Missouri Students Attending MU, UMKC, Missouri State and Northwest Missouri St. Registar to Vote, Fast & Easy

TURBOVOTE

Tractor Show

Petticoat Lane, Kansas City, 1906.

Petticoat Lane -- East 11th Street, Kansas City, Mo. pictures the street on a warm summer day, about 1906

Missouri gets D- grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation

“So little is against the law”

By Erin Richey

Missouri

GRADE:D-(62)

RANK:26TH

Assessing the systems in place to deter corruption in state government

Click on each category for more detail

OUR METHODOLOGY

Public Access to Information

GRADE:F(50)

RANK: 18th

Political Financing

GRADE:F(41)

RANK: 44th

Electoral Oversight

GRADE:F(56)

RANK: 42nd

Executive Accountability

GRADE:C(75)

RANK: 3rd

Legislative Accountability

GRADE:F(59)

RANK: 37th

Judicial Accountability

GRADE:D+(67)

RANK: 5th

State Budget Processes

GRADE:D(65)

RANK: 43rd

State Civil Service Management

GRADE:F(59)

RANK: 29th

Procurement

GRADE:D-(63)

RANK: 41st

Internal Auditing

GRADE:B-(83)

RANK: 17th

Lobbying Disclosure

GRADE:C-(71)

RANK: 10th

Ethics Enforcement Agencies

GRADE:D(64)

RANK: 11th

State Pension Fund Management

GRADE:F(53)

RANK: 38th

Tell your legislators about their grade

Provide us with your street address and Zip code and we will find your state representatives so you can tell them how your state ranked.

Street address:

Zip:

We will not save or share the personal information after using it to send emails on your behalf. See ourprivacy policy and terms of use. 

Here in the “Show Me” state, ethics reform has been an uphill battle as steep as the streets of Jefferson City, the capital.

It’s not that ethics bills have no supporters. Indeed, they do. The number of ethics-related bills and joint resolutions introduced in the General Assembly has increased each of the last three years, with 39 introduced in 2015. Democratic Gov. Jeremiah “Jay” Nixon has pledged to take the issue directly to voters in a ballot issue if lawmakers didn’t act. But not one ethics bill has passed in the last three years, despite Missouri's dubious status as a state without campaign finance limits, lobbyist gift limits, or cooling-off periods for legislators registering as lobbyists.

As a result, Missouri earned a D- grade with a score of 62, tied with Idaho for 26th place among the states in the State Integrity Investigation, an assessment of state government transparency and accountability conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity. 

That’s a drop from 2012, when the Missouri garnered a C- and a rank of 16th. But the scores are not directly comparable, due to changes made to improve and update the project and methodology, such as eliminating the category for redistricting, a process that generally occurs only once every 10 years.

SOURCE

Women of Old-time Music: Tradition and Change in the Missouri Ozarks

Women of Old-time Music: Tradition and Change in the Missouri Ozarks takes on the commonly-held folk music scholarship assertion that women did not widely participate in old-time music in the Ozarks.Through performances and interviews with senior generations of women musicians in southern Missouri, the film illustrates the central role women played, and continue to play, in the development of old-time music, culture, and community identity.

St. Louis workers won't get a raise after judge strikes down minimum wage increase.The state's Republican legislature passed a law banning local raises.

Judge strikes down St. Louis' minimum wage increase hours before it takes effect

By Nicholas J.C. Pistor

ST. LOUIS • A circuit judge struck down the city’s minimum wage law on Wednesday just hours before it was set to go into force.

Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer issued a sobering blow to the city’s law just after 4:30 p.m., declaring it void and out of step with state law. The city quickly said it would appeal to a higher court.

A consortium of groups sued last month in an attempt to stop the city from instituting an $11 minimum wage by 2018. The suit alleged the action conflicted with current state law.

Ohmer agreed, saying the city’s law raising the wage was “unenforceable and in conflict” with current state law that sets the minimum wage at $7.65.

“Obviously my clients are happy for the certainty with the impending midnight deadline for the increase,” said lawyer Jane Dueker, who argued on behalf of business groups, including the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, against the increase. “The city doesn’t have the authority to do what it did.”

On Thursday, the city’s minimum wage was set to rise to $8.25 an-hour— 60 cents above the state’s minimum wage. The law, approved by the Board of Aldermen in August, would have triggered increases on Jan. 1 to $9. Then, it would go to $10 in 2017 and $11 on Jan. 1, 2018.

Ohmer’s order blocked the city from instituting the increase, which means minimum-wage workers in the city will not see an increase unless an appellate court reverses his decision — something that could take months.

The city argued that the increase was proper, and also cited social issues from the Ferguson unrest as a reason for implementation.

Ohmer said it was the court’s duty to “determine the validity of the ordinance without considering the social or economic effect of its enforcement.”

Mayor Francis Slay was a vocal supporter of the law and pressed aldermen to pass it before a perceived state deadline.

“We will appeal the ruling with the hope that higher courts will affirm the city’s authority to adopt its own minimum wage,” Slay said via Twitter.

St. Louis City Counselor Winston Calvert, who represents Slay and the city, pledged to appeal.

“We’ve always known these issues would be resolved by the appellate courts,” Calvert said. “We are heartened that the judge agreed with the city on three of the five counts, but disappointed in the court’s decision on two of them.”

Ohmer agreed with the city that it had the power to enact legislation of local concern but said the minimum wage increase was not in conformity with state law.

Associated Industries of Missouri, a business group that was part of the lawsuit, applauded Ohmer’s decision.

“State law controls how much an employer must pay an employee,” Ray McCarty, the group’s president, said. “No local government has ever had the authority to issue an ordinance that directly violates state law. We believe the court made a correct decision.”

Some argued the city’s increase would force businesses to leave for St. Louis County, where local leaders declined to consider a wage increase to match their neighbors.

The issue was part of a national debate over raising the wage. Over the last few months, several major cities — including Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest city — approved rate increases. Proponents hope the local actions may spur state and federal legislators, who have been hesitant to approve significant minimum wage increases, to take a similar course.

Richard von Glahn, of Missouri Jobs with Justice, echoed those sentiments on Wednesday, saying: “The increase passed by the Board of Aldermen in St. Louis reflects a growing consensus that the crisis of poverty wages needs to be addressed at every level in our economy and we thank the City’s elected officials for their continued leadership on this.”

SOURCE

Lobbyists, legislators aim to quash political activist's free speech: "If I can be confronted with fines and criminal penalties, just for speaking my mind and even when there is no money whatsoever involved in my efforts, then the government can threaten and intimidate anyone."

Lobbyists, legislators aim to quash political activist's free speech

By Ron Calzone

Who would think that in America you can get a $1,000 fine for exercising your freedom of speech? Well, I just did.

I am a political activist. Just like thousands of other activists all over the state across the political spectrum, I go out of my way to talk to those in power about what I think our state’s laws should look like. When average citizens share their political opinions, exercise freedom of speech and petition the government regarding the laws we live under, they are doing exactly what America’s Founders had in mind when they established a self-governing constitutional republic.

They are not lobbyists and neither am I. Lobbyists are professionals paid by their clients to persuade politicians to vote in their clients’ interests. Lobbyists also use money to buy politicians’ attention, providing them with food or other gifts. I share my political ideas only because I believe in them passionately; no one has ever paid me to talk to an elected official and I don’t buy lawmakers gifts.

My activism has made some powerful enemies. Along with a host of other citizen activists, I vigorously oppose things like eminent domain abuse and giving subsidies and other government largess to corporations or other special interests. Maybe high-paid lobbyists don’t like having to explain to their clients why average citizens, using nothing more than facts, reason and speech, beat them at their own game time and again.

I have also angered powerful legislators by opposing them when they were trying to advance unconstitutional bills or ignore constitutional limits on their power.

On Election Day last November, the professional lobbyists’ guild, with the blessing of (and possibly at the prompting of) at least two influential legislators, decided to try to punish me and scare away other activists for exercising our constitutional freedoms. They filed a complaint with the Missouri Ethics Commission claiming that I should face fines (making prison a possibility), because I had not registered with the state as a legislative lobbyist.

Although state law prohibits the Ethics Commission from accepting complaints from any entity that is not a “natural person,” they accepted the guild’s complaint anyway. And although the law requires that they reveal the identity of the complainant within five days, the Ethics Commission took over two months to tell me who the real complainant was. Then this panel of six men and women, all appointed by the governor, held a hearing behind closed doors with their own lawyer arguing against me. So much for impartial judges, the rule of law and transparency.

There was no evidence that I have ever been hired or paid by anyone for the purpose of talking to legislators, but using uncommon and strained definitions of “designated” and “employed,” the commission decided that I must register as a lobbyist and fined me $1,000 for failing to do so in the past. Nothing they are ordering me to do increases the transparency of my activities.

Why should you care?

This conclusion was not just contrary to the state’s own definition of what a lobbyist is, it was an attack on the constitutional rights of any citizen who tries to share their political ideas with those in power. If I can be confronted with fines and criminal penalties, just for speaking my mind and even when there is no money whatsoever involved in my efforts, then the government can threaten and intimidate anyone.

That is why, with help from two public interest law firms, the Center for Competitive Politics and the Freedom Center of Missouri, I am appealing the ethics commission’s ruling against me. I will fight this case as long and as far as I must, not only on my own behalf, but on behalf of all citizens who have opinions about how our state should be governed and wish to exercise their constitutional right to share those opinions with our elected officials.

Ron Calzone lives in Maries County in central Missouri, where he raises cattle and horses and owns a small manufacturing business. He is also one of the directors of Missouri First, a think tank devoted to limited, constitutional governance.

SOURCE