Recent Missouri editorials

The Jefferson City News-Tribune, Jan. 28

Proposal would put needed teeth into Sunshine Law

We support efforts to strengthen Missouri’s Sunshine Law, which outlines what meetings and records are open to the public.

Such a law is essential. We fund our government and afford them certain powers on our behalf. Without a law clarifying most government records and most meetings of public bodies are open, we would be left in the dark. We would know far less about what our government leaders are doing, why they are doing it, and what our tax dollars are being spent on.

In the case of Missouri’s Sunshine Law, it needs updates to put teeth into the law.

Last week, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley announced three proposals meant to do just that:

Create a Transparency Division in the AG’s office. It would give his agency more authority to enforce the Sunshine Law and “will have automatic waivers (from the Legislature) of any potential ethical conflict from other executive agencies.” To avoid conflicts of interest, the division would have attorneys who would be separate from the rest of the AG’s office and never would defend an executive agency in any legal battle.

Ask the Legislature for authorization to issue investigative subpoenas in the course of public-record law investigations.

“Currently, there is no subpoena enforcement authority under the Sunshine Law. Enforcers can ask, ask vigorously, but there is no way to compel any subject of a review to actually cooperate with this office,” Hawley said.

“This office has subpoena power in other contexts. It is a standard law enforcement tool. I think we need it to enforce the Sunshine Law,” he added.

Ask lawmakers to create remedies and give his office enforcement power for violations of the Sunshine Law and laws involving public and business records.

The records retention law currently has no enforcement provisions and no penalties.

Hawley is working on the legislation along with the Missouri Press Association, which represents the interests of newspapers across the state.

“We’re here because of citizens around the state who have questions they want to know about their local governments,” said Jean Maneke, legal counsel for MPA.

Journalists rely on the law daily to inform the public about government operations.

But like Maneke suggests, the Sunshine Law isn’t just for reporters.

It’s for everyone.

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The Kansas City Star, Jan. 26

Greitens bears responsibility for the latest blow to UMKC downtown conservatory

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens’ disdain for higher education and Kansas City’s arts community continues to have consequences.

The loss this time is substantial. A $20 million pledge from the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation for the planned downtown arts campus will not come to fruition. And it appears that the specifics and the scale of the project might change.

Last year, Greitens put the planned $96 million campus in grave jeopardy when he vetoed legislation that would have fulfilled the state’s promise of matching the $48 million raised by the Kansas City philanthropic community.

At the time, civic leadership accepted the reality that our governor does not understand the economic benefits of the arts in urban centers, especially as it relates to higher education. Local leaders vowed to find the funding elsewhere.

But the Kauffman grant was always contingent upon both the funding matches from the state and from private fundraising, said Dave Lady, president of the foundation. The governor’s veto meant that those requirements would be impossible to meet, and eventually, the board had to make a decision.

“It just became apparent that it was fundamentally a different project,” Lady said, adding that the board remains supportive of the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance.

This blow to UMKC is just one example of the governor’s determined efforts to destabilize the University of Missouri System and of his refusal to be a partner in development in one of the state’s two major cities. Greitens declined to keep the state’s commitment to the arts campus, and he ignored the legislature’s wish to raise the funds by issuing bonds.

The campus was to be adjacent to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and was to house the conservatory of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, shifting it downtown. The plan was for 165,000 square feet, four floors and two state-of-the-art performance spaces.

On Friday, UMKC and University of Missouri System leadership emphasized that efforts are continuing to “develop new ideas on how we might accomplish the project.”

Announcements around “new developments” can be expected soon, Barbara A. Bichelmeyer, UMKC’s interim chancellor and provost, and Mun Choi, president of the UM system, wrote in a guest column for The Star.

But what is indisputable is that the governor continues to threaten not just this project, but Missouri higher education in general. UMKC has lost $12.6 million through budget cuts in recent years, and the entire system has lost $70.6 million.

The value of a well-educated workforce apparently escapes the governor. Kansas City, like the entire state, must have a readily employable talent pool to continue attracting new businesses and to keep Missouri healthy fiscally.

This is becoming increasingly difficult with an underfunded educational system.

The arts play a role not only in driving economic development but also in attracting new residents.

The arts campus was enthusiastically embraced by a wide cross-section of political, civic and philanthropic leadership. The project was a part of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s Big 5 initiatives. It should have been an easy “yes” for the governor to add his support.

No one would describe the gleaming beauty of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts as merely concrete and glass. Yet during a visit to Kansas City last year, Greitens condescendingly termed the arts campus a “building for dancers and artists,” dismissing the fact that a well-developed artistic community often helps cities attract educated millennials. The campus was to be much more than bricks and mortar.

The governor’s stubborn reluctance to acknowledge the economic benefits of the arts could cost Kansas City dearly.

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 28

The Legislature’s annual mythical deadbeat hunt is underway

Missouri legislators, under the comforting illusion that vast hordes of their able-bodied fellow citizens are soaking up public benefits when they could be working, have opened a multi-front war on the poor in the current legislative session.

For the most part, they’re chasing a ghost enemy. The state’s unemployment rate in December was 3.5 percent, far below the 5 percent that economists generally regard as “full employment,” or the lowest possible level that won’t cause inflation. By definition, almost anyone who is employable has a job.

Nonetheless, there’s Rep. Scott Fitzpatrick’s House Bill 1409, which would reduce the number of weeks laid-off workers are eligible for unemployment benefits from 20 to 13. Most states provide 26 weeks. At 13, Missouri would match North Carolina and rank just slightly better than Florida’s lowest-in-the-nation 12.

Missouri passed such a bill in 2015, only to have it thrown out by the state Supreme Court because of a procedural error. The House passed the same bill last year, but the Senate didn’t take it up.

This bill won’t save the state much money; unemployment benefits are paid not with tax dollars but by insurance bought by employers. The bill won’t immediately save employers any money, either. They’ll still be buying unemployment insurance for each employee.

So why do it? The state had to borrow money from the federal government during the last few recessions when the compensation fund was exhausted. To pay it back, employers (whose corporate income taxes have fallen dramatically) had to pay extra interest costs.

Fitzpatrick’s bill would increase the number of weeks of eligibility if the unemployment rate exceeds 6 percent. A far more likely reason for the bill: Beating up on mythical deadbeats helps rouse and rally the GOP base.

The weekly unemployment benefit in Missouri is 4 percent of the worker’s average quarterly wages, up to a maximum of $320. A guy who nets $10 an hour would get $208 a week.

But what if you supplement that with food stamps? The state currently requires able-bodied adults without dependents to be working or enrolled in job training to get food stamps. Teaching job skills is a nice idea, but matching trainees with employers has proved more difficult.

House Bill 1846, sponsored by Rep. Robert Cornejo, R-St. Peters, would extend this requirement to anyone getting food stamps, including single mothers. Missouri may also require its relatively few able-bodied Medicaid recipients to sign up for work training.

Able-bodied adults without dependents currently can only get food stamps for three months out of every three years. The allotment is worth about $2.14 per meal, and qualifying requires a lot of hoop-jumping. Missouri has already cut food stamp enrollment sharply; thousands of Missourians are believed to have simply stopped trying.

Which may have been the point all along.