate hikes when inflation was heating up. There’s no reason they should allow inertia to hold them back from normalizing rates now that inflation is under control,” she said.

Because shelter makes up so much of inflation, Richards has expressed concern that by keeping rates where they are, mortgage rates have been pushed so high that the housing market is unaffordable for many Americans. This, in turn, affects inflation, she said, creating a vicious cycle.

Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive economic policy think tank, stated that the Fed decision is a good sign for the housing market.

“It is good that the Fed has now recognized the weakening of the labor market and responded with an aggressive cut. Given there is almost no risk of rekindling inflation, the greater boost to the labor market is largely costless,” Baker said in a statement. “Also, it will help to spur the housing market where millions of people have put off selling homes because of high mortgage rates.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People watch the ABC News presidential debate between Democratic nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, and Republican nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, at a watch party at The Abbey, a historic gay bar in West Hollywood, California. The economy will remain central to both campaigns even as inflation cools and wages increase (Mario Tama/Getty Images).

Inflation hit a three-year low last month, just as the presidential election is heating up.

But the high cost of housing and other necessities will keep the economy central to both of the major campaigns, as seen this week in the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

The Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation, rose 2.5% in the past year, which is the smallest jump since February 2021, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Wednesday. The main driver of this increase was shelter, which moved up 0.5% in August. Airline fares, car insurance, education, and apparel also rose that month. But wages also rose 0.4% in August and 3.8% over the past year, and the average workweek increased by 0.1 hour — welcome news for workers trying to keep up with the cost of living.

Voters continue to say the economy is key in deciding who should be president, at 81%, and four in 10 say the economy and inflation are the most important issues guiding that  decision.

Trump, the former president and Republican nominee, blamed the Biden administration for high prices early on Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia, falsely claiming the post-pandemic wave of inflation is the worst ever.

“We’ve had a terrible economy because inflation, which is really known as a country buster, it breaks up countries, we have inflation like very few people have ever seen before, probably the worst in our nation’s history,” Trump said.

The worst inflation rate in U.S. history was actually in 1980, at 14%. The current wave – the highest inflation spike since then – peaked at 9.1% in June 2022.

Democratic nominee andVice President Harris responded to Tuesday’s question about the economy by touting tax cut proposals to combat housing costs.

“The cost of housing is far too expensive for far too many people. We know that young families need support to raise their children and I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000, which is the largest child tax credit that we have given in a long time so that those young families can afford to buy a crib, buy a car seat, buy clothes for their children,” she said.

Harris also pitched a proposal for a $50,000 tax deduction for small startup businesses.

Taylor St. Germain, an economist at ITR Economics, a nonpartisan economic research and consulting firm based in New Hampshire, said the latest data shows inflation is slowing enough to suggest it’s time for the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates.

“It’s encouraging to see that inflation is slowing and slowing to these much lower levels,” said St. Germain said. “However, it is, of course, still elevated and one of the reasons it’s still elevated is that shelter costs are driving a significant portion of that inflation, with rents rising as well, especially as we looked at this latest CPI report.”

The Fed began raising interest rates in March 2022 to bring down inflation, raising interest rates 11 times, and made its last rate hike in July of last year.

Economists are watching closely to see if the Fed cuts rates during its meeting next week, which is expected to have an impact on the housing market and other costs.

Kitty Richards, acting executive director at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank based in Washington, DC, said the Fed’s decisions are contributing to housing costs.

“The problem with housing is fundamentally a supply problem. And the Fed’s actions are actually making that supply problem worse by locking up the housing market and making it more expensive to buy, build or rehab housing,” she said. “Housing is such a big part of people’s experience of the economy and it really matters to folks when they might want to move and look around and they can’t. They can’t even afford to buy a house that is the same price as the house they live in because the interest rates are so high.”

VFW Post 2661 in Washington, Missouri (Photo by Max Mueller).

Not long after Commander Jason Stanfield had lowered the flag Wednesday to honor the lives lost on Sept. 11 at his Franklin County VFW Post, he learned state food inspectors had arrived. 

“It’s not an easy day,” Stanfield said. “9/11 is a tough day for all of us, particularly for veterans. I was not in the best mindset.”

The regulators said they had received a complaint that the post’s bar had been selling seltzers that contain hemp-derived THC — which has the same intoxicating effect as THC from marijuana that’s sold at dispensaries. 

The bar was selling a brand of fruity seltzers called UR Lit, which contains 5mg of Delta-9 THC.

While hemp is federally legal, Missouri recently joined a growing number of states trying to ban all intoxicating hemp products.

When Gov. Mike Parson signed his executive order on Aug. 1 to ban the products, he said his primary focus was to protect children consuming the products that resemble popular candy, like Lifesavers, or fruity drinks.

Given the governor’s goal, Stanfield said he was surprised the state wanted to inspect the post, where members are well over 21.

“There’s not a whole lot of kids that run around the VFW,” he said. 

Since the ban went into effect on Sept. 1, Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services officials have inspected 74 establishments and found intoxicating products at 42 of them, said Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the department. 

On a social media post on Wednesday, Stanfield described the inspection as a “raid,” but Cox said that description is “misleading” because there were just two inspectors responding to a complaint. 

“The two inspectors were let inside through a locked door upon request,” Cox said, “but quickly recognized that the VFW Post did not pose an immediate cause for concern, specifically in regard to Missouri children. As a result, zero product was embargoed or destroyed.”

Cox said the department has “no plans in place of returning to the establishment.”

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

But with a little science and extraction, people can enhance the small amount of the naturally occurring THC, or the psychoactive component, in hemp to make edibles and drinks. 

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

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

Stanfield said the state ban is harmful for VFW members who are trying to recover from alcoholism or opioid addiction. 

“I have testimony after testimony in my post alone of people that are still alive today,” Stanfield said, “because they use cannabis to get off of their opioids that they were addicted to.”

During the inspection, he said the DHSS employees told him that the drinks were considered “adulterated.” If a product is considered adulterated, DHSS has the authority to embargo it – which means put a tag on it until the department gets a court order to destroy it. 

Stanfield points to the state law that says, “a food shall not be considered adulterated solely for containing industrial hemp, or an industrial hemp commodity or product.”

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

It is the same law fueling the Missouri Hemp Trade Association’s lawsuit against the governor’s ban. 

“I will continue to comply with federal law and sell these products until they’re not legal,” Stanfield said, “to give my veterans a non-alcoholic option in a place where they can come and be with other veterans and not have to consume alcohol.”

Porchá Perry demonstrates with other workers in Lansing, Michigan, in favor of bills restoring local control to pass workforce and labor policies on Sept.13, 2023. A new report finds growing union organizing across the country has triggered an anti-labor legislative response in some states, but cities and counties are increasingly pushing back (Photo courtesy of SEIU Local 1).

Growing union organizing across the country has triggered an anti-labor legislative response in some states, but cities and counties are increasingly pushing back, a new report found.

The report, released this month by the New York University Wagner Labor Initiative and Local Progress Impact Lab, a group for local elected officials focused on economic and racial justice issues, cites examples of localities all over the U.S. using commissions to document working conditions, creating roles for protecting workers in the heat and educating workers on their labor rights.

In the face of increased worker organizing and Americans’ higher approval of labor unions in the past few year (hitting levels not seen since the 1960s), many states have introduced bills aimed at stopping payroll deduction for union dues and punishing employers that voluntarily recognize a union through the card check process. In April, several governors in Southern states, including Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, advocated against auto workers voting for a union.

“We know that there has been an increase in worker organizing and definitely an increase in high-profile worker organizing and certainly that action has had a reaction,” said Terri Gerstein, director of the NYU Wagner Labor Initiative and co-author of the report.

However, state preemption laws, which can make local ordinances void and could prevent many localities from implementing more worker-friendly policies, are also on the rise. There was a surge in preemption laws from 2015 to 2017 on everything from the minimum wage to paid leave, according to a June 2024 analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center think tank.

Although the passage of preemption legislation has slowed, according to the EPI analysis, the effects on localities are still damaging to workers’ rights, authors of the report explain. But labor and policy experts say there are still opportunities for localities to push back against efforts to limit labor organizing and gut the enforcement of labor protections.

“Localities are doing more to fight for working people and advance workers’ rights, and I think in states where there is rampant state hostility and abusive state preemption, local governments are also the leaders of trying to advance workers rights in those states and address new challenges and threats like heat, for example,” said the report’s other co-author, LiJia Gong, the policy and legal director at Local Progress.

Some business organizations, such as the National Federation of Independent Business, say preemption laws help small businesses, which don’t have the capacity “to navigate duplicative, overlapping and potentially contradictory local labor laws.”

“NFIB has supported legislation that creates statewide, uniform standards for minimum wage rates and legislation that establishes a preemption of paid sick leave proposals by local governments,” the group said in a prepared statement.

Gerstein and Gong argue that these efforts are not always concerned with uniformity, such as taking away a locality’s ability to raise the minimum wage when the state does not set a higher minimum wage itself.

In states where there isn’t state-level wage enforcement, localities can pass ordinances that allow workers to file complaints and get stolen wages back without a lawyer, as some Florida localities have done.

There are also things cities and counties can do to prevent heat-related injuries and illnesses, including in the workplace. Miami-Dade County, Phoenix, and Los Angeles have chief heat officers whose role it is to protect people from the effects of extreme heat.

“Unlike a lot of other hazards, people don’t really understand how dangerous workplace heat is and that there are workplace fatalities. But research also shows that there are high rates of worker injuries and accidents of various kinds on hotter days,” Gerstein said.

Amid state efforts to weaken child labor laws, schools are also some of the best tools localities have to ensure kids aren’t working in dangerous conditions, the authors said. School boards could use their power to include workers’ rights education in the curricula, for example.

“School districts can do a lot to educate families on child labor laws and age-appropriate employment opportunities, and they can also play an important role in identifying students who might be working in prohibited occupations and refer those cases to state and federal labor enforcers,” Gong said.

Worker boards can also document and seek to improve working conditions on the local level. The boards, created by local governments, have worker representation and can conduct worker outreach and make policy recommendations on wages and benefits. Last year, the Detroit City Council voted to create an industry standards board for workers at pro sports facilities including Ford Field, Little Caesars Arena, and Comerica Park.

Board member Porchá Perry, a mother of two children who works at Comerica Park and Ford Field, said her role is reaching out to workers to share their experience of working conditions. Workers say they are concerned about low wages, child care, transportation and safety. Perry said that although she is personally less concerned about finding child care, she wouldn’t have to work multiple jobs if wages were higher and she would be able to see her kids more.

“It’s hard to have quality time,” she said.

The board also has spots for city council members and the mayor’s office.

“It’s a voice for everybody – government officials, employees, the management department. It’s somewhere for everybody to sit at the table and speak,” she said.

Britain Forsyth, legislative coordinator for Step Up Louisiana, a group that organizes for economic and education justice, said New Orleans has focused on becoming a model employer. New Orleans increased the minimum wage to $13.25 for city employees, which became effective in 2022, and rose to $15 in 2023. In 2023, the New Orleans City Council codified city employees’ right to organize. Louisiana does not have a state minimum wage law, so the city’s minimum wage is far above $7.25, the federal minimum wage.

Step Up Louisiana is also working to pass a workers’ bill of rights on the November ballot in New Orleans. It would add to the bill of rights in the city’s home rule charter that workers deserve a living wage, paid leave, safe workplaces and health care coverage and says that all laws and regulations regarding unions should be respected.

“We call the question to the city about what we believe in, and we make it clear to employers here and folks who want to open businesses here that this is how we think workers should be treated,” he said.

Authors of the report also suggest that more localities should take on wage theft, since state and federal authorities frequently struggle to enforce wage judgments and recover wages.

These agencies are often under-resourced, have frequent staff turnover and manage complex cases, Gerstein said. Local labor agencies could provide help conducting interviews or prepare cases for state or federal agencies to follow up on. San Diego County has a fund for staff to pursue employers for wages and provides $3,000 to people who are victims of wage theft and have final unpaid wage orders from the state.

Gerstein said she’s seeing cutting-edge approaches to enforcing worker protections in places like Seattle, Boston, New York City and Denver, where the state is friendlier to workers. For example, in Sept 2022, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu created the Worker Empowerment Cabinet, including the Office of Labor Compliance and Worker Protections.

Jodi Sugerman-Brozan, Boston’s deputy chief of worker empowerment and the director of the office of labor compliance and worker protections, said her office has done educational outreach, including free OSHA training sessions for over 1,200 people and a set of trainings for how to create a heat illness prevention plan. Last year, Wu signed an ordinance that requires certain safety standards and training for city construction projects.

“Cities and countries don’t have a lot of power but they can use the power of contracting and vending to drive labor standards,” Sugerman-Brozan said.

But Gerstein added that local governments in more employer-friendly states are also stepping up to advocate for workers.

“It’s a very different landscape where the local government may be the only place where the government is standing up for workers,” she said. “There is largely stagnation in Congress because of the filibuster and other reasons, an unfriendly state government, and your state department of labor isn’t particularly worker protective and is more focused on being employer and business-friendly. State AG offices aren’t really doing anything.”

Even a small local office can make a difference, Gerstein said.

“Hire dedicated staff to be the worker rights person. Create an office and an army of one. That’s how these things can start.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer Program, known as Summer EBT, popped up in 37 states, the District of Columbia and multiple territories and tribal nations this year and is intended to feed hungry kids (Inti St. Clair/Getty Photos)

A U.S. Department of Agriculture initiative to feed hungry kids during the long summer months is mostly winding down, with advocates calling it a success despite some hiccups — and the federal government and many states are already working to bring the permanent program back in 2025.

The Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer Program — or Summer EBT — has popped up in 37 states, the District of Columbia and multiple territories and tribal nations this year. Advocates say that despite the program’s fair share of challenges, especially given its first year of implementation, the program emerged as an important resource in the fight against kids’ summer hunger.

Summer EBT, also known as SUN Bucks, provides low-income families with school-aged children a grocery-buying benefit of $120 per child. Children are automatically enrolled in Summer EBT if already enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, known as TANF; or the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, per the USDA.

Students might also be automatically enrolled if their school offers the National School Lunch Program or School Breakfast Program and their family qualifies for free or reduced-price school meals, according to the USDA. Most states’ deadlines to apply for the benefit this summer have already passed, and many have already issued the benefit for the summer months.

Allan Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the USDA, said it’s too early to say just how many children have been served through the program so far this summer, but based on the participating states, territories and tribes, an estimated 21 million children are eligible to receive the benefits.

‘Critical support to families’

Kelsey Boone, senior child nutrition policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center, told States Newsroom that “like any new program, there are challenges with Summer EBT.”

The national nonprofit works to reduce poverty-related hunger through research, advocacy and policy solutions.

“That has included tight implementation timelines, logistical complexities and the need to raise awareness among eligible families,” Boone said.

Despite those challenges, Boone said the program is “definitely worth it” and “provides critical support to families by ensuring children have access to nutritious foods during the summer months, bridging the gap when school meals are unavailable.”

Boone said “we are still in the midst of implementation, so there aren’t hard statistics on how the programs are really rolling out at this point.”

She added that “some states have had to return to USDA and ask for … higher amounts of benefits, and that is due to the fact that they are streamline certifying, or automatically giving benefits to more students than they expected, and that is a very big positive for the streamlined certification process.”

Boone noted that some states have been delayed in issuing the benefits, “which means some families will not be receiving benefits until September or even October or November.”

Still, Boone said that despite the importance of receiving the benefits during crucial summer months when school meal programs are not an option, “it is also going to be helpful no matter what.”

Over a dozen states opted out  

But 13 states — all with Republican governors — chose not to partake in the program this year, including Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. Multiple tribal nations in Oklahoma are participating despite the state opting out.

Rodriguez said the department expects that even more states and tribes will provide SUN Bucks next year.

States have until Jan. 1 to submit a notice of intent if they plan to participate in Summer EBT for 2025, according to the USDA. Alabama has already allocated millions of dollars in funding for the program next summer.

“We recognize that standing up a new program in a very short time period is no easy task,” Rodriguez said, adding that “potential challenges may include making systems changes, identifying sufficient staff, and securing financial resources to cover program administration, particularly (states’) responsibility for covering 50% of the administrative costs associated with operating the program.”

The USDA “is committed to working closely with all states, U.S. territories, and eligible tribes to support our shared goal of ensuring children have access to critical nutrition in the summer months through SUN Bucks,” Rodriguez added.

Justin King, policy director at Propel — a financial technology company helping low-income Americans track Electronic Benefit Transfer balances, like Summer EBT, through an app — said “there’s a lot of frustration and disappointment among folks who feel left out because their state has chosen not to participate this year.”

The company, which has partnered with the Biden administration, serves more than 5 million households each month.

King said “the big takeaway from looking at Summer EBT is that while there might be inevitable hiccups and challenges, Summer EBT can work, and it does make a difference for the households that it serves.”

“The comments that we’ve gotten from households who’ve received the benefit this year are overwhelmingly positive about it making a real difference in their ability to keep their kids healthy and fed in summertime.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cox declined comment on Hatfield’s letter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Tyson Plant in Rogers, Arkansas, on June 28, 2020 (Spencer Tirey, for Investigate Midwest)

Tyson Foods annual sales have doubled in the past two decades, increasing from $26 billion to $53 billion from 2004 to 2023, according to a review of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Yet Tyson, which is the country’s largest chicken company, has closed nine meatpacking plants over the past year — including two in Missouri impacting more than 2,000 workers.

The plant closures and the company’s contracts with affected chicken farmers sparked an investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The meatpacking company is also being sued for allegations of antitrust violations.

The Arkansas-based company operates 183 chicken facilities in the U.S., including hatcheries, processing plants and feed mills. In addition to chicken, the company’s sales come from beef, pork and prepared foods.

In July, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley sent a letter to Tyson Foods CEO Donnie King demanding transparency and accountability after a lawsuit brought against his company alleged that Tyson lied about its intentions to sell its chicken plant in Dexter to a competitor.

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Ty Murphy brushes his hog's hair at the Missouri State Fair (Jana Rose Scheise/KBIA).

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

The Missouri Hemp Trade Association filed a lawsuit Friday in Cole County Circuit Court to stop the governor’s ban on all intoxicating hemp food and drinks from taking effect Sunday.

The action comes in response to a memo the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services sent to food retailers on Thursday detailing how the ban will play out. 

“This memo really crystallizes the issue and really makes clear what they’re intending to do,” said Chuck Hatfield, the association’s attorney. “And I think what they’re intending to do is illegal.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We’re going to point out that the department lacks the authority to ban psychoactive cannabinoid hemp products across the board, as they’re doing,” Hatfield said. “Hemp products are not adulterated under Missouri law.”

Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for DHSS, addressed the line Hatfield referred to in the state law. 

“We are not talking about simply industrial hemp,” she said. “What we are dealing with are chemically converted hemp-derived cannabinoids which are included in almost every hemp-derived intoxicating product on the market today.”

Embargoed products

Hatfield also argues an executive order cannot trump a state law when there are no administrative rules in place to back it up. 

Last week, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft rejected the Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control’s proposed emergency rules that would’ve given the division the authority to enforce DHSS’ embargo at places licensed to sell tobacco or alcohol. 

And now the rules will have to go through the standard process which could take six months, Parson said in a strongly-worded letter to Ashcroft last week.

There will be a public-comment period followed by a debate among the members of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, a 10-member body made up of state representatives and senators. 

However, Cox said the rules don’t need to be approved for the ban to go into effect for places that provide food to the public. 

Food is defined as an edible substance, ice, beverage, chewing gum or an ingredient used in these products, the memo states.

“The governor has directed DHSS to use our current authority to enforce these products under the Missouri Food Code, which would not require the emergency rule,” Cox said. 

According to the memo, the department will begin to inspect facilities for compliance after Monday and will heavily rely on complaints received through the department’s online form. 

The highest priority will go to complaints received from health officials, including at poison control centers and local public health agencies. Next will be referrals from law enforcement officials. Complaints about products marketed to children will also be prioritized, the memo states. 

If unregulated psychoactive cannabis products are found during an investigation, the department will “request voluntary compliance, including destruction of the products,” it states.

“If voluntary compliance is not achieved, products will be embargoed and held on the premises until a court order for destruction is obtained,” the memo states. 

Hatfield said the department doesn’t have the authority to “pull things off the shelves.” 

If people don’t take products off the shelves voluntarily, Hatfield said, then regulators will embargo it, “which means putting a sticker on it.”

Under the state law, DHSS regulators would have to go to each retailer individually and put an embargo tag on the products they’ve deemed “adulterated, or so misbranded as to be dangerous or fraudulent.”

Then the department would have to go before a circuit court judge to petition that the products need to be embargoed. If the judge sides with regulators, the products are destroyed. If not, the tag is removed and the product is considered legal to sell.

The order also means no Missouri business can manufacture these products within the state, Cox said. 

The department’s main focus, she said, will be on protecting children “by prohibiting sales of unregulated psychoactive cannabis products.” 

“We believe that will take the majority of our time and resources to enforce,” Cox said. “However, the enforcement authority outlined in state statute allows us to address manufacturing issues as needed. We’ll be working with businesses on a case-by-case basis as they have questions about manufacturing.”

This story was updated at 12 p.m. to reflect that the lawsuit was filed. 

The gap between CEO pay and the middle-paid employee actually fell between 2022 and 2023 (Getty Images)

The pay gap between corporate leaders and workers at low-wage companies narrowed a little between 2022 and 2023, but it’s still huge, according to a report that was released Thursday.

In addition, those leaders invested far more heavily in a strategy that boosts their already-lavish pay than they did in employee retirement benefits. Nearly half of them even invested more in the strategy — stock buybacks  — than they did in their own companies, the report said.

The report, Executive Excess 2024, is the 30th such report by the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank that examines inequality, among other topics.

The report looks at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay and monitors changes from one year to the next.

A topline finding in this year’s report is that the gap between CEO pay and the middle-paid employee actually fell between 2022 and 2023. That might be due to the fact that the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 imposed a 1% excise tax on them.

However, the difference remains vast, dropping from the chief executive getting 603 times what the median employee got, to 538. The slight narrowing of the pay gulf is due both to a 9% increase in median worker pay — to $34,522 in 2023 — and a 4% drop in CEO pay — to $14.7 million, the report said.

Such huge disparities between the money the top boss makes and the median worker does aren’t just an issue of fairness. The divergence between executive and worker pay helps drive income inequality in the United States, and that’s been linked to higher rates of crime, greater consumer debt, and poorer health outcomes, a separate report from last year said.

This year’s Executive Excess report again looked at a major mechanism through which CEO’s boost their pay.

When they decide to use company revenue to buy back stock, they’re serving themselves because much of their compensation comes in the form of company stock. The value of that stock increases with demand, and buybacks boost demand.

That dynamic can create warped incentives for executives to put their own interests ahead of those of their companies and their employees. And in many cases, the Low Wage 100 spent more on buybacks than they spent on their companies.

In total, the companies spend more than a half-trillion dollars on buybacks over the five years ending in December, while they made three-quarters of a trillion in capital expenditures over the same period, the report said.

Even so, nearly half of those companies — 47% — spent more on buybacks than they made in capital expenditures.

And while CEOs are spending heavily in ways that will add comfort to their own, already-cushy retirement, they’re spending far, far less on retirement benefits for their employees.

The biggest disparity among the 20 largest low-wage employers was for Chipotle Mexican Grill. It spent $2.1 billion on buybacks over five years, while spending just $24 million on retirement benefits for its 114,000 employees, the report said. In other words, Chipotle spent nearly 50 times as much on buybacks over the period as it did on retirement benefits for its employees.

Meanwhile, CEO Brian Niccol’s compensation in 2023 alone — $22.4 million — was almost equal to retirement benefits paid out to all company employees over the last five years combined.

Among the 20 largest low-wage employers, Cincinnati-based Kroger had one of the lowest buyback-to-employee retirement ratios. Even so, it spent almost four times as much on buybacks as it did on employee retirement over the five-year period, the report said.

In addition to the 1% excise tax on buybacks imposed by the Inflation Reduction Act, other measures are being taken to curb the practice. Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, have authored a bill that would quadruple that percentage.

In addition, the Biden administration has proposed preventing executives from selling their stock over a multi-year period after a buyback, “preventing CEOs from timing share repurchases to cash in personally on a short-term price pop they themselves have artificially created,” the report said.

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

Under Missouri's new cannabis regulations, labels and packages for marijuana-related products must have limited colors and can't appeal to children or resemble candy. (Photo by Rebecca Rivas/The Missouri Independent)

Marijuana companies face a hard deadline to meet Missouri’s new plain packaging requirements on Sept. 1 — more than a year after the rule was initially put in place. 

For decades, there’s been a global movement urging “plain packaging” on tobacco products — or packaging with limited colors and frills — after numerous studies found it makes cigarettes less appealing to young people. 

Missouri is now a testing ground to see if plain packaging has the same impact for recreational marijuana.

When voters passed the constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana in 2022, it included a provision that labels and packaging for marijuana-related products, “shall not be made to be attractive to children.”

Now under new state rules, packaging can only be one primary color, and it can have up to two logos or symbols that can be a different color or several different colors.

“This approach to packaging is familiar to all of us,” said Amy Moore, director of Missouri’s Division of Cannabis Regulation, during a legislative committee hearing last year. “You think about the cereal aisle versus tobacco packaging or over-the-counter medicines.”

The initial deadline for compliance was May 1, but regulators heard from licensees that potential delays in global shipping could impact their ability to receive the packaging in time. 

Now starting on Sept. 1, marijuana manufacturers must package and label all products in division-approved designs before sending them to a dispensary. 

Dispensaries can continue to sell non-compliant products they already have in the store until Nov. 1.

The new rules also require the division to pre-approve the labels, a process that didn’t exist under medical marijuana rules. 

Nick Rinella, CEO of Hippos Cannabis, said companies have seen delays in the state’s approval of their submitted designs.

“The state just doesn’t have the manpower to go through and approve them,” Rinella said. “And until they’re approved, they can’t go onto the shelves in their new packaging.”

Since the approval process opened on Sept. 1, 2023, the division has received nearly 150,000 submissions, said Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the division.

Half of those were submitted within the last 60 days.

“Licensees have had a year to submit applications for approval,” Cox said, “and five months’ notice that they should not expect another extension.”

Cox said all applications are being processed within 60 days.

The constitution says that no marijuana facility can sell edible marijuana-infused candy in shapes or packages that are attractive to children or that are easily confused with commercially sold candy that does not contain marijuana. Penalties include fines of up to $5,000 and a loss of a business license. 

The packaging requirements are part of Missouri’s new cannabis regulation rules that went into effect on July 30, 2023. 

In the division’s first draft of proposed rules last year, it required companies to have only one color on the label. 

That caused an uproar from the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, which argued in a letter to lawmakers that marijuana businesses had already invested “many millions” in packaging designs. And companies did so, the trade association contends, because “attractive, interesting, and attention-grabbing packaging is essential to effectively advertise and promote marijuana product sales.”

After the pushback from both MoCann Trade and some legislators, the agency changed the rule to allow “limited colors.” Another compromise, Moore told lawmakers, was allowing for QR codes on the labels to send consumers to their website for more information. 

Missouri becomes one of few states that require plain packaging in the adult-use cannabis market, according to the Network for Public Health Law. The others include Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey. 

Moore said the rules align with what voters asked for in the constitutional amendment. The requirements regarding children’s safety are more stringent than what was included in the constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana in 2018.

“We have to notice that,” she said, “and say, ‘Apparently we’re to do more, we’re to do better for children and for health.”

Builders say today’s average homebuyer expects their house to be built with high-efficiency insulation and electric appliances (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon).

Twenty years ago, only the most environmentally minded of homebuyers worried much about solar panels, insulation ratings or the value of a heat pump.

Today, all those factors matter in a market where energy bills take on growing importance in homebuyers’ calculations.

Green home technologies have become more ordinary, even expected (and sometimes mandated by local building codes).

And the planet-friendly standards pioneered a few decades ago have been boosted by improving technologies — though the most dazzling ways to save energy and use more environmentally friendly materials tend to require buyers with beefier budgets.

The cheapest way to make a house greener is to keep it smaller. But other details matter.

Higher-rated insulation and electric appliances have become the standard. Meanwhile, amenities like conventional heat pumps and electric water heaters are becoming more popular among small-budget, first-time buyers. Solar panels and pricier geothermal heat pumps, meanwhile, are gaining popularity in the luxury home market.

“There’s been a lot of progress on this trend towards efficiency and electrification,” said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “That’s really taken off in the last five years because a lot of people are interested in using less fossil fuels and less energy.”

The shift toward greener homes comes partly because local and federal governments encourage it with a range of subsidies.

Evergy, for instance, gives its electricity customers rebates for heat pumps and at-home electric vehicle chargers.

And the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (which imposed more rules around fighting climate change) offers tax credits covering up to 30% of the costs for eligible clean energy home improvements like solar panels and solar water heaters installed by 2032.

What’s hot in green tech in Kansas City?

While luxury homes may feature high-end natural materials, the real driving force in today’s green construction is the demand for designs that guarantee lasting energy savings.

“There’s an aesthetic right now that’s very natural,” said Rumbach. “But that’s not the main mover of the market. A lot of these basic things, like the heating, cooling, and roofing materials, are.”

Homebuilders say that as technology advances and energy standards grow stronger, all types of buyers expect better-weatherized homes with high-insulation walls, upgraded heating and cooling systems and tight seals around windows and doors.

“Homeowners have become more aware of how extreme the weather gets here,” said Luke Owen, owner of Owen Homes. His construction company builds homes certified in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED. “We have to consider all the different weather events that are going to occur on the house and try to make sure our exterior surfaces are built for this.”

Rumbach said that energy-efficient furnaces have made huge strides in popularity. About two decades ago, most furnaces ran around 80% efficient — meaning you’d get 80% of the energy back as heat — but today’s models typically achieve between 90% and 99% efficiency, he said.

Green experts also say that electronic appliances are the standard in new home construction as buyers look to move away from fossil fuels like natural gas.

Rumbach said electric water heaters have become popular and more people are buying tankless, on-demand water heaters with federal incentives.

Bill Griffith, a member of Kansas City’s Climate Protection Steering Committee, said that he’s noticed a shift from electric stovetops to induction stovetops. Those save on electricity by using electromagnetic fields to heat pots and pans directly instead of the entire cooking surface.

But the most notable shift he’s noticed is in the popularity of heat pumps, which heat and cool air more efficiently by transferring outdoor heat inside during winter and expelling indoor heat outside during summer.

Griffith said that seven years ago, heat pumps struggled to heat homes when temperatures dropped to 35 degrees. However, the technology has improved significantly. In March 2022, he replaced his gas furnace and air conditioner with an electric furnace and a heat pump. He said he was pleasantly surprised to find that the heat pump heated his home without needing backup from the furnace, except for two extremely cold days in December.

“It still worked the second day at five (degrees) below zero before it kicked over to the backup,” he said.

And heat pumps cost only marginally more than air conditioners and bring energy savings, Griffith said. He paid $6,500 for his heat pump and an air conditioner would have cost him $5,700. He said that current homebuyers can see added upfront savings with a $2,000 federal tax credit for heat pumps.

“Most of my … savings come from the utility bill going down each month,” he said.

Heat pumps have risen in popularity so much so that Owen Homes typically includes them in its homes instead of air conditioners. They beat out gas-powered furnaces in total units sold in the U.S. last year.

But several advancements in green building lie beyond the budgets for first-time homebuyers. Owen Homes builds houses in the $1 million to $3 million range with pricier tinted and tighter-sealing windows.

“Our window packages typically range from $40,000 to $60,000,” he said. “A normal entry-level home is probably in a $7,000 to $10,000 package.”

Other technologies, like roof-mounted solar panels and geothermal heat pumps, are rising in popularity in the luxury market.

Geothermal heat pump systems make heating and cooling more efficient by running pipes underground to exploit the constant temperature.

And  Kansas City’s current energy code requires that certain new homes be designed with roofs prepped for potential solar panel installations.

Owen said that everyone wants to build green until they see the upfront price and how long it takes to make your money back in energy savings. He said first-time homebuyers might need to think smaller.

“It’s about understanding the trade-off between the size of the home and the amenities,” he said. “You can either have a larger home with fewer upgrades or a smaller home with more.”

Are green homes expensive?

The Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City estimates that adhering to the city’s current building code can add up to $31,000 to the price of a 2,400-square-foot, two-story home. However, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that the 2021 International Energy Code, the basis for the city’s standards, typically increases the cost of a single-family home by around $7,200.

Travis Brungardt, co-owner of Catalyst Construction, said that one of the biggest challenges to affordability is the shortage of trained workers who know how to install new, advanced systems. That lack of expertise means that installation and maintenance are more time-consuming and costly.

“It’s simple math for a tradesperson to choose between installing a system that they’ve installed 25 times and slowing down to learn a new system,” he said. “They will choose to take the easy work and make more money.”

Homeowners also have to learn to use the emerging technologies. For instance, Owen said, they have to know how to tweak humidity and ventilation settings on energy recovery ventilators, which exchange stale indoor air with fresh outdoor air, or they risk overworking the system during extreme weather.

“We’re pumping fresh air into the homes,” he said, “but the outdoor air could be 100 degrees or negative 10 degrees.”

Green technologies can also be costly to repair. Fixing a geothermal heat pump system can sometimes mean digging underground to access the network of pipes. That’s labor-intensive and expensive.

“It’s a lot more of a technical piece of equipment,” Owen said. “I’ve had several homeowners who have gotten extremely good benefits from them, like lower utility bills. But I’ve had some that had issues with their electronic system. It depends on what brand we go with or where it was produced.”

Brungardt said that Catalyst Construction built a 5,000-square-foot green home two years ago and its occupants have never paid more than $34 a month for electricity.

“I paid $260 last month for air conditioning and I live in a home half that size,” he said.

Catalyst Construction builds $700,000 to $2 million homes. Brungardt said that spending on any level of efficiency is worthwhile.

“There are things that you can’t put a price on,” he said, “like indoor air quality and human health.”

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

A spokesman for Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office told The Independent that the rules were rejected because they didn’t meet the state law’s criteria(Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

The governor’s ban on intoxicating hemp products hit a delay Wednesday after Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft rejected the emergency rules detailing how it would have been enforced.

Gov. Mike Parson signed an executive order earlier this month to remove all hemp-derived THC edibles and beverages from store shelves and threatening penalties to any establishment with a Missouri liquor license or that sells food products for selling them.

It was supposed to take effect on Sept. 1, pending Ashcroft’s approval of the emergency rules. And now that will likely be delayed until for at least six months, Parson said in a strongly-worded letter to Ashcroft on Thursday.

“As best I can tell, you denied this emergency rulemaking because you believe hurt feelings are more important than protecting children,” Parson said.

Hemp industry leaders call Missouri governor’s order banning THC products an ‘overreach’

The governor seemed to be implying the decision was inspired by Parson’s support for another candidate besides Ashcroft in the GOP gubernatorial primary.

Ashcroft finished third in the primary, with Parson’s pick — Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe — winning the nomination.

“This is a personal matter for thousands of parents and grandparents across the state, and denying the rulemaking is your attempt at retribution for my endorsement of another candidate,” Parson said. “Safety of kids is not a political issue. I am disgusted that you are making it one.”

JoDonn Chaney, spokesman for Ashcroft’s office, told The Independent Wednesday that the rules were rejected because they didn’t meet the state law’s criteria. The secretary reached out to the Parson administration to provide an opportunity to explain how the rules met the requirements and got not response, he said.

“Secretary Ashcroft has a discretion to determine what constitutes an emergency rule and there’s guidelines in statute that dictate,” Chaney said.

If Ashcroft would have approved the emergency rules, they would’ve been implemented after 10 business days, since there would be no public-comment period, Chaney said. 

However, now the rules will have to go through the standard rules procedure, which will take several months. 

“It opens it up for a 30- or a 60-day comment period,” Chaney said, “where individuals on both sides can comment on the rule.”

From there, it will be debated among the members of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, a 10-member body of both state representatives and senators. 

However, the rules actually don’t need to be approved for the ban to go into effect, said Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

The proposed rules include one sentence: “No retailer shall sell, or deliver, hold or offer for sale any food, drug, device or cosmetic that has been embargoed by the Department of Health and Senior Services pursuant to [state statute.]” 

It refers to the state law that gives DHSS the authority to embargo products without any administrative rule in place. It means that DHSS regulators would have to go to each retailer individually and put an embargo tag on the products they’ve deemed “adulterated, or so misbranded as to be dangerous or fraudulent.”

Then the department would have to go before a circuit court judge to petition that the products need to be embargoed. If the judge sides with the retailer, then the tag is removed. 

“The governor has directed DHSS to use our current authority to enforce these products under the Missouri Food Code, which would not require the emergency rule,” Cox said. “We can begin enforcement (embargo of products) on Sept. 1.”

However, without the approval of emergency rules, Cox said DHSS would be acting “without the enforcement authority and support” of the Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control.

“It does not appear to me that the government has really thought through this plan very well,” said Chuck Hatfield, an attorney representing the Missouri Hemp Trade Association. “And now the Secretary of State has rejected a rule. And, I hope that they’ll reconsider the whole thing.”

Hatfield said regulation of the hemp industry should be handled through a bill that’s debated and voted on by the legislature. For the last two years, the marijuana-industry — which has been a major political donor to Parson — has led an unsuccessful effort to convince the legislature to ban hemp-derived THC products outright. 

“Trying to do it through executive order and bureaucratic action is just not good government,” Hatfield said. “And I think the Secretary of State today, in part, recognized that.”

At his Aug. 1 press conference, Parson pointed to products that mimic trademarked candy but contain hemp-derived THC as a big reason why he issued his executive order banning all intoxicating hemp products.

These products have been allowed to be sold in Missouri outside of licensed cannabis dispensaries because the 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp.

Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services Director Paula Nicholson warned families about the fact that these hemp products on the shelves are not regulated by any state or federal authority during the same press conference. So there’s no way to ensure they’re safe, she said.

“We have seen the negative impacts first hand,” she said. “Disturbingly, children in Missouri and across the nation have been hospitalized after ingesting these substances. This is unacceptable.”

However, Parson did not address the fact that thousands of retailers statewide are currently selling hemp-derived beverages in bars and liquor stores and require people to be 21 to purchase them. 

Steven Busch, owner of Krey Distributing, said everyone in the hemp industry agrees that those bad actors that Parson mentioned should be taken off the shelves. 

But the governor failing to address the impact it would have on thousands of bars, liquor stores and grocery stores was “disingenuous” and “bordering unethical,” said Busch, whose company distributes 11 different hemp beverages in eastern Missouri. 

“This executive order singled out any retailers that have a liquor license and said that they cannot sell the products,” Busch said. “So that’s pretty much all of my customers that are currently selling.”

Since March, Busch has led an effort to establish regulations for these beverages and edibles by working with various lawmakers to write legislation. It’s set to be filed in December.

This story was updated at 2:44 p.m.

Equifax credit files through June show that credit card delinquency is still rising. Americans’ total credit card balances are at $1.14 trillion, up 5.8% compared to a year ago, according to a recent report from the New York Fed (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images).

Americans are racking up credit card debt as they struggle to keep up with the cost of living, and experts say those who earn the least are the hardest hit.

Total credit card balances rose 5.8% from a year ago, to $1.14 trillion, according to a recent New York Fed report. Equifax credit files through June show that credit card delinquency is still rising but that delinquency on consumer finance loans and retail cards fell and auto loan delinquency was flat.

People use credit cards for all kinds of purchases, and despite the stereotype of consumers getting themselves into too much credit card debt so that they could buy a few extra flashy clothes or vacations, many of them are for necessities.

So what does it mean for the economy that the average rate for people with a credit card balance was 22.76% in May, that there is an expansion of financial tech products like “buy now, pay later,” and that many Americans find themselves unable to pay off that debt? It depends on your role in the economy, financial experts and economists say.

“If you’re in that half who’s paying your cards in full and taking full advantage of rewards and buyer protections, life is great for you. That’s a very different story from someone who’s trapped in that expensive cycle of 20 to 25 to 30% interest month after month,” said Ted Rossman, Bankrate senior industry analyst.

Still, the rate of growth in credit card debt has accelerated, which Rossman calls “potentially troublesome.”

It’s impossible to look at rising credit card debt without acknowledging the high cost of living, such as housing prices. The Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation, showed that in July, shelter increased 0.4% and made up 90% of that month’s rise in the all items index.

“Inflation is definitely contributing to higher balances. Even if it’s a category like rent, which most people are not putting on a credit card, if you’re getting squeezed on rent, you have less money to go around for groceries and gas and other things that maybe you are putting on a credit card now,” he said.

The Federal Reserve’s campaign to raise interest rates to bring down inflation also affects credit card debt and some economists say it is fueling economic inequality. Although the Fed paused rates last year, they are still fairly high and influence credit card rates. The Fed may cut rates in its September meeting if it continues to see cooling inflation data.

“People who rely on credit cards and other forms of borrowing to finance all sorts of things in their lives, whether that’s food or purchases for investments in their education or purchases for their home or their children, disproportionately folks who are poor – they’re really hurting because interest rates are really high,” said Rakeen Mabud, chief economist and a senior fellow at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank. “These interest rates are really taking a toll on people’s day-to-day ability to live and finance their lives. It looks to me that the high interest rates at this point are actually causing more pain than the inflation that it is trying to combat.”

In addition to the impact of the federal funds rate on credit cards, consumers are facing high annual percentage rate margins, or APR margins, which the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said were an all-time high in a February report. The agency said rising APR margins are driving people into persistent debt and delinquency.

“Credit card companies are gouging consumers with record high APR margins, which sit on top of the Fed’s already high interest rates. Profiteering by credit card companies cost people an extra $25 billion last year and is yet another example of corporations using inflation as a cover to rip people off,” Mabud said.

A lack of competition in the credit industry doesn’t help matters for those struggling with credit card debt, added Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, which provides financial intelligence products.

“There is some evidence that there’s less competition in that market and that’s allowing credit card lenders to enjoy wide margins,” he said.

Mitria Wilson-Spotser, vice president and federal policy director at the Center for Responsible Lending, said she partly attributes the rise in credit card debt to some major credit card companies not reporting payment data, which does not make it to their credit reports, hurting their credit score and leaving them with higher credit card rates or extending credit without basing it on an ability to repay.

Consumers also have access to more financial tech products, like earned wage access programs, which let employees access their pay earlier for a fee, and buy now pay later products, said Wilson-Spotser. These products are not regulated in the same way as credit cards. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a rule in May to apply the same regulations to “buy now pay later” lenders as traditional credit cards.

“There’s no obligation to ensure an ability to repay for the consumer, so that debt, which is kind of this phantom in the room, is combining with credit card debt, which I think is probably one of the reasons why we’re seeing an increase in delinquency among some consumers,” she said.

Zandi said the people most likely to suffer financially from their credit card debt, lower-income people, only account for a sliver of the consumer spending driving the economy.

“[High interest rates] is adding to the pressure on households who have revolving debt, that aren’t paying off their cards and are using the card as a way to borrow money and have outstanding debt. So that’s a real problem for those households,” he said. “… The economy can move forward and be just fine even if the folks in the bottom third are struggling. The economy can’t flourish but it can do what it’s doing.”

That doesn’t mean the impact of the harms of high credit card rates and inflation, which is cooling but has done damage to households, will go unnoticed, however, Zandi said, alluding to building political pressure to improve people’s economic well-being.

“But the political and social implications are enormous. You can see it in our fracture of politics and what’s going on in terms of the presidential election,” he said. “… Politics has been affected by the fact that lower-income households have seen their share of the economic pie decline from where it was when it was at its peak back in the late 70s, early 80s.”

The welcome screen for the OpenAI “ChatGPT” app is displayed on a laptop screen in a photo illustration (Leon Neal/Getty Images).

The desire for artificial intelligence skills in new hires has exploded over the last five years, and continues to be a priority for hiring managers across nearly every industry, data from Stanford University’s annual AI Index Report found.

In 2023, 1.6% of all United States-based jobs required AI skills, a slight dip from the 2% posted in 2022. The decrease comes after many years of growing interest in artificial intelligence, and is likely attributed to hiring slowdowns, freezes or layoffs at major tech companies like Amazon, Deloitte and Capital One in 2023, the report said.

The numbers are still greatly up from just a few years ago, and in 2023, thousands of jobs across every industry required AI skills.

What do those AI jobs look like? And where are they based, exactly?

Generative AI skills, or the ability to build algorithms that produce text, images or other data when prompted, were sought after most, with nearly 60% of AI-related jobs requiring those skills. Large language modeling, or building technology that can generate and translate text, was second in demand, with 18% of AI jobs citing the need for those skills.

Those skills were followed by ChatGPT knowledge, prompt engineering, or training AI, and two other specific machine learning skills.

The industries that require these skills run the gamut — the information industry ranked first with 4.63% of jobs while professional, scientific and technical services came in second with 3.33%. The financial and insurance industries followed with 2.94%, and manufacturing came in fourth with 2.48%.

Public administration jobs, education jobs, management and utilities jobs all sought AI skills in 1- 2% of their open roles, while agriculture, mining, wholesale trade, real estate, transportation, warehousing, retail trade and waste management sought AI skills in 0.4-0.85% of their jobs.

Though AI jobs are concentrated in some areas of the country, nearly every U.S. state had thousands of AI-specific jobs in 2023, the report found.

California — home to Silicon Valley — had 15.3%, or 70,630 of the country’s AI-related jobs posted in 2023. It was followed by Texas at 7.9%, or 36,413 jobs. Virginia was third, with 5.3%, or 24,417 of AI jobs.

Based on population, Washington state had the highest percentage of people in AI jobs, with California in second, and New York in third.

Montana, Wyoming and West Virginia were the only states with fewer than 1,000 open roles requiring AI, but because of population sizes, AI jobs still made up 0.75%, 0.95% and 0.46% of all of the state’s open roles last year.

Though the number of jobs dipped from 2022 to 2023, the adoption of AI technologies across business operations has not. In 2017, 20% of businesses reported that they had begun using AI for at least one function of their work. In 2022, 50% of businesses said they had, and that number reached 55% in 2023.

For those that have incorporated AI tools into their businesses, it’s making their workers more productive, the report found. The report said studies have shown that AI tools have allowed workers to complete tasks more quickly and have improved the quality of their work. The research suggested that AI could be also capable of upskilling workers, the report found.

The report acknowledges that with all the technological advances that the AI industry has seen in the last five years, there are still many unknowns. The U.S. is still awaiting federal AI legislation, while states make their own regulations and laws.

The Stanford report predicts two futures for the trajectory of the technology — one in which the technology continues to develop and increase productivity, but there’s a possibility that it’s used for “good and bad uses.” In another future, without proper research and development, the adoption of AI technologies could be constrained, researchers said.

“They are stepping in to encourage the upside,” the report said of government bodies. “Such as funding university R&D and incentivizing private investment. Governments are also aiming to manage the potential downsides, such as impacts on employment, privacy concerns, misinformation, and intellectual property rights.”

The Biden administration and the Harris campaign are making their housing policy case to the American people as Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump compete for voters’ trust on economic issues (Spencer Platt/Getty Images).

As renters and would-be homeowners struggle with the high cost of housing, the Biden administration has announced policies to address this strain on household budgets.

That includes $100 million in funding for a program to incentivize affordable housing production and streamlining loan application processes to expedite building more housing.

Some of those proposals – such as a cap on rent increases from corporate landlords – call for Congressional action, while others are rules and grants that can be done without legislative approval. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will also be finalizing a rule to allow different kinds of housing, such as duplexes and triplexes, to be built under the agency’s manufacturing and safety standards.

The Biden administration and the Harris campaign are making their housing policy case to the American people as Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump compete for voters’ trust on economic issues. An August Financial Times/Michigan Ross poll shows that Harris is slightly ahead of Trump when it comes to who voters trust more on the economy, by one percentage point. Although that is a very small advantage, it is a change from July, when 35% of voters approved of President Joe Biden’s job on the economy compared to 41% for Trump.

Plans would cut red tape, but housing stock is still low  

The administration’s plans to address supply and soaring prices also include repurposing federal land in Nevada and a cap on rent increases from corporate landlords, which would require Congressional action. Housing and homelessness experts say many of these changes are positive, particularly zoning changes, while others argue that a few of these actions are insufficient for the crisis at hand.

On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced her plans for boosting housing affordability if she wins the presidency. Harris’ plans are similar to some of the Biden administration’s approaches to housing policy, with an emphasis on stopping corporate landlords from driving up rents and knocking down local zoning barriers to building affordable housing. She also announced a policy to provide up to $25,000 in payment assistance for first-time homebuyers on the condition that they paid rent on time for two years.

“We will take down barriers and cut red tape, including at the state and local levels, and by the end of my first term, we will end America’s housing shortage by building 3 million new homes and rentals that are affordable for the middle class,” Harris said at a campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina on Friday.

Indivar Dutta-Gupta,who focuses on policy research and seminars at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy, applauded developments to make it easier and less costly to build affordable housing through the Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing program, which provides funding for communities getting rid of barriers such as “outdated” zoning policies and a “lack of neighborhood amenities.”

“It’s very difficult for a builder to just kind of copy and paste their plans from one community to another. Secondly, we’re not just talking about requirements for special permitting and land use that are tedious,” he said. “They’re time consuming and that dramatically increases the cost of housing, so if you can knock down a process that takes 12 months to six months, that can make a big difference for housing affordability.”

Kenneth Chilton, professor at the department of public administration at Tennessee State University, said there are certainly homes being built – just not enough affordable ones between $100,000 and $300,000 in the area he lives in Nashville. Wages have also not caught up to those prices, he added.

“The market has catered to the more affluent households, so there are new houses being built, but they’re million dollar-plus houses for people who can afford or are willing to put themselves in a financial burden to afford a million dollar house,” he said. “… It’s becoming harder and harder to afford the discretionary income needed to save up for down payment.”

The Biden administration and Congress has also focused more on corporate landlords of late, who are influencing the housing market. Dutta-Gupta and Chilton said that even in situations where they make up a smaller percentage of landlords, their practices influence other landlords and drive up rents.

Chilton, who has studied how firms that can quickly snatch up all kinds of properties can influence regional housing markets, said it’s hard for the average homeowner to compete.

“You have a lot more corporations and investors who are buying up housing,” he said. “Some of those are institutional, but there’s been recent reports that even smaller local landlords are kind of adopting the same business practices of one-year leases with built-in cost of living adjustments. They’re operating like corporate landlords.”

He said that none of the Biden administration proposals he saw accounted for potential homebuyers, who have to apply for loans, failing to compete with groups and investors making all-cash purchases without inspections. Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation in Congress to limit corporate landlords’ power, but it has not passed.

Dutta-Gupta said the Biden administration’s recent efforts are putting “meaningful dollar amounts” into the quest for affordable housing through grant opportunities, even though they are probably below the demand.

He said he’s also heartened to see that the U.S. Department of Transportation is making sure its discretionary infrastructure grants give preference to communities with more “pro-housing policies,” to give localities more incentives to favor affordable housing. But he said the administration has to make sure it effectively communicates this through outreach.

“There’s going to have to be a meaningful effort to explain to the communities that there’s a new preference and this is how those communities can potentially fall into that category of the preference,” he said. “You don’t want to just let them know there’s a preference and then no change in behavior happens.”

Although Trump has talked about mortgage rates during his campaign, he hasn’t provided a lot of detail on housing policies. The Federal Reserve’s federal funds rate has an influence on mortgage rates and Trump has said the president should “have at least a say” in Fed policy. The Republican Party’s 2024 platform also includes a section on housing affordability, which mentions tax incentives to “promote homeownership,” allowing for new home construction on some federal lands, and reducing regulations that “raise housing costs.”

The challenge of keeping people housed

Given the challenges to building the supply of more affordable housing, the National Alliance to End Homelessness would like to see broader policy approaches to prevent more people from becoming homeless. Homelessness reached a record high in 2023.

Although the Biden administration has taken steps to expand housing access for groups particularly vulnerable to homelessness, such as veterans and survivors of intimate partner violence, Steve Berg, chief policy officer at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, would like to see more of a universal approach, such as housing vouchers that meet the scale of the need. He said targeted emergency rental assistance combined with eviction moratoriums in places where homelessness is particularly high and rising quickly would also be effective at reaching the people who need it most.

“The eviction moratorium combined with subsidies for landlords to help when people got behind on their rent were very effective interventions,” Berg said of earlier pandemic policies to keep people housed.

Why political leaders are focused on housing

The Federal Reserve has signaled it is close to cutting key interest rates as inflation has slowed and the housing market has begun to cool in response to high mortgage rates. The Fed started to raise interest rates in 2022 and hiked them 11 times until late 2023, putting pressure on the housing market during a time of high demand for housing and a shortage of affordable homes.

In May, U.S. rent growth was up 3.2% from a year ago, which was the biggest gain there has been in more than a year, according to CoreLogic’s single family rent data. A lack of housing affordability is also closely tied to homelessness. From 2019 to 2023, the number of people who had to go to emergency shelters for the first time rose more than 23%, a 2024 report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness shows.

“The Federal Reserve primarily slows the economy by making construction of residential housing, and generally taking out loans, more costly. People are certainly experiencing the higher cost of housing right now due to the higher interest rates, so the timing [of the policies] may be fortuitous,” Dutta-Gupta said.

(Spencer Platt/Getty Images).

The typical U.S. worker’s pay is about the same as it was in late 2019, after accounting for inflation. But workers in some states have seen sharply higher earnings, especially in scenic areas that are appealing to remote workers and have labor shortages.

In Montana, for example, average pay has increased 28.3% since before the pandemic, easily beating the roughly 19% national inflation rate during that time. That translates into an average raise of $260 a week to $1,178. No other state saw such a large gain, according to a new Stateline analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The numbers are from 2023, the latest available.

Montana has drawn remote workers with the beauty of its parks and mountains, and has lured blue-collar employees with pay that’s competitive with more expensive areas.

Other picturesque places also have drawn remote workers. Average pay increased significantly in these states, though some of them had relatively low wages to begin with. They include New Hampshire (wages up 28%), Florida (27.3%), Washington (27.2%), Maine (26.7%), Vermont (26.5%), Utah (25.7%), Arizona (24.8%) and West Virginia (24.6%).

Pay increased slightly less than the 19.3% inflation rate in North Dakota (16.8%), Wyoming (17.5%), Connecticut and Michigan (18.1%), New Jersey (18.2%), Maryland and Rhode Island (18.6%), Minnesota and New York (18.9%), and Oklahoma and Pennsylvania (19%).

Nationally, inflation-adjusted earnings increased steeply early in the pandemic as low-wage service workers lost their jobs and employers competed for scarce essential workers. Though wages continued to rise, inflation-adjusted pay started to come down sharply in late 2020 and 2021 as inflation took a bigger bite.

The inflation-adjusted wage spike early in the pandemic was somewhat misleading, both because 20 million low-wage service workers left the workforce temporarily and because prices for some things such as gasoline temporarily plummeted, noted Josh Bivens, chief economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

As the economic recovery has progressed, workers are doing slightly better, Bivens said.

“On the one hand, all else equal, you’d want better wage growth over four and a half years,” Bivens said. “On the other hand, we suffered a horrible economic shock in that period. Relative to other recessions and recoveries, this is superb wage performance, even with the inflation.”

In 2019, the average weekly wage in Montana was $918, 45th among the states. The latest figure, $1,178, ranks 39th. Montana’s natural beauty has drawn new residents from higher-wage states such as New York and California, and many of those working remotely brought their higher salaries with them.

Competition for workers in Montana has been fierce, driving up wages, as has been the case in other newly popular locations. The highest wage growth in Montana has been for those without a college education, a group that saw some of the highest gains nationwide as restaurants and hotels struggled to recover staff after the peak of the pandemic, said Christopher Thornberg, an economist at Beacon Economics, an economic research and consulting firm, who monitors Montana economic trends.

Montana’s economy is heavily geared toward services, and wages may come down again this year from the unusual spike, Thornberg said. But, he added, “there’s little doubt incomes in Montana are higher than they have been in a while, even with it backing off.”

In Florida, where the wage increase was almost as large as in Montana, competition for workers also has driven up wages, and the unemployment rate has been lower than the national average since 2017, said Hector Sandoval, director of the Economic Analysis Program at the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

Florida, like Montana, has also been a magnet for well-paid remote workers from New York in fields like finance, said the bureau’s director, Christopher McCarty.

Meanwhile, wages are stagnating in some large coastal cities that are struggling to maintain well-paying jobs, experts said.

“Coastal cities are especially struggling to add new jobs,” said August Benzow, research lead at the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization. The group has analyzed the improved fortunes of “left-behind” areas — counties with lagging population and income growth from 2000 to 2016 — that had suffered as well-paying jobs concentrated in large cities.

“On the bright side, left-behind counties — particularly those that are more rural — have rebounded swiftly. It remains to be seen whether these areas will continue to see improved growth rates,” Benzow said.

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

(Photo by iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Evictions are a window into America’s rental housing crisis: In 2022, more than half of all renters spent over a third of their income on housing, and millions of tenants who miss rent payments are evicted each year.

When renters are kicked out of their homes, the consequences can be disastrous. Families might lose their possessions when they are piled on the sidewalk, or can’t afford the fee to get them out of storage. Children might have to switch schools, and studies show that evictions often lead to job loss and depression.

The most recent eviction data, based on court records, suggests that 3.6 million evictions were filed in 2018, or 7.8 for every 100 renter households. Those numbers, from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, are considered to be the best available. But they don’t come close to painting a full picture.

Court records on eviction filings vary from county to county, and typically don’t contain much information beyond names and addresses. Crucially, they usually don’t detail the eventual outcome of the legal proceedings. And legal records only represent evictions that make it to court, not informal ones that occur outside the legal process, such as when a property owner simply changes the locks.

“There’s virtually nothing on anything that might happen outside of the court system, like more informal evictions where it’s maybe just a threat, and the person moves out,” said Jill Naamane, a director at the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the lead author of a recent report on the limits of eviction data.

“Evictions are called something different in lots of different places. There are writs of this and complaints of that, and even after understanding all those different nuances in the thousands of places, you still may not really have a good data set.”

Researchers and housing advocates say policymakers need better eviction information to make meaningful progress in addressing the nation’s affordable housing crisis. Many of them are calling on the federal government to collect and standardize the disparate data, and to provide demographic details on the tenants and property owners involved in evictions.

Collecting data

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development collects data on tenants who leave public housing, but it does not gather information on people who are evicted from private housing. In 2020, Congress directed the agency to study the feasibility of creating an evictions database, but four years later, it doesn’t exist.

In the absence of a federal database, the Eviction Lab has become one of the primary sources of eviction information. But the group relies on court filings, and despite aggregating more than 99 million eviction records and 30,000 county reports on eviction filings between 2000 and 2018, it does not have reliable data for the counties that include a third of renters.

“In one county, they use one software and track it digitally, and literally the neighboring county could be something completely different,” said Camila Vallejo, a researcher at the Eviction Lab. “It makes it really hard to funnel that data outwards if all the courts aren’t [using] the same resources or instructions.”

Property owners typically seek to evict tenants for nonpayment of rent or other violations of lease agreements. Owners begin eviction proceedings by notifying the tenant, then filing a lawsuit in a local court.

Court filings allow researchers to determine how often property owners begin this process, but they can be a poor measurement of actual evictions.

For example, the filings don’t always indicate whether the court has ruled in favor of the landlord and ordered the tenants to leave. A tenant might leave voluntarily after getting an eviction notice, or the property owner might drop the filing after reaching a payment agreement with the tenant. Even after an eviction judgment, a landlord might allow a tenant to remain if certain conditions are met.

Property owners also might pursue an informal eviction outside the court system, by changing entry-door locks or shutting off utilities.

Carl Gershenson, the director of the Eviction Lab, said the group is working on ways to fill in some of those gaps.

“A lot of this involves linking the eviction records to other sources of address data,” Gershenson said. “We’re close to getting a good estimate of how many people are ultimately displaced upon receiving these filings.”

Advances in artificial intelligence might aid such efforts, according to Tim Thomas, director of the Urban Displacement Project at the University of Toronto and the University of California, Berkeley.

Thomas noted that even the limited eviction data that is available now has had a profound impact on policy. For example, he said, it helped prompt the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue a moratorium on evictions during the pandemic. That cut eviction filings by more than half in 31 cities tracked by the Eviction Lab.

“The pandemic put gasoline on the fire,” said Thomas. “The data we had prior to the pandemic helped inspire the CDC moratorium. Without that data, we wouldn’t have had as strong of a response.”

Who is most affected

Recent studies on the demographics of the people evicted also have had an effect on policy, advocates say. Multiple studies and reports show that Black women, infants and young children are disproportionately affected by evictions.

Such research has helped spur state legislation to guarantee tenants’ right to counsel in eviction proceedings. The National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel estimates that 83% of landlords have a lawyer in eviction proceedings, compared with 4% of tenants. It also has sparked so-called just cause laws that limit the reasons a landlord can evict a tenant or refuse to renew a lease.

Colorado Democratic state Rep. Javier Mabrey, an eviction lawyer who sponsored a just cause measure that Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed into law in April, said he was inspired by personal experience: When he was 15, a landlord evicted him, his brother and his permanently disabled mother, leaving them homeless.

He told Stateline that bringing House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a fellow Democrat, to see eviction court helped earn her support after she voted against the measure last year.

“This year, after coming to eviction court with me, it was one of the bills that she highlighted” in her speech opening the legislative session, Mabrey said. “When you peel back the curtain on the eviction process, it highlights the need for these protections for tenants.”

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

Jess Bray stands on the dirt road leading into Blue Mountain Farm, which she operates near McCurtin, Oklahoma, on June 17 (Ben Felder/Investigate Midwest).

As Jess Bray pulled up to a 21-acre farm nestled in an eastern Oklahoma valley, she instantly got a warm feeling. “This is the place,” she thought.

After attempting to buy two other properties before being outbid by cash buyers, Bray and her husband Jon began to wonder whether their dream of owning and operating their own farm would become a reality.

“We always wanted to farm, but we aren’t trust fund kids, we didn’t grow up in agriculture … we didn’t have a farm handed down to us, so it wasn’t something that was very accessible to us,” Bray said. “This was a dream come true … but it wasn’t without challenges.”

In 2022, Bray, then 39, purchased the valley property, which they now operate under the name Blue Mountain Farm, growing a variety of vegetables, and raising pigs and a dairy cow near the town of McCurtin.

While Bray eventually realized her dream, the rising cost of farmland has priced out many other would-be farmers and ranchers or forced others into early retirement. The parts of the country where farmland prices have seen the largest increase have also been where the number of agriculture producers has declined the most.

From 2017 to 2022, the average value per acre of all American farmland grew from $4,368 to $5,354, an increase of nearly 23%, according to USDA data on the market value of farmland and its buildings.

But in the 409 counties across the country that saw a producer decline of 15% or greater over the past five years, average farmland values increased by 31%, according to Investigate Midwest’s analysis of USDA reports, land value records and other property data.

Boom or bubble? High Missouri farmland prices encourage investors, concern farmers

In reviewing property records and speaking with more than a dozen officials who closely track farmland values, Investigate Midwest found there are multiple causes for the decline in producers in counties that saw the most significant increase in value:

• Population growth expanding into rural communities has increased prices and reduced farmland as 11 million acres of agricultural land were converted into residential properties from 2001 to 2016, according to the American Farmland Trust.
• The push towards wind and solar energy, often backed by government subsidies, has also raised land rents much higher than for traditional agricultural use.
• Large investment firms, such as Farmland Partners, PGIM and Gladstone Land, are paying top dollar for land and reselling some property at amounts as much as five times higher than the regional average.
• The move towards industrial farms has also meant more corporate land buyers who can pay cash and beat many local offers.

“The biggest competition (for farmland) used to be from the person who wanted a hobby farm but maybe wasn’t farming full time,” said Vanessa Garcia Polanco, a policy campaign director with the National Young Farmers Coalition. “Today, the biggest threat we see is from corporations and hedge funds.”

The increase in competition for farmland has been especially detrimental for young and would-be farmers. According to a 2022 National Young Farmers Coalition survey,​​ 59% of farmers under 40 said finding affordable land was “very or extremely challenging.”

Farmland ownership has received increased attention from lawmakers in recent years, especially concerning foreign-owned companies. Lawmakers in dozens of states have pushed laws limiting foreign land ownership, including from countries like Iran and China, often claiming these buyers drive up costs that push out family farms.

However, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently called that focus misguided and said the growth in American investment firms buying farmland is a more pressing concern.

“Do you know roughly a third of all the farming operations that generate more than $500,000 in sales are owned by investment outfits? Are you concerned about Wall Street owning farmland?” Vilsack said in response to a question about foreign-owned land while speaking at the North American Agricultural Journalists conference in April.

But Paul Pittman, the executive chairman of the investment firm Farmland Partners, said companies like his were not to blame for rising prices and were keeping many farms in production.

“That’s populist B.S. and nothing less,” Pittman told Investigate Midwest when asked about Vilsack’s comments. “And remember, for every farmer who is whining about being outbid, there’s a farm family that owned that farm for 100 years and deserves to get the highest price possible.”

Investment firms significantly increase farmland holdings

In the spring of 2023, the Farmland Partners investment firm spent $8.85 million in cash on 1,840 acres of farmland in Haskell County, Oklahoma. The land was a highly productive swath of soybean, corn and wheat fields with an irrigation system pulling water from the nearby Canadian River.

The Denver-based firm had grown in recent years to become the nation’s largest farmland investor, with a valuation of more than half a billion dollars and a portfolio of more than 180,000 acres across the country.

One of the firm’s land buys in Oklahoma was a 174-acre property for $3 million. At $17,232 an acre, the Oklahoma purchase was five times more than the median for comp sales in the area, based on data from the land value tracking site AcreValue.

However, the firm had shown that its high purchase prices were likely to pay off. It had recently sold nearly 2,500 acres of farmland in central Nebraska and South Carolina for a combined $16.2 million, a transaction that netted Farmland Partners a 24% return on investment, the company announced.

According to data from the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries, investment firms increased their farmland holdings by 231% from 2008 to 2023. While traditional real estate property is constantly expanding, many investors see the decrease in available farmland as a partial driver of its value.

Most farmland investment firms lease the land back to producers who operate the entire farming business. In a recent SEC filing, Gladstone Land, which owns 111,836 acres of farmland across 15 states, said it rents most of its land to farmers on a “triple-net basis,” which means the tenant pays the related taxes, insurance costs, maintenance, and other operating costs in addition to rent.

However, Pittman, the chairman of Farmland Partners’ board of directors, said there are signs that more farmers are struggling to afford rents.

“There’s a little more trouble out there than there was 12 months ago … and we’re seeing it in having an occasional farmer come to us and say, ‘Hey, can you re-rent this farm to someone else?’ ”Pittman said on a May 1 investor call, according to a transcript. “When we’ve had that occur, we’ve been able to (re-rent) the farms at the same price or in some cases, a little bit higher.”

Asked about Vilsack’s comments, Pittman said declining commodity prices are pinching some farmers.

“Starting in about 2019, commodity prices started to go up pretty fast, but here we are in 2024, and commodity prices have pulled back,” Pittman told Investigate Midwest. “This is a low margin business … so when you see a little bit of a drop in commodity price, it can challenge (a farmer) financially.”

However, Pittman said his firm’s investments remain solid because, in the agriculture sector, “bankruptcies are minuscule.”  The 2022 farm bankruptcy rate was 0.84 per 10,000 farms, its lowest rate in nearly 20 years.

While most farmland is rented to producers, there are times when an alternative use can fetch even more money. Wind farms can attract lucrative rents and often allow the land to remain agricultural. However, the growth in solar farms, which also attract high rental rates, usually means the land can no longer be used to grow crops or raise livestock because of the large solar panels near the ground.

“In Illinois, for example, a farm that may rent for $400 to $500 an acre a year for agriculture, rents for $1,250 to $1,500 a year for solar, and the farmer cannot compete with that,” Pittman said. “To be honest, (when I’m wearing) my fiduciary obligation to my investor’s hat, if somebody offers us $1,500 an acre, it’s going to go to solar. But wearing my Paul the citizen hat, I’m not sure that’s a great thing.”

Industrial farm growth led to a ‘hollowing out of the middle’

In most counties that lost producers, agriculture production actually increased as the remaining farms often grew larger or were converted to industrial operations.

Wisconsin’s Douglas County, located in the state’s northwest corner, lost 31% of its producers from 2017 to 2022 but saw net cash farm incomes more than double and sales from agriculture products increase by 45% during that same period.

Across the state, five counties saw a producer decline of at least 15% yet also saw agriculture production sales increase.

“Many operators continued to exit, and this happened rapidly among Wisconsin dairy farms,” said Jeff Hadachek, an agriculture professor at the University of Wisconsin. “At the same time, the farms that remained were increasing in size.”

Hadachek said the increase in farm production means the local economy may still be growing even with a loss of producers.

“I think economists would typically say that just looking at the number of farms is not the best way to consider economic health in a community,” Hadachek said. “Certainly, for the people who own land, the increase in value is a great thing … so there are two sides of the issue for sure.”

Like most types of farming, Wisconsin’s dairy industry has seen a move towards more industrial operations to improve efficiency, which can increase profits in a sector with tight margins for smaller dairy farmers.

In 1997, the average Wisconsin dairy farm had 55.6 cows, while the 2022 average topped 203 per farm, according to research from the University of Wisconsin.

Some farmland investors see profit opportunities in the transition to larger farms and are predicting a continued shift toward industrial agriculture.

“An aging farmer generation, fractional family ownership structure and technological advances requiring sizable capital investment will naturally transition farmland holdings from individuals to institutions,” stated a report from PGIM, the $10 billion property asset management company run by Prudential Financial that has increased its farmland holdings in recent years.

Hadachek said the growth in larger operations has led to a decrease in medium-sized farms, what he calls a “hollowing out of the middle.”

“The growth in the larger end reflects consolidation and the economies of scale and size associated with large farms, while the growth in the smaller end reflects growth in specialty foods, farms targeting the ‘local foods’ market, and hobby farming,” Hadachek said.

But Pittman, the executive chairman of the investment firm Farmland Partners, said data on the decline in the number of farms across the country can be deceiving.

From 2017 to 2022, America lost 141,733 farms, but 80% of those lost farms had less than $2,500 in annual sales.

“You and I know those aren’t really farms, I don’t know why they’re called farms,” Pittman said. “If you’re talking about supporting a family or two families on a farm, you are talking about at least a million dollars in annual sales, which would give you about $50,000 in distributable household income to send your kids to school and pay for food and all that.”

USDA data shows the nation lost 10,537 farms with annual sales of $100,000 to $499,999, but farms making more than $500,000 grew by more than 26,000.

Some states, nonprofits work to protect farmland from development

Construction sounds have become a constant echo in McCurtin County, Oklahoma, where cabins and resorts are being built in the pastures and forests between the Ouachita Mountains and Red River. Tourism growth, especially visitors from the Dallas metro, which is within a two-hour drive, has increased local farmland prices much faster than the state average.

From 2017 to 2022, McCurtin County lost nearly one out of every five producers while the average value per acre soared from $1,901 to $2,601 as investors, second-home buyers, and some private equity firms snatched up land to build vacation homes or sit on the land while its value grew.

“When someone’s waving that kind of money at grandpa’s farm, they let ’em have it,” said Brent Bolin, a poultry producer in McCurtin County, who is also a state agriculture commissioner.

In a recent report titled “Farms Under Threat,” the American Farmland Trust found that between 2001 and 2016, more than 11 million acres of farmland was converted to urban and residential use, with Texas, California, Arizona, and Georgia topping the list.

To stall the urbanization of farmland, the American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit that says it wants to expand the “conservation agriculture movement,” has facilitated the purchase of more than 78,000 acres to protect it from nonagricultural uses.

Some states have taken similar measures, including Oregon, where counties must protect some farmland through specific zoning restrictions.

Bolin said zoning restrictions might be worth considering, although he’s hesitant to suggest them.

“It’s something that would be super controversial and I don’t know where I stand on it,” Bolin said. “I know there are some states that help protect farmland, but that is more regulation and we don’t like that here in Oklahoma. But I don’t know what the answer is.”

Even if farmland is protected from being converted into another use, young farmers still struggle to compete with cash buyers. While many of those cash-buyers, including investment firms, rent the land to farmers, critics say that creates a system that lacks stability for farmers and ranchers, especially those looking to start a business for the first time.

“The contract could be a three-year lease or a five-year lease, but that’s not much long-term security for a farmer,” said Polanco with the National Young Farmers Coalition.

Bray, the Oklahoma farmer, said owning land was crucial for her to have the kind of control she wanted over her business. It also allowed her to make more environmentally focused decisions about land use.

But when Bray was looking to buy land, competing with cash buyers was even more difficult because her own financial options took a long time to fulfill.

“Not only did we have to finance but we were kind of forced into a commercial funding route instead of the state program route because the government programs take too long,” Bray said.

The National Young Farmers Coalition has advocated for the Farm Service Agency to be made a loan-making institution with pre-approval and pre-qualification processes to give farmers needing financing a better chance at competing for land.

“This would allow farmers to show they are eligible, especially if the seller wants an offer right away and has a cash offer from a corporation,” Polanco said.

Even when Bray was able to purchase her current property, complications arose from the land’s previous owner, a cash buyer who made a quick purchase.

“Moving in, it took us months and months and months to get in our property because of how it was handled before,” Bray said. “The title had never been transferred, so we had to wait for that to be transferred to the prior owner before it could be transferred to us. And there was official paper that they had run out of stock on, somebody forgot to order the official state paper for the licenses and titles and all of that, so that was another waiting game.”

During the delays, Bray’s Realtor warned them they might have to move on to another property.

“He said, ‘Honey, if you don’t get this, don’t feel bad, we’ll keep looking,’ ” Bray recalled. “But I said, ‘No, we will wait,’ because … I had that feeling when we got here that this was the place. This was our dream, but you know, high interest rates, the prices of the properties and the margins as a farmer, those three things don’t go together, they just don’t.”

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A general view of pre-game ceremonies for the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Detroit Lions at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Sept. 7, 2023 in Kansas City (Jamie Squire/Getty Images).

For decades, academic research has been clear: Taxpayers almost never get their money back on subsidized sports stadiums.

And yet, over and over again, U.S. cities and states find themselves locked in lopsided negotiations with beloved football, baseball and basketball teams, hoping to keep them from jumping to a new market.

In the newest bidding war, Kansas aims to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lure the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs or MLB’s Royals from their side-by-side stadiums in Missouri just a few miles away. It could be one of the most expensive stadium deals yet, according to Victor Matheson, a researcher who studies stadium subsidies.

“This is wildly destructive,” he said. “This is in some ways significantly worse than intercity competition, because you’re just spending billions of dollars to just move economic activity from one point in the metro area to another.”

Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, watched closely in June as lawmakers in Topeka, Kansas, approved an expansion of an often-criticized tax incentive program with the aim of subsidizing a new stadium for one or both teams.

The bidding war for the teams is being viewed as particularly irresponsible by those who hailed a 2019 compact between Kansas and Missouri that some had hoped would set a new model for states across the country to curb corporate tax incentives.

Five years ago, the Democratic governor of Kansas and the Republican governor of Missouri celebrated an end to the so-called economic Border War, a long-standing practice in which governments would offer lucrative subsidies to lure companies back and forth across state lines in the Kansas City area. People saw the practice as wasteful, since it paid companies to relocate without spurring new growth for the regional economy.

The truce was momentous for Kansas and Missouri, two states whose rivalry traces back to bloody Civil War days. But it also garnered national acclaim from both liberals and conservatives who saw the move as a blow to corporate welfare and the cynical practice of companies pitting governments against each other.

But more powerful than the bipartisan cross-border cease-fire, apparently, is the allure of a new professional sports venue.

“Literally every piece of public policy that people said was bad before is being seen here,” said Kansas City, Missouri, Democratic Mayor Quinton Lucas.

Across the country, professional sports teams are playing various local and state governments against each other — a trend that will likely accelerate as a wave of existing stadium leases begin to expire across the country.

It’s a page from the pro sports playbook: Teams often threaten to move to other markets — one without an NFL or NBA franchise, for example. But when those efforts don’t work, team owners often seek to spark competition among local jurisdictions, Matheson said.

New Jersey officials are currently in talks with the owner of the Philadelphia 76ers to get that NBA franchise to hop over to Camden, New Jersey. And the NFL’s Washington Commanders, whose current stadium is in Maryland, are in talks with officials in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia as they look to build a new facility.

“If there’s not a credible threat to relocate,” Matheson said, “the only way to really get the money out of people’s hands is to play localities against one another.”

Lucas said the bidding war between Kansas and Missouri — and local governments in each — gives more leverage to the Chiefs and Royals in negotiations. But it’s up to elected officials to keep from being outmatched.

“I do think some support is important,” Lucas said. “Giving away the farm is not.”

In Topeka, the GOP-controlled legislature expanded Kansas’ Sales Tax and Revenue Bond program, known as STAR, which would redirect sales tax generated at the stadiums and surrounding areas to pay off construction debt. If the teams were to hop the state line, they could benefit from an unprecedented level of taxpayer support: as much as 70% of the costs of two stadiums, which could amount to billions.

The law allows the state to strike stadium deals with little to no public involvement, doubles down on a state incentive program with a spotty track record of success and potentially puts the state’s finances at risk — all for the prospect of luring a sports team a few miles away.

“I do not like this. It feels gross,” Kansas state Rep. Jason Probst said during a caucus meeting of House Democrats in June. “This whole show that’s going on feels disgusting to me. And it’s still the right thing to do.”

In an interview, Probst, who is from Hutchinson in central Kansas, said the reality of professional sports requires governments “to play the game” and offer public assistance, lest they risk losing teams altogether.

“You can stand on your principles. … But if another state isn’t playing by the same set of rules you are, then they’re going to make that investment and they’re going to take that away,” he said.

Reigniting the Border War

On a hot summer day in 2019, hundreds of people gathered to celebrate an end to Missouri’s and Kansas’ practice of offering tax incentives to move companies and jobs from one state to the other.

By one estimate, the practice cost taxpayers more than $300 million over a decade and created almost no new jobs for the Kansas City metro area, which straddles both states.

“Sometimes common sense does prevail,” Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson said at the time. “Because you don’t have to be a scientist to figure out this was a bad deal for both states.”

Parson’s office did not respond to requests for comment for this story. But in July, the governor said he was confident the NFL team would stay put at Arrowhead Stadium in Missouri.

“I’m not too worried about Kansas at this point,” Parson said.

This spring, voters’ rejection of a 40-year sales tax to help finance a new Royals stadium — and upgrades for Arrowhead — sparked a fear that the teams might leave if they don’t get new facilities. Claiming voters in the Chiefs’ and Royals’ home county had “dropped the ball,” Republican leaders in Kansas pushed to offer the teams a deal, worried they could leave the region altogether.

That fear was enough to reignite the dormant competition between officials in the two states.

“And then they said, ‘Oh, but this is sports, that doesn’t count,’” Matheson said. “Bad economics with sports teams seems to have few boundaries.”

While some Missouri officials have criticized Kansas’ overtures to the teams, Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly said in June she made no promises about leaving the teams alone when she signed the Border War truce.

This week, Kelly’s office declined to comment on the legislation, referring questions to the Kansas Department of Commerce, which would oversee any stadium deals. That agency did not answer questions but provided a statement saying such projects “require discretion and confidentiality.”

“The department will not disclose any details regarding the activity surrounding negotiations or future agreements,” department spokesperson Patrick Lowry wrote in an email.

Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Republican from Lee’s Summit in suburban Kansas City, likewise said the truce wasn’t meant to cover sports teams — and he wants his state to keep the teams. He expects the state to respond with an offer of its own.

“The sports teams are sort of in a special category of their own. I don’t think that’s what that legislation really was meant for,” Patterson said of the truce.

Kansas’ offer to the Chiefs and Royals enhances an often-criticized program meant to bring major tourist attractions to the state.

But in most cases, the STAR bond program, according to a state audit, failed at its goal of increasing tourism. There may have been some cases, the audit said, where certain projects kept Kansans spending money in Kansas rather than going to Missouri.

“But we think it’s more often that local visitors simply move existing economic activity from one part of Kansas to another,” the audit said.

Prairiefire, a sprawling development in the Kansas suburb of Overland Park, defaulted on its STAR construction bonds earlier this year because sales tax revenues from its restaurants, movie theater and museum came in far below projections.

The proposal for the stadiums would allow the Chiefs or Royals to pay off construction loans using the increased sales and liquor tax collections at the stadium. In pushing for the legislation, lawmakers noted that the money for the stadium would come from spending in and around the stadiums, not general taxpayers.

And they claimed that bond investors would be on the hook — not the state — if sales tax collections come up short.

But Geoffrey Propheter, an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver, said it’s unclear how interested investors will be in loaning huge sums for stadium projects, which typically do not create enough revenue to cover costs.

And if those state-issued bonds were ever at risk of failure, he said, lawmakers would feel implicit pressure to bail out the stadium.

“In the real world, there’s a huge risk to Kansas state taxpayers,” he said. “They’re going to have to decide to either bail out the project or do nothing. And if they do nothing, their credit, the state’s credit worthiness, will take a hit. And that will make all future borrowing more expensive.”

‘Zero-sum’ game between states

Experts viewed the Kansas-Missouri truce as a model that other states and cities could emulate.

“We were very interested in the Kansas and Missouri situation, because it gives a test as to whether this will work,” said Marc Joffe, a state policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank. “And there have been some encouraging results since 2019 … but I think sports teams are just too big of a war, and they weren’t able to avoid the temptation.”

The institute is studying the Kansas-Missouri truce, in its larger effort to end bidding wars for factories and other major employers.

Joffe criticized such competition as wasteful, and said bidding for stadiums was no exception.

“It is at best a zero-sum game,” Joffe said, “and because of all the waste involved, it’s a really negative-sum game.”

Joffe pointed to the Coalition to Phase Out Corporate Tax Giveaways, a bipartisan group of state lawmakers that sponsored bills in more than a dozen legislatures between 2019 and 2021.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Christopher Rabb, a Democrat, has twice introduced legislation in Harrisburg to end corporate subsidies. He said he was motivated by Amazon’s 2018 announcement that it was seeking a new corporate headquarters, a move that set off a national bidding war among cities.

He broadly believes corporate incentives are wasteful, especially for professional sports teams. Rabb views the Philadelphia 76ers talks of moving across the Delaware River to New Jersey as a ploy for public subsidies.

He noted most average people can’t afford to attend pro games and likened chasing the purported economic benefits of stadiums and arenas to hunting for “fool’s gold.”

“How does this really change the collective quality of opportunity for regular Philadelphians? It doesn’t,” he said. “Let’s be honest: This is the sandbox of billionaires.”

Rabb said elected leaders should be focused on policies that help marginalized people, not the “excessively wealthy,” such as team owners.

After talks stalled over a new arena for the 76ers in Philadelphia, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said he proposed the team relocate just a few miles to Camden.

Murphy’s office declined to comment, but the Democratic governor told a local television station last week that the team’s interest was “legitimate.”

“We think we got an angle here. We’re taking it seriously. Where it lands? I can’t promise you,” he said. “I think they are taking it seriously as well — we shall see. I say this as a Boston Celtics fan — don’t get mad at me.”

But this sort of jockeying between states only benefits team owners, said Neil deMause, a journalist who has written a book about stadium subsidies. Taxpayers and fans, he said, stand to gain little, especially if game tickets become more expensive at new facilities.

“All the economists I know say the best thing you could do is reject it for your state and have the stadiums get built in the other state,” deMause said. “You still get to go drive across the border and see the games the same way as you would otherwise … but you don’t have to pay for building the thing.”

A sign advertising a home for sale is displayed outside of a Brooklyn brownstone on April 11, 2024, in New York City. U.S. house sales continued to fall in June as median home prices hit a record high for the second month (Spencer Platt/Getty Images).

U.S. median home prices hit a record high for the second month in a row as sales continued to fall, according to a report released this week, as potential buyers continue to lie in wait for lower mortgage rates.

Existing home sales fell 5.4% in June and median home sales reached its highest level on record since prices were first tracked by the National Association of Realtors in 1999. The median price rose the most in the northeast region at 9.7%. In June, existing home sales plummeted 8% in the Midwest, the greatest fall among the regions, according to the report released on Tuesday.

New home sales, released on Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau, fell 0.6% in June and is 7.4% lower than new home sales a year ago. The median sales price of a new home was $417,300, lower than the existing home sales median price of $426,900. Housing experts say that this closeness in price is unusual, since new homes have usually sold for much more in the past 10 years and may be reflective of changing demands for smaller and more affordable homes.

Despite that change, these two measures have shown that home prices still remain out of reach for many and that in response, sales have been slow. What is driving these prices and when will they abate? Housing economists say there are many factors at play, including Fed policy and an aging population.

Why are home sales low and home prices high?

High demand for homes and lower inventory levels have contributed to higher home prices in recent years. These expensive home prices and high mortgage rates have resulted in this housing market shift.

Matthew Walsh, economist at Moody’s Analytics, said low housing affordability and the “persistently high” mortgage rate is contributing to cooling housing activity. Unless housing becomes more affordable soon, he said he expects to continue to see lower existing home sales. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.78% as of July 25, according to Freddie Mac.

“Buyers are very responsive to mortgage rates and with the information being so readily available and the anticipation that mortgage rates are going to come down, I think that’s keeping people on the sidelines,” said Selma Hepp, chief economist at CoreLogic.

But she said homebuyers face a double-edged sword. When mortgage rates do come down, there will be a lot of pent-up demand that will also put pressure on home prices. A rise in cash buyers could also be pushing prices higher, Hepp said. All cash buyers were 28% of home transactions in June.

“A lot of these cash buyers are actually baby boomers who maybe cashed out on their existing home. We do know that home equity is at an all-time high and if you’re moving from a very expensive home price area to a lower-priced area, you obviously will have a lot of cash,” she added.

Housing inventory is changing but is it enough?

One bright spot for homebuyers is that total housing inventory has been rising. Inventory increased 3.1% from May and was up 23.4% from a year ago according to the June existing home sales report. Walsh said some households may be deciding they can’t wait to make a life change and are moving out of homes for larger or smaller options.

“It’s a lot of households that can no longer postpone plans to sell, whether that’s because their household is expanding because they’re having children or it’s shrinking and they need to sell their larger home in the Northeast and move to a smaller home to retire in the South,” Walsh  said. “They can no longer put up with the homes that they’re in and sacrifice their low mortgage rate for a higher rate.”

Still, Hepp said the inventory is far lower than pre-pandemic levels and where demand has picked up — in Boston, New York, and Chicago, for example — there’s not a proportionate increase in the supply of housing.

Some homebuyers may be watching the Fed’s plans to cut interest rates, which affect mortgage rates, for some financial relief. A majority of economists say they believe the Fed will cut rates in September and December, according to a recent Reuters poll. Cutting rates may help bring some buyers back into the market and pump up inventory, but the effect will likely not be strong enough to bring home sales back to where they were before the pandemic, Walsh added.

What is the government doing?

The Biden administration announced a flurry of proposals this month to make housing more affordable, some of which would impact homebuyers as well as the repurposing of public lands in Nevada to bring at least 15,000 affordable rental and homeownership units to the area. In February, the White House also announced the opening of grant applications for assistance to homeowners to replace dilapidated homes.

Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, said at a July rally in Iowa that he would address problems in the housing market through cutting interest rates, according to Newsweek. Although presidents nominate the chair of the Fed for a four-year term, they do not have power over whether the Fed cuts rates.

States have been pursuing their own policies to improve housing inventory and affordability, including Utah and Oregon, which passed legislation to use funds for loans to developers who plan to build more affordable homes. A Maryland bill signed into law by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore in May would push property owners to make plans for vacant properties by letting cities raise taxes on those properties.

John Payne, managing partner at Amendment 2 Consultants, discusses legislation at an industry summit in downtown St. Louis on March 28 with Amy Moore (middle), director of the Division of Cannabis Regulation, and Mitch Meyers, partner at BeLeaf Medical (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

When John Payne was leading the campaign to legalize recreational cannabis in 2022, he faced a major hurdle.

Black business owners were largely excluded from the medical marijuana program when licenses to grow and sell cannabis were doled out by the state in 2019, and many feared history was about to repeat itself. 

So to soothe the concerns and win over skeptics, Payne partnered with Black community leaders to come up with what they hoped was a solution — a social equity program, known as “microbusiness licenses,” that would diversify the industry and ensure communities most impacted by the War on Drugs were not once again left out of the burgeoning industry.

“We do know from data that the people who have been harmed by marijuana prohibition directly, Black Americans are overrepresented,” Payne, who is white, told The Independent last year.

Because marijuana prohibition did the most harm on the Black community — Black Missourians are 2.6 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white Missourians — “that should carry over into a disproportionate good impact of the microbusiness licenses,” Payne said.

But documents uncovered by The Independent show that in some cases, Payne and his business partners were the ones aiming to benefit most from the social-equity program.

Payne’s name is connected to more than 300 social-equity applications submitted earlier this year for the second round of microbusiness licenses, winning six of the 24 dispensary licenses selected through a lottery in June and officially issued on Wednesday. 

For some of the applications, Payne recruited eligible Missourians and had them sign a 47-page contract that would ultimately give him and his partners 90.1% of profits and majority control of the business. 

Despite only owning a fraction of the business, under state law the applicants would bear the lion’s share of the regulatory scrutiny. If they ever want to walk away from the deal, they would be required to pay a nearly $1 million fee. 

Missouri revokes nine social-equity cannabis business licenses for out-of-state companies

In an interview with The Independent, Payne defended the contract, saying the arrangement was designed for people who wanted to get into the industry but didn’t want to put in their own money. 

Payne insists the six successful applications he’s involved with this year didn’t use the contract. However, one license connected to Payne that was approved last year involved a nearly identical contract, which The Independent obtained through a public records request.

Four legal experts who reviewed the contract from this year for The Independent concluded it was unfair and potentially predatory. All four agreed state cannabis regulators should reject any license application connected to the contract because it violates the constitutional mandate requiring licenses to be “majority owned and operated” by the eligible applicant. 

“If you don’t have the staying power and legal assistance, you’re going to get screwed,” said Michael Goldberg, managing partner of the Chicago-based firm Goldberg Law Group, about the 47-page contract. 

Nimrod Chapel — an attorney, president of the Missouri NAACP and an outspoken critic of the 2022 legalization amendment — believes the contract meets the state’s definition of “predatory practices.”

“I find it incredibly disappointing that this section of licensees is getting monopolized by John Payne,” Chapel said, “the very person who was in the middle of the campaign for cannabis legalization and used this as a way to gain minority buy-in.” 

Joseph von Kaenel, a St. Louis corporate governance attorney, likened the arrangement to companies “abusing” public contracting dollars meant to empower minority businesses by “finding a woman or minority to front the business.” 

The contract states several times that, “the applicant understands that this agreement is not predatory.”

“It doesn’t mean it’s true,” said Michael Wolff, a former chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court and dean emeritus of the St. Louis University Law School.

But the harshest criticism came from Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis NAACP who served on the committee that helped write the 2022 legalization amendment. Pruitt said he brought the idea for the social-equity licenses to Payne and spent months working alongside him publicly defending the proposal during the 2022 campaign.

“I’m insulted,” Pruitt said. “This is indentured servitude. That’s what this is.”

There are seven categories where people can qualify for a microbusiness license, ranging from a lower income level or living in an area considered impoverished to having past arrests or incarcerations related to marijuana offenses.

“When you look at the categories and the qualifications, there’s no doubt that overwhelmingly the qualifications are geared up for people who were impacted by the unjust enforcement of marijuana laws,” Pruitt said. “No one would dispute that that population, in most cases, are African Americans.” 

Payne told The Independent his critics have it all wrong. 

The contract The Independent obtained was used in a “relatively small number” of the more than 300 microbusiness applications that his company worked on.

“The applicants in these cases were typically personal contacts of our team members with whom we could envision a mutually beneficial long-term partnership,” Payne said. 

Payne founded the cannabis consultancy group Amendment 2 Consultants and is a leader in the Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, also known as MoCann Trade. He said the trade association’s law firm — Armstrong Teasdale — wrote the contract. 

Even though the firm’s name appears in the contract, Armstrong Teasdale adamantly denies preparing or providing it to Payne. 

“The firm had nothing to do with that agreement,” said Jay Wager, Armstrong Teasdale’s acting chief business development director, adding that Payne is not the firm’s client.

When asked if Payne repurposed an agreement written by Armstrong Teasdale without the firm’s permission, Wager said the firm is “too busy” helping their clients to read the agreement to see if the language was theirs.

Payne did not respond to questions about Armstrong Teasdale’s comments. 

In response to The Independent’s questions, the Division of Cannabis Regulation said it has opened an investigation into three microbusiness licenses awarded last October and connected to Payne in order to verify that the licenses “continue to be majority owned and operated by eligible individuals,” spokeswoman Lisa Cox said.

The Independent obtained the notices of investigation the division sent Tuesday evening to Payne, who is the designated contact for the licenses, giving him seven days to provide documents regulators need to verify ownership. 

The agreement

Garrett Farley said he was approached by Payne this spring to apply for a social-equity dispensary license. 

Payne said he would take care of the $1,500 application fee and do all the work to get the dispensary running — and Farley could sit back and get a paycheck when profits rolled in every quarter. 

“The way he made it seem,” Farley, who is white, told The Independent, “there was like no catch.”

Farley is a cannabis union organizer — something Payne didn’t know at the time. He said he was curious about the social-equity process, but the way Payne described the deal raised red flags for him. When Payne shared the 47-page agreement, it confirmed Farley’s suspicions. 

The moment Farley won a license, his contract states, he’d have to pay nearly $1 million as a “break-up fee” to walk away— even though the only investment the consultant had put in at that point was the $1,500 application fee. 

He’d have to immediately set up an LLC, where he would give up almost all control of the business. So if he ever wanted to sell the license he wouldn’t have the voting power to make that choice.

Instead, he’d only get 9.9% of the profits if the license was ever sold. 

He’d later have to transfer ownership to the person who would eventually loan the company $1 million in startup costs.

If he failed to do any of these steps, he’d be in breach of contract. 

After reviewing the contract, the St. Louis NAACP’s Pruitt compared it to “the slave owner giving me some land to work on. It’s their company, they put up the capital, they’re preparing the applications, they’re paying the fees, they’re managing the business. And if at any time me as the slave fails to do something, I owe them.”

Payne vehemently disagreed with that assessment.

“I see it as a partnership,” Payne told The Independent. “That is an agreement for the long term.”

Payne confirmed that he never told Farley about the break-up fee when they talked about the deal, but he said that was because Armstrong Teasdale had not finished drafting the agreement. 

“I did not actually write the agreement, and did not yet have it at that point,” Payne said. “I will say that if I had known that exact figure was in there, yeah, I would have explained that. But there does have to be some provision on what happens if a contract is voided.”

Von Kaenel, the St. Louis corporate governance attorney, said the amount of the breakup fee is significant. 

He said the amount is “so far in excess of any damages” that are likely to occur that it “could be considered a punitive provision calculated to limit applicant’s business options.” 

While Farley would be entitled to 9.9% of the company’s profits, the LLC must pay Payne a $10,000 monthly consulting fee before the applicant receives any revenue. 

“Frankly, that’s a decent deal for helping to essentially manage a lot of the administrative functions of a dispensary,” Payne said. “It is not as if the applicant is on the hook, that it is the business that is on the hook for that.”

Unconstitutional?

All four of the legal experts who analyzed the agreement said it does not meet the constitutional mandate that the business is to be “majority owned and operated” by the eligible applicant. 

If Farley won the license, he must set up an LLC and ask the state to approve a name change of the license. After that happens, a board with three managers would be established to make all the top-level decisions about the company.

In Farley’s case, the board would have included one of Payne’s business partners, who Payne said would also be eligible for a microbusiness license because he has a marijuana charge on his record. 

The other board manager is fronting the money, Payne said, and is eligible because she lives in a qualifying ZIP code.

Von Kaenel called the board structure the agreement’s “fatal blow,” because it gives Farley only a third of the voting power and a sliver of the company’s equity.  

“We pay the application fee, we are going to pay for everything to get up and running,” Payne told Farley in a meeting together. “And we’re going to basically put in the work to do that. And in exchange, we would take 90% of the equity, you will keep 10% of the equity.”

Goldberg, the Chicago attorney, said the profit distribution and company control are what the state regulators should be looking at.

“This contract should not get past the state,” he said. “Social-equity applicants are supposed to have control. They’re not supposed to have 10% or one third of the voting power. That’s the whole thing.”

Missouri cannabis law says a person or group cannot have significant voting or financial interest in more than one microbusiness license — or the state can revoke the license. 

The contract is between Farley and a consultant group called Comonca LLC, with whom Payne is the registered agent in documents filed with the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office. 

“The minute Mr. Applicant signs that agreement with the consultant, the consultant already has an interest in the business,” said Wolff, the former state Supreme Court judge.  

That’s largely because if the applicant changes his mind and wants to get out of the deal, he owes them $995,750 in liquidated damages, or their expected value of the license, Wolff said.

And if the agreements are the same for all six dispensary licenses connected to Payne in this round, then Payne and his associates indeed have a financial interest in all of these licenses, Wolff said.

Payne told The Independent that none of the applicants with an agreement like Farley’s won a license. He could not elaborate about how many of his applications included agreements that were similar to Farley because either he wasn’t involved in that aspect for all of his clients or he signed a nondisclosure agreement.

Contracts of winning applicants will soon be publicly available now that the latest round of licenses have been issued, and the state has officially begun its post-licensure review. 

Payne said he believes the agreement will win the division’s approval.

“It is going to be something that is compliant with what the department requires because I trust the standard of Armstrong’s work,” Payne said. 

Up for interpretation

These are not the first licenses Payne has orchestrated — and caused a stir. 

The first round of 48 microbusiness licenses – 16 of which were dispensary licenses – were selected through a lottery last August. Payne’s clients won two dispensary licenses and two wholesale licenses.

One dispensary license was under investigation by the Division of Cannabis Regulators for several months, after the division issued a letter in December stating that the application was “misleading.”

In its letter to Payne, the state said the licensee “entered an agreement that transfers ownership and operational control to another entity. This is cause for revocation… in violation of” the regulations requiring all owners to be disclosed in the application. 

The nature of the agreement also did not allow the state to “verify the microbusiness license will be majority owned and operated by individuals who meet qualifications,” state regulators said in the letter. 

The Independent obtained a copy of a redacted contract through a public records request, and the available language is almost identical to the contract offered to Farley.

As with Farley’s contract, last year’s contract states that, “​​Armstrong Teasdale LLP has no conflict of interest in drafting this agreement.” But Wager said the firm could not comment on whether it wrote the contract for this licensee.

Payne was able to submit new documents that satisfied these concerns, according to a March 21 letter from the division. The state allowed the applicant to retain the license, but this week opened a new investigation into the ownership structure – along with the two wholesale licenses where Payne is the designated contact. 

Cox, the spokeswoman for the Division of Cannabis Regulation, confirmed the investigation focused on the ownership of the license holder but could not offer additional details about the inquiry. 

Ownership issues led to the state revoking eight microbusiness licenses in the first round last year, she said.

“We will continue to exercise our authority at each stage of this process to ensure the microbusiness program is benefiting the individuals for whom it was so evidently designed,” Cox said.

The state recently approved this licensee’s request to change the name of the license to “Green Zebra LLC,” Cox confirmed. According to the contract, the next step would be to establish a three-member board, leaving the original applicant with one-third of the voting power. 

Given the timeline, it’s possible the board structure sparked the state’s inquiry.

Payne did not respond to a request for comment on the state’s investigation, but he previously told The Independent all board members would meet the program’s eligibility requirements.

As for Farley, he never ended up signing the contract to jump into the lottery for a Missouri social-equity license, but said Payne submitted his name anyway. 

He didn’t get a license, but on July 3 received a letter from Payne’s group asking him if he would like to submit his name in the Minnesota social equity cannabis license lottery. 

Homebuilders want the Kansas City Council to relax its current green building code requirements so that they can find more cost-effective construction options (Alex Unruh/The Beacon).

The Kansas City Council gave homebuilders new rules last year designed to make housing easier on the environment.

Those rules told them what kind of windows to install, how well the walls should be insulated and how efficient the heating and air conditioning systems should be.

Developers now blame those rules for a construction slowdown that’s keeping the housing market tight and posing obstacles to making more of those homes affordable to more people.

But environmentalists say the new code needs more time to work. Ditching it, they contend, will lead to construction of energy-hog homes, adding to global climate change, and stick owners and tenants with higher energy bills.

“It will lead to less efficient and more costly homes,” said Billy Davies, conservation program coordinator for the Missouri chapter of the Sierra Club.

Some regional homebuilders want the city to relax the energy-efficiency rules of the building code it put into action last year. Rather than a rigorous checklist that dictates specifics, they want a general scoring system that gives them options to hit the mark on conserving energy. That, they say, can help them keep costs down and keep housing more affordable.

“What this is intended to do is add flexibility within the process for the contractor, the homebuilder and the homebuyer,” said Will Ruder, the executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City.

Groups defending the existing, stricter code see it as the only way for Kansas City to hit its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 100% by 2040.

Buildings play a critical role in this effort, as they are responsible for 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, said architecture instructor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Dominic Musso. “So something needs to be done if we’re going to create as big of an impact,” he said.

What would change?

The Kansas City Council adopted the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code in July 2023. That code offers builders three ways to comply with its energy standards.

However, homebuilders want more flexibility. They say they’re willing to build energy-efficient housing, but they just want to figure out the best way to do that themselves. So they’ve suggested a fourth option: achieving a Home Energy Rating System score of 68 or lower to qualify for permits.

The HERS scale, created by the Residential Energy Services Network, uses a baseline score of 100 to represent the energy use of a home built to the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code. The lower the score, the better the energy efficiency.

But Davies said that the new proposal sets the standard too low by referring to energy standards set almost two decades ago. And he said the standard isn’t tough enough. In California, new homes average a HERS score of 18.

“This is a score that is so easy to meet,” he said, “that it practically makes the code null and void.”

But Ruder with the homebuilders group said a HERS score of 68 is equal to the average in suburbs like Overland Park and Prairie Village, making it the lowest and most energy-efficient score in the metro.

The city code adopted last year requires more effective wall insulation, energy-efficient furnaces and updated windows that help maintain indoor temperatures.

The homebuilders want the leeway to upgrade windows, walls and furnaces to different standards so long as the home produces an energy rating of 68 or lower.

Ruder said that would avoid wasted expenses for buyers.

Davies said that the current energy code is crucial for protecting residents from the impacts of climate change.

“What (the homebuilders’ proposed change) does is create a loophole in Kansas City’s ordinance by weakening the energy policy and allowing developers to build more cheaply,” he said.

Davies said that he is also concerned that the proposed ordinance only requires energy testing for the first home in a development plan, which could lead to undetected issues and increased costs for homeowners.

“Imagine if there’s no testing,” he said. “Then the occupant could learn a year after they moved in that their utility bill is really high — there’s some kind of leak or other issues.”

Ruder said that builders want the City Council to change the language at its next meeting (July 23) to ensure that every home undergoes energy inspections.

Has the green building code impacted affordable housing?

Builders blame the current energy code for Kansas City’s housing shortage, partly for slowing down the rate building permits get approved.

The city averaged 60 permits per month between October 2023 and June, Ruder said. That same nine-month period averaged 66 permits a month over the last two years and 85 permits a month over the last four years.

Davies said that a drop in permits is common when new codes are introduced. He said construction workers who have already adapted to the current code shouldn’t have to learn a new one so soon.

“Kansas City needs to give the experts in the building community who want to work with this (2021) code more time to make it happen,” Davies said.

Steven Bennett, a professor in the Construction Management department at Johnson County Community College, said that Kansas City has historically had a slow permit process. But he finds the delays over the last nine months excessive. He said nearby cities typically need one to two months to adapt to new building codes.

What do the numbers say?

The Home Builders Association estimated that following the current standard can add up to $31,000 to the price of a 2,400-square-foot, two-story home. Bennett, who has also taught classes on green building, agrees. He said that while builders should strive for better energy efficiency, the city’s existing energy standards are too pricey.

“It’s going to impact the owner’s cost to build, which in turn increases rent and lease costs for those utilizing these homes,” Bennett said.

He said that the code increases home construction costs by up to 30%.

However, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development states that the international standards adopted in 2021 add about $7,200 to the cost of a single-family home.

Musso at UMKC believes that the added expenses from an updated energy code are worthwhile.

“You don’t want to do it cheap up front and then have everything not give you the performance that it should,” he said.

Conservationists agree. They say that the money residents will save on utility bills will eventually offset the upfront cost of building to the city’s current standard. The U.S. Department of Energy found that the average new homeowner in Missouri can expect to save $677 annually on their utility bills, which average out to $2,603 annually.

That would take roughly 10 years to break even under HUD’s upfront cost estimation.

But homebuilders have different ideas about the cost-benefit ratio for homeowners.

Bennett said that in his experience, savings aren’t as great as significant as energy agencies claim. Even if they are, he questions the value.

“If you saw a home with a break-even deal in 10 years, I don’t know that I would advise you to do it,” he said. “You’re probably going to move out and never see that savings.”

The Home Builders Association calculated that utility savings would only be $90 to $125 per year for a 1,400-square-foot starter home, using average gas prices from Spire and average electric costs from Evergy, Ruder said.

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

(Getty Images)

Wages and benefits

Town hall attendees also shared frustrations about changes to worker wages and benefits.

Darrell Dillon, an electrician at MU, said benefits for employees have been chipped away over the 14 years he has worked at the university.

“I was promised retirement if I stayed with them long enough, I was promised a pension, I was promised insurance, I was promised vacation, sick leave and personal days,” Dillon said. “I was promised a standard raise across the board when I first started, then we get the merit raise system, which is no more than a popularity contest.”

Basi said the university’s merit-based raise system has been shown to best reward staff who are doing quality work and also encourages good employees.

Any individual who is hired while the university’s pension plan was active will receive their pension, Basi said.

“Anytime we do changes to benefits, we have had significant communications to faculty and staff, depending on who it is impacting,” Basi said. “It is something that we work very hard to do, is to make sure that we have a competitive wage, good benefits and access to affordable parking, to ensure folks that the university itself is trying to make the work environment as welcoming as possible.”

Commitment

An overall theme of attendees’ and organizers’ perspectives were the university’s commitment to and respect for its employees.

“There’s a lot of folks that received raises during COVID-19, because they were essential workers at the hospital, they received (critical) staffing pay,” Hutchinson said. “The university hospital says they can take it away at any time, and it has folks terrified because all of a sudden, in a couple of weeks, they could lose a massive part of their paycheck, and (workers) have no control over it.”

Eric Maze, public relations manager for MU Health Care, said 10 critical staffing pay plans are still in use at the hospital through September 14, 2024.

“Critical staffing plans are reviewed every 12 weeks to determine if staffing challenges continue, are forecasted to continue or new challenges have developed,” Maze said in an email. “Critical staffing plans will continue to be part of our compensation strategy.”

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

An Amazon truck makes deliveries in Wheeling, Ill., earlier this year. Some states have passed or considered measures that would impose a fee on retail deliveries in order to provide funding for road maintenance (Nam Y. Huh/The Associated Press).

For decades, states have relied on gas taxes to provide much of the money to maintain roads and bridges. But as cars become more fuel efficient, and some Americans switch to electric vehicles, state leaders say the gas tax won’t pay the bills for much longer.

At the same time, many cities have seen their streets crowded with delivery trucks from Amazon and other companies, as consumers increasingly opt to have products delivered to their homes. In a few states, lawmakers think fees on those deliveries could be part of their road-funding solution.

“If you’re going to be creating wear and tear on our roads, you should help pay to maintain them,” said Colorado state Rep. Cathy Kipp, a Democrat who chairs the Energy and Environment Committee.

In July 2022, Colorado became the first state with a retail delivery fee, a charge on all vehicle deliveries to consumers within the state. The fee, which currently stands at 29 cents per delivery, provides funding for highways, bridges, tunnels, electric vehicle charging stations and projects to reduce air pollution and to electrify vehicle fleets and transit systems. It has brought in more than $160 million.

Colorado leaders have had to simplify the law to help businesses comply with it, but they say it’s largely been a success story. Minnesota enacted its own retail delivery fee in 2023, and lawmakers in New York and Illinois have proposed similar measures. Meanwhile, legislators and transportation officials in several other states have commissioned studies to consider the concept.

Some retailers and Republican lawmakers have argued that the fee hurts consumers, and many businesses in Colorado initially had trouble complying with the law.

“The 27-cent delivery fee is not trivial, its effects are not imperceptible, and it greatly affects our citizens — especially those who are already struggling to pay the bills and provide for their families,” Republican state Rep. Rose Pugliese, the House minority leader, wrote in a Colorado Springs Gazette guest column several months after the law was enacted.

But backers of the fee say they see growing interest across the country, especially as delivery trucks become ubiquitous in many neighborhoods.

‘Future-proofing’ transportation funding

State law in Colorado limits the ways in which lawmakers can expand taxes. With gas tax revenues dwindling, legislators didn’t have an obvious solution to pay for roads. They eventually settled on the retail delivery fee, which is not characterized as a tax.

Initially, the program was a struggle for many businesses, due to a requirement that they detail the fee separately on each receipt.

“For our medium and small businesses, it was a real complicated thing and very burdensome for them to have to reprogram their software with a whole extra line item,” Kipp said.

Last year, Kipp joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers to amend the program. They rescinded the requirement that businesses itemize the fee on each receipt and allowed companies to cover the fee themselves rather than breaking it out on each order. They also exempted retailers with less than $500,000 in sales.

Since the fix was adopted, Kipp said she has stopped hearing complaints about the program. Chris Howes, president of the Colorado Retail Council, said he too has not heard any recent gripes.

“We’ve got it straightened out by now,” he said. “People have accepted it and moved on.”

Amazon did not grant a Stateline interview request, and the National Retail Federation deferred questions to state chapters. Chamber of Progress, a tech industry advocacy group, did not arrange an interview by publication time.

Last year, lawmakers in Minnesota enacted their own retail delivery fee, a 50-cent charge on purchases of more than $100. Lawmakers heard from local governments that they were struggling to maintain their roads and badly needed state aid to make up the gap.

“This is trying to future-proof our transportation funding,” said Democratic state Rep. Erin Koegel, who sponsored the bill. “We keep getting performance grades from civil engineers saying we’re at a C- or D for our infrastructure. We needed to think about ways to get more revenue in the system.”

Koegel said the measure was a compromise. Her initial draft, which did not have a $100 threshold for purchases, was intended to be a deterrent, much like cigarette taxes. She said delivery trucks are increasing congestion in many cities and damaging streets that weren’t built to support large vehicles. However, lawmakers ultimately decided to limit the fee to more expensive purchases in order to protect lower-income consumers.

Minnesota’s fee is projected to generate $59 million in its first fiscal year. The funding will be distributed to cities, counties and towns to help with their road-funding needs.

Traffic throughout the day

Cities and counties in Washington state also have asked for help, and some local leaders have asked state lawmakers to consider a retail delivery fee — or to authorize cities to collect one. State lawmakers commissioned an analysis, published last month, looking at the potential for such a program. The report found that a fee could generate $45 million to $112 million in revenue in 2026, depending on which businesses and orders were covered.

“We’re now seeing that there’s traffic on our system throughout the day, and the growth of these delivery services is a part of that,” said Democratic state Sen. Marko Liias, who chairs the Transportation Committee. “We’ve had a history in transportation of user-based fees. This feels like a mechanism that could help in that regard.”

Liias emphasized that some version of the fee is likely to be a big topic of discussion in the next legislative session. He said he’s already heard strong arguments on both sides of the issue.

In some areas, the rise in retail deliveries has put the greatest burden on the infrastructure surrounding shipping facilities. Illinois’ CenterPoint Intermodal Center, the nation’s largest inland port, connects interstate trucking, railway lines and Mississippi River barges.

“There really needs to be a shift in the tax structure, since many of these facilities are not generating the local sales tax you’d get at a brick and mortar,” said Democratic state Sen. Rachel Ventura, whose district includes the CenterPoint facility. “We have a lot of traffic going in and out, and the environmental burden and road repairs and the tax burden fall locally.”

Ventura has drafted a bill that would allow communities to assess fees on intermodal facilities — locations that transfer products from one type of transportation to another. Local governments that opted in would be able to spend the funds on roads within five miles of the facilities. The fee, which would be based on the weight of each shipment, is projected to generate $33 million to $68 million per year.

The bill has not passed out of committee, and Ventura said lawmakers are still discussing the path forward amid opposition from the trucking industry.

In New York, a Democratic bill to impose a 25-cent fee on deliveries within New York City has been introduced but remains in committee. Meanwhile, state agencies in Nevada and Ohio have commissioned studies examining the feasibility of retail delivery fees. Those reports have not yet led to legislative action.

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

A KFC employee hangs a sign for job openings at a restaurant in Miami. Several states have passed pay transparency laws that require employers to be more open about the wages and benefits they offer (Joe Raedle/Getty Images).

To combat gender and racial wage gaps, nearly a dozen states recently have enacted pay transparency laws that require employers to be more open about the wages and benefits they offer.

Most of the laws require employers to disclose wages in job postings and some bar them from asking a job candidate about their salary history.

“Even though it’s against the law, we definitely still see that women are being paid less than their male counterparts, even though they’re doing the same job,” said Jessica Ramey Stender, a lawyer and the policy director at Equal Rights Advocates, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that focuses on sexual harassment and pay discrimination, among other issues. “And that’s a problem.”

Under the federal Equal Pay Act of 1963, employers can’t pay different salaries “on the basis of sex” to employees who do “equal work.” States have similar protections. Nevertheless, women on average have been paid less than men as far back as federal data has been collected.

Women on average earn about 84 cents for every dollar that men earn, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Federal data also shows a racial pay gap: Latino, Black and Native American workers on average earn from 73 cents to 77 cents for every dollar a white worker earns.

Part of the pay gap comes from the fact that women and racial minorities are overrepresented in industries that pay lower wages, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. But there is still a gap, though a narrower one, when men and women are doing the exact same job.

Pay transparency laws can close the gap further by providing women and people of color with more opportunities to see whether they’re being compensated fairly, Stender said.

“The hope is that with this additional information in their toolbox, everyone — especially women experiencing the wage gap — will be able to better negotiate pay for themselves,” she said.

But some critics of pay transparency laws question whether they’ll have the desired effect.

Todd Zenger, a professor of strategic leadership at the University of Utah, said requiring complete transparency is an extreme way to address pay equity. There’s also mixed evidence over whether prohibiting employers from asking about salary history could help or hurt job candidates, he said.

“There’s one argument that there’s gender differences in one’s willingness to bargain,” Zenger said, noting research showing that women might not negotiate in the same way that men do. “You can say, ‘This is what I need to come and join you,’ and if they’re able to ask about your prior pay, that sets some sort of common ground.”

Pay transparency laws also could lead to “flattened” pay, he said. Some people are paid more because of good performance, for example, but transparency laws could make it difficult to change pay on those less objective criteria, he argued.

Salary transparency and history bans

The number of states with pay transparency laws has grown significantly within the past few years, said Glenn Jacoby, a policy associate in employment matters at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Labor force participation still hasn’t reached pre-pandemic levels, but more people are looking to join the workforce and lawmakers want the job-seeking process to be smoother, she said.

So far, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, Washington state and the District of Columbia have approved pay transparency laws.

The laws take varying approaches to ensuring transparency. They may require employers to disclose salary ranges for open positions, prohibit retaliation against employees who discuss their pay with colleagues, or require employers to report pay data to government agencies, according to GovDocs, a Minnesota-based company that tracks employment laws for large companies.

Some laws also mandate that employers provide salary information upon request, or prohibit them from asking job candidates about their salary history, according to Jana Bjorklund, the senior counsel and director of employment law and compliance at GovDocs.

“And this is all driven by pay inequity,” Bjorklund said.

A handful of cities, including New York City, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Columbus, Ohio, have enacted their own transparency laws.

Most states with pay transparency laws require employers of a certain size to post salaries for all open job positions. In California, companies with at least 15 workers must do so. But some states, such as Colorado, where lawmakers enacted new rules this year, require the transparency from all companies, even those with a single worker.

When states first began considering pay transparency laws, they tended to focus on requiring employers to provide salary information upon request, Jacoby said. In some cases, the requirement would apply only for applicants selected for an interview. Now, several states are expanding these laws to require compensation-related information in the initial job posting, she said.

In January, a law took effect in Hawaii requiring certain job listings to include an hourly rate or salary range. It also prohibits an employer from discriminating by paying one employee in a protected category less than another for substantially similar work.

The bill’s original language was inspired by conversations among recent college graduates struggling to find jobs, said Hawaii state Sen. Chris Lee, a Democrat. These laws make sure everyone is on the same page through the entire hiring process, he said.

“It’s both fair to the companies as well as the employees or prospective employees and helps ultimately saves a ton of frustration and time and effort by a lot of other folks who would be applying for these positions,” Lee said.

Still, Lee recalled that lawmakers heard complaints from small businesses concerned about being able to compete with larger companies.

In the District of Columbia, new rules went into effect last week requiring employers to include salary ranges in job postings and to disclose health care benefits before the first interview. A Maryland law with similar rules will go into effect in October.

“As a Black woman and as someone who works professionally, this is personal to me,” said Maryland state Del. Jennifer White Holland, a Democrat who helped pass the new law. “When we look at families in Maryland, it’s women’s earnings … that matter now more than ever.”

She cited the state’s Equal Pay Day report for 2024, which found that more than 40% of Maryland mothers are the lead or only wage earner in their household.

On average, women in Maryland are paid 86 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make, according to the report. Hispanic women in Maryland have the largest gender and racial wage gap, making just 50 cents for every dollar earned by white men.

Do the laws work?

While some states’ pay transparency laws are just going into effect, some preliminary research shows how such laws could be helping raise salaries for all workers.

A recent study in Colorado, the first state to mandate salary transparency, in 2021, found that not only did more companies share salaries within job postings, but the posted salaries increased by 3.6%. One possible explanation for the boost is that some companies adjusted their salaries to match their competitors and reach market equilibrium, according to the paper, which was written by a pair of economists in the University of California system.

According to a survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, a nonprofit for human resources professionals, 70% of organizations that list pay ranges in their job postings said they received more applications, and 65% said that listing pay ranges made the candidate pool more competitive.

Isabela Salas-Betsch, a research associate at The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, said the results are good news for businesses.

“When employees have more information, they feel more valued and motivated, which translates to greater performance and retention,” she said.

But some small employers fear that pay transparency laws will make it more difficult for them to compete with larger companies for talent. Close to half of the almost 400 companies that responded to a 2022 pay clarity survey by global advisory company WTW cited possible employee reactions as a reason for holding back on communicating about pay. Still, many companies said they plan to increase transparency in their postings, even without local mandates.

Some experts warn that the laws could have unintended consequences.

In a 2016 article for the Harvard Business Review arguing against pay transparency, Zenger, the University of Utah professor, cited an experiment in which University of California faculty who discovered they were being paid less than their peers became much less satisfied with their jobs and more likely to say they might leave.

“There’s always a trade-off associated with these kinds of things,” Zenger told Stateline.

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

Hens are often held in stacks of cages in large egg-laying facilities. (Photo via Getty Images)

Soaring temperatures made it difficult for farm workers to protect themselves from chickens recently infected by avian influenza in Colorado and likely contributed to five people contracting the virus, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

State health officials discovered the infections last week — the largest cluster of human infections in the country since the bird flu outbreak began more than two years ago.

Human infections are of great concern to public health officials because they increase the likelihood that the virus could mutate to easily pass from person to person and spur a human pandemic. A total of 10 infections among people have been discovered since April 2022.

But the virus found in the Colorado workers does not possess such a mutation, said Dr. Nirav Shah, principal deputy director for the CDC, in a Tuesday call with reporters. It’s believed they were each infected by egg-laying chickens as they sought to cull a flock of about 1.8 million in the northeast part of the state.

It is customary to kill entire flocks when they are infected by highly pathogenic avian influenza — which readily infects and kills poultry — to prevent its spread to other flocks.

The Colorado workers grabbed the chickens, placed them into containers that can hold dozens at a time, and asphyxiated them with carbon dioxide, said Dr. Julie Gauthier, executive director for field operations for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

The workers typically wear suits, goggles, gloves and boots, and they breathe through respirators that protect them from pathogens.

But the outdoor temperature at the time of the work was about 100 degrees, and the temperature inside the facility was likely hotter. Giant fans moved air to cool the inside, which circulated potentially virus-laden debris such as feathers.

“The difficulty with wearing all that gear in that kind of heat, you can imagine,” Gauthier said, “and it was made more difficult by those fans pushing the air — made it hard to keep those goggles and N95 respirators in place.”

The virus that infected the flock is similar to one that has infected dairy cattle in 13 states, Shah said. Colorado has had the most infected herds of any state, with at least 37. It’s possible that the virus was transported to the egg-laying flock from one of those herds, Shah said.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza has been spread by wild birds and has been sporadically devastating for U.S. poultry flocks since January 2022. About 99 million birds in infected flocks have been destroyed, according to CDC data.

Federal officials believe the virus passed from wild birds to Texas dairy cattle in December. Since then it has spread to herds in other states, likely due to the transportation of infected cattle. From there it is believed to have spread locally to other herds and poultry flocks via people and their equipment, including farm workers and veterinarians.

Colorado accounts for seven of the 10 known human infections in the United States that were the result of interactions with sick birds and cows. It had the first-ever infection of a poultry worker, in April 2022. Early this month, a Colorado dairy worker was also infected.

The workers who were recently infected had mild symptoms of pink eye and respiratory illness.

This story was originally published by the Iowa Capital Dispatch, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Iowa State University researchers have identified receptors for the avian flu on dairy cattle mammary glands. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture)

As avian influenza is being detected in more and more dairy herds across the U.S., Iowa State University researchers have found a possible “why” connection to the virus being found in raw milk.

A study published this month by a team in ISU’s College of Veterinary Medicine found that bovine mammary gland tissue held receptors for the avian influenza virus, offering a potential explanation for how cattle are being infected.

Todd Bell, a professor of veterinary pathology and co-author of the study, said the idea to look at mammary glands as a potential entry point for the virus came after it was identified in raw milk. Two ISU alums in the spring identified an illness impacting cattle in Texas as avian flu, and ever since different teams at the university and in partnerships with other organizations have been working to tackle the virus and its spread from different angles.

“They really answered the ‘what,’ what was actually going on, what was making these cattle sick, which is a new and novel finding, and then our job, really, at that point as researchers was to understand the ‘why,’” Bell said. “We’ve never seen this before. Why is this happening?”

To understand the concept, Bell suggested thinking of viruses as like keys, and receptors are like locks to cells. In order for the avian flu virus to enter a cell and reproduce, it needs the right receptor. The research team found that receptor on cattle mammary glands.

Another receptor they found is connected to human influenza, Bell said, which is important because it opens up the possibility of a cell being infected by both viruses, potentially causing the creation of a new virus.

“To our knowledge, that hasn’t happened yet in this particular outbreak, but we wanted to look for those receptors to understand what might be possible and hopefully stop the transmission and stop that from happening,” Bell said.

The team also looked at the respiratory system to try and identify evidence of the bird flu, but found little there, narrowing down the possibilities of how cattle are being infected.

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, as of July 12 the avian influenza had been detected in dairy herds in 12 states, including 13 herds in Iowa. While the virus is being detected in raw milk, the pasteurization process ensures it is safe to be consumed.

Research may inform preventative policies

While Bell and his colleague’s work is still very much focused on the “why” of avian flu in dairy herds and its spread, he said the hope is that their research will help inform regulators in making decisions on testing and biosecurity measures to try and stop the spread of the virus. He said there is some literature that states the virus can live on milking machines for a few hours after an infected cow is hooked up to them, offering one potential method of spread.

“We hope that what we find will help them make those types of decisions, specifically if we can find it in mammary tissue, then how do we stop it from getting to that mammary tissue in the first place,” Bell said.

Next steps for Bell and his colleagues include looking at the milk and mammary glands of other domestic animals, like sheep and goats, to see if they also carry receptors for the avian flu. Bell said they will also look at their respiratory systems and gastrointestinal tracts to see if the flu could have other points of entry, like if a wild bird with the virus defecates into a water supply and farm animals drink the infected water.

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said during “Iowa Press” last week that longitudinal studies are also being conducted on farms to test every single animal housed there in order to track how the virus moves and determine how it exits the herd.

“Because it will, it will eventually exit that herd and you want to be able to track those things and have an expectation of how long does that last,” he said during the program.

This story was originally published by the Iowa Capital Dispatch, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

A patron awaits her turn Dec. 2, 2020, at the Central Pantry in Columbias (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

For the third year in a row, taxpayers claiming Missouri’s food pantry tax credit found they didn’t get the full value when the state Department of Revenue reviewed their returns.

The credit, up to $2,500 per taxpayer for 50% of qualifying donations to food pantries, homeless shelters and soup kitchens, is capped at $1.75 million annually. 

But this year about $2 million was claimed.

That means every taxpayer using the credit got only 87.8% of the amount claimed. And unless a taxpayer paid extra, anticipating that the full credit may not be available, the disallowance notice also stated they had to cover the difference, plus interest and penalties on the unused portion.

The law creating the credit “does not provide provisions to waive interest and penalties due to the apportionment of the food pantry tax credit,” department spokeswoman Anne Marie Moy said in an email to The Independent. “Interest is statutory and cannot be waived.”

In each of the previous two years, less than 75% of each individual credit claim was allowed, Moy said.

“The champion for children tax credit has also been apportioned in the past,” Moy said. “It was last apportioned in fiscal year 2019.”

The cap on the champion for children tax credit, which helps agencies that support children involved in court cases or family crises, was $1 million in fiscal 2019 and has since been increased to $1.25 million.

A bill to stop the interest and penalties until a taxpayer has been given a chance to pay or make arrangements to cover the difference didn’t get very far this year. State Rep. Brenda Shields, a Republican from St. Joseph, said she was surprised to find out that people who thought they had paid in full were getting bills with interest and penalties.

“I had one constituent contact me, and when they contacted me and told me they received this, I said, ‘Oh, we don’t do that.’,” Shields said. “And sure enough, come to find out, we do.”

The food pantry tax credit is one of about a dozen that encourage charitable donations to organizations that promote adoptions, help victims of domestic violence, provide diapers and food for people in poverty and perform other tasks lawmakers wish to support. The credit is generally 50% or more of a donation and can only be used by the donor to offset their own state taxes.

If a portion of the credit can’t be claimed in the year it is issued, the remainder can be carried over for up to three years.

But that doesn’t excuse the interest and penalties. The maximum credit is $2,500, so a return that claimed the maximum would have been allowed $2,195. If the $305 remainder was not paid when the return is filed, the initial charge of interest and penalties would be $21.35.

“It’s annoying,” Shields said. “It discourages people from doing what we want them to do, which is to contribute to our local food pantries.”

Shields’ bill would give a taxpayer a grace period of 60 days after receiving notice that the food pantry tax credit has been disallowed to pay the balance or make arrangements to pay. Her bill includes a grace period for the champion for children credit, which also does not include an exemption for penalties and interest.

Many donors to food pantries, she said, are people who have used the free groceries to feed their families.

“We need to give them that grace period of figuring out the payment plan,” she said, “because they might not have extra $50 within five days to be able to pay that right back.”

Construction on Interstate 70 begins Monday in Columbia. The $2.8 billion project is expected to be finished by 2030 (Sarah Voyles/Missourian).

Construction crews began work Monday night on an ambitious $2.8 billion project that will expand Interstate 70 to three lanes across Missouri.

Crews are first tackling a stretch from Route J at Millersburg to Route M at Hatton, 7 miles of a 20-mile section that will ultimately add a third lane in each direction from Columbia to Kingdom City.

The overnight schedule is designed to minimize traffic disruptions as the highway work progresses from the center of the state to other portions at the east and west ends of the highway.

The project’s first 20-mile section is expected to be completed by the end of 2027. Subsequent phases include improving stretches of highway from Warrenton to Wentzville and from Blue Springs to Odessa. The entire project is expected to be finished by 2030.

Road crews will first close the westbound lane from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. nightly to lay new asphalt that will strengthen the highway shoulders, said the state’s Improve I-70 central project director, Jeff Gander.

When that portion is done, the eastbound lane will be closed to traffic. Estimated completion is this summer.

First contract for widening I-70 approved by Missouri highways commission

“After they get that shoulder-strengthening done, they’re going to re-stripe the highway to push traffic more toward the outsides, and then they’ll be setting barrier wall all along the inside to barrier off the median so we can perform our work in there,” Gander said.

In addition to adding a third lane each way to the 20 miles between the U.S. 63 and U.S. 54 exits, crews will improve the intersections of U.S. 63 and I-70 in Columbia and between U.S. 54 and I-70 in Kingdom City.

Missouri Department of Transportation plans to begin working on the U.S. 63-Interstate-70 connector this summer, while construction on U.S. 54 will likely not start until 2025, Gander said.

A St. Charles-based contractor, Millstone Weber, was selected to do the first section, which has a $405 million price tag. The contractor intends to avoid impacting local traffic by keeping two lanes open during construction at all times, with the exception of some temporary closures at night.

“What we have committed to for this project is to keep two lanes of I-70 flowing at all peak times, which means during the day,” he said. “There’s a good possibility that they will have a lane closed at night, both eastbound and westbound at the same time.”

MoDOT did preliminary work ahead of Monday’s construction, including pavement coring, as well as subsurface boring where some of the structures will go to prepare for the design.

Since the initiative is a design-build project, highway improvement happens incrementally, Gander said. In this kind of project, the full design plans are completed while the project is underway.

“When we actually award this contract, we don’t have full design plans — we have plans that are probably at, say, 30 percent complete,” Gander said. “Right now, they are hot-and-heavy working on fully designing the rest of the project.”

The project has been on MoDOT’s unfunded agenda for almost 20 years and is the largest interstate construction program since the early 1960s. The expanded highway portion will run from Blue Springs in Jackson County to Wentzville in St. Charles County.

More than 40,000 vehicles travel between Kansas City and St. Louis each day. A third lane will allow for emergency vehicles to access crashes faster and with less traffic back-up, keeping drivers safer and less frustrated, according to MoDOT Director Patrick McKenna in an earlier Missourian report.

Due to the significant highway construction happening around Columbia during the next few years, Gander said it is important for people to pay attention while driving.

Distracted driving is the main issue that highway construction workers must deal with, he said.

“When this project gets really rolling, and we have all the different areas that we’re working on, we could have upwards of around 300 people out there working on a day-to-day basis, including our prime contractor and our subcontractors,” he said.

“Our goal is for everybody to go home safe, so we really need the public’s help for that.”

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

Fireworks go off before a game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City last year. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said he doesn't think the Kansas City Chiefs want to leave Arrowhead for a new domed stadium in Kansas. (David Eulitt/Getty Images).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said Monday he doesn’t think the Kansas City Chiefs want to leave Arrowhead Stadium for Kansas, though he acknowledged he hasn’t actually talked to the team’s owners.

Speaking to reporters after a bill signing in Kansas City, Parson said he thought the reigning Super Bowl champion wasn’t that interested in building a new domed football stadium.

“I think they really want Arrowhead to stay,” Parson said. “I think it’s a unique arena.”

Parson’s remarks came after he spent the afternoon meeting with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and other area officials to discuss how to keep the Chiefs and Kansas City Royals in Missouri.

Both teams have publicly considered the possibility of leaving for Kansas after Jackson County voters rejected a proposal to extend a 3/8-cent sales tax to help finance a downtown Kansas City baseball stadium for the Royals and upgrades to Arrowhead. 

Last month, Kansas lawmakers expanded a state tax incentive program in the hopes of convincing one or both teams to relocate.

“I’m not too worried about Kansas at this point,” Parson said.

Parson, who leaves office in January, said he expected to see Missouri put forward a plan to keep the teams by the end of the year. Missouri’s plan, he said, could be just as good for the teams — if not better.

First, he said, information on the teams’ plans — including location of stadiums, costs of the project and details of any entertainment district or other development planned around it — needs to be made public. 

With Parson’s impending departure from office, Missouri’s next governor could be left to finalize any plan to keep the teams. Two of the three top candidates for the GOP gubernatorial nomination say they would oppose any incentive package for the Chiefs and Royals. 

Asked if that affects negotiations, Parson said the state has tools at its disposal even now while the Missouri General Assembly is not in session “if we knew what the plan was.” 

“The conversation needs to be had with the Royals — where are you going to put a stadium?” Parson said. “How much money do you need? What’s it going to cost for this? How are we going to pay for this? What incentives does the city have?”

Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson — who will likely become the next speaker of the House — told the Kansas City Star Monday that he expects Jackson County residents will wind up voting again over the stadium sales tax. He also told The Star, following conversations with both the Chiefs and Royals, that it was clear both teams wanted to stay in Missouri.

After Kansas lawmakers passed legislation designed to relocate the teams, Patterson told The Star he thought a second Jackson County vote would be successful.

“I think now with the Kansas option staring us, staring us right in the face, I think that changed the dynamic, and it would be a different vote next time around,” he said.

Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. said in a statement after meetings with Parson that the two had a “productive conversation centered on the pride these teams bring to our community and the importance of developing a fair and sustainable plan for the future.” Before White can support a new stadium proposal, he said, “it must offer clear and significant benefits to the taxpayers of Jackson County,” something he argues the sales tax does not.

White said he’s hopeful that the state will continue to support the effort to keep the teams in Missouri even after Parson leaves office.

“Together, we can find a solution that ensures the Chiefs and Royals remain a proud part of Jackson County without compromising the financial well-being of our community,” White said.

The Royals’ Kauffman Stadium and Arrowhead sit next to each other and share the parking lot of the Truman Sports Complex in east Kansas City.

The teams’ plans for the Jackson County sales tax were criticized by some, including White, as vague and incomplete. 

But Kansas lawmakers saw in the failed Jackson County vote a chance to lure the teams across the state line. They claimed Missouri had “dropped the ball” and it was up to Kansas to keep the teams in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Last month, Kansas lawmakers expanded the state’s Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond to help finance up to 70% of the cost for one or both teams to move to Kansas. The expanded program could yield hundreds of millions of dollars for the stadiums.

STAR Bonds are issued to help pay the construction costs and then repaid by the sales tax collected at the project site. Normally, STAR Bonds, which are meant to help build tourist and entertainment venues, are limited to 50% of the project costs. 

The legislation, signed by Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly last month, was criticized by Missouri officials who considered it a violation of an agreement Kelly and Parson reached in 2019 to stop using economic incentives to move companies and jobs back and forth across the state line.

Neither the Chiefs nor the Royals were available to comment.

This story was updated at 8:48 a.m. with comments from Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson and Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. 

Gov. Mike Parson, seated, holds up legislation he just signed offering a tax break to private developers expanding the National Nuclear Security Administration's south Kansas City campus. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

Developers planning to expand a Kansas City facility manufacturing nuclear weapons components will get a break on sales tax under legislation Gov. Mike Parson signed Monday.

Parson held a signing ceremony at the site, currently a gravel lot across from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s south Kansas City campus. The expansion is expected to cost more than $3 billion and add more than 2 million square feet of space to the campus.

Lawmakers present Monday predicted the expansion would add about 2,000 high-paying jobs in south Kansas City.

“To have that kind of investment anywhere in the state, especially here, is a big deal for the entire state and a big deal for this community,” Parson said.

For years, Honeywell International Inc. has operated the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plant manufacturing non-nuclear parts for the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

Missouri legislators pass tax break for Kansas City nuclear weapons campus expansion

But proponents of the tax break say the facility needs to expand to accommodate work the NNSA will need to modernize and refurbish the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. 

“You’re talking about securing the country and making sure that this country stays safe,” Parson said Monday.

Lawmakers passed the tax break overwhelmingly this spring, largely citing the potential economic boon of the new jobs. The sales tax exemption on construction materials for the project is expected to divert more than $150 million in state, county, city and Kansas City zoo sales tax revenue over 10 years, according to a fiscal analysis that noted the exact cost couldn’t be verified. 

Legislative staff wrote that the bill’s “fiscal impact could be significant.”

The legislation had support from both Democrats and Republicans and was championed by now-former Missouri Sen. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat.

At the signing event Monday, Razer called the tax break a “no-nonsense piece of legislation.” He said the Honeywell expansion would be “transformational” for south Kansas City, Grandview and surrounding communities.  

“This is high-paying jobs in these communities,” Razer said, “and as Kansas City continues to grow and have a renaissance, we’ve got to make sure that every corner of Kansas City grows and is involved in that renaissance. That’s what’s happening here today.”

(Scott Olson/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The stalemate over the current farm bill may be solidifying a new era in farm politics as it joins the last three farm bills in a trend of delays and partisan division — a contrast from the legislation’s history of bipartisanship.

Every five years, Congress is tasked with drafting a new federal farm bill. The omnibus law that began 90 years ago as various kinds of payments to support farmers now has an impact far beyond the farm, with programs to create wildlife habitat, address climate change and provide the nation’s largest federal nutrition program.

The current farm bill process, already nearly a year behind schedule, is at an impasse as Democrats and Republicans clash over how to pay for the bill and whether to place limits on nutrition and climate programs. The previous farm bill expired in September 2023 and has been extended through the end of this September.

Historically, farm bills were completed within a few months of their expiration date. Ten of the 13 farm bills since 1965 were enacted by December 31 in the year of their expirations. But three of the four farm bills since 2008 went beyond that date.

The last three bills — including the 2018 bill, which is the one recent version that passed on time — each had partisan disagreements about spending.

The trend represents a change in how the once-bipartisan legislation is viewed.

“The last two farm bills were the anomaly,” said Jonathan Coppess, a professor of Agricultural Law and Policy at the University of Illinois who has written a history of the farm bill. “Now that it has been three in a row, I’m not sure that holds.”

A recent report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service notes that starting in 2008, farm bills have been subject to delays, vetoes and insufficient votes to pass on the floor.

The report concluded: “Over time, farm bills have tended to become more complicated and politically sensitive. As a result, the timeline for reauthorization has become less certain.”

Spending debate

That uncertainty is true of the current farm bill, as Republicans in the House and Senate push for spending limits that Democrats say are non-starters.

“I don’t think we’re close to getting a farm bill done until the folks who are negotiating the farm bill are realistic about what’s doable within a constrained resource environment,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview on the radio program AgriTalk June 21.

The Republican-led House Agriculture Committee approved its farm bill proposal largely on party lines at the end of May, after hours of debate and complaints from Democrats that the process had not been as bipartisan as in years past.

Four Democrats voted for the bill in committee, but they joined 20 other Democrats on the committee in a “dissenting views” letter expressing “genuine concern over the trajectory of the Majority’s partisan farm bill” — which they predicted would be stuck in delay and dysfunction without significant changes.

The Senate Agriculture Committee has yet to vote. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the committee have each put forward contrasting bills and expressed their frustration.

‘The most frustrating time’

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie  Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who is retiring after this term, has called the process the “most frustrating” of her career and said she would not let the Republican approach for the farm bill be her legacy.

“I’ve actually been involved in six farm bills and led on three of them, and this has been the most frustrating time,” said Stabenow in an interview with Michigan Advance at the end of June. “Because it’s so much more partisan than usual and particularly around food assistance.”

Partisan division is not uncommon in today’s Congress but is notable on the farm bill, which had historically brought together lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. Bipartisan support can be necessary for final passage because the size of the $1.5 trillion farm bill means it inevitably loses some votes from fiscal conservatives and others.

“If you don’t have a bipartisan bill, this is not going to happen, and that is no matter who’s in charge. The margins are too close to be able to get this done without bipartisan support,” said Collin Peterson, a former Democratic House member from Minnesota and Agriculture Committee Chairman.

The key dispute for Democrats this year is a funding calculation that would place limits on the “Thrifty Food Plan” formula that calculates benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.

Republicans are using the limits to offset other spending in the bill on crop subsidies. The top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, said he wants to put “more farm in the farm bill.”

Peterson, who is now the head of an eponymous consulting firm, said in an interview with States Newsroom that Republicans would likely have to make changes to the nutrition title to get a bill to final passage.

“It is unrealistic to think they are going to get this done without significant changes in that part of the bill,” he said.

‘An uneasy alliance’ from the start

The nutrition program that is at the center of the impasse was added to the legislation 50 years ago to help build a coalition of wide-ranging bipartisan support.

Lawmakers added the nutrition title to the farm bill in 1973, a move that widened the vested interest in the bill in the House. Lawmakers who wanted to increase payments for cotton and wheat farmers in their districts were able to bring in support from representatives from districts whose citizens could benefit from food aid.

“That was the first coalition building between the two interests,” Coppess said. “But it was pretty intense. And it was an uneasy alliance from the start.”

Since then, the farm bill in many ways has become a food bill. Three-quarters of the mandatory spending in the bill falls under the nutrition title, which includes SNAP, the largest U.S. program that addresses hunger.

The program, formerly called food stamps, supplements food budgets for low-income households. Anti-hunger groups have joined the outside interests pushing for the bill every five years.

But with such a large funding line, the nutrition program has become a target for Republicans who want to cut it to offset other spending in the bill.

“The dispute is all the pay-fors,” Peterson said. “And that has been the issue for the last three farm bills and issue on this one as well.”

Peterson, who was chairman of the House Agriculture Committee for the 2008 farm bill and was the top Democrat on the committee for the 2013 and 2018 bills, said partisan division on the committee is not unfamiliar at this phase of the process.

The farm bills he worked on also had partisan votes in the House but eventually found support from both sides after conferencing with the Senate.

“At the end of the day, every one of those bills was partisan, until we got through the conference committee, and then at that point it was bipartisan, because the Senate brought some of that to the table,” Peterson said. “So, kind of, what’s going on here went on the last three farm bills.”

The most recent farm bill in 2018 was marked by contentious partisan debate centered on SNAP’s work requirements and other eligibility rules.

The House Agriculture Committee’s bill that year initially failed on the House floor and later squeaked through on a 213-211 vote. Twenty Republicans joined all House Democrats in voting against that bill.

After reconciling with the Senate bill and the removal of some of the contentious changes to SNAP, most Democrats flipped their votes in support and the House agreed to the final conference report in a bipartisan vote of 369-47. The dissenting votes included 44 Republicans and three Democrats.

A trend toward fracture

The partisan division over the nutrition title creates new fault lines for the farm bill.

Historically, farm bill alliances were more regional than partisan. They were built on a common ground of support for shared crops or producers: cotton in the South, corn in the Midwest and wheat in the Western Plains.

“What was our biggest issue back in the four farm bills that I wrote was not Republican versus Democrat. It was usually Midwest against the Southeast or the Northeast or the Southwest from a crop standpoint,” former Senator Saxby Chambliss said in an interview.

Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia, was on the House Agriculture Committee from 1995 to 2002 and the Senate Agriculture Committee 2005 to 2011, which included a stint as chairman and ranking member.

“There’s a different political dynamic that exists in the Senate today that did not exist when I was there,”  Chambliss said. “How much of that bleeds into the farm bill? I don’t know the answer to that, but obviously it’s a little more acrimonious than what I ever experienced.”

As partisan politics have become more entrenched in regions of the country, with the South becoming more closely aligned with the Republican Party, it has played out in farm-bill politics.

“You see a staunch realignment around where the regional and the partisan are now very similar,” said Coppess.

Six matches will be held at at Arrowhead Stadium during the 2026 World Cup (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon).

The 2026 World Cup will squeeze Kansas City’s already tight housing market in ways that could make shelter particularly scarce for homeless people.

Many thousands of soccer fans flocking to the region will need places to stay. But some housing experts say that the World Cup’s short-term impact on the housing market could prod the market to create more housing that would benefit the city long after the international crowd leaves town.

“You want to spend on public service infrastructure that has benefits beyond the event,” said Michael Frisch, professor of urban planning and design at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. “Ideally, that infrastructure should have broad impacts.”

How the World Cup could affect homelessness

Realtors say property owners are already converting their spaces into short-term rentals.

Sal Loiacono, owner of Better Builders Co., said that short-term rental prices will skyrocket by 2026. That was his experience when he attended the previous World Cup in Qatar.

“Prices were three times the typical rate,” he said.

The competition for apartments, in turn, likely will push up rents and make permanent housing less affordable. Frisch said that residents will want to avoid any leases that end the summer of 2026.

“Renters with leases that are up between May and August 2026 are going to be threatened with displacement,” he said.

Every country that bids to host the World Cup has to comply with a human rights policy and submit its own human rights strategy, a FIFA spokesperson told The Beacon.

Host cities must collaborate with housing rights groups to address potential housing issues, such as rising rent prices and possible evictions caused by the event. Cities are also asked to work with homeless rights groups to develop a plan for people living on the streets and find shelter for people displaced by the event.

The host nations of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. put together their strategies to ensure that the 2026 FIFA World Cup doesn’t worsen housing problems.

But in Brazil in 2014, up to 250,000 people were displaced to make way for construction tied to the World Cup. Similarly, thousands of migrant workers were evicted from their homes to make room for soccer fans when Qatar hosted in 2022.

Josh Henges, Kansas City’s homelessness prevention coordinator, said that major displacement should not be a problem in U.S. cities because no new stadiums or housing projects will need to be built.

“All of the infrastructure already exists,” he said.

But Stephanie Boyer, the chief executive officer of reStart Inc., said homeless and domestic violence agencies often put clients in hotels. With the World Cup, out-of-towners will take over those rooms.

Boyer said that Kansas City’s homeless population has been displaced for past sporting events. She is in talks with the city’s World Cup committee to make sure that doesn’t happen this time.

“What we don’t want to see is a repeat of what happened when the NFL Draft came to town (in 2023) and encampments started disappearing,” she said.

The city’s encampment policy requires police or city officials to give service providers and encampment residents at least 48 hours notice before clearing an area. But officials cleared out encampments without notice in preparation for the NFL Draft, Boyer said.

That sudden action prevents outreach workers from contacting homeless people, causing case managers to lose track of clients.

“They could have been close to getting that person housed and now they’re nowhere to be found and they have no way to contact them,” she said.

Long-term impact of 2026 World Cup in Kansas City

Frisch from UMKC said that the World Cup’s impact on affordable housing in Kansas City depends on the city’s approach to development and policies. He stressed that long-term benefits come from investing in public needs.

“If they serve private needs, like the owners of sports teams, then there’s not going to be a public impact,” he said.

Past host cities have leveraged large sporting events to create long-term housing benefits. Barcelona used the 1992 Olympics to improve infrastructure and rebuild run-down areas, converting the Olympic village into mixed-income housing. Atlanta adopted a similar strategy after the 1996 Olympics. However, both projects also resulted in widespread gentrification and displacement of low-income residents.

Ryana Parks-Shaw, Kansas City’s mayor pro tem, said that City Hall has not begun discussing the World Cup and homelessness. But she said that as long as the city’s strategy to end homelessness by 2030 remains on track — which includes the construction of a low-barrier shelter — then Kansas City should be well-prepared for the World Cup.

Shaw said that increasing affordable housing stock over the next two years will curb displacement.

That includes establishing a citywide land trust, a nonprofit model that keeps housing affordable by acquiring land and separating a resident’s ownership of a home from that land, she said.

That land trust can help sell the 3,000 vacant properties that the land bank commission is looking to use for affordable housing, Parks-Shaw said.

She said the city’s housing locator, which connects residents with property owners in need of tenants, will also help to get stock off the market. Landlords can no longer turn away tenants merely for using rent subsidies. And it’s spending $1 million to entice landlords to take in more low-income and high-risk tenants.

“I heard from our housing providers that on any given day, 8 to 10% of their housing stock sits vacant,” she said. “Our goal is to take advantage of that housing stock that sits vacant and get individuals to lease those homes. That will be in full effect by the time the World Cup comes.”

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

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly at a campaign event in 2022 (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector).

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly on Friday signed legislation that offers hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals to relocate from Missouri. 

The legislation, an expansion of one of the state’s tax incentive programs, could help finance up to 70% of the cost for one or both teams to build a new stadium in Kansas.

“We know that modernizing our economic development tools provides the opportunity to increase private investment into the state,” Kelly said in a news release announcing she had signed the bill along with an income tax cut for Kansas residents.

Missouri lawmakers criticize Kansas attempt to poach Royals, Chiefs

Both bills passed the Kansas Legislature earlier this week. Lawmakers argued during a special legislative session this week that Kansas needed to offer the Chiefs and Royals incentives to stay in the Kansas City area after voters in Jackson County, Missouri, rejected a 3/8-cent sales tax for the teams. 

Extending the sales tax would have helped finance a new Royals stadium in the Crossroads Arts District of downtown Kansas City. The Royals currently play at Kauffman Stadium next door to the Chiefs in the Truman Sports Complex, where both teams have had venues since 1973. 

The sales tax would have also financed upgrades to the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium.

The teams’ plans for the Jackson County sales tax were criticized by some as vague and incomplete. Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. has said he is open to discussions to help keep the teams in Kansas City, Missouri, but wants to see a “complete and transparent plan that offers tangible benefits to our taxpayers.”

Kansas lawmakers, arguing Missouri had “dropped the ball,” expanded the state’s Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program to help finance up to 70% of the cost of the stadiums, which would have to hold 30,000 fans and cost at least $1 billion.

STAR Bonds are issued to help pay the construction costs and then repaid by the sales tax collected at the project site. Normally, STAR Bonds, which are meant to help build tourist and entertainment venues, are limited to 50% of the project costs. 

Bonds for the stadiums wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years, compared to the normal 20.

And both projects would be eligible to use funds from the state’s legalization of sports betting and the liquor taxes paid at the stadiums to help repay the bonds.

Neither team has pledged to move to Kansas, but both the Chiefs and the Royals welcomed the legislation when it passed the Kansas Legislature on Tuesday.

Missouri currently spends $3 million annually on the Truman Sports Complex, part of a deal cut in 1989 to secure financing for construction of the St. Louis stadium now referred to as The Dome at America’s Center.

Missouri’s current fiscal year budget also includes $50 million from general revenue for “stadium and ground modifications, transportation, marketing, and additional event support” around Arrowhead for the FIFA World Cup.

Missouri legislative leaders have signaled they may respond to Kansas’ efforts to poach the Chiefs and Royals after the August primary, though no plans are currently in place.

In California, where layoffs in tech and the film industry have unsettled the job market, there is less than one opening per unemployed person. In North Dakota, where a brain drain has left a shortage of skilled and educated workers, there are almost three openings per unemployed person (Spencer Platt/Getty Images).

The number of job openings has declined sharply in every state since 2022, better aligning the numbers of unfilled jobs and people seeking work.

Nationally, for the first time since before the pandemic, the number of job openings and unemployed people is roughly in balance: a little more than one opening per person looking for work, according to a Stateline analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. At the height of the labor shortage in 2022, there were two job openings per job seeker. As of April, the ratio was down to 1.2 openings per person.

But the proportion of workers to jobs ranges widely from state to state. In California, where layoffs in tech and the film industry have unsettled the job market, there is less than one opening per unemployed person. In North Dakota, where a brain drain has left a shortage of skilled and educated workers, there are almost three openings per unemployed person.

The federal government defines a job opening as an available position that an employer wants to fill within a month.

California, one of the few states where unemployment is above 5% and unemployed people outnumber job openings, has replaced Mississippi as the state with the highest unemployment rate. Washington state and Nevada also have less than one job opening per unemployed person.

The epicenter of the decline in job openings has been California’s Bay Area, including the San Francisco and Silicon Valley metro areas. California ended up losing nearly all the tech jobs it gained during a pandemic boom fueled by online work and shopping.

Vishwanath Eswarakrishnan, a 35-year-old software engineer in the Bay Area, was shocked by his layoff from a San Francisco robotaxi firm in December, a day before the birth of his second child. But as soon as he posted the news to social media, he started getting calls from major firms, including Airbnb, Uber and Nvidia. He accepted an offer from Meta within a month and started work again in March.

“There are opportunities out there for folks with eight to 15 years of experience. You do get calls,” Eswarakrishnan said. He added, however, that friends who have less experience or who work in less technical fields, such as product management, are having a harder time.

In North Dakota, by contrast, there are still almost three job openings for every unemployed person, though that’s down from more than four openings in some months of 2022. Before the pandemic, there were 2.7 openings for every job seeker.

North Dakota suffers from a lack of skilled workers to fill open jobs, and many who could fill them move to nearby cities, such as Minneapolis, looking for a more urban lifestyle and more desirable jobs, said Thomas Krumel, a professor at North Dakota State University who studies labor demand.

North Dakota’s oil boom peaked a decade ago but it left a lasting legacy of high wages and cost of living, he added.

“The positions that employers find most difficult to fill do not require a four-year college degree. Skilled trades, healthcare support and technical jobs often face shortages,” Krumel wrote in an email.

Unemployment nationwide was at 4% in May, higher than the 3.5% before the pandemic but still near historic lows. The only states with unemployment rates above 5% were California (5.3%) and Nevada (5.1%), along with the District of Columbia (5.2%). The lowest rates were in North Dakota and South Dakota (2%), and Vermont (2.1%).

A return to a pre-pandemic labor market is a good sign, said Nick Bunker, economic research director at Indeed Hiring Lab.

“It was a strong labor market, robust and seemingly sustainable,” Bunker said.

However, states with the largest declines in job openings could be in for future trouble.

“We’ve hit the spot now where if employers do continue to pull back on openings, the probability of the unemployment rate rising more sharply becomes higher,” Bunker said.

Of the 10 metro areas with the largest decline in job listings since the beginning of the pandemic, four are in California, according to Bunker’s research. San Francisco (-31%) had the largest decline, followed by San Jose in the Silicon Valley (-28%); Seattle (-27%); New York City (-12%); Boston (-8%); Los Angeles (-6%); Oxnard, California (-5%); Provo, Utah, and Washington, D.C. (-4%); and Buffalo, New York (-3%).

In California, there has been a steep decline in the number of jobs in film and tech, especially supporting roles in sales and recruiting that blossomed in the early pandemic years. Some of the boom in startups was fueled by low interest rates that allowed new tech firms to operate for years before reaching profitability. Higher rates have hit hard.

“Most software is built in startups, with the bulk of the work at the beginning of a business. VC [venture capital] is down and there’s been a flood of talent from big companies that have cut the fat,” said Cody Palmer, a software engineer who does contract work for Silicon Valley companies from Denver. He lost a large contract job this year.

“I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I choose jobs that are hard and high-risk, typically startups,” Palmer said. “I’ve seen, like, 13 layoffs in my career. I’ve grown into this mindset of ‘Always be looking, always try and find the next gig, and be wary of just how fast a job can cut you.’”

The cooling of the labor market without an unemployment spike, at least so far, has surprised some economists.

“It had never happened before, but it did happen,” said Olivier Blanchard, an emeritus economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He co-authored an influential paper in 2022 with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers predicting that by raising interest rates to curb inflation and cool down an “overheated” labor market, the Federal Reserve would cause a “painful” spike in unemployment.

“Larry and I turned out to be wrong,” Blanchard said.

Other economists such as Andrew Figura at the Federal Reserve argued that a “soft landing” without high unemployment was possible as long as layoffs didn’t spike nationally, as they did in California.

California’s creation of new jobs, the largest in the nation before the pandemic, has now reversed into the largest losses in employment, according to an earlier Stateline analysis. Since 2022, when the Fed first raised interest rates, California has lost 93,000 jobs in the information sector, which includes many internet services and also film and sound recording, according to a March report from the Public Policy Institute of California.

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

A red-clad crowd packs Arrowhead Stadium to watch the Kansas City Chiefs play (Eric Thomas/Kansas Reflector).

TOPEKA, Kansas — The Kansas City Royals and Chiefs could receive hundreds of millions of dollars in sales tax revenue to move from Missouri and build new stadiums across the state line under legislation passed Tuesday by Kansas lawmakers.

The House voted 84-38 and the Senate voted 27-8 to approve legislation that would expand a state incentive program in an attempt to lure one or both teams from Kansas City. 

The bill now heads to Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, who said in a statement following the Senate vote that the effort to bring the teams to Kansas “shows we’re all-in on keeping our beloved teams in the Kansas City metro.”

“Kansas now has the opportunity to become a professional sports powerhouse with the Chiefs and Royals potentially joining Sporting KC as major league attractions, all with robust, revenue-generating entertainment districts surrounding them providing new jobs, new visitors and new revenues that boost the Kansas economy,” Kelly said.

Neither team has promised to move to Kansas, though both actively lobbied for the legislation’s passage. The Chiefs said in a statement that the team appreciated Kansas leaders reaching out for input on the legislation.

“We look forward to exploring the options this legislation may provide,” the statement said. 

The Royals said the team was grateful to the legislature for its vote. 

“The Kansas City Royals look forward to additional conversations as we evaluate where we will play baseball in the future,” the team said. “We will always prioritize the best interests of our fans, associates and taxpayers in this process.”

State Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Republican from Stilwell, said during debate in the House that Missouri had a history of losing professional sports teams and implored fellow House members to pass the legislation.

“I ask you today, do you really want to put that type of an economic generation in the hands of the state of Missouri?” Tarwater said just before the vote.

Passage of the bill represents a monumental step in Kansas lawmakers’ attempts to court the teams. Both teams have signaled a willingness to move from their current stadiums at the Truman Sports Complex in Kansas City, Missouri.

While neither team has announced a proposed site for a Kansas stadium, legislators speculated it could land in Wyandotte County near the Sporting KC soccer stadium, NASCAR track and outlet shops.

“We have the history of building amazing projects that have brought in retail commerce, restaurants, hotels and have improved an area that was largely just a field and turned it into a tax-generating machine for our state,” said state Sen. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican.

The legislation, he said, would put Kansas in a “very good position to keep the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals in the Kansas City metro area.” 

The bill, which was not voted on by any legislative committee, would expand the state’s Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program, which is meant to help finance tourism and entertainment districts to help pay for a professional football or baseball stadium of at least $1 billion.

A developer building a stadium under the program would be eligible to finance up to 70% of the project cost by issuing bonds and repaying them with the increased sales tax collections from the stadium site. The expansion would have initially allowed up to 75% of project costs but was tweaked before introduction. Debt on a stadium constructed under the expansion wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years instead of the normal 20.

The project could also receive a boost from liquor taxes generated in the STAR Bond district and revenues from a fund Kansas created when it legalized sports betting.

During House debate, state Rep. Paul Waggoner, a Hutchinson Republican, argued subsidized stadiums never generate the economic activity that they promise. He was alarmed by what he called “minimal transparency” in the deal-making process laid out in the legislation.

The bill says any agreement between the state and a team would be confidential until after it has been executed.

Waggoner called the legislation “bad public policy.”

“This is not your mother’s STAR Bonds,” Waggoner said. “This is a jacked up super-sized version of STAR Bonds.”

The bill limits the eligibility to National Football League or Major League Baseball teams currently near Kansas. The financing mechanism could be used for both stadiums and training facilities.

Both teams have pressed lawmakers in recent weeks to pass the bill with representatives from the Royals hosting dinner for Democratic lawmakers at a steakhouse Monday night and the Chiefs throwing a lunchtime block party Tuesday steps from the Capitol.

Earlier this month, a nonprofit called Scoop and Score Inc. launched to advocate for a Kansas stadium deal. The organization, which does not have to disclose its donors, hired 30 lobbyists to advocate for the STAR Bond expansion legislation. 

In a statement, former Kansas House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr., a lobbyist for Scoop and Score and the Chiefs, said the Legislature “stepped up in a big way, paving the path to make sure the Chiefs stay right where they belong — in Kansas City with their loyal fans.”

“The votes show overwhelming bipartisan support because Kansas lawmakers know what the Chiefs mean to us and how big of an economic opportunity this is for Kansas,” Ryckman said.

Several lawmakers expressed skepticism about STAR Bonds or the deal in front of them but voted for it anyway.

State Rep. Jason Probst, a Democrat from Hutchinson, said the idea disgusts him and lamented that the legislature does not move as swiftly to pass bills on issues including homelessness, hunger or childhood poverty. But he still voted for the bill.

“So I’m going to hold my nose and probably support this,” he said, “but not without protesting the fact that we get sent here to do things for people, and we never move with this sort of urgency or with this sort of passion or the energy that we have around this.”

In a meeting of House Democrats before the vote, Probst said he thought the Chiefs were using Kansas to “get Missouri worked up” so the state would “sweeten the pot” and offer the team more incentives to stay put.

Probst said he was bothered that the Chiefs were making an emotional appeal, invoking sports heroes, while being thin on details. Still, he said, it would be “catastrophic” if the Chiefs left the Kansas City metro area.

“I do not like this. It feels gross,” Probst said. “This whole show that’s going on feels disgusting to me. And it’s still the right thing to do. That’s how I see it.”

State Rep. Stephanie Sawyer Clayton, an Overland Park Democrat, said during that meeting that she was struggling with the proposal “because I don’t like misogynistic dude bro culture,” because the family that owns the Chiefs supported the anti-abortion constitutional amendment that Kansas voters rejected in 2022. She said she also doesn’t like Ryckman.

But, she said, her decision to support the bill was cemented when she saw testimony from the governor’s office that suggested the governor planned to sign the bill if passed. 

Clayton said it would “warm the cockles of my cold, dead feminist heart” to see Kelly get credit for moving the teams from Missouri “and not the dude bros who have been working on this.”

“That is why I’m a ‘yes,’” Clayton said. “I want a woman getting credit for sports things. So I’m doing it out of spite, frankly.”

Across the rotunda, state Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Republican from Louisburg, argued STAR Bonds had generally not created anything new but rather subsidized development that likely would have occurred anyway.

“I understand the excitement behind the prospect,” she said. “It is like it’s Christmas Eve and there’s visions of sugar plums, only its royal blue and crimson and gold in this case.”

Brady Singer of the Kansas City Royals throws in the first inning against the Houston Astros at Kauffman Stadium in April (Ed Zurga/Getty Images).

LAWRENCE, Kansas — On the eve of a vote that could yield $750 million for a new Kansas City Royals baseball stadium in Kansas, a team executive met with several Democratic state lawmakers at a local steakhouse.

Brooks Sherman, chief operating officer for the Royals, and lobbyists hosted lawmakers at the Six Mile Chop House and Tavern on Monday “to talk about the Royals interest in Kansas,” according to an email from a lobbyist inviting Kansas House and Senate Democrats.

Outside the restaurant, lawmakers said they weren’t concerned about the idea of their votes on legislation worth hundreds of millions of dollars being influenced over dinner.

“It happens,” said Sen. Marci Francisco, a Lawrence Democrat. “Most of the discussions in the legislature go on behind closed doors.”

The meal came the night before lawmakers were expected to vote on whether to expand a state tax incentive program to help finance a new stadium for the Royals or the Kansas City Chiefs to lure the teams from Missouri.

Chiefs, Royals ask Kansas for incentives to allow teams to leave Missouri

The bill, which was discussed in an informational hearing Monday, would enhance the state’s existing Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program to provide up to 75% of the project’s cost for a professional football or baseball stadium project with a minimum $1 billion investment. STAR Bonds are issued to pay for the construction and repaid by the increased state sales tax revenue at the project site.

Normally, STAR Bonds, which are intended to help pay for tourism and entertainment destinations, are only authorized to finance up to 50% of a project. Debt on a stadium constructed under the expansion wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years instead of the normal 20.

The project could also receive a boost from liquor taxes generated in the STAR Bond district and revenues from a fund Kansas created when it legalized sports betting.

The Chiefs shut down a city block near the Capitol in Topeka for a rally at the Celtic Fox restaurant at lunchtime Tuesday.

On her way into the restaurant, Francisco said she wasn’t supporting the current bill but would be interested to know whether the Royals would support a standalone deal. She wasn’t sure what level of impact dinners with lobbyists have on lawmakers’ overall support.

Francisco said she was uncomfortable that revenue information from the project would not be released and that there was not enough public testimony on the legislation.

Rep. Jerry Stogsdill, a Democrat from Prairie Village, said it was “par for the course” for lawmakers to get lobbied at evening events. He said he has discussed issues with lobbyists and asked for information but that in his eight years in the Legislature he has never been influenced to change his vote on an issue.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a single person in there tonight that is going to be persuaded to vote against their conscience and against their constituents,” he said.

Stogsdill said he imagined he’d vote for the legislation and thought a stadium would be an economic boon to the community around it.

Sen. Ethan Corson, a fellow Prairie Village Democrat, said didn’t see Kansas’ efforts to help finance one or both stadiums as competing with Missouri. He’d be fine if the teams stayed in Kansas City, Missouri, but he said the Missouri Legislature is “beyond dysfunctional.”

“I worry about their ability to do anything, really,” Corson said, “so I think this is a chance to put something on the table so, that way, we can say we made a reasonable effort to keep the teams in the metro.”

Rep. Linda Featherston, an Overland Park Democrat, said Monday she declined to attend the lobbying event.

“I don’t want there to be any questions about undue influence,” she said.

Rep. Cindy Neighbor, a Shawnee Democrat, attended Monday’s dinner and recounted the sales pitch in a meeting of House Democrats Tuesday morning.

She said the Royals are looking at three potential sites in Wyandotte County where they could build a 34,500-seat stadium. The team, she said, believes its current home, Kauffman Stadium, is crumbling and that repairs would cost at least $800 million. It also doesn’t have enough office space or room for medical personnel.

Royals executives told attendees that most ticket buyers are from Johnson County, Neighbor said, and that the team is not interested in having conversations about staying where they are.

“The Royals do not feel welcome in Kansas City, Missouri, right now,” Neighbor said.

The Royals declined to comment.

Patrick Mahomes throws pass against the Buffalo Bills during the third quarter in the AFC Divisional Playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium on January 23, 2022 (Jamie Squire/Getty Images).

Representatives of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals urged Kansas lawmakers Monday to expand a tax incentive program to provide the teams millions of dollars to leave Missouri and set up shop in new stadiums across the state line.

“If we want to be major league we’ve got to have major league teams,” Korb Maxwell, an attorney who represents the Chiefs, told lawmakers during an informational hearing at the Kansas Statehouse. “This is the greatest opportunity we’ve had in any generation, and it’s here before us right now.”

Other proponents of the plan were more blunt: If Kansas doesn’t act, a group hoping to lure the teams to Kansas argued, the Kansas City region is at risk of losing its professional football and baseball teams.

“The risk that the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals — our Chiefs, our Royals — could be lured away by other states is not a risk that Kansans want to take,” said Dan Murray, a lobbyist for Scoop and Score Inc., a nonprofit hoping to bring the Chiefs to Kansas.

On the table Monday was a plan to expand the state’s tax incentive program meant to help finance tourism and entertainment destinations. Under the legislation, the teams could receive more than $750 million to help finance stadium projects.

The informational hearing came ahead of a special legislative session that starts Tuesday. Lawmakers can’t take action on the bill until the formal start of the special session.

The legislation would enhance the state’s existing Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program to provide up to 75% of the project’s costs by issuing bonds that would be repaid with the increased sales state tax collections at the project site. Other projects can use STAR Bonds to finance up to 50% of a project.

The bill requires a minimum $1 billion capital investment and limits the eligibility to National Football League or Major League Baseball teams currently located near Kansas. The financing mechanism could be used for both stadiums and training facilities. 

Debt on a stadium constructed under the expansion wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years instead of the normal 20. 

The project could also receive a boost from liquor taxes generated in the STAR Bond district and revenues from a fund Kansas created when it legalized sports betting. 

Gov. Laura Kelly, who has championed enormous economic development projects in Kansas, didn’t commit to supporting the legislation on Monday.

“I’m impressed by the full-court press that has been made to get these teams to consider moving across the river,” she told reporters. “It’s not something I’m going to invest a lot of energy in. I think this is something for the legislature to work through.” 

Kelly’s chief of staff, Will Lawrence, told the joint committee the governor’s office had no concerns with the current version of the bill that would keep her from signing it. 

STAR Bonds have been criticized by some legislators as ineffective, and an audit found that less than one-quarter of the attractions funded through the program met the state’s goal of increasing tourism. There may be some cases, the audit says, where certain projects kept Kansans spending money in Kansas rather than going to Missouri. 

“But we think it’s more often that local visitors simply move existing economic activity from one part of Kansas to another,” the audit says. 

Moving the teams 

Kansas lawmakers launched an effort to lure the Chiefs or Royals — or both — after Jackson County, Missouri, voters in April rejected a proposed extension of a 3/8-cent sales tax to help finance a new stadium for the Royals and upgrades at Arrowhead Stadium. 

Maxwell said the organization had been asked why the legislation needed to be passed in special session rather than when lawmakers reconvene for their normal session in January. 

Because with only a few years left in the Chiefs’ lease at Arrowhead, “time is of the essence,” he said. 

“The time is now,” Maxwell said. “Missouri spoke, Jackson County spoke. They had their opportunity, but now there’s a moment for Kansas to step up.”

The effort to reauthorize the sales tax in Missouri was driven primarily by the Royals, whose executives unveiled plans to move to the Crossroads Arts District in downtown Kansas City in February — less than two months before the vote. It failed with 58% of voters rejecting the proposal.

Earlier this month, Scoop and Score Inc. launched to advocate for moving Chiefs — the reigning Super Bowl champions — to Kansas. The organization’s website implores visitors to sign a petition to “tell legislators to keep the Chiefs in KC!”

The organization has hired 30 lobbyists, including Murray. The Royals have eight lobbyists, and the Chiefs employ former Kansas House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr. and his former aide, Paje Resner, as lobbyists.

Ryckman said Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt could be open to moving the team outside of the Kansas City region. 

“We’re aware of numerous cities that would love to be the home of the Chiefs or the Royals,” Ryckman said. 

Murray urged lawmakers to support the legislation, arguing it has “guardrails, guardrails guardrails” to keep the state and local governments from being on the hook for the bonds.

While an attorney for the Chiefs acknowledged the franchise hasn’t come up with a design or plan for a stadium in Kansas, Murray urged lawmakers to move forward with creating a program. Vetting the details, he said, will be up to the Kansas Department of Commerce with final approval by the Legislative Coordinating Council, an eight-member committee of House and Senate lawmakers that can adopt legislation when the Legislature is not in session.

But a draft of the bill says any agreement between the state and a team would be confidential until after it has been executed. 

The bill was panned by libertarian groups as a handout for corporations that would do little to increase economic activity in Kansas. Dave Trabert, CEO of the Kansas Policy Institute, told the committee there was no way to verify the claims that the stadiums would boost the economy. 

“We asked Scoop and Score to provide their math. ‘Show us how you arrived at a billion dollars of economic activity,’’ Trabert said. “Nothing was forthcoming.”

In an interview, Trabert called the proposal “absurd.”

“This isn’t about economic development,” he said. “It’s about politics. It’s so people can say, ‘Look what I did. Vote for me.’”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Missouri’s affordable housing dilemma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How northeast Missouri wants to solve its housing shortage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A server delivers beverages at Dover Downs Casino on June 5, 2018 in Dover, Delaware. Former President Donald Trump said in a campaign rally in Las Vegas on June 9, 2024 he would seek to end taxes for tips if elected again in November. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Economists across the ideological spectrum raised doubts about the cost and workability of former President Donald Trump’s proposal over the weekend to exempt tips from federal taxes if he wins in November.

During a campaign rally Sunday in Las Vegas, where hundreds of thousands work in the hospitality industry, Trump promised service workers that they would no longer have to pay federal taxes on tipped income if the presumptive Republican nominee wins a second term.

The roughly 6 million tipped workers in the U.S., as of the latest data available from 2018, make up a small fraction of the country’s 150 million taxpayers, but campaigning on tax cuts for certain demographics is increasingly a top issue leading up to November’s presidential election.

“This is the first time I’ve said this, and for those who work at hotels and people that get tips, you’re gonna be very happy because when I get to office we are going to not charge taxes on tips, on people making tips,” Trump said to cheers at the rally.

Trump said he will “do that right away, first thing in office,” though changing the tax code would require an act of Congress.

Tax code due for update

Large portions of the sweeping 2017 tax law that Congress passed along party lines during the Trump administration are set to expire at the end of 2025, and lawmakers and advocates are already trotting out their priorities.

Tipped workers made an average $6,000 on top of their base wages in 2018, and together they paid about $38 billion in taxes on tips, according to the latest Internal Revenue Service figures. In 2018, the IRS collected about $7 trillion in overall taxes.

“In terms of the macroeconomic impact, it’s pretty small,” said Erica York, senior economist and research director at the right-leaning Tax Foundation.

“If you think of it in terms of what Congress is going to be debating next year, one of the big challenges that lawmakers are going to face is the revenue impact. Every dollar of tax revenue for one type of tax cut is $1 less for another type of tax cut. So it’s going to be a real exercise in prioritizing trade-offs across different policies,” York said.

Trump has vowed to extend all tax cuts enacted under his watch, but the cost of extending them over the next decade would reach $4.6 trillion, according to estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation and nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Trump’s proposal to tipped workers “smells more of campaign politics than a really well thought out and principled tax policy proposal,” York added. “And I think the elephant in the room for both candidates is that they haven’t fully addressed ‘what are you going to do about these huge expirations that are scheduled to happen next year?’”

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for further detail.

Incentivizing tipped work

Andrew Lautz, associate director for the Bipartisan Policy Center, said while tipped workers are a “small slice” of the tax base, “you’re talking about a potentially large chunk of revenue that you’re giving up on an annual basis,” depending on how the policy would be rolled out.

“Our current tax system is certainly not designed to treat all income equally, but this proposal, if it were enacted into law, would sort of add a new category of income that is not subject to tax,” Lautz said. “And you know what economic theory would say is that, all else equal, making that change would incentivize people to have tips which are not taxed under this proposal versus regular wage income.”

There is also the potential for “misuse,” he added.

“If Donald Trump is president again next year, and even if he’s not, but this proposal sort of catches interest from policymakers in Congress, it’s very well possible that this could be on the table,” Lautz added.

Janet Holtzblatt, senior fellow at the left-leaning Tax Policy Center run by the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, said Trump’s proposal to eliminate taxes on tips is “unusual.”

“Because tips are a substitute for the wages and salaries that the rest of us get, and if you don’t tax tips, you’re basically not taxing tip workers (on) their wages, making it a tax advantage on their earnings. Those of us who don’t work in industries where tips are paid, we would not get the same tax advantage,” Holtzblatt said.

Minimum wage

Several localities’ wage laws allow employers to pay service workers hourly rates well below the federal minimum wage.

Holtzblatt said the “solution” is for localities to raise the minimum wage for service workers for multiple reasons.

“Tips are not always a predictable form of income,” she said. “And there’s a great deal of variation, the tips that the server gets at the top-notch restaurant are going to be very different than the tips the person in the diner gets.”

President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign responded to Trump’s “wild campaign promise” by saying that Biden supports increasing the minimum wage and eliminating the tipped minimum wage, “a much bigger deal” than Trump’s proposal, a campaign spokesman wrote in a Monday email to States Newsroom.

Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer for Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which has 60,000 members in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, said the organization has for decades “fought for tipped workers’ rights and against unfair taxation.”

“Relief is definitely needed for tip earners,” Pappageorge said in a statement over the weekend. “But Nevada workers are smart enough to know the difference between real solutions and wild campaign promises from a convicted felon.”

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.”

CBD Kratom employees in St. Louis voted in favor to unionize in the election held the first week of June. (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

CBD Kratom employees have become the first Missouri workers in the industry to unionize, following a Friday election.

The election spanned across 17 stores in eastern Missouri and Illinois operated by the St. Louis-based CBD Kratom, which sells largely kratom and hemp-derived THC products. Employees voted 23 to 6 to unionize, with 75% of the eligible employees participating.

“I’m so excited and so proud of everyone,” said Taylor Moore, sales associate. “I’m encouraged to know that our voices as workers are and will be heard.”

Sales associate Nina Sykes said, “This opens the doors for CBD Kratom employees to be more successful in their role.”

The employees join more than 15,000 cannabis industry workers nationwide as members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Of the 17 locations that voted to organize, 14 are located in St. Louis and will be represented by UFCW Local 655. The remaining 3 in Illinois will be represented by UFCW Local 881.

The win was expected because the company signed a “neutrality agreement” with the union in April.

Union drive at St. Louis cannabis company could have major impact on national labor law

Following the vote, Chief Operating Officer Jason Brandi issued this statement: “CBD Kratom cares about its workers and respects their legal rights to organize a union in their workplace. We look forward to working with the UFCW to negotiate a union contract that meets the needs of our employees and our business.”

When the employees from two stores first filed the petition in December, CBD Kratom leaders responded by essentially saying that the process “doesn’t have to be so contentious, we can work together,” said Garrett Farley, an organizer for Union Local 655.

The agreement states the company will remain neutral as best it can, he said. It was even the company leaders’ idea to hold the election for 17 stores instead of just two. 

“So, that’s how it’s been,” Farley said. “None of my workers have been harassed. They haven’t been fired. They haven’t been saying things like, ‘Oh, the union is the worst thing.’ It’s been really nice.”

It’s been a stark difference from other companies, he said. In December,  Local 655 held a massive campaign to unionize cannabis workers across eastern Missouri, which is the area the local represents. A dozen organizers visited every one of the approximate 100 marijuana dispensaries — twice. 

A unionization attempt by “post-harvest workers” at BeLeaf Medical’s Sinse cultivation facility in St. Louis has been blocked by their employer’s continuous legal challenges this year.  In April, BeLeaf filed an appeal, asking the five-member National Labor Relations Board. If the company wins the case, it could have national ramifications on labor law.

CBD Kratom sales associate Ariel Nielson hasn’t seen any harassment related to the election at her location in St. Louis, but she’s heard of some tension at a few other stores. It’s more related to the personalities of some supervisors, she said, and not a united pushback from company leaders. 

For her, she hopes unionizing will improve everyday working conditions. The stores lack security, she said, and she can’t afford the health insurance. 

“They just told us, ‘Guys, we’re offering you pet insurance now,’ Nielson said. “Okay? But like, I can’t afford my insurance.”

Alex Taykowski-Schmitt, a sales associate, said she and her colleagues are treated like they’re “disposable,” and that’s why she wanted to unionize. Since the election was announced, she’s noticed that she’s been given a little more respect at work. 

She said her supervisors’ seem to understand employees are organizing, “whereas beforehand, the respect for me as a person was kind of like the bare minimum.”

USDA Supervisory Agricultural Meat Graders at the annual national beef correlation event, Aug. 13, 2019. In 2019, the top four beef packers — Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill Beef and National Beef — processed around three quarters of the nation’s beef in 27 facilities across the nation (Preston Keres/USDA).

Meat industry groups and major meat companies spent more than $10 million on political contributions and lobbying efforts in 2023. For some, last year’s spending was an all-time high.

The federal government has been rolling out changes to the protections given to livestock and poultry producers, as well as how these farmers operate. In turn, these changes prompted various meat companies and industry groups to lobby against certain provisions. In some cases, industry groups backed lawmakers seeking to do away with the new rulings altogether.

The now-finalized updates to the Packers and Stockyard Act include addressing discrimination of livestock and poultry growers based on race, sex, age, or disability from the companies that purchase their animals or pen the contracts by which producers abide. Another update, known as “Transparency in Poultry Grower Contracting and Tournaments,” requires sharing information between large chicken companies and the independent, contract farmers that raise chickens for consumption.

The changes are a step in the right direction to protect producers over businesses, said Mike Stranz, National Farmers Union vice president of advocacy. The National Farmers Union, according to its website, “helps the family farmer address profitability issues and monopolistic practices” and represents 200,000 farmers and ranchers across the country.

“Decades of consolidation and unchecked vertical integration have created a livestock market that tips the scales away from family farmers and ranchers and puts much of the power in the hands of just a few multinational corporations,” Stranz said in a statement provided to Investigate Midwest. “USDA is rebalancing the scale and providing fairness for farmers and ranchers.”

R.J. Layher, the director of government affairs at the American Farm Bureau Federation, said in a statement provided to Investigate Midwest that the prominent agricultural group also supports the changes to the Packers and Stockyards Act. The Farm Bureau is an agricultural advocacy and lobbying organization with more than 2 million members across the country.

“We believe that the changes to the Packers and Stockyards Act will bring needed transparency for contract poultry growers as well as clarifying what constitutes retaliation and deception,” Layher said.

President Joe Biden has made consolidation and anti-monopoly efforts a core tenant of his administration, with the meat industry a primary target. Changes to the 103-year-old Packers and Stockyard Act continue to spark lobbying efforts and political donations to influential federal lawmakers in agriculture and livestock focused states.

Austin Frerick, an agriculture policy expert and author of the book, “Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry,” said the rise in spending points to meat organizations’ and companies’ concerns over the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s changes.

“These slaughterhouses are throwing record amounts of money at politicians right now because they see farmers and voters clamoring for change and they want to stop it,” he said.

Companies and lobbying organizations said their increase in lobbying was directly related to legislation like the Farm Bill as well as addressing specific concerns for individual industries.

Investigate Midwest analyzed two decades of political campaign contributions and lobbying dollars from meat industry groups National Pork Producers Council, National Chicken Council, National Turkey Federation, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and major meat companies JBS, Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods, and Cargill.

The National Pork Producers Council, Tyson Foods and Cargill spent the most on lobbying federal lawmakers and agencies last year. The annual revenue reported by industry groups is based on 2022, the most recent public tax filing year.

The National Pork Producers Council:

• is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, and has local associations in 39 states
• reported nearly $20 million in annual revenue in 2022
• spent $2.8 million lobbying last year — the largest spend and year-over-year increase seen in any meat group analyzed
• increased its lobbying spending three-fold since 2003
• has executive members from pork companies Clemens Foods and Smithfield Foods

Tyson Foods: 

• is the nation’s largest poultry company and is headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas
• reported nearly $53 billion in annual revenues last year
• spent $2 million lobbying federal lawmakers and agencies in 2023
• has doubled its annual lobbying spending in the past two decades
• shuttered eight meatpacking plants in last year, leaving growers with large amounts of debt and few options to pay it of

Cargill Inc:

• is the nation’s largest private company and is headquartered in Wayzata, Minnesota
• reported $177 billion in annual revenues last year
• spent $1.3 million lobbying federal lawmakers and agencies in 2023
• has increased its lobbying spending 106% in the past two decades

In a statement provided to Investigate Midwest, Cargill said the company’s lobbying aligns with business priorities across all of its food and agriculture sectors, not just meat. The company said that it did increase its spending from 2022 to 2023 to focus on major problems facing the sector.

“Looking specifically at the meat industry, our efforts in 2023 focused on critical issues facing the entire industry, not just Cargill, including the Farm Bill, climate, supply chain resiliency and transportation,” the statement said.

The National Pork Producers Council and Tyson Foods did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Regarding political donations, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Turkey Federation and the National Pork Producers Council spent the most last year. The National Pork Producers Council donated nearly $293,000 in donations to federal lawmakers in 2023. (Companies cannot donate directly to politicians. All donations come through political action committees organized by top company officials and employees.)

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association:

• is headquartered in Denver Colorado and has offices in Washington, D.C.
• reported $55 million in annual revenue in 2022
• nearly tripled its political donations in the last two decades and spent $609,000 in 2023
• said the USDA’s new Inclusive Competition ruling “fails to give adequate consideration to the severe costs that increased litigation and litigation risk will impose on the beef industry”

The National Turkey Federation:

• is headquartered in Washington, D.C.
• Reported a much smaller annual revenue than its peers at $3 million in 2022
• spent an organizational record $308,500 in political donations in 2023
• tripled its political spending in the past two decades
• has leadership from poultry companies Butterball, Tyson, Jennie-O Turkey, and Cargill
• urged the USDA to not include turkey growers in its final “Transparency in Poultry Grower Contracting and Tournaments” rule, even though the turkey and chicken industries use similar payment systems

“Turkey farmers and others who work in the industry are actively engaged in (the National Turkey Federation)’s legislative efforts, and support for the PAC has increased as a result,” National Turkey Federation communications manager Laycee Gibson told Investigate Midwest in an email. “With increased contributions over the years, the PAC has been able to allocate more funds to address the needs and issues of the industry.”

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

While these industry groups and companies represent individual meat producers and products, they often work in tandem on major issues facing the entire industry. For example, the Pork Producers Council has advocated on behalf of the poultry industry when the USDA introduced changes to how poultry companies pay contract growers.

Sarah Bryner, OpenSecrets’ director of research and strategy, said increased spending on lobbying often correlates with specific legislation, such as the Farm Bill or updates to the Packers and Stockyard Act.

“If they’re spending more, they’re probably hiring more, or more expensive, lobbying firms to represent them,” Bryner said.

Which lawmakers benefited from industry money?

Federal lawmakers in major agricultural states have raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars in industry campaign donations over the past 20 years. And industry support transcends partisan lines.

Rep. Jim Costa, a Democratic Congressman from California, received nearly $400,000 from all of the meat industry groups and corporations analyzed from 2004 to 2023. Costa — a ranking member of the House Committee on Agriculture’s Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Subcommittee — topped the list for these three organizations. His office did not respond to a request for comment.

And of all the meat industry groups and corporations analyzed, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Turkey Federation and the National Pork Producers Council have had the largest increase in political spending over the past two decades, according to an Investigate Midwest analysis of Federal Election Commission data.

In Midwestern states, the top five recipients of industry money in the past 20 years are:

• Rep. Frank Lucas, a Republican Congressman from Oklahoma and the longest-serving member of the House Committee on Agriculture ($265,495)
• Rep. Adrian Smith, a Republican Congressman from Nebraska ($237,864)
• Rep. Collin Peterson, a former Democratic Congressman from Minnesota, who lost re-election in 2020 and recently began lobbying on agriculture issues ($232,545)
• Rep. Sam Graves, a Republican Congressman and Senator from Missouri ($177,399)
• Roy Blunt, a former Republican Congressman from Missouri, who retired in 2023 ($166,866)

In the past 20 years, Smith received more than $80,000 from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Lucas received nearly $67,000.

Smith also received $60,000 from the National Pork Producers Council over the two-decade period, the second-highest in that time. The pork organization also donated large sums to representatives in major pork states such as North Carolina and Iowa.

In late 2023, when the USDA introduced its final language for the Transparency in Poultry Grower Contracting and Tournaments ruling, numerous members of Congress wrote a letter to the agency, asking for an extension of the public comment period as well as scrutinizing the agency’s plans to update the ruling. Congressmen Lucas, Smith, Graves, and Costa signed onto the letter.

Representatives Lucas, Smith and Graves did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Former Minnesota Rep. Peterson received the second-highest amount of money from the National Turkey Federation. Other major contributions from the Turkey Federation include $53,000 to Rep. Steve Womack, a Republican Congressman from Arkansas and co-chair of the U.S. Congressional Chicken Caucus.

Peterson said he received his donations from industry groups because he was the chair of the House’s Agriculture Committee. He also told Investigate Midwest he received donations from meatpackers and poultry groups because of his work in his home state during the 2015 avian flu pandemic, as well as efforts to reopen meatpacking plants during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“My door was always open whether they had given me any money or not,” he said.

Death of a rider

In 2024, Congress is up against finalizing a long-overdue Farm Bill, a presidential election year and its annual allocation of federal dollars to agency budgets.

While federal lawmakers were trying to finalize budgets for agencies from the USDA to the Food and Drug Administration earlier this year, an effort to quash all updates to the Packers and Stockyard Act was circulating in the nation’s capital.

A subcommittee of Congress members is responsible for proposing the USDA’s budget. The Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration Appropriations Subcommittee is a majority-Republican group of 15 people, from Iowa to California.

In May 2023, Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican and subcommittee chairperson, introduced an appropriations bill that included language meant to nix all enforcement of the USDA’s new poultry transparency ruling.

The bill failed, but as final negotiations began on Capitol Hill in late February, the language was resurrected as a potential policy rider — an amendment to legislation often added to larger bill packages to pass controversial items — into the USDA appropriations bill.

A section of the failed bill from 2023 said none of the funds made available by the bill could be used to “implement or enforce” three separate issues being addressed by the USDA’s Packers and Stockyards Division:

• The now-finalized Transparency in Poultry Grower Contracting and Tournaments rule
• Future USDA rulemaking to tackle problems in the poultry industry’s tournament system
• Proposed Packers and Stockyards Act revisions that would encourage competition in the meatpacking industry and penalize anti-competitive behavior

Harris received more than $24,000 from meat industry organizations in 2023, a career-high for the congressman. (Harris added a policy rider with similar language during the annual budgeting sessions for the USDA in 2016.) His office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

As the federal government inched closer to a March 1 deadline this year to finalize the appropriations bill, agriculture reform advocates and elected officials began to sound the alarm that this language made its way back into budget negotiations, said Jordan Treakle, the policy coordinator for the National Family Farm Coalition, an advocacy organization that works with farmers, ranchers and rural communities.

“We are strongly opposed to this recurring policy rider and don’t feel that it reflects the interests and needs of the family farmers and poultry growers that we represent, and feed our communities everyday,” Treakle said.

Senators Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, and Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, also published a joint letter to their fellow senators on Feb. 20, urging them to reject any policy riders that would prevent the USDA from enforcing regulations that prevent meatpacking companies from continuing to fix prices and make record profits.

“They want to abuse their market power to pay producers less and charge consumers more,” the senators wrote.

The policy rider was not included in the USDA’s final budget this year.

Attempts to delay or dismantle new USDA rulings meant to provide fairness and transparency in the meat industry are not new.

In December 2023, members of the Congressional and Senate Chicken Caucuses wrote the USDA to request that the agency delay implementing the poultry transparency rule, stating that the agency’s impending rule “dramatically underestimated” the necessary time and people needed to update current contracts between farmers and meatpacking companies.

The National Chicken Council also sent a similar letter to USDA in December.

In response to the request to delay the final rule implementation, USDA spokesperson Allan Rodriguez told Investigate Midwest that poultry growers have long waited for basic transparency needed to avoid deception from major corporations. He said the agency made the proposal rule available to the public for more than a year, and the final language was available for 100 days between its announcement and implementation.

Reform of meat industry regulation has been nearly 20 years in the making.

The 2008 Farm Bill included language tasking the USDA to revitalize its enforcement carried out by the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration — or GIPSA —, which enforces the Packers and Stockyards Act and is responsible for enforcing rules and regulations in meat and grain markets.

In 2010, the USDA proposed regulations that would increase contract transparency for poultry and swine farmers, a decision commonly referred to as the “GIPSA rule.” Before the regulations were finalized, Congress prohibited USDA from implementing its final recommendations. This lasted until 2015, with policy riders that suppressed the release of the final rule.

GIPSA was allowed to draft and propose a finalized rule in the 2016 appropriations process. When then-President Donald Trump took office, his administration threw out all new GIPSA rules changes.

Now, despite the Biden administration’s work to tackle consolidation and power in the meat industry, farmers and agricultural reform advocates have become increasingly frustrated with the pace of new regulations from the USDA and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

Frerick, author of “Barons,” is among those frustrated.

“The meat industry is the closest we have to a criminal organization in modern day American business and the USDA just seems incompetent to deal with them,” Frerick said. “It’s allowing them to keep engaging in these incredibly abusive practices to both our workers and farmers.”

He said there was a heavy sense of deja vu this year when it came to fights over policy riders and meat industry monopolies influencing legislation.

“The meat industry has so much money and power,” Frerick said. “It’s going to win in the darkness.”

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Patrick Mahomes throws pass against the Buffalo Bills during the third quarter in the AFC Divisional Playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium on January 23, 2022 (Jamie Squire/Getty Images).

The leading candidates to be Missouri’s next governor disagree on whether the state should offer incentives to keep the Kansas City Chiefs from relocating to Kansas. 

On Tuesday, the top Republican lawmakers in Kansas announced that they had reached out to the Chiefs organization to urge the team to consider moving across the state line. To sweeten the deal, the state could consider issuing hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds to finance construction of a new stadium.

Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican and Chiefs superfan, has said he will “do what he can to keep the Chiefs in Missouri.”

But he’s leaving office this year due to term limits. So with the Chiefs’ current lease at Arrowhead set to expire in January 2031, the issue could ultimately fall into the lap of whoever is elected to replace him in November.

And there is a deep divide among the candidates about what, if anything, to do.

Kansas legislative leaders draw up play to lure Kansas City Chiefs away from Missouri

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the leading Republican candidate for governor, said he is “opposed to providing taxpayer subsidies to keep sports teams.”

Instead, Ashcroft said, if elected he would focus on public safety, education and lowering taxes “so that Missouri will be a destination state for teams, their players and all economic freedom loving Americans.”

State Sen. Bill Eigel, also a Republican candidate, said he’s confident that “the Chiefs will make the right decision and remain in Missouri, but it won’t be because of taxpayer handouts for sports teams or stadiums on my watch.”

Government, Eigel said, “shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. I’m going to ensure Missouri is a place where all people can thrive.”

On the other side of the issue in the GOP primary is Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe. His campaign manager, Derek Coats, said Missouri deserves a governor “who will fight for jobs and economic growth.”

“Mike Kehoe will not watch passively as other states poach our businesses,” Coats said. “As governor, he will use every tool at his disposal to ensure Missouri is a state that welcomes investment, creates jobs and spurs economic growth.”

State Rep. Crystal Quade, a Democrat running for governor, said that any candidate who “claims they don’t care about the Arrowhead-sized hole losing the Chiefs would create is lying. 

“We need to elect leaders who will work with the Chiefs,” she said, “to make sure all sides get a fair deal and keep our Super Bowl Champs playing football in Missouri for decades to come.”

Springfield businessman Mike Hamra, who is also a candidate in the Democratic primary, said Missourians take pride in being the home to the Chiefs.

“State leaders,” he said, “should explore every reasonable option to keep the Chiefs in Missouri.”

Kansas City Chiefs Chairman Clark Hunt has previously expressed interest in remaining in the Truman Sports Complex, which is where the Chiefs and Royals have had venues since 1973. 

But Hunt made it clear that all options were on the table moving forward after Jackson County voters rejected a sales tax measure earlier this year that would have helped fund renovations to Arrowhead Stadium and build a new downtown ballpark for the Kansas City Royals. 

Missouri currently spends $3 million annually on the Truman Sports Complex, part of a deal cut in 1989 to secure financing for construction of the St. Louis stadium now referred to as The Dome at America’s Center.

That 1989 bill was signed into law by Ashcroft’s father, former Republican Gov. John Ashcroft. Those payments would end if the current leaseholders  — the Chiefs and Royals — are not using the facilities.

Missouri’s current fiscal year budget also includes $50 million from general revenue for “stadium and ground modifications, transportation, marketing, and additional event support” around Arrowhead for the FIFA World Cup.

The Kansas Legislature will be in Topeka for a special session starting June 18. The focus is tax legislation, but there is no limit on topics lawmakers might consider, which opens the door for discussing an incentives package for the Chiefs. 

Near the end of the regular legislative session, Kansas lawmakers briefly considered a proposal to use bonds with 30-year terms to pay up to 100% of the cost of building a new stadium.

The proposal never came up for a vote. 

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, has said she would welcome the chance to lure the Chiefs out of Missouri but that she doesn’t think the state is in a financial position to successfully recruit them.

Missouri legislative leaders told the Kansas City Star Wednesday that they are in no rush to put together a counter offer or reconvene in a special session to discuss the issue.

In 2019, Kelly and Parson both signed off on a truce to the longstanding economic border war between the two states, pledging to end the use of tax incentives to lure companies across the state line that do not create new jobs for the region. 

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this story.

Wendy Doyle, United WE president and CEO (left), and Kelsey Lents, founder and CEO of the Two Birds child care and school facility, stand at the entrance of Lents’ business (photo submitted).

Women entrepreneurs with children need more flexible, less expensive child care, or their businesses could suffer, according to a survey released Tuesday. Part of a United WE l project, the survey was funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

“The child care needs of women entrepreneurs is a topic that is crucial to the future of our U.S. economy and the advancement of women in business,” said Wendy Doyle, president and CEO of United WE, a Kansas City organization promoting the role of women in civic life.

The study, “Care for the Economy,”  surveyed 750 female business owners across the country with children under age 6. The women were from 45 states, 35% were non-white, and 31% came from households earning less than $50,000.

Here’s what it found.

Business costs

A lack of adequate child care negatively impacts these women’s businesses, especially ones earning more than $1 million a year.

Of women surveyed, 57.1% said that their business would be more successful if child care met their needs better. More than 60% agreed that a lack of child care that meets their needs negatively affects their ability to run a business.

Respondents who worked more than 30 hours a week, or made more than $1 million per year in gross revenue, were more likely to say a lack of adequate child care harmed their business. Half of respondents who worked less than 30 hours a week felt that their business would be more successful if they had child care that better met their needs, compared with 60% of respondents who worked more than 30 hours a week.

Of respondents whose businesses made less than $1 million per year in gross revenue, 53% felt they would be more successful if they had child care that better met their needs, compared with 74% who made more than $1 million per year in gross revenue.

Main needs 

The main needs specified are flexible schedules, infant and toddler care, and early and evening hours.

About 30% of respondents wanted more flexible scheduling, 29% of respondents wanted infant and toddler care, and 27 % of respondents wanted early morning and late evening hours.

Infant and toddler care “is a problem. It’s a problem everywhere. It has to do with the business model of child care” said Tim Green, director of research and data. “We need a higher number of staff for every younger child because younger children have greater needs.”

Weekend care, after-school care, part-time care, summer or winter break care and overnight care were all cited as needs.

This reflects the nontraditional business hours of entrepreneurs.

“The child care system was really conceived for an older economy, based around nine-to-five work,” Green said.

According to Green, schedules can be fluid – and the system just isn’t set up to support women in those kinds of roles.

Formal or informal care 

Respondents who work more and make more tend to rely on formal  child care rather than informal arrangements.

Informal care can include a friend or family member, partner or nanny taking care of the child. Formal care includes day care centers, preschool and after-school programs.

A quarter of respondents who made more than $100 thousand in gross business revenue didn’t use formal care, compared with 75% of respondents who made more than $100 thousand in gross business revenue who did.

Women entrepreneurs are also learning to blend these types of care.

Kelsey Lents, founder and CEO of Two Birds childcare and school, is quite familiar with the world of child care, with three children under 6.

“Child care only existed as a binary solution,” Lents said. “The traditional setup, where you drop off in the morning and pick up at night, where you have very little engagement with your child’s community. Or on the other end of the spectrum, some versions of stay at home are cobbling together a patchwork of care that relied heavily on your village.”

Lents wanted full time care. She wanted to get back to work quickly, but also wanted to nurse throughout the day. She wanted to feel like part of her child’s community. She heard from other mothers who felt the same way.

So she created Two Birds. Lents says it’s an “all inclusive approach to families’ early years.”

Two Birds has an on-site co-working space, weekend extracurriculars and parent classes, along with early education full time Monday through Friday.

But child care of that caliber can be expensive.

According to Green, a 2023 analysis from the U.S. Department of Labor found that child care is unaffordable for the average family in all 50 states. It was this analysis that made United WE want to ask these questions and conduct this survey.

United WE recommends that in order to “ensure female entrepreneurs have access to reliable, flexible, child care policymakers need to support child care as any other critical business input,” Doyle said. They can do this, she said, through expanding the child care and dependent care tax credit and supporting the small business child care investment act.

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

A red-clad crowd packs Arrowhead Stadium to watch the Kansas City Chiefs play (Eric Thomas/Kansas Reflector).

The Kansas Senate president and House speaker said Tuesday they were intrigued by the potential of putting together an incentive package capable of attracting the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs to a new stadium complex in Kansas.

The Kansas Legislature will be in Topeka starting June 18 to consider a tax relief bill after called into special session by Gov. Laura Kelly. There is no limit on topics lawmakers might consider, which opens the door consideration of a deal for the NFL franchise.

Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins said in a statement establishing a home for the Chiefs on the Kansas side of  the state line was an opportunity that deserved “thorough conversation.”

“We have reached out to the Chiefs organization and asked them to weigh in on the possibility of using Kansas’ unique STAR bond funding tool and explore what that collaboration could hold,” the statement said.

The two GOP legislative leaders have discouraged lawmakers from wading into issues during the special session other than tax reform and an economic development package tied to a second professional sports franchise.

Sporting Kansas City, an MLS team, is based in Kansas City, Kansas.

During final days of the 2024 regular legislative session, House and Senate members discussed the possibility of the state issuing hundreds of millions of dollars in STAR bonds to finance construction of a stadium in the Kansas City area. The bonds would be repaid through tax collections within the business district bracketing the replacement for Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.

The rush to land the Chiefs has been supported by formation of a lobbying organization, Scoop and Score, affiliated with former Kansas House Speaker Ron Ryckman and nearly two-dozen registered Kansas lobbyists.

Initially, the idea was to draw the Kansas City Royals to the Kansas side of the state line. That idea surfaced after Jackson County voters rejected a sales tax proposal for construction of a downtown stadium for the team.

However, proposed legislation floated at the Capitol left open the possibility of either the Chiefs or Royals relocating to Kansas.

“The rich tradition and history of the Chiefs are beloved across the entire Kansas City region and throughout Kansas,” Hawkins and Masterson said. “We’re excited that the Chiefs are open to this  conversation and look forward to seeing what mutually beneficial opportunities might lie ahead for both the people of Kansas and the Chiefs franchise.”

The legislative leaders have communicated with Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt to tout potential of the state’s business incentives and strategic locations in Wyandotte County.

The key element of any deal would be STAR bonds, which could be used to finance construction of a stadium and related infrastructure to operate the facility. STAR bonds have been used for all sorts of Kansas economic development projects with debt repaid by collecting sales tax revenue within the bonding business district.

This story originally appeared in the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

Chickens gather around a feeder at a farm on August 9, 2014, in Osage, Iowa. A new proposed U.S. Department of Agriculture rule would ban chicken companies from deducting farmers’ pay (Scott Olson/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — A rule proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture would eliminate pay deductions for chicken producers, Secretary Tom Vilsack said Monday.

Under the current poultry payment system, an incentive-based arrangement known within the industry as a tournament system, farmers who raise poultry earn a base payment from the companies that buy the product and bring it to a retail market.

Companies contract with producers to supply broiler chicks, feed, and veterinary care and then it’s up to the farmers to raise healthy, substantial chickens at a mutually agreed price.

Farmers have opportunities for bonuses based on the quality of their flock.

But companies can also deduct pay from producers’ base pay based on that year’s market. If demand is down or if one producer successfully raises more chickens than another producer, the chicken company can deduct pay from the lesser farmer’s contracted compensation.

The proposed rule would prohibit companies from deducting that pay.

“If you’re going to establish a base pay, then it can’t go below that,” Vilsack said at a Monday press conference.

Industry groups say the tournament system makes sense economically and promotes competition in the chicken industry.

But critics, including groups that advocate for farmers, say it often harms smaller farmers, leading to a more consolidated industry and a tougher market for producers.

Vilsack said Monday that the USDA’s proposed rule would not compromise the quality of meat sold to grocery shoppers around the country, but rather balance the relationship between producers and companies.

This rule is one of several new rules under the Packers and Stockyards Act enacted by President Joe Biden’s administration seeking to combat monopolization in the agricultural industry. Congress passed the Packers and Stockyards Act in 1921 to regulate competition in livestock markets.

In 2021, under Biden’s Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, the administration aimed to ensure fair industry competition and equitable practices.

USDA finalized the Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity rule in March as part of this executive order. The rule addresses mistreatment and discrimination of livestock and poultry producers based on identity factors such as race, religion, national origin or sex.

The Poultry Grower Payment Systems and Capital Improvement Systems rule now enters a public comment period where industry members, consumers and others can offer feedback. It may then be revised and if allowed, published as a final ruling in the Federal Register.

Austin, Texas, has seen significant growth in tech employment in the past five years, fueling the state’s overall job creation. Texas and Florida saw most of the new jobs created since 2019, according to a Stateline analysis. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

More than half of the nation’s jobs created in the past five years have come in two states: Texas and Florida.

They’re at the forefront of a job creation revolution in which states with lower wages and a lower cost of living are gaining the highest share of new jobs, according to a new Stateline analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Meanwhile, high-wage states such as California, New York, Washington state and Massachusetts tumbled out of the top 10. California, which had the highest share of new jobs from 2014-2019, crashed to the very bottom in job creation.

The changes closely follow state-by-state labor trends in the years during and since the COVID-19 pandemic. Employers have been less willing to create jobs in higher-wage states. Workers, meanwhile, are avoiding skyrocketing housing costs and taking advantage of new options for remote work.

“In the pandemic’s wake, workers are likely playing a bigger role because many have new flexibility about where to work and live,” said Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

“About 1 in 10 U.S. workers now work fully remote jobs, an expansion enabled by organizations’ investments in distributed work capacity during the pandemic,” Sojourner said. “Many families with high-paying remote jobs migrated towards areas with lower living costs because they’re no longer tethered to a high-cost place.”

Between 2014 and 2019, California gained 1.4 million new jobs — more than any other state and 12% of the national total. But for the past five years California has been dead last in job creation, losing about 214,000 jobs. Texas moved into first place during that time, seeing almost 1.3 million new jobs, almost one-third of all new jobs created nationally.

Florida was not far behind, with about 911,000 new jobs, almost 25% of the national total of about 4 million.

Besides California, which plunged from No. 1 to No. 51 in job creation for the states and the District of Columbia, New York fell from No. 5 to No. 50, and Massachusetts from No. 7 to No. 47.

Washington state, Michigan and Tennessee also fell out of the top 10, while Arizona, Utah, Virginia, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Colorado moved into the top 10.

High wages in some states are playing a part in lagging job creation, according to an April analysis by the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization.

California and New York have average salaries about 18-20% higher than the national average of $65,500, while Texas and Florida are 6-7% lower, according to federal Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data.

“For the first time since the Great Recession, the richest metro areas are no longer creating the majority of new jobs in the U.S.,” the report noted.

Some of the shift in job fortunes comes from a struggle between California’s Silicon Valley and Texas’ capital city of Austin for primacy in tech jobs. California’s share of tech jobs began to plummet during the pandemic as Texas’ share rose.

In a 2020 Wall Street Journal opinion piece headlined “California, Love It and Leave It,” venture capital entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale described moving his company from San Francisco to “a new land of opportunity: Texas.” He blamed bureaucracy for slowing business progress during the pandemic and restrictive zoning that made it impossible for employees to afford housing near their jobs.

More recently, Jeffrey VonderHaar discussed in February his plans to move much of his business, Specialized Orthopedic Solutions Inc., which involves manufacturing prosthetic limbs and other medical equipment, back to Texas after 14 years in California. In an interview with Business Insider, he complained of business regulations and taxes in California, as well as high housing prices that fed homelessness and people living in parked RVs near his office in suburban Los Angeles.

Last year, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott gleefully proclaimed Austin “THE destination for the world’s leading tech companies” in a tweet, mentioning Tesla’s and Samsung’s expanding operations in the Austin area. Democratic U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who represents the Austin area, told Stateline that Samsung is building a third semiconductor fabrication plant in the area and already employs thousands of Texans.

But recent cutbacks in tech have led to setbacks in Texas as well as in California. Oracle announced in April a move to Nashville, Tennessee, from Austin, where it had built a massive lakefront campus with the help of tax breaks, citing even more generous incentives from Tennessee. Tennessee approved $65 million in tax incentives in 2021, when Oracle pledged to bring in about 8,500 jobs; Tennessee’s average salary is also about 5% lower than in Texas.

Oklahoma made the biggest jump in the Stateline analysis of job creation rankings, from No. 31 to No. 9. The state has seen a reversal of the “brain drain” it experienced in the late 2010s, a period when it lost educated residents to other states, according to research this year by the Oklahoma City branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

The state had been losing college graduates and higher-income people to other states before the pandemic, but that has reversed, said Chad Wilkerson, the Oklahoma City branch executive for the bank and author of the report.

Leaders want to grow Oklahoma’s job landscape beyond the cyclical energy industry that attracts blue-collar workers but also creates boom-and-bust cycles, Wilkerson said. Many new Oklahomans have higher education levels and are employed in business services such as research and development and engineering, as well as retail management, reflecting both population growth and a more diverse economy.

“It’s been intentional to some degree by chambers [of commerce] and state policy, the desire to attract more than just oil and gas,” said Wilkerson.

The privately funded Tulsa Remote program, for example, has brought in thousands of remote tech workers from other states with a promise of lower living costs and a shared work space to encourage networking and friendship.

A 2021 study found that $4.5 million spent luring new residents paid off in the form of $62 million in new jobs — both for those workers and other jobs created to support them.

Most states have some form of job creation incentives and evaluate them regularly for effectiveness. Oklahoma has tax incentives for data processing and research and development jobs, and a state commission last year recommended keeping them.

State tax incentives can pay off in the long run, but the effect is modest, said Robert Chirinko, a University of Illinois finance professor whose most recent study of state job creation tax incentives was published in September by the National Tax Journal.

Florida has enjoyed a decade of job creation, moving up the rankings from No. 3 to No. 2 in the past five years. But overall, its economic landscape is mixed.

Wages have not kept up with inflation, and housing prices in the Miami area are especially high, making poverty an increasing concern, according to a report last year by Florida International University’s Center for Labor Research and Studies.

“It is a tale of rich and poor,” said Ravi Gajendran, a business professor at Florida International University in Miami. “A lot of the migration [to Florida] is due to well-off individuals moving to Miami, which is part of the reason why real estate prices have risen here to a greater extent.

“For someone moving from New York or California, real estate prices are still cheap here in Miami,” he said. “But for local Miamians, this increases real estate and rental costs, making it less affordable to stay here.”

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 Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a new workplace anti-discrimination law that was passed by Congress with wide bipartisan support, has become fodder in the abortion rights battle between Republican-led states and the federal government (Getty Images).

Natasha Jackson was four months pregnant when she told her supervisor she was expecting. It was 2008, and Jackson was an account executive at a rental furniture store in Charleston, South Carolina — the only female employee there.

“I actually hid my pregnancy as long as I could because I was scared about what could happen,” she said.

When her doctor recommended that she not lift more than 25 pounds, her employer wouldn’t let her move temporarily to a role where she didn’t need to lift furniture, even though those roles were available, she said. She was forced to go on leave and then lost her job. Her marriage unraveled and she spent time after the birth in emergency housing.

“That hardship affected me years on, and it took away the joy of being pregnant,” said Jackson. “They made me feel guilty and ashamed for having a baby.”

Jackson, now 41 and a mother of four who owns her own cleaning company, has spent years working with advocacy groups to fight for better laws to protect pregnant workers. Last year, she was invited to speak at a White House event celebrating the passage of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a new workplace anti-discrimination law for which she had advocated.

But now this law, passed with wide bipartisan support, has become fodder in the bitter battle over abortion rights between Republican-led states and the federal government.

The act fills gaps in state and federal protections by requiring employers with 15 or more employees to provide “reasonable accommodations” for pregnant workers and those who have recently given birth or have related medical conditions — unless the employer can prove it would cause “undue hardship” on the business.

Accommodations can include allowing an employee to take additional bathroom breaks, carry a water bottle, or sit instead of stand while on the job. After years of lobbying by nonprofit organizations and business groups, the federal law passed in December 2022. It went into effect last June.

In its rulemaking process, the Biden administration included abortion as a “related medical condition” covered by the law. That means employees seeking abortion care can ask for accommodations from their employers, such as time off work for an appointment or recovery.

This year, 19 Republican attorneys general — including from Jackson’s home state of South Carolina — have sued the administration over that interpretation.

The AGs argue the Biden administration is forcing abortion accommodations even in states where abortions are illegal.

“Under this radical interpretation of the PWFA, business owners will face federal lawsuits if they don’t accommodate employees’ abortions, even if those abortions are illegal under state law,” Arkansas Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement last month announcing the lawsuit filed by Arkansas and 16 other Republican-led states.

But some advocates say the lawsuit threatens protections for all pregnant workers covered under the new law — not just the small subset who need abortion care.

“These states are cutting off their noses to spite their faces,” said Elizabeth Gedmark, an attorney and vice president of A Better Balance, a national nonprofit advocacy organization that provides legal services and has long pushed for a national Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

“These attacks have very real consequences for peoples’ lives and for their economic security and health,” she said.

Jackson fears the lawsuit could lead to fewer workers accessing the care they need to be healthy.

“[Workers] should have the right to proper medical care during pregnancy, after childbirth, after having a miscarriage, or having an abortion,” she said. “It seems quite ridiculous to me that some employers want so much control over employees to the point that they feel like they have the right to threaten their job security because of pregnancy or anything associated with it.”

Into the fray

After Congress passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency known as the EEOC, had to hammer out a set of rules that clarify what employers can and can’t do under the law.

So last summer, the EEOC sought public comment on its proposed rules for how the new law would work. More than 100,000 comments were submitted over a two-month period.

The flood of comments stemmed from opinions about whether the EEOC should include abortion in its definition of “pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions” that are covered under the new law.

The vast majority were nearly identical form comments, according to the EEOC. About 54,000 of the comments urged the EEOC to exclude abortion, while about 40,000 supported its inclusion.

In a 3-2 vote, the EEOC ultimately adopted new rules that included abortion care in its definition of conditions covered under the law. The rules are set to go into effect June 18.

But in April, a week after the EEOC announced its final rules, the 17-state coalition of GOP attorneys general argued in its lawsuit that the agency’s “erroneous interpretation” of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act creates an “abortion accommodation mandate.”

“When the law was passed by Congress, it was explicitly understood not to address abortion at all, and the text of the statute does not address abortion,” said Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, who is co-leading the lawsuit with Arkansas’ Griffin.

Skrmetti and the other Republican attorneys general point to comments made by lawmakers during debate on the measure that appear to signal Congress’ intent was not to impose abortion-related requirements in states where those abortions would be illegal.

Pennsylvania Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, who sponsored the pregnant workers bill, said during debate that the EEOC “could not issue any regulation that requires abortion leave, nor does the act permit the EEOC to require employers to provide abortions in violation of state law.”

The 15 other states joining the lawsuit are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia.

More states have jumped into the fray. In mid-May, Louisiana’s and Mississippi’s attorneys general, both Republicans, filed their own lawsuit challenging the same provision.

And in February, a federal judge in Texas blocked the EEOC from accepting complaints filed by Texas state employees under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. It was a win for Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who had sued the Biden administration last year.

Protections at risk

Skrmetti, the Tennessee attorney general, believes the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is a good law.

“It was passed with a degree of bipartisanship that you rarely see,” he told Stateline, “and it undermines the efforts of Congress and the popular will when agencies take laws and change them without the authority of the people’s representatives.”

But Gedmark, of A Better Balance, said decades of legal precedent support including abortion as a related medical condition for pregnant workers. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, a federal law passed in 1978, prohibits sex discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions — a definition that the EEOC has long interpreted to include abortion.

Proponents of the new Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the EEOC’s rules worry the lawsuits will sow confusion among employers and employees. There’s concern, Gedmark said, that a court could render more of the regulations invalid, beyond those that mention abortion.

Skrmetti doesn’t think the 17-state lawsuit will hurt the law’s protections for pregnant, postpartum and lactating workers.

“The optimal outcome would be for the abortion-related pieces of the rule that aren’t supported by the statute to be vacated,” he said. “But the law remains the law regardless of what the [EEOC’s] rules are.”

While states and the feds clash in court, Jackson said she’s focused on making sure as many women as possible know about their new rights.

Whenever she’s out shopping and spots a pregnant store employee, she asks how they’re doing. She asks if they know about their workplace rights, and how to ask their employers for the accommodations they need.

“Whether a mother decides to have an abortion or not, she still needs medical care after the procedure, the same as she would need medical care if she had a miscarriage or regular childbirth,” Jackson said. “I believe that employers need to know the difference between personal [ideology] and business.”

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.

Fifth-three percent of Missouri voters signed off on a constitutional amendment legalizing recreational marijuana on Nov. 8, 2022 (Carol Yepes/Getty Images).

Since recreational weed was legalized in 2022, it has led to more than $19 million going towards three causes — supporting veterans, expanding substance use treatment programs and adding to the Missouri Public Defenders System’s budget.

“It is so rewarding to see the impact of this voter-approved program on organizations that provide vital services to Missourians,” said Amy Moore, director of the Division of Cannabis Regulation, which is within the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

The constitutional amendment Missouri voters approved in November 2022 to legalize recreational marijuana also established funds for the three causes.

Last fall, each of these three programs received $1.3 million. Then earlier this month, DHSS transferred an additional $5.1 million for each. 

The funds going to the Missouri Veterans Commission are specifically meant to pay for health care and other services for military veterans and their dependent families, according to the division. 

The public defender system’s funds will pay for legal assistance for low-income Missourians. 

And, DHSS will use its fund to operate a grant program to increase access to drug addiction treatment with an emphasis on reintegrating recipients into their local communities by supporting job placement, housing and counseling.

In January, Moore told state lawmakers that recreational cannabis sales had generated $58 million in revenue, which includes sales tax and annual fees marijuana businesses pay the state. 

So far, $8.2 million has gone to pay for the state’s operation costs of regulating the recreational marijuana industry — for things like salaries or professional services.

After operational costs, the next draw on the fund is expenses incurred by the court system for expunging certain marijuana offenses from people’s criminal records. 

After that, revenues are split between veterans, substance use treatment programs and public defenders.

“We look forward to watching this impact grow,” Moore said, “and are grateful to be a part of it.”

From left, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island; Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power; and U.S. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Democrat from California, urge big oil companies be held accountable for high gas prices on Thursday, May 23, 2024, outside of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom).

WASHINGTON — As Democrats continue to ramp up their push against the oil industry, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and others on Thursday called out big oil companies and their executives for high gas prices heading into the heavily traveled Memorial Day weekend.

Republicans in turn have blamed President Joe Biden’s energy policies for high gas prices, with the potency of the issue for both parties illustrated by a new poll in seven battleground states that shows the economy and cost of living at the top of voters’ minds in the 2024 campaign for the presidency.

The Biden administration earlier this week said 1 million gallons of oil will be released from reserves in the northeastern United States, in an effort to curb prices ahead of summer driving. And officials with the Biden campaign pointed out Thursday a Wall Street Journal report that prices are trending downward even before the weekend.

The national average price of a gallon of gas was $3.615 Thursday, according to automotive group AAA, down from an all-time high of $5.016 in June 2022.

The Democratic lawmakers at Thursday’s press conference outside the U.S. Capitol included Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and U.S. Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island; House Assistant Minority Leader Joe Neguse of Colorado; and Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán and Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, both of California.

“Instead of working to lower gas prices for Americans ahead of a busy Memorial Day weekend, Big Oil companies, executives, are huddling to find ways to keep prices high and keep their profits soaring,” Schumer said. The press conference was co-hosted by Climate Power, a strategic communications organization in the climate space and the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group.

Earlier in May, the Federal Trade Commission alleged that Scott Sheffield, the CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, “attempted to collude with the representatives of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and a related cartel of other oil-producing countries known as OPEC+ to reduce output of oil and gas, which would result in Americans paying higher prices at the pump, to inflate profits for his company.”

During Thursday’s event, Schumer said he would be sending a letter to the U.S. Justice Department next week “calling on them to investigate and prosecute collusion and price fixing that may have increased gasoline, fuel and energy costs, based on the report done by the FTC, when they unfortunately allowed (Exxon) Mobil to … merge with Pioneer (Natural Resources), which I thought was a bad idea.”

Schumer added that “the federal government must use every tool at our disposal to investigate the oil industry, hold accountable liable actors and illegal activities. There’s something wrong — very wrong — when big oil companies rake in the cash by polluting the atmosphere and at the expense of the American people.”

Trump and oil companies

The Senate majority leader and his fellow Democratic lawmakers also called out former President Donald Trump over recent media reports saying Trump engaged in a quid pro quo offer with major oil companies’ CEOs in April.

Schumer said “one of the ways big oil companies spend their time these days is cozying up to Donald Trump, who, as we all know, is no enemy to big oil.”

Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, setting him up for a rematch with Biden.

Separately on Thursday, Whitehouse, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, and Oregon U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said their respective committees launched a joint investigation into Trump’s “quid pro quo offer to big oil.”

The senators are asking nine oil and gas companies and their trade associations for information and documents pertaining to the purported quid pro quo proposed by Trump.

Neguse, a Colorado Democrat, said that for him, “all of this boils down to three words: polluters over people.” He noted that “over the last 16, 17 months, we have witnessed in the House an extreme MAGA Republican majority that has taken every opportunity to pass bill after bill to give giveaways to oil companies and to corporate polluters near and far.”

Republicans blame Biden

Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group, is seeking to turn the arguments back on Democrats. The group this week announced a series of events across the country where it will partner with local gas stations to roll back gasoline prices to what they were when Biden took office.

In March, the House GOP Conference said “the surging prices at the pump Americans are facing are a direct result from Joe Biden’s unprecedented war on American energy, which Biden launched on his first day in office in an attempt to appease his Far Left base by implementing his radical Green New Deal agenda.”

Republicans cited the U.S. Energy Department’s move to pause approvals of new exports of liquified natural gas to all countries without a free trade agreement with the United States, as well as the decision early in Biden’s tenure to kill the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline.

Meanwhile, also Thursday, polling and analysis released by The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, in collaboration with Democratic polling firm BSG and Republican polling firm GS Strategy Group, found “the defining issue for this contest is a more traditional one: the economy.”

Over half of likely voters from swing states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, viewed inflation and the cost of living as the “worst/weakest” part of the economy, according to the report. In seven states combined, Trump led Biden 47% to 44% in a head-to-head matchup. Trump led in all states except Wisconsin.

Neither a spokesperson for the Trump Organization nor his 2024 presidential campaign immediately responded to a request for comment Thursday.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack expressed frustration that work on the $1.5 trillion farm bill has been delayed by eight months (Jared Strong/Iowa Capital Dispatch).

WASHINGTON — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on a call with reporters Wednesday strongly criticized a farm bill draft written by U.S. House Republicans, saying it would damage the coalition that traditionally has united behind farm bills and “raises the real possibility of being unable to get a farm bill through the process.”

The massive five-year legislation governing farm, nutrition, commodity and conservation programs is scheduled for a markup beginning Thursday morning in the House Agriculture Committee, headed up by Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican.

It already has appeared headed for a clash with a proposal in the Democratic-controlled Senate amid disagreements over anti-hunger and conservation programs. In addition, the must-pass bill faces a House with a slim 217-213 GOP majority.

Vilsack expressed frustration that work on the $1.5 trillion measure has been delayed by eight months and said he has “deep concerns” about the proposed package released by Thompson last week. Lawmakers fighting over spending and the speaker post in the House last year passed an extension of the 2018 farm bill that expires Sept. 30.

“I appreciate the fact that folks are working hard. I appreciate the fact that they’ve listened to people out there in the countryside,” said Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa.

“But I’m afraid that what we have is a circumstance where the proposal being advanced by the House of Representatives, the Republican members of the Ag Committee, it really is designed not to create a route to passage … I think it’s designed, unfortunately, for a route to impasse, which will cause a further delay.”

Cuts to nutrition, disaster programs

Vilsack said he objects to provisions that would reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, that delivers food assistance to more than 40 million low-income families.

By limiting future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, the basis for benefit levels, the bill’s reductions would amount to $30 billion over 10 years, the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has estimated. Vilsack put the number at $27 billion.

“It’s been clear that there has been a coalition historically that is central to the passage of the farm bill, which understands the importance of addressing the nutrition programs and the farm programs,” Vilsack said. “It is essentially a crack in the coalition that is absolutely necessary to the passage of the farm bill … The fact that we’re crossing that red line raises the real possibility of being unable to get a farm bill through the process.”

He said he also has a problem with a section of the House bill dealing with the Commodity Credit Corporation, which carries out various farm programs.

The legislation would restrict the USDA’s authority to use the CCC’s Section 5, which Vilsack said would tie the agency’s hands in responding to natural disasters affecting farmers and force USDA to rely on Congress to enact disaster assistance.

“There’s no assurance that such bills get passed,” Vilsack said. “And secondly, oftentimes Congress underfunds those bills, as was the case so recently with the 2023 situation disasters.”

He said Thompson is proposing “essentially to eliminate the capacity of the secretary of Agriculture to utilize the CCC in the face of a natural disaster, for example, that distorts markets.” He also said he believes the bill overestimates the savings that would be obtained.

Vilsack said he prefers a farm bill proposal offered by Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, describing it as “more practical” and “doable.” Stabenow, who has released a summary of her bill but not the text, would boost eligibility for nutrition programs such as SNAP, among other provisions.

Chair defends proposal

Thompson, in a statement after the call, pushed back on Vilsack’s comments and said his bill makes “historic investments” in agriculture.

“It’s clear from this eleventh hour push that the Secretary is determined to use every penny of the borrowing authority made available to him to circumvent Congress if left unchecked,” he said. “The Committee is reasserting Congress’ authority over the Commodity Credit Corporation, which will bring reckless administrative spending under control and provides funding for key bipartisan priorities in the farm bill.

“The sudden rancor on using the CCC as a pay-for is nothing more than the latest partisan attempt to divide our committee and slow down progress on passing a farm bill.”

The committee in a press release Wednesday also listed multiple statements of praise for the Thompson proposal, including the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the CEO of the National Conference of State Legislatures, the CEO of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and leaders of various commodity and trade groups.

GM workers with the UAW Local 2250 Union strike outside the General Motors Wentzville Assembly Plant on September 15, 2023 (Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images).

Just days before workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama began voting last week on whether to unionize, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a new law that would claw back state incentives from companies that voluntarily recognize labor unions.

Alabama’s move follows similar efforts in Georgia and Tennessee, where GOP leaders also have passed laws pushing against a reinvigorated labor movement.

The laws require that unions be formed only by secret ballots rather than the so-called card check process, in which employers can voluntarily recognize a union without a protracted election process. And under the laws, companies that voluntarily recognize unions risk losing state incentives, which amount to billions of dollars invested by governments to bring automakers to the region.

These new laws speak to the growing push of labor unions into Southern states — and the fierce opposition of pro-business GOP leaders there. For decades, the region has attracted investments from foreign automakers with lucrative tax breaks, low-cost labor and a lack of labor unions. Labor leaders hope that is changing now that workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelmingly endorsed a union in April, becoming the first foreign auto plant in the South ever organized by the United Auto Workers.

Unions such as the UAW argue their involvement can help boost wages and improve the work environment at auto plants. But GOP forces in the South view unions as an existential threat to their manufacturing economies — of even more importance now that states are increasingly competing for electric vehicle and battery plants.

Mercedes-Benz workers outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on Friday voted against joining a union at their plant, in a setback for the labor movement. But more organizing drives are underway in Alabama and South Carolina, as well as in California.

Many Southern states where unions have begun to focus already are less friendly to organizing. They are so-called right-to-work states, where each employee in a workplace can decide whether to join and pay union dues, though all workers are represented by the union.

Seeking to capitalize on major contract wins it secured for workers last year at the nation’s Big Three automakers (GM, Ford and Stellantis), the United Auto Workers union announced plans to spend $40 million through 2026 to help organize workers at auto and battery plants across the country, with a particular focus on the South. The union did not respond to multiple Stateline requests for comment.

A week before April’s monumental vote at the Tennessee Volkswagen plant, six Southern Republican governors warned that unionization would jeopardize the region’s auto jobs. In addition to Ivey in Alabama, the governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas also signed on.

And Ivey continued to rally against organized labor in auto plants last week, as she announced she had signed the state’s bill regarding secret ballots.

“Alabama is not Michigan,” Ivey said at a chamber of commerce event last week. “ … We want to ensure that Alabama values, not Detroit values, continue to define the future of this great state.”

It’s unclear how much impact the new laws will have. The vote in Chattanooga was conducted by secret ballot with nearly three-quarters of all workers who voted in the election choosing to join the UAW. Tennessee awarded Volkswagen more than $500 million in incentives to build its plant there in 2008.

To Tennessee state Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, the 2023 law regarding union elections passed in his state was yet another GOP effort to “blockade” union power in the South.

“It’s typical, in my view, for Southern states to have that kind of a mindset: to have less of a voice for workers as opposed to having an exchange between workers and employer,” said Hakeem, a Democrat.

Hakeem said the UAW’s landslide win in his hometown of Chattanooga exposed a political miscalculation on the part of Republicans who view economic development prospects and union organizing as mutually exclusive.

“I thought it was huge,” he said. “They thought that scare tactics would be the winning thing for them … and the union workers demonstrated that they have a backbone.”

‘Right-to-work’ states

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group known as ALEC that works with lawmakers across the country, introduced model legislation similar to the laws already passed in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.

ALEC did not respond to a request for comment, but the organization’s involvement could further push the legislative concept across red states, particularly in the South.

That expansion is likely to happen, said Vincent Vernuccio, a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank that worked with Tennessee Republican lawmakers on their legislation.

“We’re seeing a snowball effect,” he said of the legislation. “It is getting noticed and I fully expect it to spread.”

Vernuccio said most Southern employers had been “protecting their employees” by calling for secret ballot elections rather than the signing of union cards in the open.

“There could be peer pressure, there can be coercion and intimidation,” he said, “and probably even more common is the union’s trying to make sure that employees … are not receiving both sides of the story on what would happen if a union organized them.”

Billy Dycus, president of the Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Council, viewed fierce GOP opposition to Chattanooga’s union effort as a boon to the cause.

“I think that helped more than it hurt,” he said. “People say, ‘You know what, we’re kind of tired of the government telling us how we should run our lives.’”

Dycus, whose organization represents more than 60,000 union workers in the state, including teachers, steelworkers and nurses, said labor leaders have little incentive to mislead or pressure employees to join unions, especially in right-to-work states. Dycus said that because workers can choose whether to join unions, organizers must continually prove their worth to maintain membership and dues.

“They think that card check means we go in and twist arms and force people to sign cards. That doesn’t make any sense because you’re in a right-to-work state,” he said.

Opponents of the new union voting laws argue that pushing for elections through secret ballot run by the National Labor Relations Board — as opposed to card check — can subject workers to anti-union messaging from management. Such elections also might delay the inevitable, they argue, in cases where the union has identified a clear majority of support.

But pro-business Republicans portray the new laws as ways to protect the privacy of individual workers, who might feel peer pressure to sign union authorization cards in a card-check scenario.

“There’s absolutely nothing in this bill that would stop anybody from being able to unionize,” Georgia state Sen. Mike Hodges, a Republican who carried his state’s bill on the floor for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, said in an interview.

Hodges said the new law aims to ensure a “level playing field” in union decisions. He noted that his father, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Georgia, raised him and three siblings on union wages and benefits.

“We didn’t say we don’t want unions,” Hodges said. “Bless your heart, if you want to unionize, unionize.”

Alabama state Sen. Arthur Orr, a Republican who sponsored the legislation in his state, said the secret ballot process protects workers from both management and union leadership.

“Employees are caught in a tug of war, if you will,” Orr said. “Having the secret ballot provides the employees the ability to say what they want to, one side or the other. But when it comes to the ultimate voting, they can do it privately.”

Union expansion could hurt economic development prospects, Orr said, but workers always have the right to unionize.

“If companies are not taking care of their workers — and you can define that as you will, whether it’s pay or whether it’s time, job flexibility, safety, whatever — then that makes them vulnerable to an organization effort,” he said.

Legal challenges

While some labor advocates have argued the state bills could be preempted by federal labor law, Orr said he consulted with several attorneys on Alabama’s legislation. He noted that Tennessee’s law had not been challenged in court.

Still, it’s a “close question” as to whether these laws would hold up to a legal challenge since federal laws govern most labor issues in the private sector, said Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor and industry at Harvard Law School. Some labor advocates expect courts could strike down the state laws, finding them preempted by federal labor law.

“What I can say for sure is that if it’s not preempted, then we are really opening up the landscape to dramatically more state and city intervention into labor relations and the rules of union organizing,” he said in an interview.

In his blog, OnLabor, Sachs warned anti-union forces to be careful what they wished for: If the Southern GOP laws stand, he wrote, it could open the door to blue states passing a litany of bills with opposite aims.

“If red states are entitled to tie economic incentives to a ban on card check, then blue states presumably are entitled to tie economic incentives on a requirement for card check,” he added in the interview.

While the recent labor win in Tennessee shows unions in the South can still succeed with a secret ballot process, Sachs said the legislation could have a “chilling effect” on companies that would otherwise prefer to voluntarily recognize unions.

“If it weren’t a big deal, they wouldn’t have enacted these laws,” he said.

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

Ken Simard was homeless for seven years. He slept in an encampment under a Blue Parkway bridge (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).

Ken Simard mainly slept under the Blue Parkway bridge near railroad tracks along Brighton Avenue for the seven years he was homeless, numbing himself with meth and weed.

“If it were not for the drugs that I did, I would have been suicidal,” he said. “I would do anything to take my mind and put it in an alternate place and time.”

That drug use would have made him unwelcome at Kansas City’s homeless shelters.

“It’s not a good mix to have somebody who’s hallucinating with people who are sober or haven’t used,” he said. “When you’re hallucinating you’re inclined to think your best friend is out to get you. It just turns into a dangerous environment for all parties involved.”

Kansas City has the country’s highest rate of chronically homeless people who can’t find an apartment — or space in a shelter. A U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development survey found that 96% of those people in Kansas City live on the street.

Last year, the Kansas City Council set out to pass along $7.1 million in federal tax dollars for a low-barrier shelter — a last-resort way to get people off the streets by dropping the usual shelter rules like sobriety or job skills training. It’s a key part of the city’s Zero KC plan to end homelessness by the end of the decade.

Hope Faith Homeless Assistance Campus landed a grant from the city in January to open a low-barrier shelter at Virginia Avenue and Admiral Boulevard.

But pushback from residents in Northeast neighborhoods stalled that plan. They’re worried about the safety of a center that they fear would concentrate people with mental health or substance abuse issues to one place. That opposition prompted the City Council to retract its grant to Hope Faith for a low-barrier shelter.

Factions in the Northeast neighborhood lobbied to split the money among multiple, scattered shelters.

But that money won’t stretch far enough for multiple shelters. So Hope Faith argues Kansas City needs at least one place that takes in people other shelters turn away — if it wants to make sure people aren’t forced to live under bridges or in encampments.

“If we don’t help them, then where do they go? The streets. And I’ve never seen anyone improve their life by living long-term on the streets,” said Hope Faith Executive Director Doug Langner. “The solution for this problem is to get them off the streets. And we feel we have a plan.”

Why did the City Council restart the low-barrier homeless shelter application?

The Kansas City Council voted 8-2 on April 25 to restart grant applications. Of the $7 million, $5 million will be set aside for the construction of a new shelter.

Evie Craig, president of the Paseo West Neighborhood Association, said the City Council should have been more transparent about what was planned and where it would go. She said residents weren’t aware there were plans to build a shelter in her neighborhood until after the proposal was approved.

“There was no community notification or engagement,” she said. “Why not share outcomes and issues and have regular meetings? It could be a true collaboration between providers and neighborhoods.”

Craig said large homeless shelters aren’t always safe for all populations, particularly queer people or victims of domestic abuse.

“One large building that the city is investing in can become an area where you have the same kind of dynamics that happens on the street,” she said. “Like a (homeless) campground in concrete. You really want a place where folks can feel safe.”

She said many Northeast residents don’t want their neighborhood to host the only low-barrier shelter in the city. Hope Faith is located near several other homeless services, such as reStart Inc., City Union Mission and NourishKC.

Craig said the neighborhood has supported those groups, but she doesn’t think converting Hope Faith into a shelter is an accessible plan for everyone in the metro. Residents would like to see the money distributed to other shelters across the city or establish new small-scale shelters.

“There are pockets of street homelessness throughout the city,” she said. “And we felt that one place where you’re displacing folks from where their support system is may not be the best solution. We’re advocating for a better solution. Not just the easiest one.”

But Josh Henges, the city’s homeless prevention coordinator, said the $7 million in federal money barely pays for a single shelter and couldn’t be used effectively for multiple locations.

“That argument is fine if we’re splitting up $100 million, but we’re not,” he said. “The quickest way to have 100 homeless people standing outside of your homeless shelter is to have a homeless shelter that only has 40 beds.”

Henges said that Kansas City can’t afford to wait for a perfect solution before taking action.

“We’re not even close to a solution. And we’re arguing about why we need multiple shelters,” he said. “So that means let’s not just start with one?”

Could splitting up the money work?

Henges said the city is making a mistake by trying to appease residents. He argues residents will always oppose a shelter in their neighborhood. So trying to win over residents, he said, means endless delays and abandoning the ambitious Zero KC goal of ending homelessness by 2030.

“There’s always going to be people who don’t want a thing,” Henges said. “If the role of (the City Council) is to appeal to the people who don’t want a thing, nothing is going to get done.”

Henges argued that low-barrier shelters are critical when he co-wrote the Zero KC plan. He said City Hall needs to listen to the insights of people working directly with the homeless community.

“Kansas City isn’t special,” Henges said. “It has to solve homelessness the way homelessness is solved everywhere and you have to have a starting point, which is a low-barrier emergency shelter.”

He said spreading money across existing shelters with stricter requirements won’t work. Rather, he sees a low-barrier shelter as the best chance to make a difference for the chronically homeless, who have experienced homelessness for at least a year — or repeatedly — while struggling with substance abuse, a serious mental illness or a physical disability.

“We’re trying to solve for chronic homelessness,” Henges said. “We have nothing for chronic homelessness, which is the reason the emails are coming in, the reason the cops get called and the reason that ERs are plugged up.”

He acknowledged Northeast residents’ concerns, but said Hope Faith has served the chronically homeless for a decade. He said a shelter there wouldn’t concentrate homelessness, but provide much-needed services to an existing population.

“They are a low-barrier day center,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is solve the problem of what happens when Hope Faith is closed (at night).”

Hope Faith’s application included a proposal to use the $5 million to expand its campus at Virginia Avenue and Admiral Boulevard by creating up to 100 beds with shared bathrooms.

But rules attached to the federal tax dollars call for individual rooms and private bathrooms. Langner said Hope Faith originally proposed shared bathrooms to maximize the bed count. In the new application, it will include more bathrooms but have to cut out 70 beds.

Kansas City spent four times as much on a single animal shelter, so Langner said $7 million is barely enough for a single homeless shelter.

“I can’t put our organization in a spot where we either can’t do construction, or have to do it in such a manner that’s not dignified,” he said. “If they split this pot of money up, then I don’t know that we could move forward.”

Why is low-barrier homeless shelter necessary in Kansas City?

National Alliance to End Homelessness says more than one in five people who become homeless end up that way chronically. A chronically homeless person costs taxpayers more than $35,000 a year. Give them housing, the group says, and that cost is cut in half.

Langner said he understands why residents are concerned about the safety of a large facility. A homeless person is more likely to be the victim of a crime than to commit one. And he said a larger low-barrier shelter doesn’t have to bring chaos.

If Hope Faith becomes a shelter, guests will not have to pray to stay or be sober, so long as they pose no danger to themselves and others, he said.

Bakersfield, California, ended chronic homelessness for a moment. In 2020, the county briefly achieved functional zero, meaning at least as many people escaped homelessness as fell into it.

Federal pandemic funding allowed homeless service agencies to place people in hotels and motels. But that wasn’t a long-term solution. The high cost of housing in California remains the core issue, said Carlos Baldovinos, chairman of the Bakersfield Kern Regional Homeless Collaborative in Bakersfield.

Baldovinos said communities will decide what best suits their low-barrier shelter needs through trial and error. Low-barrier shelters in Kern County, for example, began to allow guests to bring their pets. Some shelters even installed dog kennels.

He said large shelters should have evaluations and trained professionals on-site to deal with mental health issues or substance abuse.

“You have to accommodate people where they are and work with them,” he said. “Doing nothing is not an option.”

Henges said Kansas City needs to do something now if city leaders want to see Zero KC hit its 2030 goal. For now, he said, Kansas City is behind schedule.

“We are more likely to double our homeless population than we are to reduce the homeless population by even 5 percent,” he said. “At some point, your elected officials have to decide this is a problem they want to solve. Until then, it’s not solvable.”

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

Soybeans being loaded from a grain bin onto a truck on June 13, 2018 in Dwight, Illinois. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding $300 million in grants to expand overseas U.S. agriculture (Scott Olson/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Tuesday $300 million in funding for more than 60 groups seeking to diversify American agricultural exports.

“USDA is pleased to be able to provide the startup capital to tap into these opportunities,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on a call with reporters Monday night previewing the announcement.

In total, 66 organizations will be funded under the new Regional Agricultural Promotion Program, or RAPP. The USDA launched the $1.4 billion program in October in order to develop new export markets for U.S. food and agricultural products beyond the traditional partnerships with Canada, Mexico, the European Union and China.

“What this program really provides is an opportunity for us not only to expand geographically the opportunities for trade, but also the products that can be made available,” Vilsack said. “It’s a tremendous opportunity for us to diversify in a variety of different ways to grow market opportunity.”

The program focuses on tapping U.S. exports into new markets in regions such as South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

“When you have the major markets, as we’ve had, where 60 to 65% of what we export goes into four or five markets, that can create a sense of complacency,” Vilsack said.

‘The riskiest business in the world’

Vilsack said the funding would be an important step in building wealth in rural areas of the United States.

“We want to make sure our foreign-market development programs and agricultural trade in general work for the full spectrum of American agricultural producers, regardless of their size, their location, their product or target market,” he said. “By investing in exports, we’re investing in the future of American agriculture and rural communities.”

Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who leads the Senate Committee on Agriculture, joined the call with reporters. She said that USDA investing in exports is crucial to growing American agriculture.

“The bottom line is (to) create new revenue for the folks that have the riskiest business in the world,” Stabenow said. “This is a really important way to support them.”

According to a list provided by the USDA, some of the grant recipients include:

• The Hazelnut Marketing Board in Oregon and Washington state will receive $455,000 to conduct market research and trade missions in several countries in Africa.

• The U.S. Dairy Export Council, based in Virginia, will receive $10 million to expand its presence in Africa by using the funds to study and develop dairy import regulations and regulatory frameworks in those markets.

• The U.S. Meat Export Federation based in Colorado will be awarded $21 million to expand its export efforts to new markets throughout Africa. It will also expand its investment in the convenience-store industry in South Korea, Central America and Colombia.

• The Brewers Association in Colorado will be awarded $2 million to partake in the craft beer scene in Southeast Asia, by participating in the region’s premier brewing trade show and festival and bring buyers from that region to top trade shows in the US.

• The Cranberry Institute in Massachusetts will receive $1 million to conduct trade education seminars and other events to identify opportunities in India, Brazil, Colombia and Southeast Asia.

U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (photo submitted).

The U.S. House voted 387-26 Wednesday to clear a bill to reauthorize $105 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration for the next five years — and to finalize a hotly debated deal adding flights at busy Washington Reagan National Airport.

Advocates for the bill, which won votes from every ideological corner of the often-divided House, touted its aviation safety and consumer provisions. The House vote sends the measure to President Joe Biden’s desk ahead of a Friday deadline. The Senate approved the legislation last week.

The only member to speak against the bill during floor debate Tuesday was Virginia’s Don Beyer, a Democrat who, like the entire U.S. Senate delegation from Maryland and Virginia, opposed a provision to add five incoming and five outgoing flights at Washington Reagan National Airport across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

The bill:

•  Increases funding for the Airport Improvement Program that funds infrastructure improvements at airports of all sizes across the country;
• Requires the agency to hire more air traffic controllers;
• Updates the aircraft safety certification process; and
• Requires airlines to automatically refund passengers on flights delayed three hours or longer, among many other provisions in its more than 1,000 pages.

Missouri congressman ‘could not be more proud’

The bill’s passage was something of a career capstone for House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican and one of the few pilots in Congress.

“I’ve served in this House for more than 23 years and I’ve been looking forward to passing an FAA bill as chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for a long time,” he said on the floor Tuesday. “This is the kind of bill that a chairman only gets to do once in their career and I could not be more proud of the final product that we put together.”

Graves is in his third term as the top Republican on the committee and, under House GOP rules, cannot seek another, though he can ask party leaders to waive that rule.

He highlighted protections in the bill for general aviation, a term that can apply to all non-commercial and non-military flights.

Rep. Rick Larsen, the ranking Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, applauded several provisions in the bill, including the Airport Improvement Program funding, which he said could be used for alternative-fuel infrastructure and to mitigate noise and other harmful effects of airports in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The bill also creates a program to help airports replace firefighting foam made with PFAS, or forever chemicals, funds workforce development grants and bans airlines from charging families to sit together, the Washington Democrat said.

The bill “cements a safer, cleaner, greener, more innovative and accessible future for U.S. aviation,” Larsen said.

DCA flights

Six no votes in the House came from members from Virginia who opposed a provision adding flights to Washington National, also called DCA.

The state’s congressional delegation, along with Maryland’s U.S. senators, has said the airport already strains to safely handle the traffic it currently operates. Adding flights will only worsen the safety environment, they said.

“I’m deeply concerned about the provisions that would aggravate dangerous conditions at National Airport,” Beyer said Tuesday. “I cannot support a bill that hurts my constituents, disrespects all the elected leaders from Virginia, Maryland and D.C., and directly harms our airport and the passengers who use it.”

Members from outside the capital region argued the additional flights would be a positive. Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, said they would add “connectivity and economic expansion.”

Rep. Burgess Owens, a Utah Republican, also applauded the extra flights.

“This legislation (was) designed not for one airport and one airline, but for all of us,” he said. “It gives more convenience, more opportunities to families traveling into Washington, D.C.”

The five new routes have not been selected but some members, including Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who is the ranking member on the Senate committee that oversees aviation, have speculated that San Antonio could be one beneficiary.

Research from Min-Seok Pang, a professor at Temple University’s Fox School of Business in Philadelphia, Russell J. Funk, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, and Daniel Hirschman, a sociology professor at Cornell University, found that the U.S. House district represented by the chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee sees more commercial aviation service.

The data show transportation committee chairs saw flights to their districts increase by more than 5% on average from 1990 to 2019. Airlines also increased direct service to Washington from a chair’s district, the analysis, which was published last year in the academic journal Organization Science, showed. The numbers generally reverted to normal after the chair’s term.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey, right, testifies to the House Budget Committee on Feb. 6, 2024 (Rudi Keller/MIssouri Independent).

School districts in Jackson County saw home property assessments leap by nearly a third — and add more heft to their tax bases.

They set their property tax rates lower to reflect the beefier assessments — amid a furor from homeowners and politicians contending the numbers inflated the real value of properties in the county.

That tossed Jackson County into the center of a court challenge from the state that could test who can challenge assessments and how.

Meanwhile, those schools? And other entities that get tax money such as police, fire departments, libraries, mental health services?

School districts in the county claimed in court this week that a win for the homeowners would prove “catastrophic,” costing school districts nearly $1,500 per student.

“That’s not fair to the school districts, the fire protection districts, the libraries,” said Joe Hatley, an attorney representing the Lee’s Summit School District.

It looks most likely that those taxing districts won’t take a hit — a lawsuit demanding that  nearly all the new assessments be erased faces steep odds. Meanwhile, any rebate for homeowners wouldn’t arrive for months at the earliest.

The lawsuit filed by the Missouri State Tax Commission and Attorney General Andrew Bailey contends property owners didn’t get a fair shot to challenge such dramatic increases in their assessments.

The Missouri Supreme Court threw out a similar class-action lawsuit last year. In that case, the court concluded that homeowners couldn’t sue if they didn’t appeal their property assessments with the county first.

That earlier lawsuit sought to reverse all of the assessments that increased more than 15% or didn’t get a mailed notice of the change. But most of the cases had not gone through the usual appeals. Likewise this year, the state wants to throw out all the new assessments that increased any amount.

That means Bailey is testing the limits of a fresh precedent from the high court. Bailey’s case differs by arguing that there is no fair way for homeowners to challenge assessments. That case has its next court date on June 6.

The Missouri Supreme Court has said no before 

Bailey has used his office aggressively in pursuit of conservative causes with mixed success — pushing to ban gender-affirming care, abortion and federal student loan relief.

Now the Republican is stretching the scope of the attorney general’s office by stepping into an intra-county dispute between taxpayers and their local government.

Mike Ardis, a spokesman for the International Association of Assessing Officers, said he was unfamiliar with any case where a state has tried to void an entire county’s assessment increases.

“We’re not familiar … with a similar situation where a state has tried to void a county’s reassessment,” he said in an email.

Before going to court, property owners can challenge an assessment with the county’s Board of Equalization. If they strike out there, they can appeal to the State Tax Commission.

If their case fails with that state commission, they can sue.

What’s different with these lawsuits is that the attorney general is suing on behalf of all property owners whose assessments increased — even if they didn’t appeal.

Bailey argues that homeowners can go to court before taking a case to the State Tax Commission because the appeal process doesn’t give homeowners a fair shot.

Jackson County’s lawyers counter that if homeowners never tried to appeal, they don’t have the right to sue. Some homeowners have challenged through the county and the state, but the lawsuit calls for undoing all 247,500 property assessments that went up. That includes 190,000-plus that were never appealed.

Last June, a group of property owners filed a class-action lawsuit arguing that the county botched the assessment and appeal process.

The Missouri Supreme Court dismissed their lawsuit using the same reasoning the county’s lawyers push now — that the homeowners hadn’t finished appealing their assessments.

Most states, including Missouri, can order reassessments, Ardis said, “but that is usually because an assessment hasn’t been done rather than on questions about a reassessment.”

Jackson County argues the State Tax Commission can compel Jackson County to redo its assessments without going to court. The county was told by that same commission in 2018 to bring all of its 301,000 properties up to market value because it wasn’t complying with state law.

But the State Tax Commission hasn’t ordered the county to take action on the 2023 assessments. It could sue a county for not following such an order.

‘Catastrophic’: School districts stand to lose millions of dollars

If the attorney general’s lawsuit is successful, Jackson County’s taxing jurisdictions will be forced to refund millions of dollars to homeowners.

The Fort Osage, Oak Grove, Independence and Lee’s Summit school districts submitted an amicus brief on May 9 asking the judge to consider the “catastrophic financial harm” of tossing out the higher assessments. It estimated that would mean paying back $57 million in taxes across the four districts, or $1,468 per student.

Lee’s Summit would have to give up $32 million — almost a tenth of its revenue. But that money has already been spent on the 2023-24 school year.

“The school districts budget for the fact that there will be some successful challenges to the county’s assessments,” the brief says, “but not for an illegal rollback of assessments on virtually every property in the county.”

For Lee’s Summit, that amount is nearly a third of its reserve. It would take years to recover, and in the meantime, the district would be in a precarious position.

“It would require an immense juggling act on the part of the district’s business staff to figure out what to do,” Hatley said. “You’re not going to dig out of that hole anytime soon.”

Housing costs are continuing to rise

The 30% spike in property values that Jackson County residents saw last year appears consistent with the rise in home sale prices. Tech real estate company Zillow says home values in Jackson County have increased by 45% since March 2020.

“There are parts of the county that we’re still trying to get to value … but I would say the majority of what is driving up these values right now is simply an increase in value,” Jackson County’s director of assessment Gail McCann Beatty told The Beacon in April 2023.

At the time, she said that home values have been increasing 14% to 15% every year since the housing market recovered from the pandemic.

Remote work has made the Midwest more appealing for people who previously needed to live in high-cost cities like New York City or Los Angeles. Since 2020, those workers have been able to relocate to Kansas City.

Additionally, corporations have been buying up Kansas City homes to add to their investment portfolios and renting them out. That has shrunk the number of homes for sale and made the market more expensive.

If a judge tells Jackson County to throw out all assessment increases, that will temporarily reduce property values for the 2023 tax year. But unless the county can get the housing market under control, market value will continue to increase and property owners will see their assessments spike once again in 2025.

So even if taxpayers get a property tax refund for 2023, that relief could be short-lived.

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

A sales representative shows prospective customers a BYD Dolphin electric car at a BYD dealership on April 05, 2024 in Berlin, Germany. BYD, which stands for Build Your Dreams, is a Chinese manufacturer that went from making solar panels to electric cars (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is doubling and in some cases tripling tariffs on Chinese-made products, like steel and electric vehicles, in a move aimed at easing economic pain in battleground states, though senior administration officials say it isn’t political.

National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard told reporters on a call Monday ahead of the announcement that the steep increase to several tariffs would help address the Chinese government “flooding global markets with exports that are underpriced due to unfair practices.”

“We know China’s unfair practices have harmed communities in Michigan and Pennsylvania and around the country that are now having the opportunity to come back due to President Biden’s investment agenda,” Brainard said, mentioning two crucial swing states ahead of November’s election.

President Joe Biden’s decision to increase several tariffs, Brainard said, ensures “that American businesses and workers have the opportunity to compete on a level playing field in industries that are vital to our future, such as clean energy and semiconductors.”

Here are the tariffs that will increase and when the White House will implement those changes:

• Steel and aluminum will move from a 7.5% tariff to a 25% tariff this year.
• Semiconductor tariffs will rise from 25% to 50% before 2025.
• Electric vehicle tariffs will increase from 25% to 100% this year.
• Batteries: The tariff on lithium-ion EV batteries and battery parts will rise from 7.5% to 25% in 2024. The tariff on lithium-ion non-EV batteries will rise to the same level in 2026.
• Solar cells will rise from a 25% tariff to a 50% tariff this year.
• Ship-to-shore cranes will get a 25% tariff this year. They currently aren’t subject to tariffs.
• Medical products: Tariffs on personal protective equipment, including face masks, will increase this year and tariffs on rubber medical and surgical gloves will go up in 2026. Both will be set at 25%. Tariffs on syringes and needles will go from not having a tariff to 50% in 2024.

Senators appealed for tariff increases

A group of seven Democratic U.S. senators wrote to Biden earlier this month, urging him and United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai to “maintain or increase the tariffs to address China’s continued actions to cheat and undermine our national security.”

Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Bob Casey and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York all signed on to the letter.

The senators wrote that tariffs “are an important tool to level the playing field and combat anti-competitive practices from non-market economies and trade cheats, and they must remain in place.”

“China has continued to cheat, circumvent, and manipulate to artificially strengthen its economy and harm the United States,” the senators wrote. “Across sectors like steel, solar products, and electric vehicles, China employs tactics to distort markets and create artificially low prices by illegally subsidizing its industries and producing to overcapacity.”

Tariffs on electric vehicles

A senior administration official, speaking with reporters on background Monday to discuss details of the changes, said the higher tariffs on electric vehicles are necessary to avoid China having an unfair share of the global market.

“If we have a level playing field, we and other countries will have the chance to compete and that’s the kind of dynamic that we think will produce resilient supply chains and clean technology and give us our best chance of meeting our climate goals,” the senior administration official said.

A second senior administration official declined to “speculate” about whether China would set retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, saying that officials from that country are likely to speak publicly in the coming days.

A third senior administration official on the call said the decision to raise certain tariffs and the timing of the announcement “has nothing to do with politics.”

That official also said there are differences between the production of electric and gas-powered vehicles in China, which is why the Biden administration is raising tariffs on one, but not the other.

“We’ve been thoroughly studying and assessing how the Chinese have been investing in their electric vehicle domestic industry and the range of unfair best practices that are giving them a significant unfair pricing competitive advantage,” the third official said. “So I think that’s the reason why we’re moving towards a significant step up in the tariff rate for electric vehicles.”

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.

Timothy Bundren's chicken barns are all standing empty since Tyson cancelled his growing contract last year. His operation near Harrison, Arkansas, was photographed on March 31 (Julie Anderson, for Investigate Midwest)

Timothy Bundren must have heard wrong.

The sun wasn’t up yet. He was still groggy from starting his morning routine of walking through chicken barns.

His phone rang and his contact with the global meat company headquartered in Springdale, Arkansas, just two hours south of his farm, started telling him he would no longer be raising chickens.

Bundren, 52, didn’t believe him at first. Just hours later, he was supposed to meet with the bank about another loan to buy the farm down the road. Bundren waited an hour and then called the man back.

The news didn’t change, but the weight sunk in.

Tyson Foods closed four meatpacking plants that day in North Little Rock, Arkansas; Noel and Dexter, Missouri; and Corydon, Indiana. Bundren lives near the plants closed in Missouri and Arkansas. Because of this, the company canceled Bundren’s contract to raise broiler chickens.

But to his knowledge, the chickens Bundren raised weren’t processed at the plants shut down that day. His chickens were shipped to a Tyson plant in Green Forest, Arkansas, just half an hour away and still in operation.

When Tyson closed those regional plants, it had to reassess which growers would send chickens to which plants to meet demand, said Eddie Todd, president of the Missouri-Arkansas Poultry Growers Association and president of the Arkansas Farmers Union.

“The plant that (Bundren) sent his birds to might not have been directly the cause since it didn’t close, but it was because of the other closures and how Tyson looked at all the plants’ feasibility,” Todd said.

Bundren and other growers affected by the closures have been caught in the wake of a larger, company-wide initiative to cut costs. But that has left some growers with more than a million dollars in debt — debt they accumulated at Tyson’s urging — and few options to pay it back, according to growers Investigate Midwest interviewed.

Bundren is $1.4 million in debt. Nine months since that call, his barns are still empty.

While relieved he didn’t sign onto another loan, his world has been turned upside down.

“I’m thinking if I’m hearing this right, I’m out of business,” he said. “How am I going to pay a loan this big back?”

Tyson introduced a restructuring program in 2022 that included consolidating corporate headquarters, reducing expenses and increasing efficiency, according to its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

“These assets that we’re shuttering would have required significant capital in order to make them competitive,” said Tyson President and Chief Executive Officer Donnie King in an August 2023 investor meeting, the same morning the company announced plant closures across four states. “If you look at the returns on those, it really didn’t make sense to do that.”

The company’s plans came at a human cost. Tyson closed eight meatpacking plants in 2023, six of them chicken processing and two beef processing. It laid off more than 4,200 workers across all of its plants last year.

The company has a lot to gain from its contract growers. In 2023, Tyson Foods had nearly $53 billion in sales — a third of which was from chicken. The company operates 183 chicken facilities across the country, which include processing plants, hatcheries, feed mills and grain elevators. The company’s website states it contracts with more than 3,600 poultry farmers nationwide.

It is unclear how many growers, who are not employees, had contracts with Tyson before the plants closed last year.

But in the counties where Tyson shut down chicken processing plants last year, and where contract growers who spoke to Investigate Midwest operate in, there were a total of 114 broiler chicken farms under production contracts in 2022, according to the USDA’s most recent agricultural census. Many farms raise more than a million birds each year.

Bundren has spent the past six years annually raising about 600,000 broiler chickens, or chickens bred for consumption.

Like almost all broiler chickens in the country, his were raised under contract for a major poultry company. Many chicken growers only grow for a single company as more than half of contract chicken growers live in a region with two or fewer companies, according to a 2012 Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics study.

“I stand a chance of losing everything. Every (chicken) house I got, all my land, everything,” Bundren said. “It’s throwing me and my family in the street. Tyson ain’t thinking about that, and I guess they don’t care.”

An expensive proposition

From the pivotal early morning phone calls to the millions in debt, former Tyson contract growers who spoke to Investigate Midwest said they have had to take out upwards of $2 million loans to become Tyson contract growers. Their contracts canceled, they’re now saddled with massive debt.

They said the company pushed them to go into more debt to upgrade their barns to meet company demands. Growers also said the company told them that they would be given chickens to raise for as long as they had loans on their barns.

Now that their contracts have abruptly ended, Tyson contract growers said they aren’t able to pay off the debt. Growers are staring down bankruptcy and foreclosures. Some have sold off land or other property to pay off debt while others have retired or looked for work off the farm.

Investigate Midwest spoke to five growers, located in Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana and Virginia, and pored through lawsuits filed by four other contract growers to find how Tyson’s closures have affected the farmers who raise the company’s chickens. A grower in Virginia asked for anonymity because of concerns over breach of contract. Another grower asked to speak on background only, but their situation mirrored that of the other growers.

Tyson did not answer specific questions about the closures, its relationship with contract growers, or how many growers lost contracts due to these closures. In a statement emailed to Investigate Midwest, it said closing plants was not an easy move:

“Tyson Foods is proud to partner with a network of independent growers across the country, and we value the contribution that these growers make to our business. Closing plants is always a difficult decision, and we understand the impact it has on the people and businesses in those communities. We work to help our team members and partners through that transition, and Tyson Foods has provided affected growers with several options to honor our contractual commitments and allow growers to receive fair value.”

Almost a year after the first announcement of Tyson plant closures and canceled contracts, King, Tyson’s president and CEO, said in a February investors meeting that the company is already “seeing the benefits of these actions and we’ll continue to evaluate opportunities to drive efficiency, across our segments.

“The improvements are coming from operational improvements, operational excellence both in plants and in live production and really driving out waste from the business,” King said.

Tyson’s 2023 annual report states it lost $322 million in costs related to closing plants in 2023. One of those costs was contract terminations for chicken growers. The growers that Investigate Midwest interviewed were offered buyouts of their contracts but all stated it would not be enough to cover the entirety of  their debt.

Raising poultry is the most expensive type of livestock or animal production farming in the U.S., according to Census of Agriculture data.

The poultry industry was one of the first to introduce the practice of outsourcing debt and risk associated with raising live animals. All major poultry companies use the practice, said Aaron Johnson, a co-policy director at the agricultural reform nonprofit, Rural Advancement Foundation International, or RAFI, headquartered in North Carolina. Tyson owns and delivers the birds to the growers who must put their own money into their operations.

“The model is designed to put that debt load external to the company so that if the company decides to shut down a facility, they are not left holding the bag,” Johnson said. “The contract growers are.”

Tyson’s cost-cutting doesn’t appear to be helping the company’s stock price. Earlier this month, it experienced its worst one-day decline in a year, according to Reuters.

From top grower to empty barns

Six years ago, Bundren moved to rural Harrison, Arkansas, to start growing chickens for Tyson. A former car mechanic, electrician and property manager, he switched careers to put his family into a better financial position and so he could stop working multiple jobs.

Bundren said Tyson verbally promised him years of steady pay if he took out the loans needed to purchase chicken barns. Now, the rug has been pulled out from beneath him.

“They told me point blank that as long as I grow decent birds and do my job, they would keep me in birds long enough to pay my loan off,” Bundren said.

There’s pride in his voice when he talks about his chicken barns and the life he was afforded by raising chickens.

He emphasizes that he always kept his barns clean. Along the dirt road on which his house is located, his driveway is the only one paved.

Chicken growers are generally paid under a system known as the tournament system, a method in which chicken companies rank a grower’s flock of birds against neighboring growers based on the size of the birds and how much feed and other expenses they used. The higher the ranking a contract grower receives, the more money they get. The opposite remains true, though, leaving poultry contract growers susceptible to major swings in pay.

Today, Bundren’s barns are useless. He has no income from poultry farming. The barns he purchased are designed for Tyson chickens, making it difficult to transition to raising poultry for another company.

This is a common experience across the poultry industry. Growers will build or purchase barns with company-specific parameters. In instances where a contract is cut short or growers want to move to a different poultry company, they often are unable to use or sell the equipment and barns they already own, according to a 2006 study in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

After the initial shock, Bundren talked to a regional Butterball plant about raising turkeys for the company — only to discover it would cost at least $250,000 to upgrade his barns to its specifications. He said the brunt of the cost was replacing all feed and water lines to be sized for turkeys instead of broiler chickens.

In the end, Bundren said he was unable to raise turkeys for Butterball because his farm is located too close to other poultry operations. He was told this could create a biosecurity risk for the birds.

“Right now I’m scared to death,” Bundren said. “I’m scared I’m gonna lose everything and I made a mistake by putting my family up here.”

Bundren entered the industry at a rough time for growers. In the seven counties in Arkansas and Missouri affected by plant closures, chicken farms were consolidating. From 2002 to 2022, the number of broiler farms under contract was cut in half, according to USDA data.

At the same time, poultry farm debt in Arkansas and Missouri exploded. In Arkansas, the amount of debt and other liabilities held by poultry growers tripled from 2003 to 2022, according to an analysis of USDA farm income data. In Missouri, the figure increased six-fold.

In 2022, the total cost of raising poultry in the country was nearly double that of raising hogs. Poultry is more expensive to raise than dairy cattle, beef cattle, sheep and goats. USDA research shows that raising chickens can also provide less revenue.

Nationally, the cost of raising chickens increased 35% from 2012 to 2022, according to an analysis of Census of Agriculture data. This data does not separate out types of poultry or delineate between the cost of raising chickens for consumption or egg production.

Despite rising costs and debt loads, growers said Tyson continued to ask for upgrades and investments or they would lose their contracts.

Bundren noted growers, if they don’t invest in further upgrades per Tyson specifications, they’re told they won’t receive additional birds. “(Tyson) don’t give a damn about how much money it costs,” he said.

Sleepless nights

Nine months ago, Preston Arnold’s phone rang as he was driving his 1999 white Chevy Silverado to his chicken barns. He pulled over to the side of the road to answer it.

It was his Tyson broiler manager. A few moments into the conversation, Arnold, 67, thought he was joking.

As the man on the phone walked him through the news, Arnold realized he wasn’t.

He looked down the road and saw his eight chicken barns in Sikeston, Missouri. They would soon be empty. He stood to lose everything.

Arnold had been around the chicken industry for years. His brother and father raised birds for Tyson for 25 years while he pursued a career in the insurance industry. He said as he got older, he wanted to travel less and be home more. He bought chicken barns half a mile from his house in Sikeston.

Then, he contracted with Tyson to supply birds for the Dexter, Missouri, slaughter plant 30 minutes away.

For almost five years, he raised close to a million chickens a year for Tyson. When he started as a contract grower in 2019, Arnold’s original loan was for $1.6 million.

As of mid-April, his loan balance sits right around $900,000. His barns now barren.

Arnold said he put his home and property up as collateral for the initial loan. Since the plant’s closure, he said that his bank has threatened foreclosure.

In negotiations with the bank, he said he’s suggested the idea that he keep a barn located at his home throughout the potential foreclosure process, so as to at least have a roof over his head.

“We’ve gone a lot of sleepless nights,” he said. “This has just been a roller coaster of emotions.”

The Farm Service Agency, the federal agency that assists and secures loans for agriculture producers, said in a statement to Investigate Midwest that it has met with Arkansas contract growers who lost Tyson contracts. It has yet to meet with growers in other states, though. The agency said situations like this are why the USDA is examining the treatment of contract growers.

Often, poultry companies will require or strongly encourage growers to upgrade their barns and equipment in order to get more birds to raise, according to USDA research and interviews with contract growers. The USDA estimates that it costs roughly $400,000 to build a new chicken barn, with many growers having multiple barns.

Arnold said in the last two years, he’s invested in upgrading his barns and spent $500,000 on a new one.

“Had I known that there was even talk about (closure), I wouldn’t have (upgraded or built new barns),” Arnold said.

The news of Tyson’s closure blindsided Arnold and other contract growers whose chickens were processed at the Dexter plant. According to two lawsuits filed by four Missouri contract growers, Tyson allegedly planned to shut down the Dexter facility at least a year in advance of the announcement. (Tyson did not respond to a question about the lawsuit’s allegations.)

Despite this, the lawsuits state that the company encouraged contract growers to continue taking out loans and updating facilities. The filings allege that Tyson largely benefitted from the contract operations because it did not have to build or maintain farms that the company would knowingly abandon.

One of the lawsuits was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money. Attorney Russell Oliver, who represented the family that settled and still represents the  contract growers suing Tyson, declined to comment. The other lawsuit is pending.

“We were not free to seek out other business opportunities on the open market and could only perform this service for the Tyson Companies,” wrote grower Eric Kessler in a signed affidavit from the settled lawsuit. “As such, we are not in ‘business’ for ourselves but were exclusively servants of Tyson.”

The Dexter processing plant was bought by Cal-Maine Foods, the largest egg company in the country, in March. Cal-Maine operates more than 100 production, processing and packing facilities across Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ohio, Texas, and much of the South.

The company plans to convert the plant to process egg products and said it will work with some of the region’s former Tyson contract growers to now raise eggs.

Cal-Maine’s vice president and chief financial officer, Max Bowman, said the company has already started placing birds with contract growers in the Dexter area. He declined to say how many new growers used to contract with Tyson, and he declined to say how much money it would cost to convert their operations to meet Cal-Maine’s requirements.

“We’re quite confident that the opportunity we’re going to offer to the growers will be as good as or better than what they had in their former contracts,” Bowman said.

Arnold said the cost to convert his barn to meet Cal-Maine’s specifications was estimated to be at least $550,000 per barn for four barns, meaning he would have to take out another large loan in order to produce eggs for the company. He is still considering taking out a new loan, but has yet to act.

A loan of more than $2 million on top of his other debt is hard to swallow.

“If something doesn’t happen in the way of an FSA debt relief plan or some new legislation, then we’re going to lose everything that we’ve worked our lives for,” he said.

Tyson told growers the company was ‘not going anywhere’

The same morning Arnold pulled over to the side of the road, racking his brain about his next move, Jonathon Morrow answered the phone.

His Tyson service technician told him he was no longer getting birds and the Dexter complex was closing.

Morrow, 60, who raised roughly 1.8 million broilers annually for Tyson, was nonchalant in his response.

“I thought, ‘Yep, I’m losing everything,’” he said.

Following the Great Recession, Morrow started looking for other career paths. After working in construction and roofing for decades, he eventually landed on contract chicken growing for Tyson. In 2013, he said he began to build chicken barns on his family’s farmland in Dudley, Missouri, just outside of Dexter.

Now, he is weighing the options of spending more money to become a contract grower with Cal-Maine, selling the barns, or tearing them down and selling the farmland.

“We went from (360,000 birds a flock) to nothing real quick,” Morrow said.

Morrow had two different contracts to raise two different types of birds for Tyson. He raised broiler chickens in Dudley and breeding chickens in Annapolis, Missouri, more than an hour away.

Morrow, a man of faith with an optimistic demeanor, said he was able to pay off his debt on his barns built for his broiler chickens. But, he said, he is millions of dollars in debt for the barns built for breeding chickens.

Both his broiler contract and breeder contract were canceled by Tyson. The barns have been empty since October 2023. Without a chicken processor in the area, there’s no company to provide him with the birds to occupy them.

“It’s not like you can buy 300,000 chickens on your own and put them in (barns) and find a market,” he said.

In the interim, Morrow has gone back to working construction. On a recent morning call, his laughter was interrupted by the beep of dump trucks.

After the Tyson closure in Dexter, Morrow said he was approached by Cal-Maine to become a contract grower. When he heard that it would take nearly a million dollars for him to meet their specifications, he said he was brutally honest with the company.

“I said, ‘If you think a bank would even loan us more money after this, you’ve lost your mind,’ ” he said. “ ‘And if you think I would be stupid enough to borrow almost another million dollars after this, you’ve lost your mind.’ ”

The agency is currently finalizing a rule proposal internally that will address “certain problematic practices” such as the requirement for additional capital investments in poultry production facilities and equipment. This effort is part of the agency’s ongoing updates to the 100-year-old legislation known as the Packers and Stockyards Act.

The act, created in 1921, is supposed to protect members of the livestock, meat and poultry industries from “unfair, unjustly discriminatory or deceptive practice.”

The USDA finalized a new rule under the act in February that is supposed to give chicken growers more transparency in their contracts and an understanding of how exactly they are paid. In March, a separate ruling to prevent discriminatory practices was finalized and became law on May 6.

“Like with starting any new business, chicken farmers typically incur some debt to get their chicken houses built and their farms up and operational,” said Tom Super, National Chicken Council senior vice president of communications, in a statement to Investigate Midwest. “But chicken farmer loan performance data show more consistent payments and one of the lowest loan default rates in all of agriculture. Raising chickens under contract is one of the best and most reliable sources of cash flow that helps keep families on the farm.”

The National Chicken Council is an industry group that promotes the sale of chicken in the U.S. and whose board members include executive leaders of several major poultry processors.

Morrow said he knew the risks of such a large loan when he became a contract grower. But he, just like other growers, was told that if he does a good job, the company was “not going anywhere.”

“Somebody higher up the food chain had to know this was a possibility,” Morrow said. “Yet they’re (still) giving out contracts to build new (chicken) houses.”

A waiting game

In Arkansas, Bundren’s six chicken barns are remain empty as he negotiates with the bank and the FSA about how to handle his debt. His barns were once a source of steady income, but now the empty metal husks are a reminder of the debt he carries.

“(The barns) are worth zero now,” he said. “When you’ve got a contract, they’re worth $200,000-$300,000 used, a piece.”

Now, it’s a waiting game for Bundren. His wife has started looking for work and interviewing for jobs. He is now doing landscaping, excavation and stump grinding to pay bills.

He said the bank has been working with him to repay the loans and, after some conversations with the FSA, he feels hopeful the agency will help him find a way to manage the financial burden.

Still, his debt of more than a million dollars weighs on him. This past December, while uncertain whether he could keep his house, he tried to have a normal Christmas for his two daughters.

That uncertainty has turned to frustration when he thinks of the money and time he put into making his barns the perfect place to raise Tyson chickens.

“The mental stress is killing me,” Bundren said. “I still don’t know if I’m going to get to keep anything.”

If he keeps his land and avoids foreclosure, Bundren said he may tear down the barns.

“I don’t want to grow birds anymore anyway,” he said. “You just can’t trust Tyson.”

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Jelani Bayi, seen with his dog, Dior, bought this four-bedroom house in Detroit’s Rosedale Park neighborhood for $275,000 in 2021. Like many Black-majority areas, his ZIP code has seen big gains recently as the housing shortage intensifies and state and federal efforts to end bias in valuations of Black-owned homes progress (Valaurian Waller/Bridge Detroit).

Black homeowners’ property values are on the rise across the country, with some of the biggest upswings in Midwestern and Southern states. The boon to Black homeowners, after decades of lagging property values, could help them close a racial wealth gap that has kept the American dream out of reach.

Home values increased on average 84% in majority-Black ZIP codes between 2016 and 2023, outpacing growth in white ZIP codes, where values grew 69%, according to a Stateline analysis of federal housing and census data.

A hot market during the COVID-19 pandemic, an intensifying housing shortage, and new state and federal efforts to fight appraisal bias may finally be moving Black homeowners a bit toward property value parity.

Morgan Williams, an attorney for the National Fair Housing Alliance, an advocacy group, cautioned that the push for more fair housing appraisals remains in the early stages. And he noted that even unbiased appraisals can perpetuate undervalued housing by using past sales as a benchmark.

“There was, during the pandemic, an increase in Black wealth. There may be some broad policy actions you could trace that to, but I think a lot of that is going to be more housing-market driven,” Williams said.

Recent research has revealed that homes in majority-Black areas are more likely than those in majority-white areas to be appraised below purchase offers. The disparity remains high but has improved recently, according to federal statistics.

The Stateline analysis found that the home price increases in majority-Black neighborhoods since 2016 are a major shift from the prior 15 years.

Between 2000 and 2016, selling prices in majority-Black communities increased by 40% compared with 48% for majority-white areas, and home values fell in more than a fifth of Black ZIP codes.

Since 2016, however, home values increased in every majority-Black ZIP code tracked by the independent Federal Housing Finance Agency, and on average outpaced increases in white ZIP codes.

Stateline relied on that Federal Housing Finance Agency data on ZIP codes, which uses sales of similar properties — so-called matched pairs — to estimate price changes over time. U.S. Census Bureau estimates were used to find ZIP codes where most homeowners are Black.

In Detroit alone, rising home prices in Black neighborhoods have created almost $3 billion in new wealth for Black homeowners, according to a University of Michigan study released in April. That study focused on 2014 to 2022, the decade after the city’s bankruptcy. The Stateline analysis suggests the turnaround extends far beyond Detroit, across the Midwest and South.

The Stateline analysis identified 92 majority-Black ZIP codes nationally, including nine in Detroit and six in Cleveland, where home values have increased since 2016 after losing value earlier in the 2000s. There were 22 such ZIP codes in Georgia, 21 in Michigan, 17 in Ohio and 13 in Illinois, with others in Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Another 48 majority-Black ZIP codes across the South and Midwest saw big property value increases of more than 100 percentage points. For instance, ZIP code 32811 in Orlando, Florida, saw 26% home price growth from 2000 to 2016, but that has ballooned to almost 215% in the years since.

Six of the top 10 turnarounds were in suburban Atlanta’s Clayton County, which got a boost when a long-vacant army base was redeveloped into the Gillem Logistics Center, an e-commerce and distribution hub that is projected to add 5,000 jobs and $4 billion into the local economy, said Erica Rocker, the county’s economic development director.

In Clayton County, a new four-bedroom home — with two Tesla chargers, an elevator and keyless doors — recently sold for almost $700,000. It had replaced a smaller home on the property that sold for $40,000 in 2020. The home’s ZIP code in Forest Park, 30297, had the nation’s largest swing in prices, going from a 27% loss to a 214% gain.

Altimese Dees, a real estate broker who has represented Clayton County in real estate and land acquisitions, said home values became artificially low in the Great Recession. Foreclosures sank the county’s average home price as low as $66,500 in 2009, but it has since recovered to about $253,000 this year, she said.

“We had a historic number of foreclosures between 2006 and 2011. Investors were basically getting these houses for pennies on the dollar,” Dees said. “It was a result of people losing their jobs and income during this time, as well as subprime lending targeting our mostly African American and minority community. We’re thankful for the increase in value, but it’s more like getting back to where it should be.”

A similar Stateline analysis in 2018 noted a drop in home values in many majority-Black ZIP codes. Some scholars concluded at the time that, despite the wealth-building potential of home ownership, many first-time Black homebuyers would have been better off renting.

In Detroit, resident Jelani Bayi bought his first home in 2021 in the city’s 48219 ZIP code, part of the Rosedale Park neighborhood. He feels like he’s building wealth for himself and preparing a place to raise a family when he’s ready.

“I definitely think it’s increased in value. I’ve put a lot of time and resources into the house, and values are increasing in Detroit,” Bayi said. “All my adult life I’ve always wanted to be a homeowner, and it was the right time. I just love it. It was very important to me to live in Detroit.”

Bayi said he took advantage of low interest rates in 2021 to buy his $275,000 four-bedroom brick home. Zillow estimates its current value at $316,200.

Sandra Newman, a Johns Hopkins University professor who studies housing and neighborhood change, said pandemic shifts toward suburban living and remote work may have brightened the fortunes of some Black neighborhoods.

“Price trajectories, especially for Black homeowners, depend heavily on location, location, location. The old real estate saw definitely applies,” Newman wrote in an email to Stateline.

Some states, including Mississippi, New Jersey and Texas, have tried to combat appraisal bias after recent cases made the extent of the problem clear.

In a California case, a Black couple sued after getting a dramatically higher appraisal when they “whitewashed” their home by adding family photos of a white family and removing African American art. After that, the appraisal increased by half a million dollars to nearly $1.5 million. The case was settled last year for an undisclosed amount.

In a similar Maryland case, a Black couple got an appraisal two-thirds higher when a white acquaintance posed as the owner of their Baltimore home. That case was settled in March for an undisclosed amount. A Black couple in Ohio also said they got a higher appraisal in 2020 after borrowing family photos from a white neighbor.

Because appraisals rely on personal judgment, many states are looking to diversify their ranks of appraisers. But an outmoded training system that includes thousands of hours of supervised work means many young would-be appraisers simply can’t find supervisors willing to help them get started.

However, in recent years, the racial gap in appraisals has narrowed in almost every state, according to a Federal Housing Finance Agency review published in April. It gauged the effect of a federal task force started in 2021 that “increased awareness of racial bias in home valuations” for states and other governments. The appraisal gap between homes in majority-Black and majority-white neighborhoods declined from 6% to 3.8%, the study found.

The gap closed in every state but Mississippi, which is working to diversify its appraiser workforce. E.C. Neelly IV, director of the Mississippi Appraisal Board, rejected the idea that white appraisers like himself are inherently unfair to Black homeowners.

“I’ve been an appraiser for 34 years, and if you pay an appraisal fee, I don’t care if you’re white, Black, pink or green, I’m doing a good job for you,” Neelly said.

Mississippi used federal funds to pay for alternative training that includes online courses, a move that should allow a more diverse group of would-be appraisers to get licenses. The first class had a high rate of success on licensing tests, and a second class is underway without federal funding, Neelly said.

“This has been just a godsend for the state. Every state is affected by this,” Neelly told Stateline, noting that most of the roughly 25 graduates of the program are non-white and from parts of the state, such as the Delta region, that desperately need more appraisers. The training program, designed and run by appraiser Melissa Bond, has drawn interest from other states interested in getting younger and more diverse appraisers, Neelly said.

“We need more diversity. It’s not just about Black. There are more Black appraisers than Asian, for example,” Bond told Stateline.

Texas recently adopted some online and virtual reality training to reduce an appraiser shortage and to diversify its crop of appraisers, and was the first state to treat appraisal bias cases as civil rights violations, said Melissa Tran, director of the state’s Appraiser Licensing and Certification Board.

And in New Jersey, Democratic Attorney General Matthew Platkin recently announced that state civil rights authorities would investigate appraisal bias there.

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.

A Robust Cannabis employee showcases the company's Black Hole Sun strain at their warehouse in Cuba, Missouri (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

A judge in St. Louis ruled Thursday that local municipalities can stack sales taxes on marijuana dispensaries, the first court ruling on a much-debated issue playing out around the state. 

The lawsuit was filed by Robust Missouri 3 LLC. The company saw its Florissant dispensary’s tax rate on cannabis products rise to 14.988% after both the city and St. Louis County approved 3% sales taxes on adult-use marijuana in April 2023.

The constitutional amendment that legalized recreational cannabis sales included a 6% statewide excise tax — but it also authorized “any local government” to charge a sales tax of up to 3%. 

At the heart of Robust’s lawsuit is whether the law intended for local governments to be able to impose a maximum of 3% sales combined, or if they can each impose a 3% sales tax. 

St. Louis County Circuit Judge Brian May ruled that both governments’ taxes are valid. 

In his Thursday order, May stated there is no court precedent on this issue, so he interpreted the intent of the law “as a whole and not in isolated parts.”

Pair of lawsuits challenge whether Missouri counties can ‘stack’ tax on marijuana sales

While the law allows for recreational marijuana to be legal, he stated it also intended for local governments to be able to “protect public health.” 

“If [Robust’s] interpretation were accepted, then a municipality or city would essentially be given carte blanche to ignore any county ordinance or regulation, including those related to public health and safety wholly unrelated to the taxing issue,” May wrote in the ruling. 

May pointed to the provision that allows the city to approve placing a dispensary within less than 1,000 feet of any then-existing school. 

“…and the county, and other cities in the Ferguson-Florissant School District, would have no say in that decision,” May wrote. “This absurd outcome would directly contradict the stated purpose of the [amendment].”

The ruling is a win for the Missouri Association of Counties, said Steve Hobbs, the association’s executive director. The association has strongly advocated that counties have the ability to do this, he said.

“The bulk of the counties around the state had gone to the voters and asked them to implement this tax,” Hobbs told The Independent on Friday. “And I think every one of them approved of it. I think [the ruling] removes some uncertainty from those counties.” 

On the other side, leaders of the marijuana industry have called the effort to collect both taxes an “unconstitutional money grab” that violates the terms of the amendment.

“We know from other states that when legal marijuana is taxed unnecessarily high, it only helps the illicit market,” said Andrew Mullins, executive director Missouri Cannabis Trade Association, in a statement to The Independent Friday, “which deprives Missouri veterans and substance abuse programs of needed revenue.” 

Robust Missouri has submitted an appeal on the circuit court’s decision. Another similar case is pending in Buchanan County.

St. Joseph dispensary Vertical Enterprises sued Buchanan County Collector Peggy Campbell, arguing that it, too, would be “irreparably harmed” if both taxes were imposed.

A hearing is scheduled in that case for May 16 in the Circuit Court of Buchanan County.

Union Station and downtown Kansas City (Getty Images).

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Kansas City becoming a sanctuary city?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But some members of the City Council still have questions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growth begets growth, Peri said.

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

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

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

(Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent)

Two Missouri social-equity licensees connected to a Michigan company that used Craigslist to recruit applicants have appealed the state’s decision to revoke their dispensary licenses. 

The Michigan company, Canna Zoned, was behind two of the 16 microbusiness dispensary licenses issued by lottery in October — Frankenstein Enemy LLC in Columbia and Seashore Rhythm LLC in Arnold. Both licenses were revoked on March 27.

Their appeals will be argued before the Administrative Hearing Commission on Sept. 26. 

Missouri’s microbusiness license program is meant to boost opportunities in the industry for businesses in disadvantaged communities, and it was part of the constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana that voters passed in 2022. 

The program is designed to provide a path to larger facility ownership for individuals who might not otherwise easily access that opportunity, such as having a net worth of less than $250,000 or veterans with a service-connected disability. 

The microbusiness license must always be majority owned and operated by individuals who meet these eligibility criteria. 

According to the revocation notices for the Canna Zoned-backed licensees, cannabis regulators were unable to verify the licenses would be owned and operated by eligible individuals. 

Canna Zoned’s owner, Jeffrey Yatooma, was listed as the “designated contact” for the two licenses, and the purported owners of the licenses told the state they did not know who Yatooma was, according to the notices. 

“While owning and operating a license may include contracting for management services or consulting services, the lack of knowledge, control, agency or decision-making demonstrated by the individual used to meet eligibility does not meet even the most liberal understanding of owning and operating a business,” the letter from Missouri regulators states.  

Applicants recruited on Craigslist competed for Missouri social equity cannabis licenses

Illinois resident Aric Rybacki is listed as the owner of Seashore Rhythm, and he told The Independent he had no comment in a phone conversation Monday. Curtis Floyd, owner of Frankenstein Enemy, did not respond to a request for comment. 

State records show Yatooma was listed as the designated contact on 104 out of the 1,048 applications that were entered into a lottery selection for the dispensary licenses. An investigation by The Independent in October found applicants said that they thought they were partnering with the Michigan investor but had signed agreements requiring them to relinquish all control and profits of the business.

The Independent obtained an agreement between a Missouri social-equity applicant who did not win a license and Canna Zoned. It stated that he must appear to have 100% ownership interest on the application but wouldn’t get revenue or profits from the business. 

After the business passed through all the state and municipal approvals, the contract stated the applicant would be required to sell his share of the business for $1 to the group or be held in breach of contract. 

Frankenstein Enemy’s attorney, Nadeem Harfouch, did not deny that the agreement described in The Independent article existed, in a Jan. 12 letter sent to the Division of Cannabis Regulation that was included as part of the appeal documents.

And Harfouch acknowledged that such an agreement wouldn’t be legally enforceable. 

“Even if the ‘agreement’ described in the news articles exists between licensee and the eligible owners, such an ‘agreement’ would not meet the requirements for transfer of ownership stated in the regulations and would be of no effect,” the January letter states. 

Harfouch states that The Independent’s Oct. 26 article quoted people who weren’t the license winners and their comments “have no bearing on the application that was submitted.” 

The letter also accused state regulators of “cowering” to the press. 

“The department is bowing to public pressure to revoke licensee’s license for arbitrary reasons completely disconnected from the statutory requirements,” it states.

Another company that used the strategy of flooding Missouri’s lottery with applications was an Arizona-based consulting firm called Cannabis Business Advisors. It was connected to more than 400 dispensary applicants, including six winners. All six of the group’s licenses were revoked. 

According to the Division of Cannabis Regulation, the “purported majority owners” of the eight revoked licenses lacked knowledge of agreements or operations of the license — and in some cases did not know the person who applied for the license on their behalf.

The Arizona group has submitted appeals for all six licenses, said Sara Gullickson, founder and CEO of the consulting firm. The cases are not yet available on the Administrative Hearing Commission portal. 

Gullickson told The Independent last month that the state decision was “severely unjust.”

The revocations, she said, “irreparably penalized the qualified social equity applicants who were awarded the life-changing opportunity to become successful cannabis entrepreneurs and provide generational wealth for their families.”

A woman displays a city-provided debit card she receives monthly through a trial program in Stockton, Calif., in 2019. That year, Stockton launched a basic income experiment that has set off a major expansion of such programs across the country. Research has shown basic income programs can boost employment and health, but GOP lawmakers in some states are pushing back on the concept of free cash (Rich Pedroncelli/The Associated Press).

South Dakota state Sen. John Wiik likes to think of himself as a lookout of sorts — keeping an eye on new laws, programs and ideas brewing across the states.

“I don’t bring a ton of legislation,” said Wiik, a Republican. “The main thing I like to do is try and stay ahead of trends and try and prevent bad things from coming into our state.”

This session, that meant sponsoring successful legislation banning cities or counties from creating basic income programs, which provide direct, regular cash payments to low-income residents to help alleviate poverty.

While Wiik isn’t aware of any local governments publicly floating the idea in South Dakota, he describes such programs as “bureaucrats trying to hand out checks to make sure that your party registration matches whoever signed the checks for the rest of your life.”

The economic gut punch of the pandemic and related assistance efforts such as the expanded child tax credit popularized the idea of directly handing cash to people in need. Advocates say the programs can be administered more efficiently than traditional government assistance programs, and research suggests they increase not only financial stability but also mental and physical health.

Still, Wiik and other Republicans argue handing out no-strings-attached cash disincentivizes work — and having fewer workers available is especially worrisome in a state with the nation’s second-lowest unemployment rate.

South Dakota is among at least six states where GOP officials have looked to ban basic income programs.

The basic income concept has been around for decades, but a 2019 experiment in Stockton, California, set off a major expansion. There, 125 individuals received $500 per month with no strings attached for two years. Independent researchers found the program improved financial stability and health, but concluded that the pandemic dampened those effects.

GOP lawmakers like Wiik fear that even experimental programs could set a dangerous precedent.

“What did Ronald Reagan say, ‘The closest thing to eternal life on this planet is a government program’?” Wiik said. “So, if you get people addicted to just getting a check from the government, it’s going to be really hard to take that away.”

The debate over basic income programs is likely to intensify as blue state lawmakers seek to expand pilot programs. Minnesota, for example, could become the nation’s first to fund a statewide program. But elected officials in red states are working to thwart such efforts — not only by fighting statewide efforts but also by preventing local communities from starting their own basic income programs.

Democratic governors in Arizona and Wisconsin recently vetoed Republican legislation banning basic income programs.

Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Harris County to block a pilot program that would provide $500 per month to 1,900 low-income people in the state’s largest county, home to Houston.

Paxton, a Republican, argued the program is illegal because it violates a state constitutional provision that says local governments cannot grant public money to individuals.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, a Democrat, called Paxton’s move “nothing more than an attack on local government and an attempt to make headlines.”

Meanwhile, several blue states are pushing to expand these programs.

Washington state lawmakers debated a statewide basic income bill during this year’s short session. And Minnesota lawmakers are debating whether to spend $100 million to roll out one of the nation’s first statewide pilot programs.

“We’re definitely seeing that shift from pilot to policy,” said Sukhi Samra, the director of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, which formed after the Stockton experiment.

So far, that organization has helped launch about 60 pilot programs across the country that will provide $250 million in unconditional aid, she said.

Despite pushback in some states, Samra said recent polling commissioned by the group shows broad support of basic income programs. And the programs have shown success in supplementing — not replacing — social safety net programs, she said.

The extra cash gives recipients freedom of choice. People can fix a flat tire, cover school supplies or celebrate a child’s birthday for the first time.

“There’s no social safety net program that allows you to do that.” she said. “ … This is an effective policy that helps our families, and this can radically change the way that we address poverty in this country.”

Basic income experiments

The proliferation of basic income projects has been closely studied by researchers.

Though many feared that free cash would dissuade people from working, that hasn’t been the case, said Sara Kimberlin, the executive director and senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Poverty and Inequality.

Stanford’s Basic Income Lab has tracked more than 150 basic income pilots across the country. Generally, those offer $500 or $1,000 per month over a short period.

“There isn’t anywhere in the United States where you can live off of $500 a month,” she said. “At the same time, $500 a month really makes a tremendous difference for someone who is living really close to the edge.”

Kimberlin said the research on basic income programs has so far been promising, though it’s unclear how long the benefits may persist once programs conclude. Still, she said, plenty of research shows how critical economic stability in childhood is to stability in adulthood — something both the basic income programs and the pandemic-era child tax credit can address.

Over the past five years, basic income experiments have varied across the country.

Last year, California launched the nation’s first state-funded pilot programs targeting former foster youth.

In Colorado, the Denver Basic Income Project aimed to help homeless individuals. After early successes, the Denver City Council awarded funding late last year to extend that program, which provides up to $1,000 per month to hundreds of participants.

A 2021 pilot launched in Cambridge, Massachusetts, provided $500 a month over 18 months to 130 single caregivers. Research from the University of Pennsylvania found the Cambridge program increased employment, the ability to cover a $400 emergency expense, and food and housing security among participants.

Children in participating families were more likely to enroll in Advanced Placement courses, earned higher grades and had reduced absenteeism.

“It was really reaffirming to hear that when families are not stressed out, they are able to actually do much better,” said Geeta Pradhan, president of the Cambridge Community Foundation, which worked on the project.

Pradhan said basic income programs are part of a national trend in “trust-based philanthropy,” which empowers individuals rather than imposing top-down solutions to fight poverty.

“There is something that I think it does to people’s sense of empowerment, a sense of agency, the freedom that you feel,” she said. “I think that there’s some very important aspects of humanity that are built into these programs.”

While the pilot concluded, the Cambridge City Council committed $22 million in federal pandemic aid toward a second round of funding. Now, nearly 2,000 families earning at or below 250% of the federal poverty level are receiving $500 monthly payments, said Sumbul Siddiqui, a city council member.

Siddiqui, a Democrat, pushed for the original pilot when she was mayor during the pandemic. While she said the program has proven successful, it’s unclear whether the city can find a sustainable source of funding to keep it going long term.

States look to expand pilots

Tomas Vargas Jr. was among the 125 people who benefited from the Stockton, California, basic income program that launched in 2019.

At the time, he heard plenty of criticism from people who said beneficiaries would blow their funds on drugs and alcohol or quit their jobs.

“Off of $500 a month, which amazed me,” said Vargas, who worked part time at UPS.

But he said the cash gave him breathing room. He had felt stuck at his job, but the extra money gave him the freedom to take time off to interview for better jobs.

Unlike other social service programs like food stamps, he didn’t have to worry about losing out if his income went up incrementally. The cash allowed him to be a better father, he said, as well as improved his confidence and mental health.

The experience prompted him to get into the nonprofit sector. Financially stable, he now works at Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

“The person I was five years ago is not the person that I am now,” he said.

Washington state Sen. Claire Wilson, a Democrat, said basic income is a proactive way to disrupt the status quo maintained by other anti-poverty efforts.

“I have a belief that our systems in our country have never been put in place to get people out of them,” she said. “They kept people right where they are.”

Wilson chairs the Human Services Committee, which considered a basic income bill this session that would have created a pilot program to offer 7,500 people a monthly amount equivalent to the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in their area.

The basic income bill didn’t progress during Washington’s short legislative session this year, but Wilson said lawmakers would reconsider the idea next year. While she champions the concept, she said there’s a lot of work to be done convincing skeptics.

In Minnesota, where lawmakers are considering a $100 million statewide basic income pilot program, some Republicans balked at the concept of free cash and its cost to taxpayers.

“Just the cost alone should be a concern,” Republican state Rep. Jon Koznick said during a committee meeting this month.

State Rep. Athena Hollins, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation, acknowledged the hefty request, but said backers would support a scaled-down version and “thought it was really important to get this conversation started.”

Much of the conversation in committee centered on local programs in cities such as Minneapolis and St. Paul. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, a Democrat, told lawmakers the city’s 2020 pilot saw “groundbreaking” results.

After scraping by for years, some families were able to put money into savings for the first time, he said. Families experienced less anxiety and depression. And the pilot disproved the “disparaging tropes” from critics about people living in poverty, the mayor said.

Carter told lawmakers that the complex issue of economic insecurity demands statewide solutions.

“I am well aware that the policy we’re proposing today is a departure from what we’re all used to,” he said. “In fact, that’s one of my favorite things about it.”

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 Small Area Fair Market Rents program will give voucher holders more housing options in areas like Hyde Park (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).

For generations, federal housing subsidies have provided a lifeline to families struggling to afford rent.

But the maximum amount families got for rent stayed the same regardless of which neighborhood best suited their needs — effectively segregating them into low-income areas.

Come this fall, the rent cap for a standard apartment will vary from one Kansas City ZIP code to the next.

Experts see the new program — Small Area Fair Market Rents, or SAFMR — as a game changer giving families access to neighborhoods they have been essentially shut out of. That could mean putting families closer to fresh produce and better schools and moving them out of high-crime areas.

But by raising the subsidies in some neighborhoods, the program will eat through federal dollars more quickly and make those Section 8 rent vouchers available to fewer families.

“This means that you’re not artificially stuck with a voucher that has a cap on its ability to pay,” said Brian Handshy, regional spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Raising the (fair market value) is not going to solve everything completely. But it certainly empowers the tenant to have more ability to push back on (money) constraints.”

Regional housing authorities across the metro have until the end of this year to roll out their ZIP code-based subsidies.

Why will Kansas City section 8 use SAFMR?

HUD will publish the subsidies for 2025 on Oct.1. Small area fair market rents will only affect new voucher users. Current leases will be upheld unless a landlord requests a rent increase.

Local housing agencies currently pay up to $1,098 for a one-bedroom and $1,258 for a two-bedroom.

That’s based on the federal government’s calculation of fair market rents set by the average rent of standard quality units — or nonluxury apartments that are more than two years old offering basic amenities.

Housing authorities will then make sure that the rent charged for an individual unit is reasonably priced in comparison to other units in the area. The tenant will pay about 30% of their income for rent and the housing authority pays the rest.

“Under the fair market rents, you have that lower benchmark that housing authorities set their payment with,” Handshy said. “That’s been a problem in these last few years with rising rental costs.”

Last year, Kansas City was chosen as one of 41 additional metro areas to participate in SAFMRs, because at least 20% of its standard rentals are in ZIP codes with fair market rents significantly higher than the citywide average.

“If we found that there’s only one or two ZIP codes where that was a challenge, then there’s really no reason to force that housing authority in that ZIP code to go to small area,” Handshy said. “But that’s not what we’re seeing for Kansas City.”

Edwin Lowndes is the executive director for the Housing Authority of Kansas City, which serves Kansas City proper, Raytown, Grandview and Gladstone. He said most of the region’s high-income neighborhoods are in the suburbs, where low-income residents often can’t afford to stay. Based on 2024 calculations from HUD, SAFMR would significantly increase voucher payouts in those areas.

In southern Johnson County, where the median household income is $109,363, the housing authority would pay up to $1,650 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,890 for a two-bedroom.

This would place voucher holders within the range to afford a standard apartment in the area, where the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,219 and the average rent for a two-bedroom is $1,521, according to Apartments.com. Luxury apartments, however, can go for rents twice as high.

Voucher holders could also move to downtown neighborhoods like Quality Hill and the Garment District, where a voucher for one bedroom would pay up to $1,500. A two-bedroom would max out at $1,720.

In areas where the rent average is lower than the region’s, the voucher amount will decrease. That would apply in the area stretching east of The Paseo extending to Eastwood Park, where the median household income is $28,493. In that area, rent subsidies would decrease to $970 for a one-bedroom and $1,110 for a two-bedroom apartment. About 12% of current voucher holders live in that area currently, Lowndes said.

What impact could SAFMR have on the market?

Income segregation traps poor residents in neighborhoods with fewer opportunities and resources.

Low-income housing often exists in food deserts or neighborhoods that have limited access to nutritious food. A 2021 study by the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that families facing housing instability are 40% more likely to face food insecurity.

Without access to healthy meals, low-income residents are at a higher risk for diet-related health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Schools in high-poverty neighborhoods have fewer instructors, less access to high-level coursework and lower levels of state and local funding. The Kansas City Public Schools system has a long history of segregation and inefficiency.

And without other vital resources — such as health care and job opportunities — low-income neighborhoods are more likely to be affected by crime than high-income neighborhoods.

Kansas City’s shift to SAFMR reflects a national trend in housing policy. HUD required 24 other metro areas to make the switch in 2018. The Housing Authority of Cook County, Illinois, was an early adopter in 2012. Voucher payments in Cook County were too low to allow poorer families to move into its more prosperous northern suburbs.

Switching to SAFMR allowed voucher payments to better reflect market rents in high-rent areas. Landlords then became more receptive to the program. And the number of units in high-income areas available to voucher holders rose by 14% in 5 years.

New payment standards for the housing voucher program could bring similar changes for the 17,586 people on Kansas City’s voucher wait list, Lowndes said.

Does SAFMR have any unintended consequences?

Candace Ladd, outreach coordinator for the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom, is optimistic about the new payment standard. Her organization provides free legal aid to renters and she believes SAFMR, combined with legislation preventing landlords from discriminating against voucher holders, will let tenants explore previously out-of-reach neighborhoods.

But she worries the smaller subsidies for apartments in poorer neighborhoods could cut off access to some housing. Voucher holders already struggle to find something they can afford even outside of high-income neighborhoods due to rising rents.

In Cook County, while the number of affordable apartments in high-income areas increased by 14% under SAFMR, the number of affordable units in low-income areas decreased by 14% in five years.

“If a tenant’s not able to find a home within a certain period of time, they actually lose that voucher and have to start all over,” she said. “So If a tenant isn’t able to rent in a certain area of town any longer because that voucher is too low, they’ll miss out on the voucher entirely.”

But Lowndes said that having more housing options should speed up the process for tenants.

“They can go to wherever they want … and there should be a higher probability that the rents will be approved,” he said.

Instead, Lowndes said HUD should watch out for the negative impact higher rent subsidies will have on the amount of vouchers the housing authority can give. HAKC gets $60 million a year to pay landlords, he said. They will not be getting any additional funding in 2025.

“There are conflicting aspects. We want families to move to high-opportunity neighborhoods but that means they cost more,” Lowndes said. “Higher rents mean more funds are paid out on behalf of the tenants, which means we can serve fewer people.”

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

Flora Farms Stateline dispensary at the Arkansas border has 50 employees and 14 registers. (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

April 20 is a day recognized globally for celebrating cannabis culture, but it’s also like the cannabis industry’s Black Friday. 

Dispensaries offer deals designed to inspire people to flood their stores to stock up. 

However on Saturday, dispensaries across the state using an inventory platform called Dutchie were hamstrung for hours by technical challenges, which caused many of their registers to go down or move at snail pace. 

It was the second year in a row that a 4/20 sales surge caused the system to crash.

“Imagine running a restaurant where you have one burner working and you normally have 20 stoves operating,” said Nick Rinella, CEO of Hippos Cannabis dispensaries. “We had one burner going.” 

Each Hippos location went from selling around 500 items per hour to less than 100 because of the issues the outages were causing, he said.

Dutchie is similar to the platforms major stores, such as Home Depot and Walmart, use to scan items at check out. However, Dutchie also has the special function of communicating with the state’s seed-to-sale tracking system called Metrc. 

It keeps the stores compliant with the state’s stringent tracking requirements of marijuana products. 

With recreational marijuana now legal, 4/20 looked much different in Missouri

Rinella said all three Hippos dispensaries in Springfield, Chesterfield and Columbia faced delays all day — causing them to lose an estimated $200,000. 

Mark Hendren, president of Flora Farms, also said his six stores across the state faced delays up to five hours. He’s not sure what kind of loss Flora Farms experienced, he said, because the company extended their deals through Monday to make it up to their customers.

“It seems to be working,” he said.

John Mueller, CEO of Greenlight cannabis company, said his 15 stores were not impacted, nor were any of the company’s 32 stores across the country. Greenlight stores experienced some outages last year, he said, so they were expecting the same this year. 

“We prepared and trained for the outage that never came,” Mueller said. “But I’ve heard from a number of my peers that they had outages and somehow we did not.”

Dispensaries that are on certain servers faced more difficulties, Rinella said, but it’s the luck of the draw which servers companies are put on. Companies can’t pay more to get on the “good server,” he said.

Missouri was not alone. Dispensaries across the country experienced delays on Dutchie.

“This year’s 4/20 was a record setting day for the majority of Dutchie powered dispensaries,” Chris Ostrowski, chief technology officer of Dutchie, said in a statement emailed to The Independent. 

Ostowski said the systems powered more than two million transactions, representing $165 Million dollars in retail commerce — which was a 50% increase from last year’s 4/20. 

“While Dutchie and our partners prepared extensively for this year’s 4/20, a group of customers local to a specific instance of our POS system experienced serious issues that impacted their ability to transact,” Ostrowski said. 

The difficulties impacted less than 20% of Dutchie customers, he said.

Rinella said Dutchie’s statement just made the incident sting even more. 

“Hearing that is just painful to me,” Rinella said. “So they had a 50% increase. That means I probably would have had a 50% increase had they not jacked my entire system for the day.”

It’s unclear if Missouri’s cannabis industry had record-breaking sales this past weekend. April’s sales numbers won’t be available on the state’s website until early May.

However, Rinella said the sales were likely record-breaking, which is why the bandwidth on Dutchie’s server couldn’t handle the volume that was coming through. 

Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the Division of Cannabis Regulation, said the Dutchie malfunctions did not interfere with the division’s tracking operations. 

“While licensees are permitted to use these [point of sale] systems, it is their responsibility to ensure each day’s transactions and inventory are recorded accurately in the statewide track and trace system,” Cox said, “no matter what happens with the POS system.”  

Rinella said the staff and customers were very understanding, and hopes any new customers that came to the stores on 4/20 aren’t discouraged to come back. 

“We kind of want to do more of an apology,” he said. “Obviously, this wasn’t something that we could control, but we do want to be able to make sure that customers get the greatest experience they can possibly get when coming to a dispensary.”

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks at a press conference in the Missouri House Lounge, flanked by House Speaker Dean Plocher, left, and state Rep. Justin Sparks (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey launched an investigation into four companies Wednesday as part of an effort to crack down on intoxicating hemp products.

The problem, according to Bailey, is the products in question — such Delta-8 edibles and vape pens — are not clearly labeled to indicate that they’ll get you high.

“When purchasing products, Missourians have a right to know if they will be subject to serious and potentially dangerous side effects,” Bailey stated in his press release, “like psychotic episodes, severe confusion, hallucinations and other life-threatening problems.” 

Intoxicating hemp products are completely unregulated but can still be sold in places like bars and gas stations — because hemp is federally legal. 

However, everyone from the companies making these products to stores selling them to elected officials want to see age restrictions put in place by the state, along with label and testing requirements.

Two Republican lawmakers have proposed legislation to do that, but the bills would also likely ban a majority of the intoxicating hemp products currently on the market — putting hundreds of companies out of business. 

The large divide in how regulations should happen has essentially tanked the bills’ chances of making it to the governor’s desk.  

Bailey seems to be joining the push to regulate the products. However, it’s unclear exactly who he’s targeting.

Bailey issued a “civil investigative demand,” which are essentially subpoenas, to CBD Kratom Connect LLC of St. Louis, a company that several leaders in the hemp industry say they’ve never heard of and which has virtually no online presence indicating it is operating in Missouri. 

Some wonder if Bailey meant to target CBD Kratom, which is one of the largest intoxicating hemp companies in the state and country. 

When asked for clarification, Madeline Sieren, spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s office, said: “Unfortunately because the investigations are ongoing, I cannot comment beyond what is written in the CIDs.”

Also based in St. Louis, CBD Kratom has over 60 retail locations throughout Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis. And it has no connection to CBD Kratom Connect, the company’s owner David Palatnik told The Independent Thursday. 

During hearings regarding the proposed legislation, Palatnik testified in support of banning products that look like candy and are attractive to children — the exact issue Bailey is hoping to address by the investigations. 

“It’s an issue in the industry that some people sell child-looking packaging that is also fraudulent and is also a violation of federal laws,” Palatnik said. “So we’d agree with the attorney general on that front.”

His company ensures all its products have transparent labeling, he said. Palatnik says he opposed the legislation proposed in the Missouri General Assembly because of the harmful impact it would have on hemp businesses.

On Wednesday, Bailey also ordered an investigation into American Shaman, one of the largest intoxicating hemp companies in the state and country. 

Vince Sanders, owner of American Shaman, told The Independent Thursday that his company makes gummies and chocolates made with hemp-derived THC, but they’re sold in child-proof containers, similar to what is required by state law for marijuana products.

“They all say ‘21-plus,’” Sanders said. “If you’re in one of our stores, you actually have to sign a document that says you understand that these are psychoactive.”

Sanders has also been a vocal and influential opponent to the proposed legislation.

Two individuals also received investigation notices from Bailey: Cara Buchanan with Smoke Smart LLC in St. Louis and Tariq Zeiadeh with Vape Society Supplies in Columbia. 

An employee at the Smoke Smart location in St. Peters said Buchanan no longer owns the business or lives in Missouri, and the current owners do not operate as Smoke Smart LLC. Zeidadeh has not responded to a request for comment.

In his press release, Bailey states that he’s received reports that businesses were “potentially violating the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, which grants Missourians the right to a marketplace free from fraudulent or deceptive business practices.”

Bailey also pointed to the six elementary-age children in St. Louis County who became sick and intoxicated at school after reportedly ingesting Delta-8 products that were packaged as “Nerds Rope Bites and Mad Monkey Sour Strawberry Premium Gummies.”

The attorney general’s office didn’t respond to The Independent’s question on whether any of the four companies under investigation made the products in the St. Louis County incident.

The great divide

Among the biggest supporters of the proposed legislation are leaders of the marijuana industry. The intoxicating hemp industry poses a major threat to marijuana businesses. 

Hemp is often known for being the part of the cannabis plant that doesn’t get people high. It’s full of CBD, a nonpyschoactive cannabinoid that helps people relax and often found in massage oils and sleep aids.

However, hemp was taken off the controlled substance list in 2018 by the last U.S. Agriculture Improvement Act, more commonly known as the farm bill. Since then, people have found numerous ways to make intoxicating products from hemp — largely through a chemical process of converting CBD to THC. The market for things like Delta-8 drinks and edibles is one of the fastest growing markets in the country.

Because of the farm bill, there’s no state or federal law saying teenagers or children can’t buy them or stores can’t sell them to minors — though some stores and vendors, including American Shaman and CBD Kratom, have taken it upon themselves to impose age restrictions of 21 and up. 

Mitch Meyers, partner at BeLeaf Medical, said at a recent industry summit that the intent of the bill was to put the hemp-derived products under the strict packaging and other requirements that marijuana companies must go through. 

“So that’s why we’re just in complete amazement that this stuff just can be out there without any of these checks and balances,” Meyers said.

The Missouri Hemp Trade Association has continuously advocated for measures such as prohibiting sales to minors and mandating clear user instructions and rigorous product testing.

The big problem the hemp industry has with the legislation is that it would place these products under the same constitutional framework and rules that the marijuana industry must abide by — including the mandate that products are only sold at licensed marijuana dispensaries regulated by the cannabis division within the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. 

There are no new marijuana facility licenses available currently, so there would be no way for the current hemp storefronts to sell these products.

Last week, Republican state Rep. Barry Hovis of Whitewater offered a different draft of the House legislation — backed by the hemp industry — that would allow the Division of Cannabis Regulation to issue licenses to companies that sell intoxicating hemp products, as well as oversee age restrictions and labeling requirements. 

Under Hovis’ proposal, the licensees would not come under other marijuana rules, which includes a ban on the “chemical conversion” process used to create the majority of hemp-derived THC products. The state rules also require that THC may only come from cannabis cultivated by a Missouri-licensed cultivation facility. Most hemp-derived THC is currently brought in from other states.

Few products currently on the market would meet these requirements. 

Hovis’ proposal failed, largely because the division said the licensing fee he proposed wouldn’t produce enough revenue to cover the division’s costs. 

“There’s something we need to do because of the unregulated market that we have right now,” Hovis said. “I do feel that for the safety of children… this would be a good move.”

State Sen. Karla May, a Democrat from St. Louis, said she plans on offering an amendment to Republican Sen. Nick Schroer’s bill to regulate these products, which will likely be similar to Hovis’ proposal. May said the license fees in her proposal will be higher.

Schroer’s bill could be brought up on the Senate floor for debate any time, May said, and that’s when she’d offer her proposal. 

“My only concern is that we get an independent structure for these businesses,” May said, “and that they don’t have to come up under marijuana. Because the only license they will be given is a microbusiness license and that is not fair to them.”

Nicholas Costanzo, 31, works at the ice cream counter at the Golden Scoop in Overland Park, Kan. While the nonprofit shop could have sought permission to pay its workers with intellectual and developmental disabilities below the federal minimum wage of $7.25, everyone is paid at least $15 per hour. Some states are moving to end subminimum wage pay (Kevin Hardy/Stateline).

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — High-fives, fist-bumps and hugs come with the ice cream at the Golden Scoop.

Tucked into a shopping center in suburban Kansas City, the shop employs 15 people with developmental disabilities. While customers first come for the sweet treats, many are drawn in by the Golden Scoop’s mission and friendly environment.

“It just brings you so much joy,” said Lindsay Krumbholz, who opened the shop with her sister in 2021. “We’ve even had customers that come in and say, ‘I’ve had a bad day, I just had to come to the Golden Scoop.’”

The nonprofit shop could have sought federal approval to pay workers below the $7.25 federal minimum wage. But each of the store’s “Super Scoopers” earns at least $15 per hour plus tips.

They include 32-year-old Jack Murphy, whom customers know by his nickname of “Mayor.” He enjoys connecting with them, the managers and the job coaches who support him during his shifts.

“I love coming to work,” he said. “If I wasn’t working, I would be crying.”

Everything at the Golden Scoop was designed to set workers up for success: The menu has been pared down for simplicity. Employees pre-scoop and package the ice cream to streamline service. Binders with big pictures show step-by-step directions on mixing batches of ice cream. And baked goods are prepared elsewhere.

“They provide customized employment. They’re providing the right accommodations for individuals that work there in order to succeed,” Sara Hart Weir, executive director of the Kansas Council on Developmental Disabilities, said of the shop’s managers.

Weir, who also serves on the board of the Golden Scoop, hopes to see more Kansas employers follow the ice cream shop’s model after a state law this year provided grant money for organizations to pay workers with disabilities above minimum wage. The law, for the first time, also made a special tax credit available only to employers paying at least minimum wage.

Since 1938, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, federal law has allowed some employers to pay people considered less productive because of a physical or mental disability well below the federal minimum wage. While the law was originally intended to provide opportunities for those with little access to work, policymakers in a growing number of states are trying to move away from the practice.

With federal authorization, the employers pay pennies or a few dollars per hour in “sheltered workshops” that contract with companies and hire workers to perform menial tasks such as shredding paper, attaching product labels or packaging consumer goods in group settings that are segregated from mainstream employees.

While most workers have intellectual disabilities that can include cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, federal regulations list blindness, alcoholism and drug addiction as qualifying disabilities for lower pay.

At least 16 states, not including Missouri, have eliminated the subminimum wage, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Others, including Kansas and Minnesota, have agreed on a middle ground: creating funds to help employers make the change themselves.

The move comes at a time of increased scrutiny of Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal law authorizing the lower pay, and follows decades of efforts to fully integrate people with developmental disabilities into their communities.

Congress has failed multiple times to ban the practice: A bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers of Congress introduced such legislation last year, but it has not advanced. It followed the U.S. Department of Labor announcement of a “comprehensive review” of the federal program. In a 2020 report, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found “persistent failures in regulation and oversight” of employers by the federal Labor and Justice departments.

While many disability advocates see moving away from subminimum wage as a basic issue of fairness, others worry that raising pay could affect social service benefits for disabled workers or put some operations employing disabled workers out of business altogether.

A report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office last year found about 120,000 workers were employed under the program, with half earning less than $3.50 an hour.

But the program’s use has been declining for years, as more disabled employees have moved away from sheltered workshops into mainstream work settings such as the Golden Scoop.

In 2010, more than 3,100 employers across the country participated in the federal subminimum wage program. By 2019, that number had dropped by nearly half, with 1,567 employers participating, according to the GAO.

“What this program has become over the decades is a very niche program for individuals with significant intellectual disabilities and mental health issues,” said Kit Brewer, executive director of Project CU, a sheltered workshop in St. Louis that employs about 100 people with developmental disabilities.

Brewer said many workers don’t have the capacity to produce at the rate needed to compete in mainstream work environments, meaning subminimum wage work might be their only option. And, he said, the economics just don’t bear higher pay. Like other workshops, Project CU competes with for-profit companies.

A large share of those who work on shrink-wrapping, labeling and packaging materials at his facility, Brewer said, would struggle with mainstream employment — even those who have the right skill sets.

“They don’t have the comfort level, because of their anxiety, because of their disability, possibly because of some of their behavioral needs,” he said. “And throwing money at a changeover doesn’t fix any of that.”

‘Everything is about choice’

In Minnesota, disability advocates have been working for years to phase out the subminimum wage. Last year, lawmakers embraced most of the recommendations from a state task force. In an omnibus spending bill, they provided funds for technical assistance, case management and training for those employers transitioning to the minimum wage.

Last week, a House committee approved a bill that would abolish the subminimum wage.

Sheltered workshops are as antiquated as the state institutions that formerly housed many people with disabilities, argued Jillian Nelson, a member of the task force and the community resource and policy advocate at the Autism Society of Minnesota.

“We would never do that now,” she said. “We saw when we brought people out of institutions, they thrive. When we brought people out of institutions, our communities became more diverse. … And this is very much the same thing.”

Nelson, who has autism, said she struggled for years with mainstream employment. She said she was not attuned to office politics and bounced around among entry-level jobs, but then found an employer that supported her.

“It’s changed my sense of self-worth. It’s changed my value of myself,” she said. “It’s hard to want more for your life when you’re making $4 an hour. It’s hard to see value in yourself when you’re being told you’re worth $3 an hour.”

But ending the subminimum wage could remove options for some families by causing the closure of workshops, said Minnesota Republican state Sen. Jim Abeler.

“For me, everything is about choice,” said Abeler, who opposes abolishing the subminimum wage. “Nobody should be trapped, and so if they want to be independent, we should try to support them in that.”

Abeler said he supports efforts to help workers with disabilities move to competitive employment — if they choose. But, he said, that’s not an option for everyone.

Of the 3,200 Minnesotans who work for subminimum wages, he said, a few hundred may be able to find mainstream work.

“So at least 2,500 people would find themselves sitting at home, trying to work on a puzzle or watch TV or something,” he said.

Impacts of closures

In the fall of 2021, Colleen Stuart said a change in Pennsylvania state reimbursement rates for job coaching services pushed her to close a sheltered workshop where rural workers had prepared mailings and packaged goods for 25 years.

Employees lost their friendships and paychecks, but the closure also rippled through their families: Some parents said they would need to quit their jobs to take care of their newly unemployed adult children.

“The individuals said, ‘Colleen, you’re breaking up our family,’” she said. “It broke my heart.”

Stuart is the president of the national Coalition for the Preservation of Employment Choice, which advocates for the federal program allowing employers to pay below minimum wage.

She’s also the chief executive of Venango Training and Development Center, which provides mental health and employment services in Northwest Pennsylvania.

While her training center’s 2021 closure of a sheltered workshop was not related to wage issues, she said its effects show what could happen to employees of other workshops if they’re forced to pay above minimum wage.

“To this day, there’s one person out of all the individuals that got employment,” she said. “The rest still don’t have services and are sitting at home. And that is our biggest concern.”

Similar concerns this January helped sink Utah legislation that would have abolished the subminimum wage, said Nate Crippes, the public affairs supervising attorney at the Disability Law Center of Utah. Utah’s 45-day legislative session made it hard to have a substantive debate on the issue, he said.

“I think it needs to be a longer discussion than just, ‘Oh, these places would go out of business and people would have nowhere to go,’” he said. “Because I don’t think that would happen.”

Crippes said day programs and other services for those with disabilities will persist even if sheltered workshops are required to pay minimum wage.

“My struggle is that our minimum wage is pretty low and it is not a living wage to begin with,” he said. “Just getting people to $7.25 shouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.”

Georgia state Rep. Scott Hilton views the issue through the lens of his 14-year-old son, who has Down syndrome.

“My goal for my child is for him to be a taxpayer and in return be a net positive, a net benefit back to that system that’s paid so much into his life to make him a happy, healthy, productive citizen,” he said.

Hilton, a Republican, co-sponsored a bill this session that would force the state’s eight remaining workshops to pay the federal minimum wage. The bill was approved by the state House and is pending in the state Senate.

“Work brings joy to a lot of us,” Hilton said. “And that’s what we’d want for any of our kids — meaningful work and a fair wage.”

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 IRS estimates that 19 million taxpayers are eligible to use a new Direct File program in advance of the April 15 tax filing deadline (Phillip Rubino/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — Many U.S. taxpayers in a dozen states for the first time can electronically file their federal returns directly to the Internal Revenue Service for free — but critics insist the new federal benefit is not needed and will even harm both users and states.

More than 50,000 taxpayers in Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming have so far used the new online IRS Direct File program this tax season, according to the agency.

The free alternative to potentially costly private tax filing software rolled out in mid-March for the 2023 filing season. It is only available for those with W-2 income or simple credits and deductions, like the child tax credit or student loan interest.

The IRS estimates that 19 million taxpayers are eligible to use the new program in advance of the April 15 tax filing deadline.

But opponents argue the government Direct File program is a waste of resources and will snag business from professional tax preparers. They say it will confuse taxpayers who are accustomed to automatically filing their federal and state returns together through private software.

Some states also claim it will cost them revenue and increase what they have to spend on collections from taxpayers who owe money to their states.

The IRS program is purposefully small for now. The agency said in a launch-day release that it’s following “best practices for launching a new technology platform by starting small, making sure it works and then building from there.”

The pilot program “is almost tailor-made for students and young people with simple tax situations,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in late March, encouraging people to visit the new directfile.irs.gov.

The White House is celebrating the launch as a win for President Joe Biden, who in 2022 along with a Democratic-led Congress authorized its funding to jumpstart the program as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The progressive Economic Security Project estimates that if the program scales up, it could eventually save the average taxpayer up to $160 annually in tax prep costs. Assuming broad public adoption, that could add up to Americans saving $11 billion a year in filing fees and time.

The organization also estimates low-income households could gain up to $12 billion in unclaimed federal tax credits, and that the IRS would see a return on investment of more than $100 per federal dollar spent on the program due to less paperwork and fewer errors.

Roxy Caines, director of the Get It Back campaign, said Direct File could increase tax participation, particularly for low-income households.

“Having an accessible way to file taxes is really important because of the high cost of tax preparation as well as the arduous process. It’s often viewed as intimidating,” said Caines, who runs the financial literacy and tax credit advocacy campaign by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

‘Unnecessary and unconstitutional’

But not everyone is on board.

When Werfel appeared in February before the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, Republican Chair Jason Smith of Missouri described the program as a “scheme the American people didn’t ask for.”

In January, 13 Republican attorneys general sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen opposing “the unnecessary and unconstitutional efforts to empower the Internal Revenue Service with the expansive authority to prepare and file tax returns for all taxpayers.”

“American taxpayers do not want to invite the proverbial fox into the hen house,” wrote the officials, led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen.

Attorneys general from Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia co-signed it.

The officials wrote that a program for taxpayers to directly file with the IRS at no cost “needlessly threatens” the livelihoods of tax preparers.

“Every year, tens of millions of taxpayers file their taxes for free with help from existing programs or online software. Additionally, millions of Americans work with small businesses in our states to file their taxes at an affordable cost, including both independent tax preparation services and local accountants. They choose to do so because they want an advocate in their corner who will represent their interests against the IRS bureaucracy,” they wrote.

The IRS did not respond to a request for comment about the criticism.

Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union, a fiscally conservative organization that advocates for simplifying the tax code, told States Newsroom the project has been “dramatically oversold” and is being piloted in “some very easy places,” including states that don’t collect their own income tax.

Money for the IRS would be better spent on improving customer service, he argues.

“Every single penny they can scrounge up from other places needs to be poured into that effort, right? Now, in our opinion, designing a portal for direct file that is underpowered and is competing with other services is just not a priority,” he said, referring to the 22-year “Free File” arrangement the IRS has had with select private companies.

So what about Free File?

Today, the vast majority of taxpayers file electronically, according to IRS data. Of the 160 million individual federal tax returns that the IRS processed in 2022, 150.6 million, or 94%, were e-filed. Of those, just under 3.3 million used what’s been criticized as an opaque and complicated electronic Free File program.

Free File dates back to the early 2000s, when the idea of e-filing was just budding, and the government had no such program in place.

President George W. Bush’s administration was exploring the possibility of a free direct file portal through the IRS website.

At the time the agency was struggling after failed modernization efforts, and a public-private partnership with the burgeoning tax preparation software companies became an appealing option.

“The tax companies just said, ‘Well, we got a deal for you,’” recalls Nina Olson, who served as the National Taxpayer Advocate for the IRS from 2001 to 2019.

“And at that time, I was very suspect of the deal. I said at the time that they’re going to find themselves in 20 years, that you know, tax companies would pull out and you would have a patchwork of services available to people,” Olson, who now runs the nonprofit Center for Taxpayer Rights, said in an interview with States Newsroom.

What began in 2002 was an agreement between the IRS and a group of  private tax prep software companies, under the name Free File Alliance, to offer free federal tax returns to those under a certain income threshold. In 2023, that annual earnings threshold was $79,000 or less.

Taxpayers who earn above that income threshold have the option to complete their federal returns for free, unguided, using fillable PDF tax forms.

The just over two-decade-old program has been scrutinized for not reaching the taxpayers who most need a free filing option and for not providing a better user experience.

A 2019 Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report described the program as “fraught with complexity and confusion.”

The inspector general found that in 2018 only 2.5 million of the 104 million taxpayers eligible for Free File actually used it.

About 34.5 million of those Free File-eligible taxpayers used one of the alliance companies’ commercial software options, and a likely 14 million of them paid to e-file their federal returns, the report found.

The low number of Free File users likely was because an estimated 9 million eligible taxpayers were unaware that they had to access the Free File software options via the IRS website.

Those who, for example, searched the web and found one of the IRS partner companies’ websites were “not guaranteed a free return filing,” and subsequently susceptible to advertising for potentially costly add-ons like “audit defense,” the report found.

Investigative reporting in 2019 by ProPublica revealed deliberate tactics to cloud the Free File program by Intuit, maker of TurboTax, one of the Free File Alliance’s largest partners.

Terms between the IRS and Free File Alliance initially included a commitment from the agency to not develop its own free online filing program. In exchange, the partner companies agreed to limit advertising and add-on solicitation on their free file web pages.

In 2019 the IRS dropped the prohibition on developing its own program. Limits on company marketing and solicitation for add-on products continued as part of the agreement — though Intuit would eventually have to pay for breaking its commitment.

H&R Block and Intuit respectively left the Free File Alliance in 2020 and 2021. Together they served about 70% of eligible Free File taxpayers in 2019, according to a 2022 Government Accountability Office report that recommended the IRS develop additional options for taxpayers to file for free.

Acknowledging the opposing viewpoints on whether the IRS should create, or could handle, its own program, the report concluded the agency “should work to manage the risk of taxpayers having fewer options to electronically file their federal taxes for free.”

In 2022, Intuit settled with attorneys general from across the U.S., agreeing to pay $141 million to Intuit TurboTax customers who ended up buying services that should have been free to them.

Today there are eight companies in the Free File Alliance, with differing income and tax situation criteria. All are listed on the IRS website.

Olson said she doesn’t view the IRS Direct File pilot as a competitor to the already existing Free File partnership. Rather, it’s “one more component of a robust tax online taxpayer account,” she said.

“This is what countries do around the world. We’re so far behind,” Olson said. “There’s a response to folks who say ‘The government doesn’t need to do this’ or ‘There’s no interest in this product.’ Regardless of whether there’s interest in the product, it’s a government obligation.”

Congressional mandate

Among the tens of billions of dollars Congress authorized for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act, $15 million was earmarked for exploring the possibility of an IRS-run direct federal tax filing system.

Specifically Congress mandated the agency to use the money to survey taxpayers’ wants and needs, obtain a third-party opinion, and report back to lawmakers on the costs to create and run such a program.

In its third-party review, the left-leaning think tank New America assessed that a successful IRS-run Direct File program “depends critically” on whether the agency prioritizes the project and begins with limited testing before building up.

The organization estimated that development, staffing, infrastructure and customer service for a scaled-up platform would cost the IRS annually anywhere from $22 million to $47 million if 1 million taxpayers use a Direct File program, and up to $126 million to $213 million in the event that 25 million taxpayers jump on board.

New America also recommended the IRS consider the importance of customer service, data privacy and taxpayers’ habits of filing federal and state returns all on one platform — one of the main concerns from critics.

Ayushi Roy, deputy director of New America’s New Practice Lab, which led the review, told States Newsroom she’s been talking to taxpayers using the Direct File pilot and “broadly speaking, we’re finding that filers are really landing on either ‘Wow,’ or ‘it didn’t include me for now.’”

The group will conduct its own analysis of the IRS trial run, particularly focusing on the experience for Spanish-speaking filers.

As for taxpayer interest, the IRS found that 72% of survey respondents said they were “very interested” or “somewhat interested” in a free IRS-provided tool to prepare and file federal taxes.

The survey conducted in 2022 by MITRE, a nonprofit that runs federally funded research and development centers, also found that a top reason cited by 46% of those interested is that they would rather give their financial data to the IRS than to a third party.

An October 2023 report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration took issue with the design of the survey, warning that the interest level may be “overstated” because the survey did not include a “neutral” option for respondents to choose.

However, the largely Democrat- and progressive-aligned international polling firm GQR found in late January through early February that between 92% and 95% of taxpayers across political ideologies and income levels in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New York and Texas support a free online IRS filing service.

Several state governments already offer free public electronic filing for state income tax returns, including Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, which offer the service regardless of income level. Some states, like California and Iowa, have income thresholds for free filing.

States bite back

Despite the adoption of free public filing in some states, 21 state auditors, comptrollers and treasurers from 18 states sent a letter on March 25 to Yellen and Werfel expressing concern about the “serious harm” the IRS Direct File program will cause and urging them to “shut down” the service.

“Taxpayers are not the only parties who will suffer from Direct File. States will suffer too. States will lose out on payments from Direct File taxpayers who owe state taxes but incorrectly assume that Direct File covers federal and state filings.

“States will then have to increase resources dedicated to collection efforts,” wrote the officials from Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

According to the Treasury Department, taxpayers using the IRS Direct File pilot in Arizona, California, Massachusetts or New York are automatically directed to their state-supported tax filing websites. Those in Washington are sent to that state’s page to claim the Working Families Tax Credit.

The IRS could not provide a more specific figure of how many taxpayers have so far used Direct File, and its latest estimate stands at 50,000. Advocates say they expect to learn updated numbers as soon as a week after federal taxes are due on April 15.

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

The Royals and the Chiefs had everything.

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

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

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

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

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

‘No’ votes are easier than ‘yes’ votes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big price tag, shrinking team leverage for a stadium tax

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translating this momentum into future political movements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A customer shops for food at a grocery store on March 12, 2024 in San Rafael, California. High prices at the grocery store and consumers’ memories of their pre-pandemic budgets may be playing a role in how Americans feel about their finances as recession fears recede (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images).

Americans are still worried about their financial stability even as their recession fears lessen. High prices at the grocery store and consumers’ memories of their pre-pandemic budgets may be playing a role. Here’s what financial and economic experts have to say about what last week’s economic indicators tell us about people’s perception of the economy.

What is driving consumer confidence?

The Consumer Confidence Index, released by the business nonprofit and research organization the Conference Board, is a survey indicating how optimistic or pessimistic consumers feel about their financial well-being and the economy.

The Consumer Confidence Index fell slightly in March from 104.8 to 104.7, well below some economist expectations of 106.5. Although consumers’ perception of the likelihood of a recession fell this month, consumers were less confident about their family’s financial situation in the next six months. The percentage of consumers who expected their incomes to fall rose from 11.9% in February to 13.8% in March.

Elizabeth Pancotti, director of special initiatives for the Roosevelt Institute, said that consumers’ experience of the economy and their financial situation may come down to crises they’re feeling that may not show up at a macro level but may strike their budgets particularly hard.

“When egg prices finally come down and chicken prices finally come down, but orange juice is high because of some random citrus greening disease or some other shocking food item, your total grocery bill doesn’t come down and that really highlights it,” she said.  “There’s one crisis after another at a micro level, which I think is really why we’re not seeing that divergence between overall economic strength and at a very micro level, the feelings of average consumers.”

Pancotti acknowledged that housing is also one of the highest expenses for consumers right now, and those prices aren’t showing as much movement as other areas of consumers’ budgets.

“For most families, it is the largest purchase they make every month,” she said.

Why isn’t consumer sentiment higher?

Consumer sentiment, a smaller survey conducted by the University of Michigan, also gauges people’s sense of the economy overall, the labor market, and how they see inflation. On Thursday, U.S. consumer sentiment jumped to 79.4 from 76.9 in February and 62 a year earlier, making this its highest level since July 2021.

Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in the report that this number is an indication that consumers believe the economy is “holding steady.”

“As the election season progresses and debates over economic policy become more salient for consumers, their outlook for the economy could become more volatile in the months ahead,” she added.”

Kevin Kliesen, business economist and research officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said consumer confidence and consumer sentiment are still far below pre-pandemic levels and that it’s a puzzle as to why when the economy has “been growing fairly strongly” in the past year and a half. But like Pancotti, he added that high prices at the store compared to pre-pandemic prices may be playing a role in those measures.

“If you’re like me, you look at something, and you go, ‘Oh my gosh. I remember when it was so much less before the pandemic.’ So I think that calls into question, probably, a lot of people’s perceptions of the overall state of the economy and importantly their consumer finances,” he said.

What can we expect from inflation and the Fed?

As the Federal Reserve looks to its favorite inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures price index, economists are watching the PCE closely for signs the Fed will cut rates in the coming months. This policy change is expected to have effects on the housing market as well as the growth of businesses.

The PCE rose 0.3% from January to February and 2.5% over the past year, according to the  Bureau of Economic Analysis’s Friday release. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell responded to the news when he spoke at the San Francisco Fed and said the numbers were “in line with expectations” but not as reassuring as the numbers Fed officials saw last year.

Despite this reception from Powell, some financial experts believe inflation will ease up soon. Cristian Tiu, associate professor of finance at the University at Buffalo, said that although the economy is adding jobs, he doesn’t believe the quality of those jobs is high enough to sustain this price growth for much longer.

“Prices basically on consumer goods can’t be driven up forever just by the very top of the wage distribution. The rest of the wage distribution actually looks pretty modest. So I don’t think these price increases can actually be sustained,” Tiu said.

For this reason, he doesn’t think the Fed should continue to put brakes on the economy through restrictive monetary policy. Tiu added that he sees inflation as driven partly by corporate profit-seeking, with companies taking advantage of inflation to continue to keep prices higher than they can justify for the American consumer.

Amy Moore, (right) director of the Missouri Division of Cannabis Regulation, talks with attendees at the National Cannabis Industry Association's summit on March 28, 2024 in St. Louis (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

Proposed legislation to regulate intoxicating hemp products could potentially ban the majority of the Delta-8 drinks and edibles on the market in Missouri today, the state’s top marijuana regulator told an industry meeting late last week in St. Louis. 

“This is really an unanswered question,” said Amy Moore, director of the Missouri Division of Cannabis Regulation.

Moore was among a panel of speakers at the National Cannabis Industry Association’s Missouri Stakeholder Summit who discussed legislation in the state House and Senate that would create the “Intoxicating Cannabinoid Control Act.”

Currently, Delta-8 THC products — including a large variety of drinks that are popular at bars and available at gas stations throughout the state — can be sold in Missouri stores because the intoxicating ingredient is derived from hemp, not marijuana.

Hemp is federally legal.

There’s no state or federal law saying teenagers or children can’t buy them or stores can’t sell them to minors — though some stores and vendors have taken it upon themselves to impose age restrictions of 21 and up. 

The legislation would place these products under the same constitutional framework and rules that the marijuana industry must abide by — including an age restriction, labeling and testing requirements and a mandate that products are only sold at licensed dispensaries regulated by the cannabis division within the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. 

However, the state’s rules also currently ban the “chemical conversion” process used to create the majority of hemp-derived THC products. 

When asked how many hemp-derived THC products would still be left on Missouri shelves if the legislation passed and this rule was enforced, Moore said the department would have to take a hard look at the “intent” of the law.

“Everyone knows the rules are part of our regulatory framework,” Moore said in an interview with The Independent after the summit. “Does that indicate intent that chemical conversion, at least, remain prohibited?”

Or, she said, it could also be the law’s intent to simply put these products under the same guidelines marijuana products follow, and the state would need to adapt its rules to be able to keep them on the market.  

“We don’t really have a position right now about what that would mean in the future,” she said.

Three weeks ago, Krey Distributing Company, the wholesale company for Anheuser Busch, released hemp-derived Delta-9 THC drinks, and it’s already selling them to nearly 120 bars, liquor stores and convenience across the state. 

The products aren’t made using a chemical conversion process, so they wouldn’t be banned if the legislation goes into effect. But sales would definitely plummet if they could only be sold in dispensaries, said Steven Busch, the company’s president. 

“This legislation would really hurt our business,” Busch said. “It would also limit the business our customers are doing already, and it would also limit consumer choice by forcing consumers to go into a dispensary to buy these products.”

Pushback from both sides

Hemp is often known for being the part of the cannabis plant that doesn’t get people high. 

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

But much has changed since hemp was taken off the controlled substance list in 2018 by the last U.S. Agriculture Improvement Act, more commonly known as the farm bill. 

Now state regulators can barely keep up with the constantly evolving ways that people have found to make intoxicating products from hemp — largely through a chemical process of converting CBD to THC. The market for things like Delta-8 drinks and edibles is one of the fastest growing markets in the country. 

The fact that it is legal federally was the basis for St. Louis Democratic Sen. Karla May’s opposition to a bill sponsored by state Sen. Nick Schroer, a Republican from Defiance. 

“The feds are not stopping the sale of this product,” May said, during a Senate floor debate last week. “What you’re saying is we need to shut down all the businesses that are currently selling this product and making revenue from this product, and then transfer them to all of the people that have gotten marijuana licenses.” 

While May was the most vocal critic in the Senate last week, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have pushed back on the idea of forcing the hemp industry under the umbrella of DHSS, saying that would allow the “marijuana monopoly” to take over this market given the limited number of licenses for dispensaries available.

After voters passed a constitutional amendment allowing medical marijuana in 2018, competition for licenses became fierce when the state capped the number of applications it would approve — initially issuing 338 licenses to sell, grow and process marijuana.

Widespread reports of irregularities in how applications were scored fueled criticism of the industry and accusations that insiders were building a monopoly. That criticism spilled into the campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in 2022, though the proposal still won voter approval.

Some applicants who didn’t land medical marijuana licenses turned to producing hemp-derived THC products.

May and others have expressed concern that because hemp is federally legal, lumping it in with the regulations of a controlled substance could result in lawsuits.

Schroer told The Independent in December that he’s closely watching the ongoing legal case of Robertsville-based marijuana manufacturer Delta Extraction.

Delta Extraction had its license to manufacture cannabis products revoked in November, months after a massive recall pulled more than 60,000 products off the shelves — which the state says were illegally made with a hemp-derived THC concentrate imported from out of state.

While hemp is federally legal, state regulators argue that once hemp-derived THC comes into the marijuana realm, they can regulate it. 

The question currently before the Administrative Hearing Commission is whether or not Missouri regulators have the authority to prohibit licensed companies from infusing Missouri-grown marijuana products with hemp-derived THC. 

If the company loses its appeal before the commission, then Delta will continue to fight in court, the company’s attorneys have said.

And Delta will be arguing the state has no authority to regulate hemp products at all. 

“The Division of Cannabis Regulation’s authority to regulate is limited to non-hemp marijuana and does not depend on whether it is used to make THC,” Delta’s attorney, Chuck Hatfield, wrote in a recent letter to the state. 

Interestingly, one of the processes the state cracked down on Delta for wouldn’t be banned under the Schroer’s bill. Delta was importing THC-A, a cannabinoid that’s extracted from the hemp plant the same way it is with marijuana. It did not go through the banned chemical conversion process, and Moore said the THC-A process would likely be allowed.

However, state rules also require that THC in marijuana products can only be derived from marijuana cultivated by a Missouri-licensed cultivation facility. Most hemp-derived THC is currently brought in from other states.

Cannabis summit

The panelists at the summit Thursday were overwhelmingly in support of Schroer’s bill and the companion bill sponsored by state Rep. Chad Perkins, a Bowling Green Republican. 

Mitch Meyers, partner at BeLeaf Medical and another panelist at the summit, said the intent of the bill was to put the hemp-derived products under the strict packaging and other requirements that marijuana companies must go through.

“So that’s why we’re just in complete amazement that this stuff just can be out there without any of these checks and balances,” Meyers said.

The Missouri Hemp Trade Association has continuously advocated for measures such as prohibiting sales to minors and mandating clear user instructions and rigorous product testing.

However, the association opposes requiring the products to be made and sold by marijuana licensed facilities. A number of hemp businesses testified during committee hearings in February about the harmful impact the bill would have on them.

Several legislators said they were sympathetic to these businesses’ concerns and that they’d only agree to advance the bill if Schroer negotiated with the hemp industry and found a way to protect hemp businesses.

At the summit Thursday, Jamey Murphy, Schroer’s chief of staff and another of the panelists, said negotiations can only go so far. 

“We have to make sure that when we do negotiate, that we’re doing what we set out to do,” Murphy said, “which is make sure that these things are sold in the correct way in the correct setting, and that they’re not harmful to the consumer.” 

The hemp association has demanded the products don’t come under the Division of Cannabis Regulation’s framework, but instead be regulated by the same rules that tobacco and alcohol products abide by under the Department of Public Safety’s Division of Alcohol and Tobacco.

Murphy said he’s not sure they have a “perfect solution” to solve these differences.  

“There’s some other bills in other states that we’re definitely going to look at to see if we could solve some of those,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that the bill we have now is potentially the bill that we can get across the finish line.”

Veterinary personnel keep a cat named Miller calm as he has blood drawn at a veterinary hospital in Florida. Some veterinarians and advocates warn that private equity’s involvement in veterinary care could lead to higher costs for consumers and the closure of independent practices (Wilfredo Lee/The Associated Press).

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — About a year ago, veterinarian Melissa Ezell started noticing subtle changes at the midsized animal clinic in Huntsville, Alabama, where she works.

She said she and other vets were feeling pressure from management to make a certain amount of money from every appointment. If a pet owner wasn’t going to spend enough, the message from management was to offer more services. She was urged to pack in more patients outside of normal business hours.

“Before, I never felt any pressure to be making a certain amount of money in a day,” Ezell, who started working at the clinic in 2021, told Stateline. “It was just, ‘Fill your schedule, practice good medicine, everything else will come.’”

The clinic is owned by National Veterinary Associates, one of the largest veterinary chains in the nation. In 2020 the company was acquired by JAB Consumer Partners, a global private equity firm based in Luxembourg. By early 2023, Ezell said, she felt a shift in atmosphere at the clinic and a greater focus on increasing profits.

Private equity’s foray into the human health care industry in recent years has drawn public outrage and legislative scrutiny as firms have been blamed for increasing prices, slashing services and shuttering hospitals to maximize shareholder profits.

Now, some veterinarians and advocates are sounding the alarm that private equity’s entry into the pet health care industry could lead to similar results.

Some states already have laws that prohibit non-veterinarians from owning veterinary practices, and some consumer advocates want states to review large-scale acquisitions in the industry.

“A large number of these funds are seeing veterinary medicine as a good profit center,” said Dr. Grant Jacobson, an Iowa veterinarian who serves on the board of the Independent Veterinary Practitioners Association. He said he’s seen corporate-owned chains in his region drive up prices for consumers, suppress market competition and skirt state laws that ostensibly prohibit veterinary practices from being owned by non-veterinarians.

Private equity firms such as Shore Capital Partners, KKR, TSG Consumer and JAB Consumer Partners have spent billions over the past few years on veterinary practices, specialty animal hospitals, pet insurance services and pet food companies. Among the companies owned by private equity are PetSmart, PetVet Care Centers, FIGO, Thrive Pet Healthcare and ASPCA Pet Health Insurance.

Private equity firms say those investments are giving clinics and other providers the capital they need to buy better technology, and that they are improving efficiency. And in many cases, corporate chains can offer their employees better workplace benefits, such as health insurance.

In a statement to Stateline, National Veterinary Associates said its corporate philosophy is “grounded in vets making medical decisions and not a corporate office,” and that its program of shared ownership by veterinarians is “the industry’s largest such program and unique among our peers.”

“Our vision is to build a community of hospitals that pet owners trust, are easy to access, and provide the best possible care,” National Veterinary Associates said in the statement.

JAB Consumer Partners did not respond to Stateline’s request for comment.

More pets, more money

Private equity uses pooled investment money from pension funds, endowments and wealthy individuals to buy controlling stakes in companies. The firms typically look for a quick return on their investment before selling it within a few years. They have been gobbling up small businesses in myriad industries in recent years — from nursing homes to car washes.

As pet ownership soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, private equity followed close behind. The pandemic years of 2020-2022 were “the peak years for private equity acquisitions of veterinary services and practices,” said Michael Fenne, senior coordinator for health care at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit watchdog group that advocates for communities affected by private equity ownership.

Americans spent a record $147 billion on pet products and services last year. From 2017 to 2022, private equity spent $45 billion on deals in the veterinary sector, according to PitchBook, which tracks investment data.

The vet industry is attractive because it’s mostly made up of small, privately owned businesses that corporations can buy and consolidate into larger chains. And it’s mainly a cash-based business: Unlike in human health care, veterinary customers typically pay out of pocket, rather than rely on third-party payers such as insurance companies.

In some cases, private equity firms and other corporations buy community clinics from the veterinarians who own them for two, five or even 10 times their value. Then the firms roll them up into a larger chain of clinics that can corner a regional market.

It’s a strategy that can push other private owners out of the business, said Jacobson, the Iowa veterinarian. He spent nearly 20 years working at a privately owned practice in Iowa and had hoped to buy it when the original founder retired.

But the founder sold the practice to a large veterinary chain owned by Mars Inc. — the private company best known for owning candy brands that include M&Ms — for more than $1 million above his offer, Jacobson said. Mars, while not a private equity firm, is the biggest consolidator of pet care companies in the United States, owning pet food companies, pet pharmacies and veterinary care clinic chains such as Banfield Pet Hospitals and BluePearl.

About a quarter of general veterinary practices and about three-quarters of specialty practices, such as emergency and surgery care, are now owned by large corporations, according to John Volk of Brakke Consulting, a veterinary management consulting firm.

Some private equity-backed chains, such as National Veterinary Associates, buy community-based veterinary practices like Ezell’s without rebranding them under the chain’s name. As a result, clients might not be aware of the ownership change.

“It can appear you’re getting community-oriented care when there’s actually this set of big-box incentives underlying [the clinic] that comes from their private equity owners,” Fenne said.

Where vets want to work

Lori Kogan, a clinical sciences professor at Colorado State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, surveyed nearly 900 veterinarians in 2022 about their experiences and perceptions of corporate vs. privately owned veterinary clinics.

Even though most of the veterinarians surveyed reported working for corporate-owned clinics, Kogan found more than half said they would prefer to work in privately owned clinics. The benefits offered by corporate chains, such as health insurance, didn’t seem strong enough to override other preferences, Kogan told Stateline.

“Feeling like they have a voice in decision-making, feeling like they’re recognized as an individual, those are things that are really important to people,” she said. “I think corporate ownership could accomplish those things, but it will take paying attention.”

Ezell, the veterinarian who left National Veterinary Associates, said the pressure has an impact on patients and their humans as well.

“Either you’re getting talked into additional services that may or may not actually be necessary, or your feel like you’re being rushed,” Ezell said. “You feel like you don’t have the time with the doctor, and you leave not fully understanding what was done to your pet or what is wrong with your pet if they’re sick.”

In its statement to Stateline, National Veterinary Associates noted that it has made “continued investment in technology and infrastructure, pioneering clinical research, industry-leading continuing education programs and wellbeing initiatives.”

Could states step in?

Last August, Thrive Pet Healthcare announced it would be closing the only 24-hour emergency veterinary clinic in the Rochester, New York, metro area. Thrive is a chain of more than 500 veterinary clinics and hospitals based in Austin, Texas, that is owned by private equity firm TSG Consumer.

“The thought of having the only 24-hour emergency pet care center in our entire metro area close was really scary,” said Rachel Barnhart, a Democratic member of the Monroe County Legislature in New York who has taken her dogs to the clinic. “We are a community of more than a million people. The idea that we can’t support a 24-hour pet facility is outrageous.”

Barnhart wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, asking it to look into Thrive, which operates more than a dozen clinics in Rochester. She said she’d seen the FTC act against anticompetitive practices in the veterinary industry elsewhere, and she felt Thrive deserved similar scrutiny.

Thrive leadership said in a letter to Barnhart and in media reports that a shortage of ER veterinarians made it impossible to hire enough workers to keep the 24-hour clinic open. But Barnhart suspected the company wanted to shutter the clinic because its staff recently voted to unionize. CEO Tad Stahel said in the letter to Barnhart that the closure was unrelated to the staff unionization.

In 2022, the FTC took action against JAB Consumer Partners, which recently acquired an array of veterinary and pet service companies. The FTC required the firm to divest some of its vet clinics in California, Colorado, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C., as a condition of approving its multibillion-dollar purchases of two other multistate veterinary care chains.

If states were to authorize officials or agencies to review similar large-scale mergers and acquisitions in the veterinary industry, that “would be a good first step” toward protecting consumers, said Fenne, of the advocacy group.

Many states already have laws that prohibit non-veterinarians from owning veterinary practices, including Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina. The idea is to prevent corporate interests from guiding veterinarians’ medical judgment.

Experts and advocates expect to see further corporatization in veterinary care as more companies acquire not just vet clinics, but also other businesses across the pet care spectrum.

In February, asset management behemoth Blackstone Inc. acquired Rover, the nation’s largest online platform for pet sitting, dog walking and other services. In the past two years, JAB has acquired several of the largest pet insurance companies in the United States and Europe.

Ezell, the Alabama veterinarian, eventually decided to take a job at another clinic in town that’s privately owned. She will start there in a few weeks.

“Not all corporate medicine is horrible, and you can find amazing veterinarians and caring support staff anywhere,” she told Stateline.

“But it’s easy to lose sight of your values. The whole reason we’re doing this is we want to make a difference in animals’ and people’s lives. If we’re unable to do that, shouldn’t we try to fix 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.

In the past, brokers could wait until an offer was made to enter into this agreement. Starting in July, they will be required to do so before touring a home (Getty Images).

A recent legal settlement agreed to by the National Association of Realtors leaves Missouri realtors unsure of what the future holds.

The association, which represents about 1.5 million realtors nationally, announced March 15 that it will settle several antitrust lawsuits, pending court approval.

The industry group denied any wrongdoing, but it will pay out $418 million over approximately four years, remove compensation offers from multiple listing services, and require multiple listing service participants to enter written agreements with buyers.

A multiple listing service, commonly referred to as an MLS, is a private database used by real estate professionals to assist clients in buying and selling properties.

The settlement comes after a Kansas City jury in October ordered the National Association of Realtors and major real estate brokers to pay approximately $1.8 billion, finding they had used anti-competitive trade practices that resulted in inflated costs for Missourians selling their homes.

After this month’s settlement, people in the industry are waiting to determine what their next steps should be, according to Brian Toohey, CEO of the Columbia Board of Realtors.

“It’s really just wait and see where the settlement goes when the judge or the court approves it,” Toohey said, “and then seeing what changes we might potentially have to make at that point.”

Settlement terms

The settlement will prohibit offers of broker compensation from being communicated on multiple listing services.

Historically, an MLS shows compensation, which allows users to know what is being paid out to buyers’ agents for homes listed on the database.

Jessica Simpson, a Columbia realtor, said the terms of the settlement address the potential ethical violation of some buyers’ agents using MLS postings to consider possible commissions before alerting clients to available houses.

Michael Ketchmark, the lead trial attorney for the plaintiffs in the Kansas City case against the National Association of Realtors, said the elimination of broker compensation from the MLS is a victory for consumers.

“We think it’s going to result in a tremendous benefit to home sellers and home buyers by lowering the amounts of commissions and costs of buying and selling a home,” Ketchmark said.

The association has emphasized that commission rates have been negotiable. However, some say agents have implied that rates are fixed at 6%. Simpson said that contributed to the lawsuits in the first place.

Ketchmark argued in the Kansas City case that large interests within the industry made efforts to present commissions as fixed.

“We put on evidence, live witness testimony, internal training videos and documents that showed … there actually had been collusion at the highest corporate levels to fix commissions at 6%,” Ketchmark said.

Another change under the settlement is that multiple listing service participants working with buyers must enter into written agreements specifying what services they will provide and at what cost.

In the past, brokers could wait until an offer was made to enter into this agreement. Starting in July, they will be required to do so before touring a home.

Industry impact

Some believe the changes within the industry could affect the overall housing market by contributing to houses sitting on the market longer.

“We’re just going to have to explore this and see how things go,” Simpson said. “I think that if sellers begin paying drastically less in commissions, it’s going to impact the sale of their home.”

Lower commissions may also turn away some agents, Simpson said. Agents must account for the costs they incur, and that could result in hesitancy to take on clients who want lower commissions.

To avoid commissions altogether, some home buyers do not use an agent. Simpson said that can be dangerous to those unfamiliar with the practice due to the gravity of the purchase.

“Purchasing a home is huge,” Simpson said. “A lot of times it’s the biggest purchase they have ever made in their life.”

Residential real estate is facing changes to the way business has been conducted for decades, Ketchmark said.

“There’s a hundred-year history of stabilizing the prices there …” he said. “The industry has used MLS and has used the (association’s) rules to stabilize prices, and they’re no longer able to do that.”

While these changes are still months away, their implementation will introduce uncertainty for the industry to navigate.

“I think this is all going to get messy before it gets smoothed out,” Simpson said. “But, it’s hard to say exactly what will happen, and we’re just going to have to wait and see.”

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

Abigail Vivas, the state's new chief equity officer for the cannabis program, (left) answered a question from attorney Marialle Bell about the eligibility requirements for the microbusiness program at an educational outreach event at St. Louis University on June 22, 2023. (Photo by Rebecca Rivas/The Missouri Independent)

Missouri cannabis regulators have revoked nine of the 48 social-equity cannabis licenses issued in October, after finding the companies that obtained them didn’t meet eligibility requirements. 

Eight were dispensaries linked to out-of-state groups and one was a wholesale facility.

Among them is Canna Zoned, a Michigan company that secured two of the 16 dispensary cannabis licenses — in Columbia and Arnold. Both licenses were revoked.

State records show Canna Zoned was connected to 104 out of the 1,048 applications that were entered into a lottery selection for the dispensary licenses. An investigation by The Independent in October found applicants thought they were partnering with the Michigan investor but in reality signed agreements requiring them to relinquish all control and profits of the business. 

Some Canna Zoned applicants were recruited through Craigslist ads from around the country. 

In a statement to The Independent Wednesday night, representatives of the Columbia dispensary, Frankenstein Enemy LLC, called the state’s action a “drastic and unjustified penalty” that “lacked a clear basis or rationale.”

“We have not been provided with specific reasons or justifications for the revocation, leaving us in a position where we must take appropriate action,” according to the statement. 

Another company that used the strategy of flooding Missouri’s lottery with applications was an Arizona-based consulting firm called Cannabis Business Advisors. It was connected to more than 400 dispensary applicants, including six winners. All six of the group’s licenses were revoked. 

According to the Division of Cannabis Regulation, the “purported majority owners” of the eight revoked licenses lacked knowledge of agreements or operations of the license — and in some cases did not know the person who applied for the license on their behalf.

“…the lack of knowledge, control, agency or decision-making demonstrated by the individuals whose information was used to meet eligibility does not meet even the most generous interpretation of owning and operating a business,” said Amy Moore, director of the Division of Cannabis Regulation, in a press release. The revocations took effect on Wednesday.

A wholesale license in Kansas City was revoked on March 11 because the owner had a disqualifying felony offense. 

A Missouri firm, Amendment 2 Consultants, was listed as the designated contact to more than 80 dispensary applicants and two winners. A dispensary license connected to the group was initially deemed ineligible as well on Dec. 15, but the applicant was able to provide evidence that satisfied the eligibility requirements.

 “The department had questions about this licensee’s ownership and management,” said John Payne, managing member for the firm, “and we demonstrated that the license is and will be owned and operated by qualifying individuals.”

Payne said the licensee made “some minor revisions in the operating documents to make these points more explicit.”

The microbusiness program is meant to boost opportunities in the industry for businesses in disadvantaged communities, and it was part of the constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana that voters passed in November. 

The program is designed to provide a path to larger facility ownership for individuals who might not otherwise easily access that opportunity, such as having a net worth of less than $250,000 or veterans with a service-connected disability. 

The microbusiness license must always be majority owned and operated by individuals who meet these eligibility criteria. 

Following The Independent’s October report, Democratic state Sen. Karla May of St. Louis demanded the state investigate what she called an “egregious exploitation” of social-equity marijuana licenses.

Moore responded to May in a letter, saying the division shares the senator’s desire that the program be “implemented exactly as designed and that no unscrupulous actors be allowed to subvert the law.” 

On Wednesday, May told The Independent regarding the revocations: “I’m proud to stand up for constituents who have been taken advantage of, and I appreciate the hard work of the department to help these individuals.”

On March 5, the division announced that the state will accept the second round of microbusiness license applications through the online registry portal from April 15 to 29. 

In light of the revocations, the state will add nine more licenses to this round, which means there will be 57 licenses — 24 being dispensary licenses — available instead of 48.

The licenses are expected to be issued in July.

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

Missouri lawmakers return to the Capitol Monday with a long list of policy priorities still in flux and only eight weeks to get it all done before the legislative session ends in May.

Yet despite a host of issues dominating debate during the first half of the session, the two top tasks lawmakers must complete before adjournment aren’t in question: Pass the state’s roughly $50 billion budget and renew $4 billion in medical provider taxes vital to sustaining Missouri’s Medicaid program.

A failure to do either would require a special session this summer. And factional infighting among Senate Republicans likely means neither will be easy. 

Senate leadership and members of the Freedom Caucus have squabbled all session, a continuation of the fissures within the Senate GOP that has mired the chamber in gridlock for much fo the last three years. 

The Freedom Caucus wasn’t impressed with the $52 billion budget proposal laid out by Republican Gov. Mike Parson, and only mildly less dissatisfied with House Budget Chairman Cody Smith’s $50 billion alternative. 

“There’s a real disconnect between the fiscal conservative promises that a lot of Republicans are making in campaign season and what they’re continuing to talk about when we come down to the Senate floor and actually debate policy,” said state Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican and member of the Freedom Caucus.

Eigel, who is also a candidate for governor, predicted a long slog through the budget this year. 

“It’s going to take a lot of work,” he said. 

Potential trouble also lurks in the background across the rotunda in the House.

The GOP supermajority in the House is expected to work quickly through the budget this week, with the chamber avoiding the internal dissension that’s plagued the Senate. Yet hovering over the House as it heads into the session’s home stretch is the ongoing ethics investigation of House Speaker Dean Plocher, who is facing a litany of allegations of misconduct. 

The House Ethics Committee is scheduled to hold its fifth closed-door meeting Tuesday, with the timeline for issuing a final report unclear. 

Plocher has already faced calls for his resignation from some Republicans. If the committee concludes he engaged in unethical conduct, the fight over whether Plocher should keep his job could derail the session as lawmakers are trying to finalize the budget. 

Federal reimbursement allowance

Even if a budget compromise can be reached, the Freedom Caucus has also raised concerns about renewing the federal reimbursement allowance, or FRA — the taxes paid by hospitals, nursing homes, ambulance providers and pharmacies as a mechanism for drawing additional federal funds and boosting payments for Medicaid services.

A Senate bill to renew the taxes before they expire later this year has been stalled over Freedom Caucus demands that it include provisions excluding Planned Parenthood from providing Medicaid services.

Including that provision, GOP leaders have argued, could put the entire program at risk of running afoul of federal law. In an effort to tamp down resistance to passing a “clean” FRA, a separate bill blocking Planned Parenthood from being reimbursed by Medicaid was passed by the House earlier this year. 

“It’s a bipartisan belief that we need to pass (the FRA) clean,” Plocher told reporters, later adding:: “I’m an eternal optimist, and I believe we get it done.”

But time is running out, said Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, an Independence Democrat. The Senate should have taken up FRA legislation at the beginning of the session instead of waiting until the last minute. 

“I don’t understand why it hasn’t been brought up,” Rizzo said. “I don’t understand why it hasn’t had a really good debate. I mean, it seems like there’s a lot of things that have gotten a lot of time on the floor that are way less impactful than the FRA… Everyone in this chamber knows how essential the FRA is to health care, especially in rural Missouri.”

If the legislature is forced to hold a special session this summer to renew the FRA — which is how it was last renewed in 2021 — it will be the Senate’s fault, said Plocher, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. 

“It won’t be because of the House’s actions,” he added. 

‘Ballot candy’

Beyond the budget and FRA, Republicans are determined to make it harder to amend the state constitution through the initiative petition process. 

A version of the proposal cleared the Senate last month when Democrats agreed to end their filibuster in exchange for Republicans stripping out provisions labeled “ballot candy.” 

The bill would require a statewide majority and a majority vote in five of the state’s eight congressional districts to pass a constitutional amendment resulting from an initiative petition or a state convention.

In addition to making it harder to enact constitutional amendments, the legislation included “ballot candy” that would bar non-citizens from voting and ban foreign entities from contributing to or sponsoring constitutional amendments. 

Democrats called the immigration and foreign entities provisions a misleading sleight of hand meant to confuse voters from the issue at the heart of the amendment. Republican leadership agreed to remove them, and the bill was sent to the House. 

But state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold who sponsored the initiative petition bill, urged a House committee to restore the “ballot candy.”  And she hinted at the idea that Senate Republicans were going to turn to a rarely used procedural move near the end of session to force the legislation through over Democratic opposition. 

Coleman’s bluster infuriated Democrats, who accused Republicans of going back on their word and undermining the negotiating process in the Senate. In response, Rizzo and his fellow Democrats used the filibuster to shut down Senate business for a day. 

Despite the setback, Rizzo said he hopes cooler heads will ultimately prevail. 

“I don’t harbor any ill will or animosity towards (Sen. Coleman),” Rizzo said. “Obviously, she made some mistakes in the House committee.”

Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughllin, a Shelbina Republican, said Coleman “maybe just didn’t think before she made the comments. I think maybe she just didn’t weigh out what the results of that would be.”

The House intended to restore the ballot candy, said state Rep. Peggy McGaugh, a Republican from Carrollton and chair of the House Elections Committee. But the specter of Senate Democrats upending the legislative session could change those plans. 

“They made it clear they don’t like the plan we’re working toward,” she said. “So there will be a lot of give and take there… and I don’t know exactly where we’ll end up.”

Education and child care

The most expansive bill to clear the Senate so far this year would expand the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program and allow charter schools to open in Boone County. The bill also includes provisions boosting public school funding and teacher retention efforts.

“This is a great package,” said state Sen. Andrew Koenig, a Republican from Manchester who is sponsoring the bill. “It’s a great package for parents. It’s a great package for kids.”

Meanwhile the House passed open enrollment legislation that would allow a school district to accept transfer students from outside its boundaries. Its sponsor, Republican state Rep. Brad Pollitt of Sedalia, has argued that open enrollment “offers parents the opportunity to select curriculum options to better align with their personal beliefs.”

How either bill will fare in the other chamber is unclear. 

“The House has focused the last few years on open enrollment,” said Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican. “The things that we’re focusing on are a little more involved or a little deeper or a little more holistic.”

One of the first bills to win House approval this year would create tax credits designed to make child care in Missouri more affordable and accessible.

The state continues to grapple with a child care crisis, with about 200,000 children living in parts of Missouri considered “child care deserts” because there are one or fewer child care slots available for every three children.

The bill, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Brenda Shields of St. Joseph, would create three types of credits: for taxpayers who donate to support child care centers, for employers who make investments in child care needs for their employees and for child care providers. 

It won overwhelming approval in the House, and is a priority for both Parson and Senate Democrats. 

But the Freedom Caucus has poured cold water on the idea.

“What we’re focusing on is cutting the tax burden for everybody, not having targeted giveaways and tax benefits for certain groups of folks,” Eigel said. “I want to lower the tax burden for everybody.”

Post-harvest employees at BeLeaf Medical's Sinse facility await union election results on Feb. 6, 2024 at the St. Louis Public Library Barr branch (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).

Employees at BeLeaf Medical’s Sinse Cannabis site in St. Louis moved a step closer to unionizing last week, when their employer’s efforts to block union election votes from being counted were rebuffed by a federal labor official.

Since September, BeLeaf leaders have argued before the National Labor Relations Board that the employees weren’t eligible to unionize because they were agricultural workers – who are not protected under federal labor law.

On Jan. 25, National Labor Relations Board Regional Director Andrea Wilkes issued a 13-page decision detailing why the employees are not agricultural workers and allowing them to cast votes in the unionization election. 

She ordered an election be held on Feb. 6, where 16 employees cast votes. Just before the votes were counted, BeLeaf leaders issued another challenge to 11 of the employees’ votes, delaying the official count from taking place. 

Wilkes issued a second decision last week, stating the evidence BeLeaf provided still “does not raise substantial and material factual issues” in proving they are agricultural employees.

Wilkes ordered for 10 of the uncounted ballots to be opened, though the date has not yet been set. 

Company continues to argue Missouri cannabis workers can’t unionize

One ballot may be opened at a later date, pending the outcome of a separate NLRB complaint, Wilkes said. Todd Rick, a former post-harvest specialist who was fired just before the election, said he believes he was targeted for his leadership in organizing the union, and he filed a complaint soon after. 

“I’m very happy to see the board uphold its original decision,” said Sean Shannon, lead organizer with United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 655. “Hopefully this continues to show cannabis workers in Missouri and the rest of the nation that no matter how hard their bosses want to fight them, they’ll still win when they have a union behind them.”

Beleaf Medical did not respond to The Independent’s request for comment.

Agricultural laborers aren’t protected under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which ensures employees have the “fundamental right to seek better working conditions and designation of representation without fear of retaliation.”

Labor attorneys, companies and union representatives across the country have grappled with the lack of clarity around whether post-harvest workers should be considered agricultural laborers.

In her Jan. 25 decision, Wilkes described these employees’ duties as the people who take down the dried marijuana plants and begin the de-stemming process. 

After de-stemming and separating, the marijuana is packaged or processed into pre-rolled joints. The facility produces anywhere from 900 to 1,200 pre-rolls a day.

She compared BeLeaf’s Sinse post-harvest employees’ work to that of employees in a tobacco processing plant. 

“Removing the veins from tobacco leaves and fermenting the leaves has been held to be outside the definition of agriculture,” under federal labor law, she wrote in her Jan. 25 decision.

Jeff Toppel, a labor law attorney with the Bianchi Brandt firm in Arizona, has been keeping his eye on the BeLeaf case, just as other labor attorneys and unions have throughout the country, he told The Independent in February. 

Up until now, it wasn’t clear if the post-harvest workers would be excluded as agricultural workers, he said, which has pushed unions to focus more on dispensary workers.

While the regional director’s decisions in this case haven’t set a national precedent, it could lead to one.

The company has 10 business days after the votes are counted and the election result is certified to file an appeal, asking the national five-member board appointed by the president to review the election results and the regional director’s decisions. 

A decision from the board in the BeLeaf case would set a national precedent and have a wide-ranging impact, Toppel said.

Wilkes’ stance in the case, he said, gives a strong indication of how the board will rule.

“A decision from the board…” Toppel said, “will provide much needed clarity on an issue that will have a significant impact on the future of organizing in the cannabis industry.”

The U.S. House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee held a hearing Thursday to review the administration’s request to boost Department of Agriculture funding (Joe Raedle/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — A U.S. House appropriations panel reviewed the Biden administration’s request to increase the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget for fiscal 2025 Thursday, with Republicans asking pointed questions about a proposal to boost a popular low-income nutrition program.

The hearing came less than two weeks after Congress passed a months-delayed appropriations bill for the USDA for the current fiscal year. Lawmakers have yet to finish a multi-year farm bill that is also delayed.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack advocated for Congress to pass the farm bill – legislation to authorize federal farm and nutrition programs – this year, and highlighted the ways the department is working to prevent funding shortfalls for critical programs for low-income families.

“We create a meaningful economic opportunity in rural America by improving critical infrastructure, supporting a clean energy economy and investing in a higher quality of life for those who live, work, play and raise their families in rural America,” Vilsack said in his opening statement.

Republicans on the panel took issue with the $25.1 billion budget request, an increase of $2.2 billion from the recently enacted fiscal 2024 law.

Backfilling WIC

The budget requests a total of $7.73 billion for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC. That number is $700 million above the recently enacted fiscal 2024 levels.

Subcommittee Chair Andy Harris of Maryland grilled Vilsack on the reason for the larger request for fiscal 2025.

Vilsack said the increase is needed because Congress took so long to pass fiscal 2024 funding, and only provided USDA with flat funding levels in short-term continuing resolutions, the agency had to transfer resources from other nutrition programs to avoid a $1 billion shortfall for WIC.

“Part of the reason why we have the request that we have is to refill those transfers,” Vilsack said.

WIC provides nutrition assistance to about 6.7 million infants, young children and pregnant and postpartum patients per month.

“There is a limited amount of resources for all of the programs funded by this bill,” Harris said. “I think it is reasonable, and quite frankly it is our job as appropriators, to ask questions about the estimates for all of the programs, including WIC.”

Democrats on the panel defended the increase to WIC, and advocated for protections to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which is authorized by the farm bill.

The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Sanford Bishop of Georgia, said that the budget reflects a “growing demand for WIC funding as participation continues to rise.”

“We must rise to meet this critical funding need,” Bishop said of the WIC program.

The top Democrat on the full House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, said she was intrigued by USDA’s proposal to backstop WIC funding, “so we do not face (a) nutrition assistance cliffhanger like we just went through.”

Crawfish, oranges and shrimp

Some lawmakers did not question Vilsack about USDA’s budget request, but instead asked him specific questions about agriculture-related crises in their districts and whether the department could help them.

Louisiana GOP Rep. Julia Letlow said a major drought has put the “crawfish industry on life support.” She said the crawfish are a more-than-$300 million commodity in her state, and she asked Vilsack if USDA could provide economic assistance to affected producers.

Vilsack said that he was happy to work with her and would have to check that the department has that discretion.

Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida asked Vilsack about an update on the USDA’s research on citrus greening, which is one of the most severe citrus diseases. She said Florida citrus growers have been struggling with the crop loss due to the disease.

“The problem is the cost of it is fairly significant,” Vilsack said. “I think that’s the next hurdle, is how do we get the cost down so that it’s available to producers.”

Alabama GOP Rep. Jerry Carl asked Vislack about adding domestic shrimp to a USDA list of foods to be used in school lunches in order to create “a sustainable path forward” for the industry.

USDA allows schools to use USDA Foods entitlement dollars to buy domestically grown food through an approved list. 

Vilsack said that USDA would have to first see if there is a demand and availability for domestic shrimp and if it’s “something that school districts can afford.”

Iowa GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson said she was concerned with foreign entities – mainly China – buying U.S. farmland and the reliance on foreign entities for supplies relating to agriculture.

Congressional support for limiting foreign entities’ and individuals’ access to U.S. agricultural land has grown in recent years, with a focus on China. USDA records have shown that China owns fewer than 1% of U.S. farmland.

Vilsack said that USDA is updating its handbooks and process for how it collects data on land purchases and loans “to make sure we are doing the best job we can of identifying circumstances where land transactions occur.”

He added that there will always be challenges to that tracking system because there are more than 3,000 county offices across the country and tracking those purchases would require USDA to have a centralized database.

Vilsack also said that USDA is investing in fertilizer, because the U.S. was “over-reliant on Russia, Belarus, so we have to look at ways where we can be more self-reliant.”

He also noted that in Iowa, where Vilsack was governor from 1999 to 2007, China is the top purchaser of soybeans.

“So it’s a delicate conversation that we have with our No. 1 customer, at the same time, somebody who we’re deeply concerned about,” Vilsack said.

A bipartisan agreement on government spending for the remainder of fiscal 2024 emerged just before 3 a.m. on March 21, 2024 (Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom).

WASHINGTON — Congress released the final six government funding bills early Thursday, starting off a sprint toward the Friday midnight deadline to wrap up work that was supposed to be finished nearly six months ago.

The bipartisan agreement on the $1.2 trillion spending package, which emerged just before 3 a.m., came less than two weeks after the U.S. House and Senate approved the other six annual appropriations bills.

This package includes the spending measures for some of the most crucial functions of the federal government — the departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Labor, State and Treasury.

The bill would also fund Congress, the Executive Office of the President, the judiciary and the Social Security Administration.

The 1,012-page spending package provides money for hundreds of programs, including many that lawmakers will tout on the campaign trail heading toward the November elections. Included:

• U.S. troops and civilian Defense Department employees will receive a 5.2% pay raise retroactive to Jan. 1, 2024.
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s new headquarters project — which has not only divided Democrats and Republicans, but the congressional delegations from Virginia and Maryland — will receive $200 million for construction on the Greenbelt, Maryland, site via the General Services Administration.
• States will get $55 million in new Election Security Grant funding.
• Customs and Border Protection as well as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement will get more than $4 billion in funding increases.
• Child care and early learning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services will receive a $1 billion increase in funding. The boost will go toward the Child Care and Development Block Grant, which provides grants to state, territorial and tribal agencies, and Head Start, which provides funding to local grantees.
• The U.S. Capitol Police will receive a 7.8% funding increase.
• Afghans who assisted the United States during the war would be eligible for an additional 12,000 Special Immigrant Visas.
• The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, the primary aid organization in Gaza, would be stripped of U.S. funding after Israel accused agency employees of taking part in Oct. 7 attacks.

Weekend work possible

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday morning the package clears “another hurdle towards our ultimate goal of funding the federal government.”

“This funding agreement between the White House and Congressional leaders is good news that comes in the nick of time: When passed it will extinguish any more shutdown threats for the rest of the fiscal year, it will avoid the scythe of budget sequestration and it will keep the government open without cuts or poison pill riders,” he said. “It’s now the job of the House Republican leadership to move this package ASAP.”

After the House votes to approve the package, likely Friday, Schumer said, “the Senate will need bipartisan cooperation to pass it before Friday’s deadline and avoid a shutdown.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Wednesday during a press conference he expected senators would be in session this weekend to take final votes on the package.

“My assumptions and what I’ve told our members is we’re likely to be here this weekend. That will be determined, however, by how long it stays in the House,” McConnell said.

“And when it’s over here, what we have recently done — and I think hopefully will work again — is that in return for a certain number of amendments, we can finish it quicker, hopefully, than putting us in the position of shutting down the government,” McConnell added.

Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said in a written statement the package would claw back $20.2 billion from the Internal Revenue Service funding that Democrats included in their signature climate change and tax package and $6 billion in unused COVID-19 funds.

On immigration, the funding package “cuts funding to NGOs that incentivize illegal immigration and increases detention capacity and the number of Border Patrol Agents to match levels in the House-passed appropriations bill and the Secure the Border Act (H.R. 2),” he said, referring to non-governmental organizations.

The package also includes funding for the nation’s defense. “This FY24 appropriations legislation is a serious commitment to strengthening our national defense by moving the Pentagon toward a focus on its core mission while expanding support for our brave men and women who serve in uniform,” Johnson said. “Importantly, it halts funding for the United Nations agency which employed terrorists who participated in the October 7 attacks against Israel.”

More than $1B to reduce child care costs

Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat, said in a written statement that she was “proud to have secured $1 billion more to lower families’ child care costs and help them find pre-K — a critical investment to help tackle the child care crisis that is holding families and our economy back.”

“From day one of this process, I said there would be no extreme, far-right riders to restrict women’s reproductive freedoms — and there aren’t,” Murray said. “Democrats stood firm to protect a woman’s right to choose in these negotiations and focused on delivering investments that matter to working people.”

Democratic lawmakers, Murray said, “defeated outlandish cuts that would have been a gut punch for American families and our economy — and we fought off scores of extreme policies that would have restricted Americans’ fundamental freedoms, hurt consumers while giving giant corporations an unfair advantage, and turned back the clock on historic climate action.”

The House and Senate must debate and approve the measure in less than two days under the stopgap funding agreement, otherwise a weekend funding lapse would begin. If it went on beyond the brief period of the weekend, a partial government shutdown would begin.

The House can easily hold a vote within that timeline, but the Senate will need to reach agreement among all 100 of its members in order to avoid casting votes past that benchmark.

Here’s a look at where Congress increased funding and where it cut spending on these six government funding bills for fiscal year 2024, which began back on Oct. 1.