The legislature and the Secretary of State are involved in a urinary contest and the only people getting wet are 22 public servants who have been caught in the middle of the streams.
And I am personally in a state of high urinary agitation because of this match. I was president of the Friends of the Missouri State Archives for nine years and remain on the board. I was there when the organization was founded many years before that. I have used the archives extensively for the Capitol books I have written or am waiting to be published. I have used the archives for other projects as well. Some of those who’ve gotten the axe are on the staff of the state library, which also has been an important resource for my work dating to the 1970s.
In a few days, the Friends will hold their annual meeting. At least, I think they will. The person who does a lot of the planning was one of those given a few minutes to collect their personal items from their desks before they were escorted out of the building.
Losing your job is one thing. Being humiliated by being thrown out of the place where you’ve worked for many, many years is an insult.
But who cares about who is being hurt? The Secretary of State and some Senators who should have worked things out as grownups don’t seem to.
All that I care about, and that many people who rely on these two services should care about, is restoring these people to the important work they do, whether it is working with citizens at the front desk or whether it is the behind-the-scenes sorting, cataloging, and filing that is necessary for a huge archival facility.
As usual, sorting out whether these cuts are legitimate or whether they are a grudge contest played out by senators who remember Secretary Hoskins’ involvement with a Freedom Caucus that virtually enslaved the legislature for three historically unproductive years, or whether it is a misunderstanding of fiscal policy is difficult to determine from our distance.
Whatever is going on here, there are more than twenty people who are hurt by it who do not deserve to be treated as they have been treated.
One good thing is that the legislature is meeting in special session on budget matters and can fix this—and be quick about it. Spitting at each other across a fence isn’t going to do it.
These people can get their jobs back; we have heard of some who are just short of reaching retirement eligibility, which makes this situation even more deplorable.
An adult needs to get the legislative and bureaucratic perpetrators of this petty dispute together and straighten this out. Who should that be?
Governor Mike Kehoe needs to be the adult in the room. Being the state’s adult is an unwritten qualification for the job. These 22 people are his constituents, and many of them have been even closer constituents, dating to his days as a state senator.
There’s a big round table in the governor’s office that is one of the original pieces of furniture when the building was constructed before World War I. That table has seen a lot of deals worked out around it.
It’s time for the Governor to convene a meeting around that historic table not to make policy with the big names of government, but to restore jobs and dignity to the 22 littler people who deserve far more respect than they’ve been given.