Category Archives: legislature

The Majority Rules, Chapter Two

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A rare race for Speaker of the Missouri House has shaped up after 51.6% of the voters of Missouri approved Amendment 3, the abortion amendment.

For several years, Missouri House Republicans have picked a Speaker-designate during the September veto session who would succeed the outgoing Speaker in January. They have a two-thirds majority, so the decision in September is tantamount to the actual election.

But the November election has injected some uncertainty into the proceedings.

Republicans chose Dr. Jon Patterson of Lee’s Summit as the presumptive successor to Dean Plocher, a St. Louis County Representative who is term limited.

But the election, particularly the approval of Amendment 3, has produced a challenger—Justin Sparks of Wildwood.

Patterson has said the legislature should “respect the law.”  But Sparks says that Patterson’s comment “is not what the leader of the Republican Caucus should be saying.”

Sparks is a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus.  His background is in law enforcement as a 15-year veteran of the St. Louis County Police Department and a Deputy U.S. Marshall. He has told St. Louis television station KMOV, “It is clear that many people that voted for Amendment 3 did so under information that was false.” And he asked, “Should three cities determine what everybody lives under for the entire state? I say no.”

Sparks also criticizes Patterson on other issues, especially as a St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial put it, “Patterson’s vote against legislation to prohibit transgender treatments for minors. Patterson, a surgeon, has said he believes there should be exceptions to that prohibition based on case-by-case details — a medically reasonable standard that most in Patterson’s party today reject. As House majority leader, Patterson nonetheless allowed debate on the legislation, which passed.”

The November election tally from the Secretary of State’s office shows Amendment 3 passed 1,527,096-1,432,084., a 95,000 vote margin.  But it passed in only seven of Missouri’s 116 voting areas (114 counties plus the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City).  Voters in the two cities, Jackson and St. Louis Counties were joined by Boone, Clay, and Buchanan Counties with 72.6% of the votes in those areas.  In the rest of the state, Amendment 3 was outvoted 728,042-1,050,088. Boone County was the only county outside the metro areas to vote “yes.”

Patterson and Sparks, both Republicans, won in areas that went heavily in favor of Amendment 3. St. Louis County, where Sparks lives, went for it 335,082-162,311 with St. Louis City going 95,039-19,673. Jackson County was in favor 112,822-78,712 with Kansas City adding a tally of 99,120-23,985.

Two Republicans will face off for one of the most important jobs in state government in January, both from metro areas that provided the margin in the statewide victory for Amendment 3.  One says the will of the whole people of Missouri as well as the will of voters in his home area, should be honored. The other says both should be ignored because that’s not what Republicans are about, in effect saying that they should be a party that does not accept the will of all of the public.

One says all of the voters should make the decision. The other says only one party’s voters count.

Let’s see what kind of Republican Party we have in the Missouri House, come January.

Winning for Missouri: More Like the Mugging of Missouri 

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One last shot at Amendment 2 before next Tuesday’s vote on it. And a warning that this amendment might have far-reaching results that have gone unnoticed.

Unfortunately, these considerations are being offered to late to be circulated enough to make a difference. But let’s put the issues on the record. Or at least, this person’s perspective.  Disagreements are welcome in the box at the end of this entry. We’ll talk about the casino industry’s efforts and we’ll discuss some sports teams questionable claims late in this post.

A key part of the proposed amendment is the sports wagering tax rate—10% —a back door tax cut of about 25% for all forms of gambling.

And here we must note that later we will discuss a clause in the proposed amendment that can lead to later mischief that will further disadvantage the state and its people.

The industry-supported legislation has never defined sports wagering as a special category.is listed as just another kind of game of skill.  In the lengthy list of those allowable games, it has been inserted after “Double down stud” or “any video representation of such games.”

It is that last clause that nobody has talked about.  But it’s important for future developments in the casino industry.  Here’s why.

People are not going to casinos as they once did.  The generation that has spent hours at the slot machines and the tables is dying off. Admissions are almost half what they were a dozen years ago or so.  As this trend continues, the casino industry must find ways to get customers to play these games. If they won’t go to the casinos, the casinos must—in effect—take the games to the consumers. This amendment is a template for later proposals to expand remote wagering to other forms of gambling.

This amendment legalizes remote betting in our casinos for the first time. Some of our casinos already have tested a version of remote gaming within the casinos, calling it “hybrid gaming.” In those casinos, customers who can’t find room at their favorite gaming table have gone to a nearby computer terminal, have set up their account, and have placed bets at the table as if they were there.

The tests haven’t generated much revenue. But the system has been tested.  No matter what the industry calls it, whether it’s fifty feet from the table or fifty miles from the sportsbook, it’s remote wagering. Don’t be surprised if casinos become more involved with it.  And that phrase is going into the constitution if voters approve Amendment Two.

We are not sure if that phrase in the amendment will mean casinos can offer remote betting on table games and slot machines without more legislative action. But it would not be in the proposal if the industry did not have a reason for it being there.

The Casino industry cleverly set the parameters for the discussion of sports wagering early:

—We can’t do sports wagering at 21% (the rate the state established more than three decades ago for table games and slot machines (incidentally, about 85% of casino revenues come from the slots).

—Sports wagering is different from other forms of gambling and needs special treatment.

Neither statement is true.

The industry has consistently claimed sports wagering is unique and requires its own special betting area and its own special tax rate, the latter reason justified differently year-to-year in bills introduced in the legislature.  The first bills proposed a tax rate of 6.25% (the lowest in the nation), 6.75% (the present low), 8%, and 10%.  The industry has seemed to have trouble sticking to its story when advocating a tax rate of less than 21%.

A couple of years ago the Senate tried to make the rate 12% and there was talk that the casinos would compromise on 15% because it was the average of the states around us.  We’ll get to that in a little bit.

The truth is that sports wagering is just another item on the gambling menu and its presence on that list supports that point. But the casinos have tried to get the legislature to believe it is special. And they want voters in a few days to believe it, too, so they can get a cut in overall tax rates (by our calculation) of about 25%.

The industry has never produced any independent studies in any legislative hearing we have attended, to justify the claim that sports wagering is a fragile flower needing lots of TLC, including the low tax. None of the pro-amendment advertising has offered any justification for it either.  And the voters, who understandably don’t closely follow the policy-making, or lack of it, by the legislature are left to make decisions based on thirty-second television commercials of questionable verity.

One industry argument has been that casinos will spend a lot of money establishing a unique area where the sports wagering can take place, an argument that falls apart because all forms of gambling have THEIR unique betting areas.  It’s why you can’t roll dice at a blackjack table. You can’t play poker at the roulette wheel table. You can’t play craps at the poker table and you can’t bet on where the ball will land on the big wheel at the Texas Hold ‘Em table.

There is nothing inherently unique in sports betting, regardless of industry claims. It operates the same way as other forms of wagering.  The consumer has money; the casinos have a system that will take all of it through time. The player at the poker table places a bet. So does a bettor in the sports betting area. The casino processes the bets, paying the winners and keeping the losers’ money. At the end of the day, the casino proceeds go into the same bank account with the proceeds from table games and slot machines.

Every year, the industry seems to have changed its justification for a sweetheart tax rate, raising a simple question that should been asked but never was: “How can the industry’s claims be trusted if it cannot stick to its own story?

In 2019, the industry demanded a 6.75% rate because “that’s what they charge in Las Vegas.”  A quick review of the Nevada gaming laws showed something the industry avoided telling our lawmakers: that 6.75% ALL forms of gambling in Nevada.  The industry also neglected to tell the legislators that the Nevada gaming law allows no deductions and no carryovers of casino losses from one month to the next, as is proposed in Amendment 2.  It was pointed out that the Nevada template would mean that Missouri would have two choices: either lower its present tax rate to 6.75 so all forms of gambling would be treated uniformly or to charge sports wagering a 21% tax.

Here are other reasons offered for a low tax rate:

—The casinos need to keep the extra money to properly promote and advertise this unique form of gambling. A representative of Penn National Gaming told a House committee in 2022 that a higher tax would hinder Missouri’s ability to compete with illegal gaming sites. He said, “When you are able to spend more in marketing, you are able to drive more in volume and revenues.”

The position of the industry that money should be taken away from the education fund and from home dock cities to subsidize promotions and advertising was questionable when the industry was generating revenues of about $1.7 billion at the time. Wouldn’t you think the industry should pay for its own promotions and advertising?

A critic argued that there is no reason the state should subsidize advertising for an industry of that size by reducing funding for the school systems and home dock cities (ten percent of the gaming tax goes to the thirteen host cities of Missouri’s casinos).  Additionally, major betting companies already were advertising on professional sports broadcasts and have stepped up their advertising since.

The proposal for using money traditionally earmarked for the education fund to publicize and promote sports wagering included no accountability language that would have required casinos to show the money actually had been used as proposed instead of just pocketed.

They also claimed the money not given the state in taxes was needed to convince Missourians to quit using illegal betting sites.  We’ll touch on that a little bit later.

—The casinos originally claimed the house advantage in sports wagering is “only” four percent (in 2023 the industry testified it was five percent).  But a study done for the UNLV Center for Gaming Research indicates that four percent is higher than most popular table games, sometimes double or more, and the industry has never asked for a favorable tax rate for table games.

In truth, the house advantage for sports wagering is more than four or even five percent, as the casino industry has claimed in some later legislative committee hearings. The website legalsportsreport.com charts statistics month-by-month in every state from the first month sports wagers were made in that state. As of last Sunday night, the webpage calculated $408-Billion dollars had been wagered in states allowing casino gambling on sports. The casino advantage worked out to 8.6%, more than double what the industry told legislators, and adding up to $35.1 Billion dollars.

Delaware, which has the highest tax on casino revenues, had the highest house advantage—25.1 to 46.5.  Delaware taxes casinos at a 50% and we’ve not heard any organized opposition to it.

Another excuse has been that Missouri needs a low tax rate to compete with surrounding states. Kansas is at 10. Iowa’s rate on casino earnings is 6.75, and according to an industry spokesperson. Missouri needs to have a low tax to keep Missourians from going to another state to place their sports bets.

The industry has presented no independent studies indicating casino customers care about the amount of taxes the casinos pay. In reality, the so-called competition rests on a simple question: Does Missouri have legal sports wagering? If Missouri legalizes it, Missourians presumably will place bets here because they don’t have go to some other state.

The industry also claimed it needs to have a much lower tax so it can pay for building sportsbook facilities within the casinos. If ninety percent or more of sports wagering will be done remotely, there’s not much reason for an elaborate sportsbook.  And, besides, building a sports betting facility in a casino should be considered a normal business expense with its own tax implications at the end of the business year.

This amendment has been called a “compromise between the stakeholders”—the six professional sports teams, the casino industry, and the remote betting industry” by St. Louis Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III.

But there are far more stakeholders than that. None of their representatives were invited to work on this “compromise.” Where were representatives of public education, host cities, veterans, the Access Missouri Scholarship Program, the National Guard program that provides veterans’ funeral escorts, people who develop gambling problems (we have seen several studies indicating those problems will triple with sports wagering), or even the Missouri Gaming Commission?

Here’s an answer: They were not invited because they were not considered participants in drafting gambling policy. Instead, they are industry targets whose only usefulness is based on how much money the industry can take from them or keep from programs benefitting them.

There’s one more stakeholder. The legislature, hired by the citizens to protect their interests. But the legislature has been MIA in protecting its constituents. The “compromise” is not a compromise at all.  It was, instead, an agreement to have the legislature give each of the stakeholders what they want. When the legislature fumbled several chances to satisfy the teams and the casinos, Amendment 2 was created.

It’s important as we reach the conclusion of these discussions to ask, “How did we reach this point?”

One reason this issue is on the ballot is that the legislature refused to resolve a competing issue—the legality of the gambling machines in many of our convenience stores, Video Lottery Terminals.

Supporters of video lottery terminals, while professing that they are legal, want the legislature to make them legal. The casinos see them as competing for their slot machine revenues and have not allowed an up-or-down vote on the VLT bills.  Supporters of the VLTs have filibustered the sports wagering legislation, demanding VLT legalization legislation be part of any sports wagering measure. The stalemate, especially in the Senate, has been a key factor in the pretty disgraceful deadlocks there that have resulted in historically-low levels of bill passage during the last three sessions.

The legislature lacked the courage in the face of extensive and aggressive lobbying by the casino industry to establish policies protecting the state’s interests and year after year considered the industry proposals without question. Only once that I recall did I hear a legislative committee member seriously press the chief industry lobbyist on some of these issues—Senator Denny Hoskins who was the leader in the unsuccessful efforts to legalize VLTs—was told he was out of time before he had finished his questioning. The replies he had received were vague at best.

A couple of years ago, I talked to the sponsor of a bill raising the tax rate to ten percent. A year earlier he had sponsored the industry’s bill that set the rate at eight percent. “What’s magical about ten percent?” I asked. “Last year it was only eight.”

He responded, “I figured that if ten was good enough for Jesus it was good enough for me.”

I was stunned for a second or two, and when I recovered my composure, I asked, “Jesus had twelve disciples not ten.  Can I get you up to 12?”

All I got in response was a smirk.

I found his responses to my questions arrogant, disrespectful, and dismissive. While I would not use the same phrases to characterize those who have advocated for this legislation, I think it is accurate to say there has been a certain confidence on their part that no outside opinions would be tolerated in the annual legalization efforts.

The legislature’s refusal to challenge industry-backed bills year after year is an indication of who has been in charge of things in the Capitol on this issue. Its inability to deliver what the industry—and in the last few years, the pro sports teams—wanted means the issue is likely to be put into the Missouri Constitution next week and the legislature will not be able to change things to protect the interests of the people of Missouri very easily.

I expect the mugging of Missouri and its people to succeed next Tuesday.  And we can thank a few generations of the people we think represent us at the Capitol for aiding and abetting it through their inaction.

 

 

“Winning for Education” Turns Casino Host Cities Into Bigger Losers

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So this is what they get for three decades of being the hosts of Missouri’s casinos—a financial knife in the ribs.

For three decades, ten percent of the casino gambling taxes have gone to the home dock cities and half of the admission fees, too, to pay for the police and fire protection, the infrastructure the cities provide so people can go to and from their casinos, use their bathrooms, and drink city water instead of some of the river water under the ‘excursion boat” where they gamble.

The cities have used some of that money for other improvements—parks, for example.

But not with Amendment 2, the sports wagering proposal on the November ballot.

They’re cut out of it. Completely.

None of the sports gambling taxes will go to the home dock cities.

There will still be an admission fee charged for those who go into the casinos to place their sports bets. But Winning for Missouri, the committee that is, shall we say, gloriously overstating the public benefits of sports wagering, has an economic study saying that, eventually, more than 98% of the bets will be placed online.  There will be no admission fee paid by the casinos for almost all of the sports bets.  And there is no fee in lieu of the admission fee.  They’re going to keep it all.

None of the sports gaming revenue will go to the cities, as it does for present casino table games and slot machines. Admission fees going to host cities will be minimal.

Once again, everybody loses except the casinos and the sports teams—including the host cities (the formal name is Home Dock Cities, harkening back to the days when the industry convinced voters there would be real boats traveling on our big rivers, before they became boats in moats—which is a good thing; we might tell that story in a later entry).

The host cities have been getting the short end of the stick for all of these three decades. For more than a decade, fewer and fewer people have been going to the casinos. At their peak, casinos counted about 54-million admissions.  In the last fiscal year, the admissions continued their decline toward 27 million.

Adding insult to injury is the industry’s refusal to let the legislature increase the admission fees so those home communities admission payments could keep up with inflation. The equivalent of two-dollar admission fee established in 1993 was $4.31 when we checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator Saturday night.

Yes, we mean “let the legislature increase the admission fees.”  Your faithful correspondent has suggested increases to legislators for six years. One of the more frequent responses is, “The casino industry would never buy that.”

The suspicion in the hallways for some time that the industry is, in one way or another, buying something.  It has several political action committees with bottomless checking accounts.  And legislators have to run for re-election for an unfortunately limited number of times.

The influence of the casinos is so ingrained in the legislative process that their representatives don’t even try to justify their statutory or constitutional demands. They just make brief statements about how great sports wagering will be and then sit down.

Not making any accusations, mind you.  We’re just sayin,’ as the colloquial phrase goes.

Anyway—the $4.31 equivalency means the state is getting two 1993 dollars while the casinos keep $2.31 of 2024 money.

The casinos are making more off the admission fee than the state and the home dock cities are making. But the situation is even worse than what we’ve just shown.

Inflation has reduced the purchasing power of those two dollars to about 95 cents.  So, while the home dock cities and the gaming commission are starving for funding with two dollars that are worth 95 cents in contemporary money, the casinos are making $2.31, and the gap between what the casinos keep and what the state and the home dock cities receive widens each year.

Our extensive research and hours with the calculator indicate the home dock cities and the State of Missouri, since the first casinos opened in 1994, have lost almost $1.9 billion ($1,880,392,926) in outright cash payments and in purchasing power combined because the casinos have pressured the legislature into making no change.

Extensive research has calculated how much each of our thirteen cities has lost in the last eight years or so. The individual tables are available but we don’t want to spend the space here to print them. Perhaps that can be done at another time.

Has anyone told our thirteen cities they’re being taken for a ride by their “excursion gambling boats?” The cities are part of the Home Dock Cities Association that one might think would be working to keep the losses from continuing and increasing.  But we have seen representatives for the association spouting the casino line every time they’ve testified before legislative committees.  It’s okay with the association, apparently, that the people they represent keep losing funding and will see no improvement from sports wagering.

The association says it favors the casino position because casinos are economic drivers for the region.  Really?   Can they show any studies that prove it? They haven’t, and the industry’s own statistics reported to the Missouri Gaming Commission show a different story.

We started compiling comprehensive statistics three years ago with a five-year lookback and we have updated figures from the Gaming Commission’s annual and monthly reports. In the now-eight years of statistics, these are the combined losses in cash admissions payments and lost value of those payments for each of our casinos:

  1. Ameristar St. Charles  $46,399,739
  2. River City, Lemay $43,956,210
  3. Hollywood, Maryland Heights $42,069,051
  4. Horseshoe (form Lumiere Place), St. Louis $31,287,455
  5. Ameristar Kansas City $36,290,466
  6. Harrah’s NKC $29,250,328
  7. Argosy Riverside $27,274,214
  8. Bally’s KC $21,852,498
  9. IOC Boonville $13,568,851
  10. Century Cape Girardeau $12,712,770
  11. Century Caruthersville $7,200,880
  12. Jo Frontier $8,357,439
  13. Mark Twain, LaGrange $5,718,114

Amendment 2 will only increase those numbers.

Sports wagering backers say sports wagering will generate hundreds of millions of dollars that will make a big difference for the pay of our classroom teacher.

That isn’t true.  As mentioned earlier, if voters approved Amendment 2, only a few million will be added to the $10-Billion dollar annual budgets of the elementary and secondary schools and the additional multi-million dollar budgets of our colleges and universities.

The industry has testified that increasing the admission fee to benefit our veterans would be a hardship on the industry, especially the smaller casinos. Bunk. It wasn’t but a few years ago when they paid $100 million a year, or more, for a decade and were not whining about the payments being an economic threat.

The industry has offered no statistical evidence to support its contentions.  It has shown no independent studies proving any of the claims made in their advertising leading up to the vote in a few days on Amendment 2.

The industry can’t or won’t supply that information to support its promises and claims.  But everything written in his series of posts is backed up by lengthy research.

Not only have the casinos fought efforts to maintain the value of the admission fee for their host cities, they have laid off about 5,500 of their employees since the number peaked at 11,658 in 2008.  In the most recent fiscal year, the total was down to 6,079.

Will sports wagering bring back those jobs? Not with 98% of wagers made remotely.  We can see a few more people serving drinks in the modest, at best, sportsbooks that will be created in our casinos to handle the few walk-ins. There might be a few runners taking bets to the I-T people—who might represent the biggest employee boost. But the jobs needle won’t move very much.

Let’s look at how much of an economic driver the casinos have caused in our five non-metropolitan areas, where one might suspect significant economic impact would produce community growth. Here are the population numbers for those communities, the census of 1990 first and the 2020 census next:

LaGrange  1,990-825

Caruthersville  7,389-5,562

Cape Girardeau  34,435-39,540

Boonville  7,095-7,969

St. Joseph  71,852-72,473

Five thousand jobs are gone. Limited population growth in some places or losses in others do not indicate casinos are causing their host cities to flourish. Admission Fees are dropping by the thousands, cutting funding for their host cities in half.

We mentioned in an earlier the industry’s claim that casinos “give back generously. Here’s the truth:

Casino “donations” or “contributions” to local causes are pennies on the dollar. Charitable giving during the last six fiscal years has averaged 0.000391% of their adjusted gross revenues. Their adjusted gross receipts have totaled almost $10.5 Billion in those years and their total charitable giving has been just $4.1 million. That’s less than pocket change.  And most of those who read these entries give far more than four-ten thousandth of our personal revenues to charities each year.

Again, we have charted the “giving generously” figures for each casino for the last six fiscal years. But we don’t have room for the charts in this post.  They are available, though.

A few years ago, casinos started reporting how much their customers left behind for charitable donations.  We have spotted six times when the customers provided more than the casinos did.

And that’s just fine with the industry, which fights every effort to restore funding to the towns that welcomed the casinos as great economic boosts for the area. Maybe for a while they were— thirty years ago.  But now?

The casinos also do not mention fees in Amendment 2, and for millions of reasons. The host cities have been getting the short end of the stick every year and it’s been getting worse for a long time. It is going to get even worse for host cities if sports wagering is approved next month.

I often wonder if the thirteen host cities ever get reports from their association or consider Missouri Gaming Commission annual reports that track how their fee income has fallen off a cliff and sports wagering will not save it.

Do not look for sports wagering to lead to reopened closed restaurants in our casinos. Not if only two percent of the sports bettors walk through the turnstiles. At one time, local restaurants feared the casinos would take away their business.  Today there’s far less competition from the casinos for the restaurant business in many of our towns.

One final thing before we go today:

The sports wagering proposal the casinos want to adopt in this election could be the prototype for expanded remote wagering in all other forms of gambling.  As walk-in traffic continues to dwindle, the casinos will be looking for more remote attachments to existing games.  Some casinos already have stuck their toes in those waters in recent years with hybrid table games—blackjack and other games in which people who can’t find room at the gaming table go to a computer nearby to place their bets.  The tests have not generated many dollars, relatively, but tests have been run.  Don’t be surprised if the casinos come back to our lawmakers and ask for remote slot machines and table games—again paying much less tax than those games pay now. It’s a characteristic of business that stacks the cards only for itself.

(We stayed at a casino hotel a few weeks ago and went to the breakfast bar where we placed an order and were given a tag for our table.  A few minutes later, a robot playing a catchy tune, came around the corner, and came down the aisle to my table, my order on its tray.  I took off the plate and the robot went back to the kitchen, trailing its little melody behind it. One nice thing, I suppose, is that I wasn’t given a choice of 15, 18, or 25 percent for a tip. I found myself wondering how soon there would be robots, not people, dealing the cards or spinning the wheel.)

There go more jobs.

Add the casino host cities  to the list of those whose situations will get worse if Amendment 2 is approved with its sweetheart tax rate, its deductions and carryovers, and its reliance on customers who carry casinos in their pockets.

This kind of thing should be handled by our elected representatives and senators, not written by two industries who place profit over any services to the people of the state.  But we have this proposal because our elected senators and representatives didn’t do their job.  Voters are well-advised to give them another chance by defeating a proposal that enriches the casinos and the pro sports teams and impoverishes our educators, our veterans, and the casinos’ own host cities.

Vote for Amendment 2 if you want.  But don’t do it if you think it will benefit anybody but the casinos and the sports teams, no matter what they tell you on the television or with misinformation you will find in your mailbox.

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Cold Cases 

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We usually talk about big-deal issues and people in these entries but there are times when an issue overlooked in the rush of great thoughts about great issues catches the eye.  Such is the case with Ethan Colbert’s piece in the September 17 Post-Dispatch about the exhumation in Jefferson County of an unidentified man found in the Mississippi River thirty years ago.

On one hand, it’s about how DNA technology not available then will help identify him now. He was naked except for a pair of socks, with no tattoos or other easily-identifiable features or injuries.  On the other hand, it’s a story of how government works, or can work, on behalf of the people, especially the least of us. And you don’t get much more “least’ than this man.

Colbert reported Missouri cemeteries hold the remains of more than 115 unidentified men, women, and children, “such as the female toddler found inside a suitcase in 1968 along the riverbank in West Alton in St. Charles County, date back decades.Others are far more recent, including an infant who was found in July 2019 inside a freezer inside an abandoned St. Louis city residence. The boy, wrapped in a blanket, was wearing a diaper and a ‘Winnie the Pooh’ onesie.”

Authorities and the news media did all they could do thirty years ago to identify the man pulled from the river.  They combed missing person reports, published and broadcast information about a 160-pound man, 5-10, with a three-day beard. His fingerprints didn’t match any records at the state or federal levels. Nobody called the sheriff’s office to say the man’s description resembled someone they knew.

Some of these nameless people might be those whose families long ago filed missing person reports. Some might be victims of a crime whose perpetrator has been eliminated by the passage of time. They deserve to be known, as do all of us.

Colbert relates how State Representative Tricia Byrnes of Wentzville met with some families of missing people and then got $1.5 million put into the state budget requiring the state to pay the costs of exhuming and of identifying those John and Jane Does.

Highway Patrol Sergeant Eric Brown, speaking for the Patrol, told Colbert private labs that specialize in this kind of cold cases will have to be hired because none of the state labors has the equipment needed.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department spent $1,700 of its own money to exhume the body of the unidentified man and it still hasn’t found a laboratory to do the DNA work, which is expected to cost another $2,300.  Once a lab is found, it could take as much as six months to finish its inquiry.

But few would doubt the value of spending $4,000 to resolve a family’s questions or of giving someone a name for a proper stone that marks their existence.

Sometimes the effort succeeds. Colbert recalled a 2022 case in St. Louis County when investigators learned a man had been missing since 1994 from Moline Illinois.  His family released a statement saying the discovery would provide “comfort to us and his friends.”

DNA technology has vastly improved in thirty years and the amount of DNA in various systems has partnered with that technology to solve lot of mysteries.  Private DNA repositories such as those available through Ancestry.com and other commercial ancestry companies have been used to identify victims of crime and their perpetrators as well as missing persons.

It is time consuming work, not much like the stuff we see on television where it seems DNA evidence can be processed within an hour-long program.

Missouri is investing a small amount of money in an effort to answer long-held painful questions asked by many people. Representative Byrnes’ legislation is an infinitesimal part of the $50-Billion state budget. But it might turn out to be the most important part of it to a lot of folks, living and dead.

It is so easy to think of government as a massive, faceless, unemotional entity.  But what it really is, is thousands and thousands of small and very human stories. Perhaps we will someday hear who this man in Jefferson County was. And maybe, someday, we’ll learn who the suitcase baby and the freezer child in the Winnie the Pooh onesie were.  And why somebody gave up on them.

 

Pre-People

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The Secretary of State has counted signatures and has cleared a proposed constitutional amendment legalizing abortion for the November ballot.

It has taken no time for Rep. Brian Seitz to say that if the amendment passes, he will introduce a bill for next year’s legislature declaring fetuses as people or in the terms of the proposal, “unborn children,” giving them the same legal protections as people who have been born.

We are going to raise several questions that are not intended to disparage Rep. Seitz or his efforts but are intended to take the discussion beyond the surface level. They’re philosophical more than they are ideological although the discussion next year at the Capitol is expected to be along lines of ideology which could mean the discussions are more likely to be arguments that will be less thoughtful and reasoned and will be more angry than cooly considerate.

Rep. Seitz is an interesting guy. He’s a military veteran and a Baptist minister from Branson and is a devoted fan of Superman.  His office is decorated with the big guy’s “S” memorabilia and the Representative often wears Superman stuff—as you’ll see from this picture from the Young Americans for Liberty.

House rules require certain levels of dress decorum so you won’t see him on the House floor in blue tights and a cape. But Superman neckties are allowed. And lapel pins.

In the 2022 session, he introduced a bill to ban the use of abortion pills to end ectopic pregnancies—pregnancies in which the fetus attaches outside the uterus, a situation in which the fetus is not likely to survive, a condition that in rare cases has been fatal to the woman.

It is not a simple issue, nor is the issue of fetal personhood (which would apply to ectopic pregnancies, we suppose).

Anyway—some questions that come to mind about fetuses as people:

Several years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were people when it comes to free political speech, a decision that has in the view of many people allowed for all kinds of campaign finance inequities and has furthered the development of oligarchical government. Would this legislation declare that fetuses have the same legal standing as corporations?

They couldn’t make campaign donations, of course, but couldn’t this open up all kinds of mischief by political surrogates?

Speaking of surrogates.  A fetus carried by a surrogate—-who has the final say in what happens to that fetus?  The woman carrying it?  The parent who supplied the egg?  The parent who supplied the sperm?  All three?  One?  Now you have three contributors to the fetus’s existence. Who has the final say BECAUSE——

If the fetus has the same citizenship rights as the woman who is carrying it, shouldn’t the woman—-especially if the pro=choice amendment passes in November—have the right to abort it under the state constitution?

If the woman asserts her right, can she be charged with a crime for doing something that is constitutionally legal?  Does she need permission from the egg donor or the sperm donor?

If the amendment is adopted, does not the constitution supersede state law, thereby giving he pregnant woman the ultimate authority?

If the fetus is considered an “unborn person,” should the state have some sort of a record of the creation of this person, i.e. a conception certificate that is kind of a pre-birth certificate that states the names of the parents, a conception date (because if the fetus dies before birth, should there not be a death certificate because it is a person?) or fertilization date or is the implant date the one that should be recorded?

Is a frozen fertilized egg considered a fetus?  To some who argue that life begins when the sperm hits the egg, the answer would be yes, would it not?  Then would we have thousands of frozen persons in various facilities throughout the state?

If a fetus is a person, will a name be required?  How will one know whether the proper name is Jane or John in the first hours after egg and sperm get together?

And in the non-laboratory process of conception, how will the parents know the exact date of fetus-hood and pre-birth (for lack of a better term).

If a woman’s body self-aborts with a miscarriage, who is responsible for the death of this “unborn person.” A person will have died. Should there be a funeral and a burial or a cremation?  Should there be a death certificate. If there is, what would fill the gap in the form for age?

We admit that some of these questions are pretty off the wall. But we think they bear at least a certain level of reality.

Many years ago, almost fifty of them—it was in the early days of The Missourinet’s coverage of the legislature (we went on the air January 2, 1975)— we were covering a hearing on an abortion bill and legislator asked a question of a pro-life witness that has stuck in our mind.

“When does ensoulment occur””

When does a fetus gain a soul and thus become something more than an undifferentiated cluster of cells—a person?   I think I would have remembered if there had been a cogent answer to that question. But it’s a good one to be asked under these circumstances.

We are dealing with the two basic issues of our existence here. Life and Death.  These issues are not be dealt with lightly or with political frivolity.

 

Fake Law, Part One of a Series

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(In this week before the primary election, we are reluctantly embarking on a series of daily observations of campaigns and campaign non-issues that do little to enhance public confidence in the process. We are sorry to be as pessimistic as we might seem. Perhaps the survivors of the primaries will be more responsible in their general election campaigns.

The situation seems to us be so dire that we will not have our regular Tuesday visit with the toy department of journalism—sports.)

FAKE LAW

It makes good headlines.

But it’s a fake issue.

It rallies the core.

But it’s a fake issue.

It paints a false portrait.

And it’s a fake issue.

It misleads voters.

Because it’s a fake issue.

It makes people think there’s a big problem.

But there isn’t.

It tries to capitalize on fear.

But it’s a lie.

And it’s one of the reasons Democrats in the Missouri Senate staged a record-setting filibuster in the last week of a legislative session that was characterized by filibusters from a small group of Republicans who have tried to run the chamber.

The legislation involved was a proposal making it harder to amend the state constitution. A bipartisan vote shut down debate and sent the bill to a committee that would work on compromises that might let it move forward in the last two days of the session.

The fact that Republicans and Democrats did something together put the Senate’s problem children into a tizzy.  Freedom Caucus ringleader Bill Eigel, who apparently thinks one has to disagree disagreeably to succeed in today’s politics, warned Senate colleagues that the caucus would object to any compromises that changes what the FC demands.

And what the FC demanded was passage of a bill that would become partly fake law.

If you’re keeping score, this is the proposal that says no change can be made in the state constitution, even if the statewide vote approves the change, unless voters in five of our eight congressional districts approve.  It’s a Republican effort to keep the heavy Democratic vote from the metro areas, and the Columbia area, from offsetting the conservative outstate votes.

It also contains “fake law” provisions prohibiting non-citizens from voting on constitutional amendments—-something already forbidden by Missouri and federal law.

But it sounds good in an election year.  Democrats kept the bill from going to a final Senate vote, complaining the language was included just to deceive voters. Eigel said those characterizations were “completely unfair” and the measure presented “a great opportunity” to keep non-citizens from voting.

—Except the ban already is on the books.

Democrats in the Senate, with Republican leaders refusing to take parliamentary action to shut down debate, chewed up three of the precious last five days of the session in a filibuster that lasted 51-plus hours.                    .

The demagoguery on this issue is going to be with us through November, regardless of any legislative action because MAGA Republicans, in particular, want to use it to beat Democrats—i.e. Joe Biden—over the head on immigration issues.

A few days ago in Washington, House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled the proposed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. Don’t be surprised if a House committee decides to “investigate,” giving majority members of the committee opportunities to condemn the actions or inactions of the administration to keep illegal immigrants from voting.

Another new committee, in the Missouri House, is going to investigate crime by illegal immigrants, another opportunity to make sure the issue’s political value is not wasted before the election. It has been expanded to include crimes AGAINST immigrants, a fair thing to consider.

We’ve all watched this kind of political circus on other topics.

And that’s what this harping on immigrant voting is.  Political circus.

What it is NOT is an issue. We’ll tell you why in our next entry.

Notes From a Quiet Street (Before We Forget Edition)

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We’ve been on the road quite a bit for the last month, the last couple of weeks in particular (as noted Monday).  We’re going back through some notes we jotted down during the regrettably unprogressive legislative secession that seems to have ended a long time ago (Thank God!), and entering them before they age out.

For much of the session, I did not wear a necktie.  The proper professional dress for male legislators and for those who tell them how to vote is business casual at the least.  But a January tumble that dislocated my left shoulder made it impossible to tie a necktie for a few weeks, very uncomfortable to struggle to tie one for a few more, and then a moderate struggle to do so as the end drew near..

I rather enjoyed having a good excuse for not wearing a tie, even if I had to have my left arm in a sling to be convincing.

I was comforted on Easter Sunday by a blog piece by Robert Reich, the diminutive (4-feet-11 inches) former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration.

The Washington Post  reported two decades ago, when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts, “His tie hangs an inch and a half beneath his belt buckle, or just above his knees.”

If you are a guy and you have ever wished for a tie-less society, you might find Reich’s ruminations on the issue valuable:

(4) The end of the necktie? – Robert Reich (substack.com)

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Saw a newspaper article a few weeks ago about the reopening of closed church in Chula, a town of about 200 folks, near Chillicothe.  The church closed five years ago.  Seems that the place had become a large bee hive since the last chord was played on the piano or organ.

The article in The Pathway, a Missouri Baptist Convention publication described how Amanda Hicks, her husband, and a friend went in to clean the place and make it presentable for worship again only to be attacked by “a huge swarm of bees” that stung all three people several times before they could get to safety.

The bees eventually were uprooted, unhived, smoked out—there must be an appropriate phrase for such things—and the cleaning went on.

Among things removed—77 pounds of honey.

The newspaper says 20-25 people worship there now.  Wonder if they ever sing a hymn that should be the church theme song:  Sweet Jesus.

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No other sport can match baseball for having statistics that go beyond being obscure.  Here’s one from the early games.

Pitcher Marcus Stroman of the New York Yankees has set a record for most strikeouts by a pitcher no more than five feet-seven inches tall.  The record was first written down in 1901.  He has now struck out 1,131 batters in his career, surpassing former Cincinnati pitcher Dolf Luque, a 21-year big leaguer.

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One reason the Missouri legislature has been so unproductive is that video lottery terminal operators, although insisting their machines are legal, want to pass a law legalizing them.  The casino industry complains that the “VLT” is just a pseudonym for “slot machine,” and casinos are the only ones who can have legal slot machines and they don’t want anybody horning in on their business, even if the VLTs are far, far away from any of our 13 designated casinos.

Neither side will compromise and the legislature seemingly lacks the intelligence or the courage to draft a compromise and pass it, pressure from the VLT and Casino lobbyists notwithstanding.

Three years ago, Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd became the only county prosecutor take serious action, getting a court to rule the machines illegal and crushing five of those machines in 2021.

Now there’s a second player—Springfield passed an ordinance in February declaring the machines illegal.

We’ve been kind of a vigilante on this issue.  We won’t do business with a convenience store that has the things.  At least, not locally.  Well, there is one—but it’s the only one I know of that pops popcorn every day.  I’ll spend a buck-50 maybe once a week there. But no gas.

Wonder if I can program my in-car GPS to show me stores without the machines?

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These machines bring to mind the tough old sergeant we had at the University of Missouri in the days when male students had to do two years of ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps to those too young to remember) who referred to Fort Leonard Wood as “the pimple on the butt of humanity.”  We consider VLTs to be pimples on the convenience store industry, bodily part not specified.

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We had another of life’s adventures a few weeks ago.  A sleep study.

From about 10:30 p.m. when we were ordered to bed and to go to sleep (I probably heard that order for the last time when I was about seven, if not earlier) until about 6 a.m., I tried to sleep in a strange bed with about two dozen wires attached from the top of my head down to my calves.

It did not go especially well but I was told afterwards that the machines had recorded “enough sleep” for a doctor to render an opinion about whether I was sleeping well, or well-sleeping.

The test recalls a joke Abraham Lincoln once told of a man who was being ridden out of town on a rail and when asked what he thought of the experience replied, “Well, if it wasn’t for the honor of the thing, I think I would rather walk.”

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The transfer portal is swinging both ways for colleges and universities these days. A lot of young men and women are moving from place to place almost yearly, looking for more money from the name-image-and-and likeness industry or more playing time to expose their talents to pro teams.

Wouldn’t you like to hear of one of these folks saying they’re transferring because the school of agriculture offers a better education?  Or the school of business?  Or the School of Education? Or Engineering?  Or the pre-med programs is better?

Collegiate sports is interesting but should fans be loyal to programs whose carpetbagging players have no loyalty in return?  I’ll watch the games on the teevee, and I often remember to do so, at least for football.  But I haven’t bought a ticket in years.

We think the NCAA needs a rule requiring schools to report the grade point averages of the carpetbagging players, some of whom already have their degrees. We’d like to know how many of these athletes even get a degree.

And that’s it for the sports curmudgeon today.

 

A “Day” in the Life of the Senate

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This Senate Journal for Monday, May 13, 2024 also is the journal for Tuesday and Wednesday because of a record filibuster, led by Democrats demanding so-called “ballot candy” be removed from a resolution saying no constitutional amendment could be adopted unless it carried in a majority of the state’s eight congressional districts, even if the overall vote was favorable. Democrats, already opposed to the resolution, objected to language added by the House duplicating existing law but making the proposal more appealing to the public—the “ballot candy” opponents wanted removed.

This might be dry reading to those who are not as immersed in state government as your obedient servant has been for most of his life.  We are doing this to place these events in a better record than the Senate Journal provides.

The journal for the “day” that turned into the “fifty-hour filibuster” led by the ten Democrats in the 34-member Senate is covered on pages 1059-1061 of the daily journal (the daily journals are compiled at the end of the session into one large volume, thus these page numbers pick up with the journal page number of the preceding day).  The rest of “Monday’s” journal is made up of messages from the House telling the Senate it has approved its own bills, has changed Senate bills and needs Senate approval of the changes, requests for conference committees to work out differences between the two chambers on various bills, and other routine legislative business.

Because the House of Representatives’ rules limit debate time, filibusters do not occur there.  But the Senate has no such restrictions and a parliamentary procedure called “moving the previous question,” which—if approved—immediately ends debate and calls for a vote, is seldom used.

Because the journal is a record of actions, not a by-word recording of the debates, the only indication that a filibuster occurred is the listings of the names of those who presided over the chamber at various times. The number of names is an indication of the extensive length of the filibuster.  The fact that there are no journals for Tuesday and Wednesday is another indication.

Legislative “days” are not calendar or clock-determined.  A legislative day ends with adjournment. In this case, a “Monday” lasted until Wednesday on the calendar while, for journal purposes, the legislative day was still Monday.  Adjournment in this case did not occur until some Republicans crossed party lines to join the Democrats in sending the bill back to the House with a request for a conference.  The House on Thursday rejected the Senate’s request, telling the Senate to pass the House Committee Substitute.   Senate leadership knew that the minority Democrats would resume their filibuster if the bill was returned to the floor unchanged and would run out the clock at 6 p.m. on calendar Friday.  Because there was no use spending the last day of the session in a filibuster, the Senate adjourned after a ten-minute session Friday.

We have consulted the Senate archived recording of this long “Monday” to ascertain the exact amount of time the filibuster consumed.  We have done this because this event was unprecedented in Missouri legislative history and smashed a previous unprecedented 41-hour filibuster a few days earlier by the right-wing Senate Freedom Caucus.

Monday, May 13, 2024:   Sponsor Mary Elizabeth Coleman moved that the Senate adopt House Committee Substitute for Senate Substitute Number 4 for Senate Committee Substitute for Senate Joint Resolutions 74, 48, 59, 61, and 83.  That sounds complicated but it represents the path the bill had taken to that point.

There were five similar resolutions on this issue filed in the Senate.  A Senate Committee combined those resolutions into one but not before the entire Senate had debated the bill and three substitute versions were voted down, leaving the fourth that gained enough voter for passage.

The amended and combined Senate resolution went to the House where a House Committee substituted its version. The House passed the revised bill.  The changes had to be approved by the Senate before the proposition could be put on a statewide ballot.

Monday, May 13 was the first day of the last week of the 2024 legislative session. Democrats, outnumbered more than 2-1, knew the clock was their greatest friend when it came to getting this proposition changed or killed.  They launched a filibuster that blocked a vote that surely would have sent the issue to the November ballot.

Our legislature records its debates and archives them.  We went to the May 10 audio journal and tracked how much time was spent on this bill in each day.  The Senate archive recording resets to 0:00 at the end of each 24 hours.

Day One, Monday, May 13.

0:00:00—The Senate begins its “day” with a prayer from Reverend Stephen George.

0:04:52—Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman moves Senate approval of  HCS/SS4/SCS/SJR 74, 48, 59, 61 and 83.

0:06:15—Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo makes substitute motion to send the bill back to the House and to ask for a conference committee to work out the differences between the House version, which had “ballot candy” added to it, and the Sente version.  This is the beginning of the filibuster.

“Monday” part one (Monday-Tuesday on the traditional calendar): 24 hours, of which 23 hours, 53 minutes and 45 seconds were spent filibustering the resolution. Running filibuster time: 23:53:45.

“Monday” part two (Tuesday-Wednesday on the traditional calendar): all 24 hours were involved in the filibuster. Running filibuster time: 47:53:45

“Monday” part three (Wednesday on the traditional calendar); 02:15:36  Roll call vote begins.  Roll call results announced: 02:18:06. The motion to send bill back to the House passed 18-13, with eight Republicans crossing party lines. The filibuster is official ended.

02:24:41: The Senate adjourns until Thursday morning.  “Monday,” the longest known “day” in Missouri Senate history, has finally come to an end.

Total filibuster time: 50:11:51

Total time of “Monday, May 10, 2024” in the Missouri Senate: 50:24:41.

Miserable, Just Miserable

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The Missouri Constitution establishes a definite date each year for adjournment of the Missouri General Assembly.  This was one of those years when adjournment couldn’t happen soon enough.

This miserable session will be remembered as the session that a handful of Republican senators calling themselves the Freedom Caucus ran into the ground because a majority of their party didn’t buy their demands.  They accused the majority of their majority party of being RINOS, a nickname our former president likes to apply to any Republican who does not love him. There is considerable reason to consider far-out clusters such as this as the real Republicans in Name Only.

This will be remembered as the Session of the Filibuster.  The Freedom Caucus kicked off the session with a lengthy discussion of Senate procedure, filibustered for eleven hours trying to force colleagues to act quickly on bills making it harder for citizens to create laws through initiative petition. That led President Pro Team Caleb Rowden to strip four members of the Freedom Caucus of their committee chairmanships and (this seemed to be the most terrible punishment to some of them) took away their parking spaces in the Capitol basement.  Senators Bill Eigel, the ringleader of the caucus, Rick Brattin, Denny Hoskins and Andrew Koenig lost their prestigious positions, after which Eigel stopped action in the Senate for four more hours so he could question several Senators who seemed to support Rowden’s action.

Rowden calculated in late January that the Senate had been in floor session for 17 hours and 52 minutes in 2024. He said the Freedom Caucus had filibustered “things of no consequence whatsoever relative to a piece of policy” for 16 hours and 45 minutes of that time.

And it only got worse. But in the end, the filibuster bit the Freedom Caucus—uh—in the end.

As the session reached May and the crucial last couple of weeks, including the week in which the state budget had to be approved, the caucus stopped things cold for 41 hours—believed to be the longest filibuster in Missouri legislative history—because its priorities were not THE priority of Senate leadership.

But that filibuster record was to be broken in the final week when Democrats and some Republicans fed up with the Freedom Caucus’s behavior got in the way of final approval of the resolution changing the way the state constitution can be changed. Those who had lived by the filibuster died by the filibuster.

The final filibuster lasted FIFTY hours and change. It succeeded where the Freedom Caucus belligerency failed. The Freedom Caucus’ bull-in-a-china shop philosophy of government was repudiated by a Senate that seemed to, in this case at least, rediscovered bipartisanship. But the damage done by this group could not be reversed.

The 2024 legislative session was the least productive in modern memory—or even ancient memory, for that matter.  Only 28 non-budget bills were passed.

That beats the record of 31 in the 2020 session.  But remember, that was the Pandemic Session when the legislature did not meet for several days then operated on a limited basis for several other days.

Eigel disavowed responsibility for that miserable record.  “A lot of bad things that didn’t happen this session didn’t happen because of the people standing behind me,” he said in a post-session Freedom Caucus press conference. His words probably didn’t carry any water with Senators and Representatives who had worked hard and conscientiously on bills that would have done GOOD things only to see them disappear into the ongoing mud fight in the Senate led by Eigel and his band.

Eigel has dreams of becoming Governor.  Denny Hoskins thinks he’d be a peachy Secretary of State. Andrew Koenig thinks being State Treasurer would be wonderful. Rick Brattin just hopes to get elected to another term in the Senate.

There are some folks who have watched them this year who hope they still don’t have parking places in Jefferson City in 2025.

The 50-hour filibuster deserves a closer look. We’ve taken that look to establish the exact length of it so that future observers will know when they have witnessed an even more regrettable example.

Incidentally, it is believed the longest filibuster by one person in Missouri history was Senator Matt Bartle’s futile effort to block some gubernatorial appointments in 2007. He held the floor for seventeen hours.

The Stadium Thing

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Here’s a sand-in-the-underwear situation for you.

Owners of our big-time sports teams—the Royals, the Chiefs, the Blues and the Cardinals (and our two pro soccer teams)—want you and me to reach into our pockets to pay major parts of the costs of building new stadia or upgrading old ones for them.

The Royals and the Chiefs overlooked a critical issue as their effort to extend the Jackson County sports tax was trounced by voters recently. The Cardinals are overlooking the same issue with reports that they will be seeking state support for the updating of Busch Stadium III (although team president Bill DeWitt III says such a report is “premature.” :

None of them has mentioned how many millions of dollars they will make from sports wagering. None of them has given any indication that they could use that money instead of taxpayer funds for their new projects.

It is a failing that might not bode well for the teams and the casinos that want to put a sports wagering proposition on the ballot later this year, a proposal that hugely disadvantages the state and the programs that years ago the casinos promised could be funded with taxes and fees from legalized gambling.

Would it not make sense to ease voter worries about city and state subsidies for stadium construction and improvements if the teams committed to using the first few years of the giant profits they expect from sports betting for their stadium projects instead of expecting a tax handout from the citizens?  

 Why should the legislature give any team that will profit from sports betting any funds from state taxpayer pockets?  Why should the legislature lessen financial support for, say, mental health services, veterans homes, education, senior services programs, and nursing home support so sports teams that soon will be divvying up hundreds of millions of dollars a year from people thinking they can consistently beat game-day odds don’t have to use those funds?

Opponents of sports wagering might be able to make a lot of hay out of this oversight by the teams and the casinos.  It’s an election year. If you are a voter, you should ask your candidates if they favor taking money away from state programs to build or maintain playing fields while the team owners and the casinos rake hundreds of millions of dollars in lost consumer bets into their pockets instead of investing them in stadium projects in their home cities?

You should ask those questions.  And if your candidate says the sports teams should be allowed to pick your pocket with a tax while lining their pockets with gambling revenues, you should look for another square on the ballot to fill in.

These two issues are joined at the hip and voters, especially those in the home areas of our major league teams, should hold their legislators and their sports teams accountable.