Recent Missouri editorials

The Jefferson City News-Tribune, Feb. 9

Missouri lawmakers are considering a small fuel tax increase that would raise enough money to at least put a Band-Aid on our state’s crumbling roads and bridges.

We hope the Legislature takes the bold leadership move to act on the proposal, sponsored by Sen. Doug Libla, R-Poplar Bluff.

We say “bold leadership” for two reasons:

It’s an election year. Many elected officials, from the governor down to House members, will be appealing to voters for another term. For Republicans, which control both chambers of the Legislature as well as the governor and lieutenant governor’s offices, that means being able to campaign on platforms of fiscal conservativeness and low taxes.

We generally support that line of thought. But infrastructure such as roads and bridges are basic, essential government provisions. And our roads and bridges are in poor shape.

Voters have already shot down proposals for a sales tax hike and then a gas tax hike to help maintain our roads/bridges. Would enacting a 2-cent fuel tax go against the will of voters? That’s a fair question. We would argue that those failed proposals would have raised taxes considerably more. The last proposal, in 2018, would have raised the fuel tax by 10 cents, phased in over four years.

This proposal would raise some $130 million a year. In reality, much more is needed. But even a temporary fix at this point would help.

Missouri has the seventh-largest state highway system in the nation and the sixth most bridges on that system, but its gas tax is the fourth lowest in the nation. We pay 17 cents per gallon, the same as we paid more than 20 years ago.

In 2018, Gov. Mike Parson and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe provided leadership on the issue, supporting the gas tax ballot issue.

We hope they again take the lead, actively encouraging lawmakers to support this important issue.

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The Kansas City Star, Feb. 10

On its face, Missouri state Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer’s tough-on-crime argument sounds logical: Violent criminals must be held accountable for their actions.

But what Luetkemeyer gets wrong in his criminal justice reform package that’s making its way through the Missouri Senate is imposing mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines that would take away a judge’s discretion in administering punishment for violent offenders.

One proposal, Senate Bill 600, would deny probation for someone convicted of second-degree murder or any other dangerous felony involving a deadly weapon. Another measure, Senate Bill 601, would change the minimum prison term for armed criminal action from three years to five years for a first offense. A prisoner would not be eligible for parole for five years.

In Missouri, armed criminal action is a companion charge used in felony cases involving a dangerous weapon. Judges often run armed criminal action sentences concurrently with sentences for primary felony convictions.

The bill would mandate that the sentences run consecutively, a complete legislative overreach.

Judges must be able to administer justice on a case-by-case basis. A one-size-fits-all approach to criminal justice already has proved ineffective.

There is ample evidence that tougher mandatory minimum sentences have often been ineffective at best and unfairly punitive in many cases. And studies have shown that people of color have been disproportionately affected by mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines.

Luetkemeyer, a Parkville Republican who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, argues the recidivism rate in Missouri for violent offenders is close to 65%. During a 10-year period, at least 25 people have been given probation for second-degree murder, he said. The proper place for those criminals is in prison, not on probation.

Sara Baker, the legislative and policy director for the ACLU of Missouri, testified against Luetkemeyers’ armed criminal action bill, which passed through the Senate judiciary committee by a 6-1 vote and is expected to be heard on the Senate floor in the coming weeks.

“Mandatory minimums have been used to over-sentence minority populations for years and years,” Baker said. “Missouri is trying to decrease its prison population and implement criminal justice reforms, and this seems like a step backwards.”

She’s right. Luetkemeyer’s push for tougher mandatory minimum sentences is out of step with bipartisan efforts in Congress to move away from the unjust sentencing laws that have swelled our prison populations. On this - and perhaps only this - Republicans in Congress, Democrats in Congress and the president have all agreed, as they’ve rethought outdated tough-on-crime laws, prioritized rehabilitation and given judges more flexibility in sentencing.

Luetkemeyer is trying to move Missouri in the wrong direction.

Missouri is a dangerous state. Three of its cities have been named among the 12 most violent cities in the country.

But lawmakers can’t incarcerate their way to crime reduction. Commonsense gun reform would be a more effective step toward reducing violent crime. Other criminal justice reforms should be considered.

While Luetkemeyer is right that violent criminals should be held accountable, judges must maintain some discretion in imposing prison sentences. Mandatory minimums are not the answer.

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The St. Joseph News-Press, Feb. 10

There’s no denying that Josh Hawley is an ambitious, ladder-climbing politician.

As a newly elected state attorney general, Hawley’s business cards were still in the print shop when he started answering questions about a run for U.S. Senate. Democrats were quick to point that out, and they haven’t stopped pointing it out since the Republican unseated incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill in the Senate campaign.

A wandering political eye is fair game for the opposition, something for voters to consider when weighing the motives and potential effectiveness of a candidate. But is it a crime to always be striving for higher office? We would say no. We would say that the Missouri state auditor’s 450-page report also fails to make that case.

State Auditor Nicole Galloway’s staff, following a complaint from a liberal nonprofit group, examined whether Hawley used state resources for political purposes during his tenure as attorney general from 2017 to 2019. The report, released last Thursday, paints a picture of a politician who raised eyebrows with the mixing of campaign consultants who serve a political purpose and paid attorney general staffers with an administrative function.

It all sounds enticing, but the findings are laced with maybes, what ifs, questionable meetings and possible appearances of impropriety. Galloway sums it up in the conclusions regarding paid consultants, a key part of the audit.

“While the interactions between the campaign paid consultants and government officials described in this report give an appearance of impropriety, we cannot conclude that any laws were violated.”

The audit was initiated to determine if Hawley, as attorney general, used public resources - either money or vehicles - for personal or political uses. The audit uncovers neither, only instances of poor documentation and a troubling use of private servers and text messaging for business that may or may not be considered government work.

In the use of state vehicles, the audit travels a similar path of identifying something that smells bad, including a trip to a Chiefs football game under the guise of state business. Here, Hawley’s explanations are about as thin as the audit’s conclusions. If Hawley is truly looking to move up in the political sphere, he would be wise to consider any reimbursement for past trips that raise legitimate questions.

But for Hawley’s opponents, the goal wasn’t to find things that look bad to but to identify a smoking gun. What we got, instead, is a very faint whiff of cordite.

Hawley has no reason to apologize, but he should get used to the odor as he continues to climb the political ladder.