By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
Never let it be said Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon can't learn from experience.
Criticized for his first economic development director pick -- a lawyer who turned out to be inexperienced in the art of the development deal -- Nixon has gone for a pro.
The Star's Saturday editorial
The facts are in: Despite a summer of denials, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon’s office knew almost immediately about dangerously high bacteria levels in late May in the Lake of the Ozarks.
Top Nixon aides, however, didn’t move to make that information public quickly enough.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
We know Missouri is a great state. Let’s start telling people. Let’s market Missouri and bring business here to create jobs, invest, and get those tax breaks in the process. But we need some marketeers. Missouri should outsource their marketing campaign today.
George Harris, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
The summons for jury duty arrived several weeks ago. Though I already had things on my schedule, they could be rearranged. The bigger problem was that I’d been called to jury duty previously but had never before been selected to serve from the panel of potential jurors.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Someone with the last name of "Nixon" ought to know a cover-up can often be worse than the crime itself.
Which brings us to Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon.
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
The Tour of Missouri will roll on -- at least for this year.
From Gov. Jay Nixon's office:
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
Honestly, I was going to sit out the Cynthia Davis kerfuffle. The Republican Missouri House member from St. Charles County has been making bizarre pronouncements for years. Birth control promotes promiscuous behavior -- remember that one?
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
Executions in Missouri are on hold — again.
Any delay is to be applauded. The death penalty is expensive and impossible to mete out fairly. It is simply a flawed public policy.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Conservatives often make ACORN the butt of their jokes and ridicule about the group's attempts to register low-income voters.
But ACORN is getting the last laugh in Missouri.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
The Missouri Housing Development Commission should move quickly to toughen conflict-of-interest standards and other policies governing how the agency handles its affairs and spends money.
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
Northland lawyer Steve Mowry, one of the region's most active conservationists, will be named one of Field & Stream's "heroes of conservation" in the magazine's July edition.
Kansas City Star Thursday editorial
Errors in this post have been corrected.
It’s been almost five years since the Kansas City region has had a representative on the Missouri Conservation Commission.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
Missourians now know the cost of unprofessional conduct that plagued the governor’s office during parts of Matt Blunt’s tenure.
More than $2 million.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
Nice try, Missouri.
An attempt by state leaders to sidestep federal rules while making a bid for stimulus money has bombed. The governor and legislators must move fast to repair the damage.
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has denied clemency to Dennis Skillicorn and the Missouri Supreme Court has turned down a desperation appeal, meaning the 49-year-old man will likely become the first person executed in Missouri since 2005.
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
JEFFERSON CITY | Lawmakers in the Missouri House happily munched on egg rolls, steamed rice and stir-fried chicken outside of their legislative chamber. The Missouri Hospital Association had catered a fragrant buffet for busy public servants pulling late hours in the last week of the session.
By the Kansas City Star Editorial Board
With the clock running out on this year’s legislative session, the Missouri Senate recessed for hours Thursday in hopes of resolving differences holding up a jobs bill. Frustrated with the Senate’s lack of action, the House adjourned early.
It’s been that kind of session — fractious and largely unproductive.
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
For all of those who have suspected the Missouri legislature of trying to keep citizens in the dark, take heart. The tables are turned.
Power went out in the capitol in Jefferson City at about noon, and is still out as I post this, half an hour later.
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
Hospitals in Missouri obviously had a rationale for offering the state money in exchange for getting more poor people covered under Medicaid.
People will see doctors sooner and fewer of them will show up in hospitals, which must care for uninsured patients and incur the debt.
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
This is an expansion of a post below. It is running as my weekly opinion column in the Kansas City Star.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
The Missouri legislature is heading into its final, frenzied days. But even considering the usual end-of-session follies, the rejection so for of a Kansas City request for transit aid has been inexplicable — especially when compared with how lawmakers have endorsed a similar bid from St. Louis.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
With foreclosures on the rise, Kansas City officials recently sought help from the Missouri legislature. The city wants authority to write a receivership law allowing it to deal more quickly with vacant, deteriorating properties.
But with the General Assembly now in its last two weeks of the 2009 session, the legislation is in limbo.
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
Jolie Justus married her long-time partner, Shonda Garrison, in a ceremony in Iowa over the weekend. But her marriage won't be recognized in Missouri, where she serves as a state senator from Kansas City.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
An economy on the ropes hasn’t stopped Missouri’s elected representatives from making the usual spectacle of themselves in Jefferson City.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
It’s becoming a rite of spring in Missouri. Another legislative session, yet another harebrained attempt to wreak havoc with the state’s judiciary.
By Amy Blouin, Special to The Kansas City Star
Missouri politicians announced this week a proposal to use $1 billion of the federal economic recovery funding coming into Missouri for a temporary tax cut.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
The attempt to build a second nuclear reactor in Missouri is dead for now, which is good news for ratepayers.
AmerenUE suspended its plans in the wake of its inability to get an anti-consumer bill through the General Assembly.
Missouri House members, always willing to take a stand for guns and (not coincidentally) open their pockets for gun-lobby donations, decided they know better than college presidents and campus law enforcement administrators about how to protect students.
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
Ever hopeful, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page has taken another shot at Missouri's plan for selecting judges.
With its vote on a $23 billion budget Wednesday, the Missouri Senate wisely embraced Gov. Jay Nixon’s plan to extend Medicaid coverage to about 35,000 very low-income parents and caretakers.
