Recent Missouri editorials

The Jefferson City News-Tribune, Feb. 23

Lincoln University’s police chief is right: We don’t need guns on college campuses.

Gary Hill, LU’s police chief, testified last week to a Senate committee that allowing people to carry guns on the university’s campus could lead to shootings, including in situations where a fight escalates and suddenly a gun is involved.

As we recently reported, the Senate Transportation and Public Safety Committee heard two bills Thursday morning that are intended to strengthen gun rights, both sponsored by Sen. Eric Burlison, R-Battlefield.

One would allow people with concealed carry permits to bring guns and other deadly weapons onto college campuses and other places they’re currently restricted. Allowing concealed carry on campus was the most controversial part of that bill.

LU isn’t alone in its opposition to the idea. Other universities have opposed the idea as well.

Scott Rhoad, director of public safety at the University of Central Missouri, also spoke in opposition of the bill, saying he hasn’t been in a situation in 30 years of law enforcement that he thinks would have gone better if the person had a gun.

We believe concealed carry on Missouri college campuses has a greater potential to result in the loss of life than saving lives.

On Jan. 30, we reported a Jefferson City man was sentenced to jail for making a terroristic threat - he threatened to harm students at Lincoln University after an off-campus shooting that left one man dead.

Just this past November, a student at the University of Central Missouri was accidentally shot and killed on campus by another student.

Moms Demand Action say the rate of gun deaths in Missouri increased 55 percent in the last decade, compared to a 17 percent increase nationwide. More than 1,000 Missourians are shot and killed every year, giving Missouri the eighth highest rate of gun deaths in the United States, the organization says.

Expanding gun rights on college campuses isn’t going to help.

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The Joplin Globe, Feb. 21

State Rep. Ben Baker, a Republican from Neosho, has brought back legislation to authorize Bible classes in public schools.

His bill would allow a school district to offer electives in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament and the New Testament. Such courses would include “the contents, history, literary style and structure, and influences on society,” according to the bill’s summary language. The bill also would require “religious neutrality” by mandating that schools not endorse, promote or favor a particular religion.

The measure is similar to legislation introduced by Baker last year that progressed through the House but died in the Senate. Law experts told us at the time that Bible instruction in a historical or literary context is already legal for Missouri schools, but Baker believed the bill offered clarity to schools that might have been apprehensive about doing so.

We were opposed to this proposal last year, and we remain opposed to it now. Bible instruction belongs on Sunday mornings, at churches and other houses of worship, not in the public classroom.

Moreover, teachers and students have enough subjects demanding their time. Schools in Missouri are currently graded on a variety of objectives for accreditation, including how many students are proficient or demonstrate growth in core subjects, take advanced classes or show mastery of technical skills, and it seems to us that their efforts should be devoted to those goals in order to prepare students for higher education or the workforce.

We also worry that this bill infringes on the rights of religious minorities. Where is the legislation that says it’s OK for schools to offer electives on the Quran for our Muslim students, or the Vedas texts for our Hindu students? By highlighting only one religion, the bill makes a bold statement that Christianity courses are OK, while what’s left unsaid is that courses on other religions aren’t.

The bill was given a public hearing on Tuesday, and it remains in the House’s Elementary and Secondary Education Committee - where it should stay.

It’s bad policy for the state.

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The Kansas City Star, Feb. 19

The Missouri legislature’s strange obsession with overturning the will of the people continues unabated, threatening the rights of everyone in the state.

This week, state House members are discussing Republican plans to make it harder to change the Missouri Constitution, by requiring a two-thirds popular vote to enact any amendment. Right now, it takes a simple majority.

Some plans make it harder to gather amendment petitions, before ever reaching the ballot.

It’s ridiculous. Missourians should insist on their right to amend the state’s charter as they see fit with a majority vote.

Why do Republicans want to make it harder to change the constitution? The short-term answer is obvious: to stop Medicaid expansion.

Expansion supporters are closer than ever to putting a plan on the 2020 ballot. It will take at least 160,199 valid petition signatures to force a vote; in January, supporters said they were halfway there.

Putting Medicaid expansion in the state constitution is not the best way to make policy. But petitioners seek to change the Missouri Constitution, because they know the truth: Regular laws passed by the people are but tissue paper in the hands of GOP legislators, to be shredded on a whim.

The only way to make expansion stick is to put it in Missouri’s charter. And the only way to do that is to gather petition signatures for a statewide vote.

Republicans know this. And they know voters will likely approve expansion, which the party bitterly opposes. That has led to these last-minute attempts to change the rules and to require a two-thirds majority to approve any Medicaid expansion amendment.

A two-thirds requirement would be nearly impossible to reach, not just for Medicaid expansion but for any change in the constitution. The Clean Missouri amendment, now under a separate Republican assault, got 62% of the vote - an enormous endorsement, yet still short of the two-thirds requirement.

Raising the bar would put the Missouri Constitution beyond the reach of its citizens, which contradicts the first words in the document: “All political power is vested in and derived from the people,” it says.

Amending any constitution should not be easy. In Missouri, it is not. Petitioners must gather valid signatures in six of eight congressional districts by a May deadline. They must then make their case to voters.

Those voters must now be on the alert. Lawmakers are trying to hijack the amendment process to remove your voice and amplify their own.

Oh, and by the way: It would take a simple majority in the legislature to enact a change requiring a two-thirds majority for any future changes. It’s hypocrisy, all the way down.

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb. 22

It’s never too late to rethink bad decisions and reverse course. Gov. Mike Parson and like-minded state legislators should take a close look at the experience of residents in places like Estherville, Iowa, before continuing to open the floodgates for giant corporate pig farms to overrun the state.

In May, Parson signed a bill to revoke local governments’ ability to impose restrictions on corporate pig farms more stringent than state standards. That cleared the way for mega-pig farms to enter the state, even if they put smaller local farmers out of business. But more to the point, the law revokes local governments’ powers to say: No, we do not want your smelly, polluting operation anywhere close to where our residents live, work, play and breathe.

Iowa residents are feeling the consequences of similar moves in their state. Property values anywhere close to these pig farms are plummeting. Environmental and health problems are escalating. The inescapable stink from growing mountains of pig manure are enough to make people pack up and leave.

The last federal count of factory farms was conducted in 2018 by the Environmental Protection Agency. It was incomplete, however, because industrial farming groups sued to stop the count, claiming invasion of privacy and a threat of eco-terrorism, The Associated Press reported. That count nevertheless yielded a count of 20,300 factory farms, indicating a fivefold increase since the late 1970s. The operators obviously aren’t keen on government agencies knowing where they are and what they’re up to. Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources had to resort to a search using aerial photos in 2017, which led to the discovery of 4,200 previously unknown facilities.

For all of Republicans’ clamor about deregulation and relaxation of environmental oversight, the consequences are enormous when industrial pig farms escape stringent monitoring. Local governments are the ones best suited to hold them accountable because their officials are first to smell the waste and see the buildup of phosphorous, ammonia and other effluent in waterways when farms don’t comply with manure-disposal requirements.

In Iowa and Minnesota, factory farms have a way of concentrating and multiplying once a single farm takes root. Crop farmer Brad Trom in Dodge County, Minnesota, watched in horror as the count went from one to 11 structures housing 30,000 pigs within three miles of his property. “You don’t want to be anywhere near them,” he told The Associated Press.

Jeff Schwartzkopf saw similar concentrations within 2½ miles of their house. He and his wife have developed body rashes and respiratory illnesses, and their property is now worthless.

It’s only a matter of time before similar complaints arise in Missouri. When voting time comes in November, Missourians should keep in mind a governor and GOP lawmakers who allowed corporate interests to prevail over those of local residents.