Category Archives: legislature

When you tax something—-

Posted on by
Reply

It’s a cliché.  “When you tax something, you get less of it.”

That’s shorthand for a Ronald Reaganism: “If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it.”

Would that economics could be so simple.

A bill in the legislature this year would excuse residents of St. Charles and Jefferson Counties from paying the St. Louis City one-percent earnings tax.  That’s a tax that St. Louis collects from people who come to the city to work and then leave it to go home in those two counties.

One of the supporters of the bill has trotted out the old cliché to justify it.

The trouble with cliches is that they are so easily punctured.

Those who think earnings taxes are appropriate note that daily job emigrants are served by St. Louis police and other St. Louis first responders, among others, that they drive on the city’s streets, contribute to the city’s trash burden, that they go to city hospitals or doctor’s offices if they get sick or hurt during working hours or recreational tie at the ballpark, and on top of it all, they have jobs in St. Louis that they don’t have at home.

St. Louis and Kansas City have earnings taxes.  Many years ago, when financier Rex Sinquefield, long an opponent of earnings taxes spearheaded a drive that got law passed requiring the two cities to re-approve their earnings taxes every five years. The Post-Dispatch reported a few days ago that Sinquefield had donated $25,000 to the campaign of the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Phil Christofanelli, a candidate for the state senate.  In the process of requiring the five-year re-enactment of the tax in the cities, voters also approved a statewide ban on any other city ever considering such a tax.  Voters thus gave up their right to decide what is bests for their town on this issue.

The problem with the cliché is that the word “it” needs to be defined.  Does this bill mean the elimination of the tax will bring thousands of new workers to St. Louis?  Where will they come from—St. Charles and Jefferson Counties?  Will they leave their jobs in those counties where they don’t pay an earnings tax now to flock to St. Louis just because employees won’t pay it there any more?

Will elimination of the tax result in lower prices for goods and services? It’s hard to visualize why it would.  Will it make funding public services more difficult?

The cliché has a big problem; the definition of “it.”

A look at Missouri’s loosened marijuana laws tends to indicate high taxes are no barrier at all to the weed businesses.  Maybe if we jacked up the tax even higher there would be less marijuana sales. Or maybe not.  I recall when cigarettes were two dollars a carton (ten packages). Big price increases did not seem to be the factor in reducing smoking many years later. Smoking laws were a much bigger factor.

Property. If you tax it,  you get less of it?  It’s true that increasing taxes might force someone to move into a less-expensive home.  But the old property is still there—for someone else to inhabit.  People go away but property doesn’t.

Yes, there is less in the pocket but there is more for “it,” and by “it” we talk about the institutions and services that are necessary to protect us, to heal us, to educate us, to make it possible for us to go from one place to the next—taxes are the only way there can be more of “it.”

So the cliché is just that, and cliché’s sound good but they are just surface words that substitute too often for careful thought.

(It’s kind of like a former colleague who once remarked, “Stereotypes are so handy because they save so much time.”)

It’s a campaign year, though, and tax cuts always are cheap and easy things to promise and they do seem to persuade some voters who fail to realize the consequences of the cuts, especially when the economy drips and the programs those services finance aren’t available when they are needed the most.

Maybe in a campaign year, we should levy a wordage tax on politicians.  There’s a lot of “it” that, under this philosophy, would go away.

Maybe the tax should be a pretty big, now that you mention……….

How Our Major League Sports Teams Are Plotting A Massive Rip-off Of The State 

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Most of our patrons do not read the Tuesday entries that focus on sports. We ask that you carefully read this one, however, at least the first part.

(SPORTS WAGERING PETITION)—-Our six major league sports teams have crawled into bed with an industry whose sole characteristic is greed and the people of Missouri could become their abused children.

The teams, fed up that the legislature has failed to legalize sports betting, have launched a petition campaign highly favorable to the casino industry and detrimental to the public to put the issue on the ballot.

It’s a rip-off of major league proportions.  The Cardinals, Royals, Chiefs, Blues, and Missouri’s two major league soccer teams are collecting petition signatures to ask voters to let them and our thirteen casinos pocket millions of dollars with a sweetheart tax package that will take millions away from Missouri schools, veterans, and even the host cities of the casinos.

Hidden in the deal is a big tax cut for the casino industry that is made bigger with provisions that lower the amount of money to be taxed.

The petition campaign constitutes nothing less than a mugging of the state of Missouri.

Let’s begin with a simple question.  Would you knowingly bet eleven dollars, knowing that the most you ever could win would be TEN dollars?

That is what the teams and the casinos are going to do to Missourians.  The state is guaranteed to be a loser with the very first bet.  Here is how it will work if voters fall for this scheme:

Missouri’s casinos pay a twenty-one percent tax on revenues remaining after they have paid off winners of bets.  So much money is bet in Missouri that the casinos have approached revenues of two-billion dollars in each of the last two years and are on track to equal last year’s record or set a new revenue record for a third straight year.

Simple elementary school mathematics shows how the teams’ casino allies will grow immensely wealthy with this scam while the things that are supposed to be financed with the gambling tax are massively short-changed.

The proposed tax rate on sports betting is only ten percent, eleven percentage points below the rate charged for the last thirty years of casino gambling on table games and slot machines. Thus, the state would give up eleven of the present twenty-one percentage points to get ten

The American Gaming Association’s latest annual report says Missouri would be the twelfth state with a tax of ten percent or less.  Fourteen states have tax rates above ten percent or that top out above ten percent, including three states that charge fifty and fifty-one percent. Only five states on the AGA’s chart show rates of less than ten percent.

But there is something dark behind the petition’s demand that the rate be ten percent here.

Ten percent and twenty-one percent produce an average of 15.5 percent, an effective twenty-five percent tax cut for all Missouri casino gambling.

While the teams’ sophisticated advertising campaign will tell voters the proposal wll generate millions of dollars more for the state education fund and for their host cities, the truth is that it will produce less.

Financial analysts who advise the Missouri General Assembly forecast taxable revenes from casino gambing will jump from almost two billion dollars to $2.4 billion within four years.  A twenty-one percent tax of that amount would produce $504 million with ninety percent going into funding for elementary and secondary public schools. The other ten percent would be distributed to the thirteen cities that have casinos in them and to one county that shares revenues with the casino city.  An average tax of 15.5% would produce $372 million, again with the 90-10 split, $132 million less than if the twenty-one percent tax is maintained.

While $372 million dollars on the low end might seem to be an impressive sum, here is something else the casinos and the sports teams will never tell you in their promotions and advertising:

The Missouri Gaming Commission reports that casinos in the last fiscal year paid gambling taxes of $403.3 million dollars on revenues from slot machines and table games alone.

Approving sports wagering as proposed in the petition will take more than thirty million dollars away from the state, not add revenue.

Our metropolitan areas will feel the difference most acutely.  Host communities in the St. Louis metro area, which has four casinos, will lose $5.6 million in the first four years of sports wagering under the petition plan.  We wonder if Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III, who has been the spokesman for the teams during legislative committee hearings, has ever thought of what this plan will cost his main ticket-buying community.

Host communities in the Kansas City metro area, also with four casinos, will lose $3.65 million, something we bet the Chiefs and the Royals haven’t considered. .

Our figures are based on projections made by legislative fiscal analysts.

Legislative fiscal analysts forecast the ten percent tax will cost the thirteen host cities more than eleven million dollars, total, in the first four years of wagering, money they would receive if sports wagering were taxed at the same rate as slots and table games.  Amazingly, the association that represents those cities doesn’t seem to care. It has endorsed whatever the casinos have asked for from the legislature. One wonders if the city councils or the citizens of those communities has ever heard how much they have lost in the past thirty years because the two-dollar admission never having adjusted for inflation and how much they will lose if the petition passes.

By our calculations, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics annual inflation calculator, the state already has lost almost $1.1 Billion in admission fees because casinos are paying the same fee they paid when the first two of them opened thirty years ago this year.

In the most recent fiscal year, the state received $57.9 million in admission fees. Had the fees been adjusted annally for inflation, it would have received $113.5 million. But inflation works both ways.  The $57.9 million the state did receive had a purchasing power of only $29.5 millon because of the loss of purchasing power of the two 1993 dollars. Remember, half of the two-dollar admission fee goes to the host cities.  But their association doesn’t seem to care.

And it’s worse.

Buried within the petition are six deductions not allowed in today’s law that will reduce taxable income by several millions of dollars. The deductions encourage casino bookeepers to try to show their casino produced a monthly loss on paper.  If they can, the schools, home dock cities and other state entities listed as beneficiaries of this new form of gambling will receive zero revenues that month.

But it’s far worse than that.

If a casino can show that it had a paper loss for a month, the amount it claims as loss will carry over to the next month and be used to calculate that month’s profit or loss, again reducing the casino’s tax payments. Can anyone name any other business or industry in Missouri that is allowed to calculate their taxes this way?

Two states provide scary examples of the dangers of the carryovers for Missourians to consider.  In November, 2022, Louisiana casinos reported a statewide loss of $25.6 milllion because some of the casinos took bets made by a Texas furniture store owner that the Texas Rangers would win the World Series, which they did. In the same month, Maryland casinos reported a statewide loss of $33.6 million after they spent more than $60 million in promotional credits as part of the state’s launch of mobile betting.

But it’s far worse than that.

Let’s go back to the admission fee. Casinos also pay the state a two-dollar admission fee for each person who goes through the turnstiles to the gambling floors. If the gamblers stay longer than two hours, the casino pays another two dollars—a policy that began on the first day that casinos opened thirty years ago this year when they actually were boats and river cruises actually were possible.

A prediction was made at the East Coast Gaming Conference in 2019, a few months after sports betting was legalized by the U. S. Supreme Court, that within five to ten years, ninety percent of sports wagers would be placed online. Just two years later, gambling analyst Larry Henry reported on Casino.org that more than eighty percent of sports bets already were being placed online and New Jersey, the first state to legalize sports betting after the court ruling, 92 percent of sports wagers had been placed online in 2021.

If Missouri follows national trends, ninety percent of sports bets soon will be online and not made by people who go through the turnstiles of our casinos.  Under the petition, those online bets will produce zero revenue for programs and services whose budgets have suffered greatly because turnstile admissions have declined by about forty-seven percent in the last twelve years.

Who is suffering the most? The Veterans Commission Capital Trust Fund, which provides money for veterans nursing homes. Admission fee funding of care for our veterans has dropped by 63 percent in the last decade.  Nothing in the petition does anything to reverse that trend.

The Missouri Gaming Commission’s budget has declined by more than twenty percent in the last decade. It has twenty-three fewer employees than it had then. And it is facing a major increase in enforcement responsibility if the petition passes. The commission will collect some licensing fees but the petition also requires it to use some of its new money to pay for a problem gambler’s assistance fund.

Numerous studies have indicated gambling addiction will at least triple with the introduction of sports wagering and remote betting.  The money to be set aside for “compulsive gambing prevention” comes out of the commission’s pocket. It comes out of the taxes benefitting schools and home dock cities and fees going to the gaming commission. Nothing in the petition requires the casinos or the teams to contribute directly to a fund to counter the problems their new form of gambling will create.

And two more things before we go.

The casino industry has spent a lot of time and resources trying to convince your legislators and mine that sports wagering is a stand-alone issue that need special care and feeding.  It is not.  Their own bills just add “sports wagering” to the list of games of skill in our state laws.  In the now-seven years that sports wagering bills have been introduced, not one has said anything that defines sports wagering as differing from poker, blackjack, craps, or any other table game or slot machine.  A bet is a bet is a bet.  And if you bet long enough the casino will have all of your money whether you bet on the spin of a wheel, the fall of a card, the roll of a die, or the pull of a lever.

The committee backing the petition campaign says sports wagering will provide new good-paying jobs.

Will it generate enough new jobs to replace the 5,600 people laid off in the host cities during the last fifteen years?  Will it replace the $100 million-plus in payrolls lost each year by the host cities in that same period?

Everybody loses except the teams and the casinos in this petition campaign. People going into casinos know they’re playing on tables tilted against them. That’s fine.  But before Missourians support this blatant deception against our state by the casinos and our sports teams, they should look at how much they will lose regardless of whether they gamble.

The casinos have never dealt the top card on the deck to the legislature while trying to convince it to approve sports wagering.  Now they, with their sports team bedmates, are doing the same with the general public.

The legislature could fix all of this during this session. But don’t expect it to. There are 197 state representatives and senators in our General Assembly.  The Associated Press has reported that casinos, sports teams, online sports betting companies, and video gaming terminal inerests have hired about eighty lobbyists to pressure the people we presume represent us into representing those interests instead. That’s one lobbyist for ever 2.5 members of our legislature. It is hard to grow a backbone and do what is right on this issue when  you are surrounded by lobbyists backed by interests with bottomless checking accounts and a willingness to support re-election bids or to support opponents for those with the courage to reject the ongoing mugging of Missouri.

The only recourse Missourians will have if this petition gets enough signatures to be on the ballot later this year is to vote it down.  If they fail to do so, their state will be a big loser.

(All of the statistics used in this entry are drawn from the annual reports of the Missouri Gaming Commission, the American Gaming Association, legislative staff fiscal notes for pro-casino legislation, and the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. We never have seen the homework the casinos to justify the claims they have made in the past or the present).

Now, we take a look at the history behind a cold football game, a cold-shooting basketball team, and the latest from baseball’s hot stove league)

(CHIEFS)—The regular season wasn’t pretty for the Kansas City Chiefs but they looked almost as solid as the frozen field at Arrowhead Stadium Saturday night with their dominating 26-7 wild card playoff win over the Miami Dolphins, a team that hasn’t won in forever  in cold weather.

The game goes into the record books as the fourth-coldest game in NFL history.  Here’s where it fits in:

December 31, 1967  Lambeau Field, Green Bay comes from behind to beat Dallas 21-17 on the famous Bart Starr quarterback sneak behind center Ken Bowman and Right Guard Jerry Kramer who pushed Defensive Tackle Jethro Pugh aside just enough for Starr to cross the line.  Temperatur at the start of the game: -13. Wind Chill  -48. The game was dubbed “The Ice Bowl.”  Green Bay went on to defeat the Oakland Raiders 33-10 in Super Bowl II.

January 10, 1982  “The Freezer Bowl”  Riverfront Stadium, Cincinnati. Coach Forrest Gregg, who played in “The Ice Bowl” is now the coach of the Bengals, who beat the San Diego Chargers 27-7. San Diego’s only touchdown was scored by former Missouri Tiger Kellen Winslow.  Game time temperature: -9  Wind Chill -59.  Some of the players in this game, as in the Green Bay-Dallas game reported health problems for the rest of their lives because of the playing conditions.

January 10, 2016  TCF Bank Stadium, Minneapolis. Seattle beats the Vikings 10-9 when Bill Walsh’s field goal attempt goes wide left with 22 seconds on the clock. Minus-6 with a windchilll of minus-25.

January 13, 2024 Arrowhead Stadium,  Chiefs beat the Miami Dolphins in the southernmost NFL cold game on record, 26-7. Harrison Butker’s four field goals and two extra points outscore the Dolphins, who lost their eighth straight game played in below-freezing temperatures. Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa dropped to 0-5 in games played below 45 degrees.  Game time temperature: -4  Windchill -20. At the end it was -9 and -28. The extreme cold sent 69 people to aid tents run by the city fire department. About half were for hypothermia symptoms and fifteen people were taken to hospitals where seven were suffering from hypothermia, three for frostbite and five for various other reasons.

      The game broke the record for the coldest game at Arrowhead Stadium.  The Chiefs beat the Broncos 48-17 on December 18, 1993. Footall Reference reports the temperature at the start of the game was 0.5 degrees.

December 10, 1972  Metropolitan Stadium, Minneapolis Green Bay 23, Vikings 7. Temperature at game start 0. Wind Chill -18. Green Bay’s running backs, John Brockington and MacArthur Lane combine for more than 200 yards rushing, 99 by Lane, who had come over from the St. Louis Cardinals that year. Later, Lane was with the Kansas City Chiefs and in his last year in his career, 1978, rushed for 144 yards against  the Bills. He was 36 years and 199 days old and remains the oldest player to rush for more than 100 yards in an NFL game.

January 20, 2008  Lambeau Field  New York Giants 23 Packers 20 on a 47-yard field goal 12:25 into overtime by Lawrence Tynes. Temperature -4, Wind Chill -24.

December 26, 1993  Lambeau Field  Packers vs. the now-LA Raiders. Packers win 28-0. Game time temperature 0, Wind Chill -22.

January 15, 1994  Ralph Wilson Stadium, Buffalo, Coldest game played at Orchard Park in Buffalo. Game start temperature 0, Wind Chill -32. Bills come from behind in the fourth quarter with a fourth quarter touchdown pass from Jim Kelly to Bill Brooks to win 29-23.

December 3, 1972  Metropolitan Stadium, Minneapolis. -2 at the start with a windchilll of -26. Vikings kicker Fred Cox outscores the Bears with three field goals and two PATs in a 23-10 Minnesota victory.

Kansas City’s defense again was dominant, keeping the Dolphins out of the red zone all night long.  Miami’s only score was a 53-yard touchdown pass and run to former chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill who otherwise was not a factor in the game. The win against Miami moves the Chiefs into next week’s game against the Buffalo Bills, who beat the Pittsburgh Steelers last night in the game delayed for a day because of a typical Buffalo winter storm that dumped more snow into the stadium than an army of scoopers could remove on Sunday.

(miz)—The Missouri Tigers reached the halfway point of their regular season Saturday, losing their sixth game in their last seven outings and could drop below .500 tonight when they play league-leading Alabama on the Crimson Tide’s court.  Alabama is 11-5 overall with a five-game winning streak. Missouri is now 8-8. The Tigers join Arkansas and Vanderbilt in the SEC cellar with 0-3 records.

SB Nation’s Sam Snelling reports the Tigers have not defeated a high major opponent since losing Caleb Grill early in December with an injury to his non-shooting wrist. He had surgery  and might be back later this month.

Snelling suggests coach Dennis Gates is giving his veteran players a chance to right the ship, but it’s not working. Five of his guys have played more than 100 games in their college careers with Nick Honor accounting for 139. Noah Carter, John Tonje, Connor Vanover, and Sean East II all have more than 100 games. He wonders when Gates will realize his veterans aren’t getting the job done and when he will start building for tomorrow with his younger guys. (zou)

(BASEBALL)—No big new signings by the Royals and the Cardinals but the Redbirds have made an interesting front office move by hiring Chaim Bloom as an advisor. Bloom was with the Boston Red Sox until he was dumped by Fenway Sports Group despite being credited by some with cutting spending while rebuilding the team’s farm system.

He’ll be an advisor to Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak, who plans to step aside after the 2025 season, prompting questions about whether Mozeliak is grooming his successor. Mozeliak warns against jumping to conclusions. “where it leads to, we’ll see,” he says.

It’s the second major advisory step taken in the off-season by the Cardinals, who signed Yadiar Molina earlier as an advisor, prompting speculation about his role growing from advisor to manager.  Molina is managing in the Puerto Rico winer league and wants to manage in the bigs.  Present Cardinals manager Oli Marmol is in the last year of his contract. Mozeliak does not expect friction between the M’s.  Although he’s a supporter of Marmol, he also recognizes the Cardinals cannot have another year with problems on the field and in the locker room.

-0-

Passive 

Posted on by
Reply

Maybe it’s a case of thinking the old days were better than today.  Maybe not.

The legislature has returned to the Capitol.  Most people have no idea how quickly things move when the session starts or how intense the work is—or how contentious is can become if a partisan renegade group decides it must prevail, their minority status be damned.

For the last three years the sessions’ last week or so have become mired in political mud and the sessions have been the least productive in long, long memory because of conflicts between the legalization of those Video Lottery Machines that are pimples in our convenience stores and sports wagering legislation that seeks to give our casino a significant tax break to the detriment of our education funds and even to the further detriment of their own host cities.

But that’s a diatribe for another time.

It seems to from our high position that the baneful effects of term limits, about which we were warned in 1992, have produced another regrettable trend.

A passive legislature.

The loss of institutional memory because of term limits cannot be overstated.

One of the bigget warnings before 1992 was that term imits would transfer power from the chambers to the hallways, where lobbyists roam, because no senior members would be around to advise newcomers on the role of the General Assembly in the process of lawmaking and in the process of shaping state fiscal policy.

The transfer became obvious several years ago when, during debate, the sponsor of a bill would ask of another lawmaker proposing an amendment, “Have you checked with so-and-so out in the hall?”

Later the issue became even more egregious as I watched lawmakers during debate checking their cell phones for text messages from the paid influencers outside the chamber. Lobbyists are banned from being on the House and Senate floors. Physically.  But their electronic presence is undeniable.

As we have watched for these many years, it seems that the legislature today is more likely to accept legislation without question and without hearing the voice of the public as much as it once did. Although we don’t cover committee meetings as much as we did in our reporting days, we have been in a large number of them on the issue of sports wagering, a special interest of ours for several reasons.

The caisno industry, now unfortunately aided and abetted by our major professional sports teams that need millons of dollars a year to try to keep pace with bigger-market moneybag teams, has always presented bills that are—to be frank—terrible fiscal policy for the state and its people and especially for schools, veterans, and the casino’s home cities.

Glaringly absent is any aggressive interrogation of the industry.  I can recall only two instances in which any semi-extensive questions were asked and only one when the questions were aggressively put (and the industry’s response was hardly direct).

In the old days—and I intensely dislike using that phrase—it seemed the legislature, while heavily influenced by lobbyists (who have a place in the system) and their checkbooks, looked more critically at legislation.  And it seems that lawmakers who were more likely to be presented a problem took an initiative, now missing, to fix the problem.

Many legislative hearings where held at night so members of the public could more easily be present without missing a full day of work. Night meetings are scarce today, leaving the field more and more to those who can affort to buy representation.  The voice of the citizen is muted in today’s system and the general assembly is more susceptible to being influenced by political action committee money.

In the first year of my lobbying career (working on getting the casinos to pay to keep the Steamboat Arabia Museum in Missouri), I took some findings of casino greed to a member of the House who told me, “Oh, the casinos will be interested in this. I’ve already gotten two checks form them this year.” He apparently was totally unaware of what a self-indictment his statement was.

Some legislator’s offices are festooned with plaques from organizations thanking them for their support.  When I was running the Missorinet newsroom we had a rule that we would accept no awards from any organization we covered.

We were not their friend. Nor were we their enemy.

We are one of those in the halls again this year, raising our pitiful voice against the steamroller called the casino industry, hoping again that we will trouble the consciences of those who sit quietly while the industry presents its plans for getting richer and richer while the services that serve the people of Missouri that rely on revenue from the industry get poorer and poorer, and poorer still under proposed sports wagering legislation.

Somebody has to ask the questions.  Too bad it isn’t the people who are presented with bills the industry wants passed.

Let’s See How This Plays Out 

Posted on by
Reply

Your faithful observer is a Protestant who believes that a faith that is so much based on love, whether it is toward one’s enemies, or in following as much as I can Jesus’ comment record in John 13: “A new command I give youL Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” can in so many ways pas judgment on who can love who.

My congregation lost some members a few years ago when our minister announced that he was a pastor for the congregation but a minister to all of God’s people and that he would, therefore, perform same-sex marriages (he had been approached by a same-sex couple wanting a marriage ceremony several weeks earlier).

A few days ago, Pope Francis allowed priests to bless same-sex couples.  The declaration has been described by The New York Times as “his most definitive step yet to make the Roman Catholic Church more welcoming to L.G.B.T.Q Catholics and more reflective of his vision of a more pastoral, and less rigid, church.”

It seems to be a major step away from the church’s long-held doctrine that marriage is only between a man and a woman. It is not, however, a complete break from that doctrine because the new policy refers only to “blessing,” not sanctioning marriage, a sacrament, a ceremonial rite of the church. The new rule makes that clear.

The Vatican says the blessing should not be part of any formal service but instead should be done during a private meeting with a priest, during a pilgrimage, or during a visit to a shrine or during a prayer recited in a group.

Kansas city Bishop James Johnston says the declaration “recognizes that God desires the good for all persons, including those in objectively irregular same-sex or heterosexual relationships, and if one reaches out for God’s assistance, that should not be denied.”  But he emphasizes that it would be a mistake to say the Church is “now approving or validating same-sex unions or unions which are outside of marriage.” A blessing does not signify the approval of the union but “allows for ministers to bless people in these difficult situations that they may be assisted by God’s grace along the path of conversion and salvation.”

The St. Louis Archdiocese describes those who seek the blessings as sinners.   “When we seek out a blessing, we come as sinners to receive God’s grace and mercy inour lives,” says statement from the archdiocese. “Blessings serve to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better and to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.”

The statement refers to the blessings as “an expression of the Church’s maternal heart…a reminder that we nurture and promote the Church’s closeness to people in every circumstance n which they might seek God’s help and grace.”

The statement is aimed at more than LGBTQ couples.  It also applies to people who have divorced and remarried without getting an annulment of the first marriage.

About the same time the Pope’s declaration was making news headlines, NBC was reporting, “Moe than 500 bills targeting LGBTQ people were introduced in state legisltures around the country in 2023.  Of those bills, 75 became law, including two in Missouri banning gender-affirming care and restricting participation in school athletics.”

One of the most potent moral forces in the Missouri Capitol for decades has been the Missouri Catholic Conference, the lobbying arm of the Catholic Church. I recall its opposition to legislation allowing the cessation of brain function to be a definition of death. And its opposition to abortion has never weakened.

Now the Vatican has softened its stance on LGBTQ issues. Will that action trigger any softening of conservative faith-based lobbyists on anti-LGBTQ legislation?

In matters of faith dictating law, will there be an emphasis more on pastoring than on rigid judging?

But then, how does rigid judging agree with loving one another?

And which should prevail in our lives and in our laws?

Let’s see how the Pope’s declaration carries out in our government halls and in the quiet rooms of our homes whether we be Catholic or Protestant.

Or even nothing at all.

Nullifying a Nullification 

Posted on by
Reply

The Supreme Court has once again had to rule that Missouri is part of the United States.

A lower court had ruled as unconstitutional the legislature’s latest effort to say Missouri did not have to obey federal laws.  In this case it was a 2021 law that prohibited local and state police officers from enforcing certain federal firearms restrictions.

It was a slam dunk by the court. Only former Missouri assistant attorney general Clarence Thomas thought the state had a great idea.

That great idea, given the haughty name of the Second Amendment Preservation Act gave citizens the right to sue local and state governments, agencies and agents that enforce federal gun laws that impose registration requirements, fees, and taxes, for as much as $50,000 for allegedly infringing on Second Amendment rights.

The Washington Post reported Friday that the Biden administration took the state to court. Our Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, suggested the federal government had no business suing the state because lawsuits could only be filed against state and local agencies. And he maintained, as backers of the law proclaimed in 2021 that the state has no responsibility to enforce federal law. He called the federal government arguments “aggressive and novel,” and railed against federal second-guessing state policies.

United States Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asserted that the law hampered enforcement of federal laws, “including its ability to apprehend dangerous criminals.”

She also argued—as opponents argued when the law was passed—that the U. S. Constitution prohibits states from invalidating federal laws.  Furthermore, she said, Missouri’s law says any federal employees who enforce the federal law in Missouri could never work for the state of Missouri after they leave federal employment.

Last March, a federal judge blocked enforcement of the law but damage already had been done.

The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has had a task force made up of federal, state and local authorities. But several of those state and local agencies quit feeding date into a national program that helps link evidence of crimes in Missouri with crimes elsewhere in the country.

The U. S. Marshalls Service said a lot of state and local officers stopped helping catch fugitives.

States have been trying to nullify federal laws since 1832.  It hasn’t worked but the Missouri General Assembly is a low learner.

The issue originally arose with the passage of a strong tariff law in 1828. Southern states thought it put an unfair tax burden on their agricultural economy because the south lacked industry and had to import most of its manufactured goods. When the federal government under President Andrew Jackson did nothing to relieve that distress, radcals in the South Carolina argued that a state could declare any federal law it believed to be unconstitutional null and void and in 1832 adopted An Ordinance of Nullification that declared the 1828 tariff and a later one passed in 1832 were unenforceable in the state.

South Carolina prepared a military force to oppose any federal soldiers  sent to enforce the tariffs. Congress passed the Force Bill in March of 1833 authorizing President Jackson to use military force against South Carolina. At the same time, Congress passed a new tariff that was a compromise South Carolina could accept.

A petulant South Carolina repealed its Nullification Ordinance.

Then it passed a measure nullifying the federal Force Bill, just to have the last word.

The issue of states’ rights, however, has never gone away.  And the 2021 Second Amendment Preservation Act was the latest flareup of the issue in Missouri—at least that got legislative approval.

But don’t be surprised if somebody proposes something for the 2024 General Assembly that asserts this state can live apart from the United States Constitution if it disagrees with something in it.

(You can check out the “Blood Right” entry we posted on May 10 this year for another example of the legislature to ignore the Constitution of the United States.  It was a gun issue, too.)

Legal?  Illegal?

Posted on by
Reply

The legality of VLTs, Video Lottery Terminals, remains up in the air with a recent court ruling and because of the uncertainty of their legality and a powerful influence group at the Capitol that opposes them in their present state, we can already see the 2024 session of the General Assembly degenerating into another mud fight in the closing day that winds up killing many bills on which legislators have worked hard to put into position for final passage.

The casinos say VLTs are slot machines and casinos are the only places in Missouri that can operate slot machines.  VLT supporters say they’re some kind of different animal and, as such, are not covered by state law or regulation.

Neither side wants to talk to the other. Forget about compromise. As the clock winds down on the legislative session, both sides get more angry and more desperate and a filibuster in each of the last two years on this and some other tender issues has set lawmakers home frustrated and disappointed.

Whether VLTs are illegal is disputed not only in legislative halls, but in county prosecutors’ offices throughout the state. Only Platte County has declared them illegal and has fined a VLT operator $7,500 for promoting gambling.

The machines are not regulated by either the State Gaming Commission that regulates casinos or the State Lottery Commission that regulates lotteries. The machines generate no income for state programs and services that draw financing from gambling.

Last week, a federal judge decided seven plaintiffs who claimed they are problem gamblers (some of whom have put themselves on the state casino exclusion list) had no standing to file a lawsuit accusing Torch Electronics, a VLT operator, of violating the federal Racketeer influence and Corrupt Organizations Act with its machines. The judge held they had not shown a “tangible injury to business or property.”  He also said losing money in the machines was a voluntary act by the player—who could avoid losing money in VLTs by not playing them. He says he dismissed the part of the case dealing with the RICO act and that any further challenges belong in state court.

Torch has a lawsuit in state court. It’s scheduled to be argued next month.  It, and Warrenton Oil, want an order banning the Highway Patrol from investigating Torch’s operations. Warrenton Oil operates 54 Fast Lane convenience stores with VLTs in them.

Some people have urged Attorney General Andrew Bailey to take action against the machines. He says the issue is “too complicated” for his office to get into.

The legislature seems unwilling to be the adult in the room, telling two feuding children to shut up and telling them, “This is how it’s going to be done.” Of course, it’s hard to take that initiative. when there are thousands of dollars in campaign donations from both sides floating around.

In an election year.

Somebody has to write a rule and the legislature needs to adopt it to keep the 2024 session from turning into the sessions of 2022 and 2023.  But it is our observation that our legislature has become passive, perhaps because of term limits—that legislators don’t propose alternatives to bills like these that put lawmakers, not casinos or VLT operators in a position of authority.

After watching this show for a couple of years and growing tired of it, this helpful citizen suggested a compromise late last year.  It was given to only a couple of people but is offered here for mass consideration.

First: On the effective date of this act, all VLTs will be illegal. The Missouri Lottery Commission is authorized to establish regulations that protect the interests of the state.  Upon approval of those regulations, VLTs can operate within the parameters of this act.

Second: The Missouri Gaming Commission is authorized to  VLT districts which shall consist of the home county of any casino and all surrounding counties. Revenue derived from VTLs in that district shall be distributed to the casinos on the basis of admission numbers. The casinos  (shall be responsible for paying all taxes and fees on VLT revenue established by state law.

In districts in which there are multiple casinos whose territories would overlap, a large district will be established that incudes home counties and surrounding counties (St. Louis, St. Louis County, and St. Charles County would comprise one such district.  Kansas City and St. Joseph casinos will be in a district together (they share Platte County) and their revenues also will be determined on an admission fee basis).

Third: The Lottery Commission will be free to establish additional districts as the constitution is amended to create new casinos.

Fourth: This policy will not be applied to any tribal casino unless it is included in a compact between the tribe and the state that is approved by both chamber of the Missouri General Assembly.

The plan protects the interests of casinos while leaving much of the state (the part not served by the present river-based casinos) open to independent VLT companies.

There’s no pride of authorship here. This is a result of being tired of the annual mud fight.

Of course, this stands no chance.  He who offers it has no Political Action Committees with fat checkbooks that are essential to establishing public policy that protects the interests of the constituents of those who set that policy.

But somebody has to start a conversation if the protagonists of our ongoing drama refuse to be part of it. It might be time to an otherwise passive legislature to become active before more lawmakers see their four months of work fall into the annual mid-May mud hole.

 

NOTES FROM A QUIET, HOT, HUMID STREET

Posted on by
2

This series of observations began a long, long, time ago as “Notes from a Battered Royal,” which were notes sent out to Missourinet affiliate stations about what we were planning and what they had done to help us.

With the coming of the computer, then the internet, and then the requirement that the Missourinet have a blog, it became “Notes From the Front Lines.”  But the author is no longer on the front lines. He lives on a quiet street.  And its getting quieter.  The folks who used to live in the house across the street now are in an assisted care place in Columbia.  One of the houses next to us hasn’t been occupied for more than a  year because the man living there also is in assisted living. Three nuns who lived in a house just across the street and up one driveway have moved out.

It’s been a while since we made some observations that don’t qualify for fully blogness.  Let us proceed.

Saw a letter to the editor in the local paper the other day that said Missouri’s state motto, Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto means “The will of the people is the Supreme Law.”  That’s wrong. And it’s dangerous.  Maybe we’ll go into in more depth later but for now, the correct interpretation is, “The welfare of the people is the Supreme Law.”  For now, just think of how different our freedoms would be if the word “will” actually was the philosophy of our government.  The quote, by the way, is from Marcus Tullius Cicero, who we know by his last name, the author of “On the Law.”

0-0

Is there a more pitiful figure in American politics today than Rudi Giuliani?  Of all the people whose lives and reputations have been destroyed by their association with and defense of Mr. Trump, the wreckage that is Rudi is the most pitiful.

0-0

I have a friend who lives in Tucson, Arizona who comes north for a couple of months every summer to find cooler weather (even 10-15 degrees cooler is significant).  I call her a Sunbird.

0-0

There are certain words that have become so politicized that all of the honor has been crushed out of them.  I recall when words such as “liberal” and “conservative” were not said with a sneer and were not spoken as if they were scarlet letters.

0-0

The latest word that falls into this category is “evangelicals.”  The people I heard described as such while I was growing up—-and the people who had the word on their churches—were perceived as fervent believers in God and Jesus, more fervent than us Disciples, Methodists, Presbyterians and my grandmother’s Baptists.  But then came those who discovered evangelical techniques could be applied to achieving political power, making it a third word that is being abused in “the politics of personal destruction.”

0-0

We were talking recently with some friends about the totally trivial things we remember for decades.  I remarked that I still remembered the Army service number of a high school friend who joined the service shortly after we graduated—RA18541439.

Now there’s a new number that I’d like to remember sixty years later—P01135809.  It has a certain rhythm to it, too.

And to think this person was once known only as 45.

We’ve seen the official portrait of PO-1135809.  We are sure that Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis is soooooooo intimidated.

0-0

This is about the most enthusiastic your correspondent has been for the start of the football season in decades. Maybe it’s because this year, it will bring relief from the near-daily disappointments of baseball.

0-0

Can’t help it.  Everytime I see a major sports team or league sign a deal with a sports-betting company, I start thinking its time to cast Cooperstown plaques for Shoeless Jackson and Pete Rose.

0-0

The Capitol regains its heartbeat for a couple of days soon. The lawmakers will decide whether to override some of Governor Parson’s vetoes.  There’s a lot of money available to pay for the things he differs with the legislature about.

0-0

But having a lot of money now means there’s a cushion for the bad days.

0-0

Or we can forget about the bad days and just blow it all now.

0-0

Or we can enact tax cuts so our tax base is even less able to deal with the eventual downturn.

0-0

Anybody else have deer in the yard that just watch you come home and go in the house without ever getting up?  I think that in our case, they’re just resting while they digest  their latest serving of Hostas from Nancy’s garden a/k/a the deer buffet.

0-0

A longtime friend of mine died a few days ago.  He didn’t want a memorial service.  He was a retired reporter who didn’t want his death reported in the newspaper.  Steve Forsythe, whose byline for United Press International read “A. Stevenson Forsythe” was a helluva reporter. Governor Teasdale blamed us, at least in part, for his failure to win a second term.

We could have thanked him for the compliment but we never did.

 

 

Taking the Initiative (Away)

Posted on by
Reply

Ohio residents voted a few days ago on a proposition that would make it harder for citizens to enact laws if the legislature refuses to do so.  Or to correct a legislative enactment many think based on something other than the general public welfare.

Ohio voters approved initiative and referendum in 1912, about the time Missourians approved it.  In the recent statewide Ohio vote, 57% of the voters rejected an effort largely led by those who do not want to see a pro-abortion amendment added to the Ohio Constitution.

In Missouri, constitutional amendments proposed by the people need only a simple majority to be approved.  This year, the Missouri House voted almost two-to-one (Republicans control the House by about the same ratio) to require 57% approval for any amendment proposed by the people.  Only another end-of-session mud fight in the Senate kept the proposal from a vote there sending the issue to the ballot.

Abortion was (is) the principle issue behind the failed legislative effort in Missouri. One major House supporter of the increase went on record during the session admitting the increased threshold was intended to keep a petition allowing abortions from being sent to the voters for their approval. The people, in turn, sent a message back to the legislature.

One of the key arguments for the supermajority threshold is that the change is needed to keep the state constitution from being further cluttered by amendments that should be only statutes.

The concern is legitimate. The proposed means of answering that concern, though, are questionable—and the legislature largely is to blame for the situation to begin with.

Some amendments have been added to the Missouri Constitution because the legislature has refused to pass a statute to address an issue.  The legislature has at times rewritten a statute approved in an election, a perceived rebuke to the will of the people who then can petition for an amendment to the constitution that is harder for the legislature to alter. The legislature cannot, on its own, rewrite a provision in the constitution. It can, however, suggest a replacement amendment that takes the place of the citizen-adopted language inserted into the constitution.

Government can be a little dizzying sometimes but at least the governed and the government are on the same level playing field. A national movement has materialized to tilt the field, however.

The initiative process does need some changing.  But making it harder for the people to propose and pass a law or an amendment on an issue the legislature has ignored, fumbled, or is not favored by the majority (or supermajority) party is not the proper approach.

There is a hypocrisy in this proposed change of the political process. Members of the legislature elected by a simple majority can pass a proposed law or amendment with a simple majority, even a proposal to require the people to get a supermajority to propose or pass a measure the legislature has ignored or bungled.

This is a philosophical problem that is often lost in the different worlds of politics versus popular sovereignty.  Benjamin Franklin defined popular sovereignty when he wrote, “In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns.”  Or as the Declaration of Independence reminds us, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

A simple majority governs.  A super majority dictates within the political system.

There are two kinds of supermajorities.  The human first one is a legislative majority capable of enacting laws with no regard to the presumed political equality of a minority. The second is an  entity on paper that keeps a simple majority from speaking or acting.

Supermajorities in their different forms are dangerous because they can ignore the unalienable mutual right to, in particular, liberty.

In this case, the Missouri legislature has a supermajority that wants to ban abortions with a fifty-percent-plus-one vote while requiring those who oppose the ban to get 57% support.  Changing the constitution to tilt the table against the minority is a tilt away from democracy.

There is an argument that the proposal likely to be back in the legislature next year will infringe on the right of citizens “to petition the Government for redress of grievances.”  That’s a basic right in the U. S. Constitution.  Although the document does not specifically address what it takes to petition government, our history has established the simple majority as the rule.  Making  it harder to petition for a redress of grievances hardly seems to keep faith with the founders.

The process needs improvement.  But limiting access of the people to an original right in our national charter is not the best way to handle the issue.

Here are some things—top of the head thinking so take it for what it’s worth—that could be done to improve the process. You might have others or prefer others:

—Limit the number of proposed propositions by one organizaiton to one.  Too often, petition campaign organizers file multiple versions of a proposal that vary only slightly, a process that places an unnecessary burden on the Secretary of State’s staff that has to review each proposal.

—Require clear reporting of the source of funding for the petition, identifying by name the donors and any organizations through which the financing is delivered. If someone wants to buy a part of the constititon or a state statute, voters need to know who it is and why.

—Require pre-filing public hearings in x-number of locations throughout the state so the people have chances to hear the specifics of the proposal and to criticize it within an audience of their peers, giving an early public airing of the issue which otherwise might go to the ballot with a well-financed and heavily one-sided campaign.

—-Require a hearing by a joint committee of the legislature before circulation begins. Neither the House nor the Senate could change the proposal but the hearings could explore shortcomings in a process that could be made by petition sponsors.  One of the major—and justified—criticism process is that petitions lack the refining process that legislative review offers for issues recommended for the ballot by the General Assembly.

The petition process is a right that is to be reserved and preserved for the citizens.  To limit citizens’ right by forcing on them an obligation not forced upon the people who purportedly represent them is to repudiate Franklin’s idea of a republic in which “the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns.”

We hope Missourians are as cognizant of their rights and responsibilities as citizens as the good people of Ohio are—regardless of any measure the Missouri General Assembly might try to enact that makes citizens lesser participants in their own governance.

 

A New County

Posted on by
Reply

We’ve commented in the past about whether some of our county names should be changed to honor more contemporary heroes—and maybe reject some scalawags who we learn from history weren’t really worth honoring in the first place.

110 years ago a distinguished Missouri politician introduced a bill to change the name of one of our major counties.

We discovered his suggestion among our clippings.  It’s part of a column from the Taney County Republican, January 30, 1913

The column began, “Until a few years after the war, the city of St. Louis was the seat of St. Louis County. When, by authority of an act of the legislature, the voters of the city and the county adopted the “scheme and charter,” St. Louis became a separate jurisdiction, a county within itself, under the name “The City of St. Louis” and the county became known as “the County of St. Louis.”  The county seat was established at the city of Clayton and a courthouse was erecte don land donated by a citizen of that name. It has never since had any legal connection with the city of St. Louis, although comparatively few of the people of the Stat know yet that St. Louis is not in St. Louis County. Deeds and legal documents intended for county officials and courts and lawyers are often mailed to St. Louis and important legal documents affecting property and persons in the city of St. Louis are often mailed to Clayton. The confusion created by the use of name St. Louis for the county has been a source of annoyance for many years to both city and county.”

It continues:

It was doubted, of course. One reason Michael McGrath’s bill didn’t make it is because Michael McGrath didn’t make it either.  By the time the newspaper published this article, McGrath had been dead for two days.  But it was something of a remarkable gesture—-because Michael McGrath had been a Confederate soldier whose unit took part in important early battles in the Civil War.

His name means nothing to most of those who labor in the halls of the Capitol now.  But in his time, Michael McGrath was a political power.  And his influence is still felt in Missouri government today. In fact, he has a presence in thousands of homes, libraries, offices, and schools.

McGrath was born in 1844 in Ballymartle, County Cork, Ireland and was raised on a farm and educated in a parish school.  He went to the National School in Kinsale, a small village in the southeast corner of Ireland where he studied to be a teacher and became one at age 16 (Kinsale is the home to a lot of famous people we Americans have never heard of except for William Penn, the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania.  Nearby is Old Kinsale Head, a piece of land jutting into the Atlantic that has a lighthouse and the remains of an old castle.  About elven miles out to sea from Kinsale Head, the wreckage of the torpedoed liner Lusitania. sunk in 1915, lies 300 feet down.)

A blight that infected the potato crops throughout Europe, causing “The Great Potato Famine,” led to thousands of deaths and thousands of emigrants fleeing Ireland and other European countries to the United States. McGrath arrived here in 1851. He hung out at the library in New York where his reading of copies of The St. Louis Republic convinced him to come to Missouri in July, 1856.

His good handwriting landed him a job with the St. Louis County Recorder.  He became a deputy clerk in the criminal court in 1861, a position he lost when Radical Republicans in the legislature passed an Ouster Ordinance that declared all offices not held by citizens loyal to the Union to be vacant.

We don’t know how soon McGrath came under the influence of Father John O’Bannon who at that time was raising money for the construction of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist Church, but he soon became involved a local militia unit tied closely to O’Bannon’s Total Abstinence and Benevolence Society. The unit, known as the Washington Blues, was led by Captain Joseph Kelly, another Irish immigrant, who ran a grocery and became McGrath’s father-in-law. A drill by the Blues helped raise money for O’Bannon’s church that later served as the cathedral church of the St. Louis Archdiocese and remains an active congregation today. O’Bannon was a Confederate chaplain in the war.

Kelly’s Irish Brigade was sent to Missouri’s western border in late 1860 to repel Kansas invaders, part of the infamous Missouri-Kansas border war, and became one of the first units in the Missouri State Guard, a pro-confederate force organized by Governor Claiborne Jackson and former governor Sterling Price.  McGrath was a private in what became a regiment of the Sixth Division of the Missouri State Guard.

Irish Immigrants were more likely to join the Union army but some historians think many of the immigrants in Missouri were felt they were disrespected by the anti-Irish German Unionists in St. Louis, and further identified with the Confederacy because it reminded them of Ireland’s long-standing struggle to become independent of England.

Whatever his personal motivation, Michael K. McGrath was a rebel who apparently spent the entire war fighting against the forces of the man for whom he later wanted to name a county.

Come back next time to see how this Confederate survived the war and became a distinguished political figure in Missouri.

 

 

Difficult choices 

Posted on by
3

Lawmakers, state and federal, sometimes find themselves in the position of voting for something they don’t like to get something they want. The reverse also is true—they vote against something they like to keep something they dislike from becoming law.

At campaign time, opponents usually don’t discuss these subtleties in our political system when they criticize the incumbent for voting against an issue popular or unpopular with the public.

These dual-personality bills sometimes are passed anyway.  Then it becomes a problem for governors and for presidents.

The problem could be avoided if the legislative body did not try to combine two or more (somewhat) disparate issues into one bill.

Governor Parson had one of those bills that he vetoed in the last flurry of bill signings from the 2023 session. In this case, however, he disagreed with both sections of the bill. For whatever good it does, we—as appeals court judges sometimes write—“agree in part and disagree in part.”

Had we been present in the discussion (and it is easy to be a second-guesser from our lofty perch), we would have wondered if at least some of his reasons for the veto would be different if he were still the Polk County Sheriff.

One of the sections in the bill to which Governor Parson objected expanded the number of people eligible for state restitution if their convictions of crimes were overturned by a court proceeding and the prosecutor decided not to refile the charge.

Present law allows the state to pay someone $36,500 for each year that person was wrongly imprisoned if DNA evidence proves they are innocent.  The bill that the governor vetoed upped that figure to $65,000 and includes people set free by a “conviction review process” that was established by law two years ago.

It is the new, second, category of prisoner releases that troubles Governor Parson—and the 75% increase in restitution. The original figure, an amount based on $100 a day for each day of wrongful confinement, was enacted in 2006.  The new amount would be about $178 a day.

But here’s the meat of his objection, from his veto message to the legislature:

“With very few exceptions, criminal cases are tried by local governments (counties or municipalities).  The underlying offense, elected prosecutor, elected or retained judge, and community-drawn jury all come from the local jurisdiction and not the state as a whole. However, the burden of paying restitution under these provisions falls on all Missouri taxpayers…Missourians from every part of the state should not have to foot the bill for a local decision. Local governments should bear the financial cost of their own actions.”

Had I been in the discussion, I might have piped up with something such as:

“I agree that our justice system is administered by local people in local courtrooms.  But the offender was charged with violating a STATE law.  As I recall from years of reading court records at the local courthouse, the charges often—always?—end by saying the offense occurred “against the peace and dignity of the STATE.”

“The trial was held in a circuit court, which is a division of the STATE court system. The prosecutor, although locally-elected, is prosecuting the STATE law.  The jury, although made up of local citizens, is part of the STATE judicial process that determines guilty or not-guilty verdicts.

“The accused probably was held in a local jail but the STATE compensates the local jurisdiction for the costs of incarceration—-although local officials have complained the compensation isn’t close to adequate.”

“Clearly this is a state issue because everybody but the accused is acting on behalf of the STATE.”

“If the compensation, as you argue, should be made at the local level, who should be sued to gain restitution?  If such a reversal had happened when you were Polk County Sheriff, should YOU pay it—especially if you made the original arrest? Should the twelve members of the jury be held responsible for one-twelfth of the annual amount because they acted responsibly although incorrectly?   How much responsibility should fall on the shoulders of the judge who sent this ultimately-innocent person to jail for so many years?  Should Polk County have had some liability because its county prosecutor and its county sheriff were key figures in this process?

“And suppose this trial had been moved to another county on a change of venue. How much does that county have to pitch in?

“Polk County has about 33,000 residents.  Could a court order each resident to contribute two dollars per capita times the number of years this person was improperly imprisoned? Would that be a problem in a county with a per capita income of less than $25,000 a year?”

“Do you think you would get elected to another term as sheriff if you were the one who arrested this person to begin with?”

Well—I wasn’t part of the discussion and as I said, it’s easy to second-guess a decision such as this from a distance and without hearing the other voices. And it’s always a shame when so many good things combined into a bill are knocked down because the bill contains one problematic section that a governor thinks is poorly-written.

The legislature will have a chance to override the veto when it meets in about 50 days or so.  Or it can come back about six months from now and try again, fine-tuning the language and making a better argument for financial justice for someone from whom the STATE took away the most precious gift all of us are given—time.