Missouri Government

Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder’s suggestion that elected officials should be barred from working side jobs as political consultants is right on target.

But he certainly is late getting the shot off.

Missouri’s transportation “funding cliff” looks a little less steep, but it’s ominous nonetheless. The state Department of Transportation is right to raise the alarm about the need for more money.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt and others are speaking up against the proposed takeover of Anheuser-Busch by InBev, a Belgian-Brazilian company. But what are the politicians going to do? Give A-B large tax breaks to stay in St. Louis? And will shareholders really turn down a $46 billion bid?

Missouri lawmakers recently provided more reason for public cynicism about politicians.

Shortly before the legislative session ended, last Friday, the Republican leadership whipped out a bill that entirely removes limits on individual donations to campaigns.

Gov. Matt Blunt should resist the pressure to call a special Missouri legislative session. He’s being pushed by those who want to further restrict abortion, but have failed to make their case in more than four months of the regular session that just ended.

Missourians can be thankful their legislature has a mandatory adjournment. Friday’s 6 p.m. deadline brought a welcome end to an abysmal session.

Lawmakers spent their waning hours this week passing bad or superfluous legislation.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt has offered some expected -- and ignorant -- comments on the status of judicial powers in America.

Missouri lawmakers last week finished work on a state budget that will lead to hard times. State spending will increase at a faster rate than tax collections are expected to grow.

One watchdog, the Missouri Budget Project, estimates that the state will be nearly $500 million in the red by 2010.

To prevent potentially damaging records from becoming public, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt’s office allegedly ordered copies of government e-mails destroyed.''

That’s the centerpiece of troubling allegations in a lawsuit filed by an independent team that investigated Blunt’s office.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Board

Is a crook serving as governor of Missouri?

That's the chilling question raised by the lawsuit filed Monday against Gov. Matt Blunt. The lawsuit alleges he ordered or knew about the deletion of politically harmful e-mail messages in his office.

Unscrupulous “chop shops” are talented at taking cars that have flood or collision damage and prettying them up for unsuspecting purchasers.

These rebuilt wrecks often have hidden damage or lack safety equipment such as airbags. They can be dangerous if they are in a subsequent wreck.

By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Board

As a mouthpiece for the ethanol industry, Gov. Matt Blunt made a big mistake last week: He underestimated the intelligence of Missourians.

Led by Gov. Matt Blunt, supporters of ethanol are using deceptive figures to promote its use by Missouri motorists.

Blunt and others are defending the unwarranted state law requiring that most gasoline sold in Missouri be blended with 10 percent ethanol.

Granted, it’s a slow year in Jefferson City, what with the governor’s office essentially vacant and the economy offering no room for maneuvering.

But surely lawmakers can find something more productive to do than persist in pointless attempts to curb the authority and independence of the state’s judges.

The “silent” money poured into a last-minute attempt to defeat the sales tax renewal for Kansas City’s bus system turned out to be wasted money.

Voters on Tuesday renewed the 3/8-cent tax despite a barrage of TV ads and automated phone calls opposing the measure.

At a community gathering tonight, Missouri lawmakers will hear from people who have experienced the sting of being uninsured.

They should listen. And act.

Individuals will describe what happens when preventive care is out of the question because of cost.

Missouri’s investment in its young children has lagged behind other states in recent years, to the discredit of lawmakers in Jefferson City.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the skimpy assistance for child care to low-income working parents, largely single mothers.

Do you agree with Republican efforts to limit the Missouri Ethics Commission? Leave your comments here.

Gov. Matt Blunt’s fund-raising committee admits no guilt of the violations for which it has agreed to pay a $15,000 fine.

If the committee did no wrong, why did it pay up?

Blunt spokesman John Hancock contends the Missouri Ethics Commission was on a witchhunt and abused its power in relying on vague state law. So Blunt’s campaign committee agreed to the fine to avoid protracted debate over interpretation of the law.

Editorial writer Yael T. Abouhalkah says Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt should order his underlings to stop the coverup and cooperate with a special counsel's investigation of the e-mail scandal involving Blunt's office. Read it in City Dispatch.

It's clear Gov. Matt Blunt recognizes the political repercussions of his 2005 decision, along with Republican lawmakers, to cut Medicaid recipients off the rolls. Thousands of Missourians lost health coverage as a result of those cuts.

Now, facing re-election this year, Blunt is coming across as a champion of health care for the poor with his budget recommendations to lawmakers.

He's called for a new "Insure Missouri" health plan that provides coverage for low-income working parents and caregivers with children, and later, other working adults. The plan also would help small businesses to provide coverage for their workers. Blunt estimates an additional 200,000 persons could become insured, but that still would leave 500,000 without coverage.

Missouri regulators say they will investigate Harrah's North Kansas City Casino in light of a Clay County jury's decision.

The jury awarded Michele Chambers, a former security employee for Harrah's, $1 million in her successful claim that she had been wrongfully fired.

She said the firing occurred because she told the Missouri Gaming Commission that Harrah's instructed its employees to look the other way at violations of player-card rules.

She said security workers were told not to intervene, investigate or report to the state whenever gamblers were seen using multiple cards. They also were told not to identify players who exchanged cards, she said.

Which is a better deal for those who enjoy Missouri's scenic areas? Preservation of lovely Church Mountain in southeast Missouri or extension of the popular Katy hiking and bicycling trail to Kansas City?

Both have their appeal to outdoors lovers.

The settlement that could expand the Katy Trail resulted from Attorney General Jay Nixon's lawsuit seeking state compensation for losses at Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park. The losses were the result of extensive damages caused by a breach in an Ameren Corp. hydroelectric plant reservoir.

Missouri ended up with approval to build a trail along the former Rock Island rail right-of-way from Windsor to Pleasant Hill. But Church Mountain was not in the final agreement.

Attorney General Jay Nixon lost no time in replacing a resigning member of the investigative team looking into Gov. Matt Blunt's alleged violations of the Missouri Sunshine Law.

Former Judge Daniel Max Knust resigned, saying in his letter to Nixon it was because Blunt's staff objected to him. The Missouri Republican Party also accused him of being part of a Democratic witch hunt see here.

Knust denies that he is a Democrat, telling Nixon that he held office for 28 years as a Republican.

"Thank you for having confidence that my appointment would have been well received by the Governor's staff," Knust said.

The Katy Trail could make it to Kansas City - well, Pleasant Hill - only if the state legislature appropriates enough money to cover the costs.

Ameren chipped in $18 million as part of the settlement with the state over the Taum Sauk reservoir collapse that heavily damaged Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park.

Now its discovered in the fine print of the settlement that the legislature will have to approve spending that $18 million for what it was intended, and they have to do it within three years.

If the legislature doesn't commit the money within that time period to a construction plan approved by the Department of Natural Resources, lawmakers can use the money for some other state park purpose.

On Tuesday morning, Gov. Matt Blunt pardoned a turkey named Gobbles.

On Tuesday afternoon, he let his controversial chief of staff Ed Martin go, too.

The first was a Thanksgiving Day tradition.

The second was a long time coming even though Martin had only been with the governor's office about a year.

In leading the governor's staff, Martin had survived various scandalous behaviors: He hurled insults at Laura Denvir Stith, the state Supreme Court's chief justice. He put pressure on the state highway patrol to publicly criticize Attorney General Jay Nixon, who is Blunt's likely opponent in the governor's race next year. He implied, at a meeting of the Missouri Housing Development Commission, that any time a "bunch of Mexicans" are at a construction site, they probably include illegal immigrants.

The Missouri Ethics Commission has been a useless bureaucracy for years in Jeff City.

Now the commission says it could take 5 months to decide whether candidates should return campaign contributions that were, essentially, illegal.

Oh, and the commission wants to conduct its hearings in private.

Summed up: A commission responsible for enforcing good ethical behavior by elected officials will behave unethically, hiding information from the public.

Pull the plug on this incompetent group.

Yael T. Abouhalkah, Editorial Board

In an email sent to the news media by its top lawyer, Gov. Matt Blunt's office has clarified its email policy.

It is now as clear as mud.

Blunt's office has been embroiled in a controversy over its refusal to release copies of email correspondence written by Chief of Staff Ed Martin to a Springfield editorial page editor who requested them. The governor's office said that it did not keep emails routinely.

Then, it soon afterward released reams of emails pertaining to correspondence by one of its staff, Scott Eckersley, who was fired for reasons that seem to change daily. Suddenly, emails do exist and are retained.

I've got a cell phone, you've got a cell phone, plenty of Missourians have cell phones.

Just pray that you don't have to dial 911 in an emergency and actually expect to get a response if you're in large parts of Missouri outside the KC area.

It's a life-threatening absurdity that Missouri is the only state in the nation without a dedicated source of money to supply dependable 911 service for cell phones.

Only 21 counties in Missouri (including the KC area) have the enhanced 911 system for cell phones, usually thanks to some sort of local funding. But 93 counties don't have the capability.