The Joplin Globe, March 31
Budget proposal is no joke
An amendment offered up Tuesday by the Missouri House Budget Committee to transfer $6.85 million from a fund used by attorney general’s office into the underfunded and overwhelmed state public defenders office for one-time use seems like a reasonable solution - or at least the beginning of one.
But based on some of the joking comments made by state representatives as they called out Attorney General Josh Hawley for not having a representative at the hearings, we wonder just how serious the committee is about finding a solution to managing the growing caseload of the public defenders office.
Constitutionally, those charged with a crime have a right to legal counsel, even if they do not have the means to pay for it. That’s where public defenders come in. Caseloads have increased so that public defenders who used to manage 50 cases at a time are now averaging 120 to 225 cases at one time. What that means is that those who have been charged - not convicted - are spending more and more time in crowded jails.
Rep. Deb Lavender, a Democrat from Kirkwood, was certainly serious enough when she offered up an amended from the AG’s fund to be used solely to hire private attorneys who could take over cases where conflicts of interest had been cited. It’s a one-time use of the money. The money she is proposing using comes from the attorney general’s Merchandising Practices Revolving Fund. It currently has an $11 million balance.
While a representative of the public defenders office was there from 8:15 a.m. that morning and was still there about 10 p.m. that night while hearings were going on, there was no one from the AG’s office.
“I bet if we amend the bill, they’ll show up,” Rep. Karla May, D-St. Louis, asserted. House Budget Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick, R-Shell Knob, brought laughs when he agreed with May and said he was tempted to do it.
In the meantime the AG’s office said they would send a representative right away. Thirteen minutes after the vote in which the committee ruled favorably on giving the public defenders office the money, the attorney general’s deputy chief of staff walked through the door.
Fitzpatrick later told the Globe that the committee vote was not a joke, but the manner in which it was held seemed like one. Hawley is reasonably sure that legislators won’t make this stick.
In our view, this budget proposal - one that doesn’t boost the budget but does create a solution - should be considered.
Rep. Charlie Davis, R-Webb City, said he plans to support the move throughout the legislative process. That’s a start in the right direction for the broken public defender system. This is serious business and should be be addressed as such.
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The Kansas City Star, March 30
Claire McCaskill right to plunge ahead with opioid probe
Claire McCaskill is no shrinking violet. So the Missouri senator’s much-publicized incursion this week into the opioid epidemic that is rocking this country should surprise no one.
That includes Sen. Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on which McCaskill sits. Johnson said he was disappointed in the Democrat’s go-it-alone decision to demand marketing information, sales records and studies from opioid manufacturers.
McCaskill wants to know whether the drugmakers themselves have contributed to the ongoing overuse of the powerful painkillers blamed for nearly 200,000 deaths in the last 15 years.
“We have an obligation to everyone devastated by this epidemic to find answers,” McCaskill said in a statement about the letter she sent to the drugmakers. “All of this didn’t happen overnight. It happened one prescription and marketing program at a time.”
Johnson didn’t sign that letter, and he’s not known for investigating private companies. He said through an aide that Republicans weren’t given time to join the investigation. Other Republicans said McCaskill upset tradition by plunging ahead by herself instead of taking advantage of the “widespread interest” on the committee to join her.
Committee spokeswoman Brittni Palke told The Associated Press that McCaskill wanted “headlines instead of results.”
We don’t care who gets the credit. We’re just happy that someone - anyone - is pushing ahead to get to the root causes of such a sinister epidemic. Opioid addiction has grown dramatically since the drugs were first introduced two decades ago. Manufacturers of the products are said to have made billions from sales.
McCaskill’s suspicion - and she has said this publicly - is that the companies are focused more on encouraging addiction than they are on preventing abuse.
A McCaskill aide said the former prosecutor knows exactly where she wants to go with the investigation. The senator told Johnson what her intentions were. “She felt it was important to put down a marker in this space,” and she hopes Johnson and other committee members will participate, the spokesman said. McCaskill clearly didn’t want anything to get in the way of an urgent priority.
Lots of states have tried lots of things to get a handle on this ongoing problem. State lawmakers across the country are said to have considered nearly 1,000 measures in recent years to fight opioids.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a doctor, calls opioids probably the nation’s biggest public health crisis.
For that reason alone, we hope McCaskill runs hard at this issue - alone or with the committee beside her. Drug manufacturers have questions to answer.
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 1
Greitens hints at a possible crack in the Medicaid expansion door
Last week, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens appeared to open the door, however slightly, to expanding Missouri’s Medicaid program now that Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act have stalled.
This would be an excellent idea, and long overdue. Missouri is one of 19 states that failed to expand Medicaid after the enactment of Obamacare in 2010. The decision has cost a state’s struggling economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs - to say nothing of improved health outcomes for 150,000 to 300,000 Missourians who could have become eligible for coverage.
Former Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, supported expansion. But the Republican-dominated Legislature has balked. Just Wednesday, even after Missouri House Democrats pointed out that the Republican Legislature in Kansas had just passed Medicaid expansion, House Republicans killed the idea again. On Thursday, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, who has a knack for economically destructive policies, vetoed the expansion.
Greitens himself says that the Affordable Care Act must be repealed and replaced and that health care costs are out of control. But Greitens has been spending a lot of time lately with Vice President Mike Pence. As governor of Indiana in 2015, Pence enacted the Healthy Indiana Plan, a Medicaid expansion program loaded with conservative features, mainly a requirement that recipients pay monthly into a health savings plan that offsets insurance payments.
Indianans thus got the benefit of expanded federal Medicaid spending and coverage in their state while Republicans were able to preserve their core beliefs in personal responsibility.
On Tuesday, Greitens repeated his standard anti-Obamacare remarks, but when asked about his conversations with Pence, he said: “There’s a number of things we’re taking away not only from Gov. Pence but from governors around the country. We talked with them about reforms they put in place to make sure they’re getting better health care for people in their state. There were key waivers that Indiana pursued under Medicaid which enabled them to deliver better care at lower cost.”
He added, “We’ve got an administration that’s signaling us that they’re ready and willing for us to also experiment with those kinds of things here in Missouri.”
It took Pence two years of haggling with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to get approval for the conservative modifications of the Healthy Indiana Plan. CMMS is now run by Seema Verma, a health policy expert who helped Indiana and other Republican states design their programs. All Missouri would have to do is ask.
Indiana’s plan charges the poor for being sick, but it’s a whole lot better than no plan at all. Greitens should kick the door open.
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The Columbia Daily Tribune, April 2
Hank Foley leaves MU with good marks
Interim MU Chancellor Hank Foley will become the next president of New York Institute of Technology.
I would have been glad to see Little Hank, as I called him (guess who Big Hank is) become permanent chancellor of MU, but several understandable factors stood in the way. Brand new university system President Mun Choi was not in the best position to simply elevate an interim holder of the office. University curators were bound to conduct a nationwide search for a new chancellor, not the route Foley preferred. And because he had taken over as interim chancellor at a time of unprecedented upheaval in MU governance, Chancellor Foley inevitably evoked some opposition on campus to counter his strong support.
It turned out the road to the presidency in New York was smoother than winning the job he already had at MU. On top of that, the New York job is a good one, at a science-oriented institution where Foley’s background fits the bill very well, where the former president is retiring after 16 years at the helm, giving Foley reason to plan on finishing his career in similar fashion, and where the institution is offering new President Foley a salary of more than a million dollars a year with more on the horizon.
Foley is making $459,000 as interim chancellor here, the same amount paid his predecessor, Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin. Foley said money is not the primary reason he is moving to New York. Higher costs of living will offset much of the gain, he says, but he certainly is not taking a loss by moving. He came to MU from Pennsylvania State University, so he’s familiar with the Eastern Seaboard neighborhood.
All in all, the timing worked against Foley’s retention at MU. In the perverse politics of the situation, he had to work harder to prove he should keep his MU job than to gain it in the first place. To his credit he had exhibited leadership while in the interim position, speaking out when he thought necessary, inevitably irritating some faculty members and others already smarting from criticism from outsiders for lack of adequate response to student protests.
A formal search has been underway, and President Choi hopes to announce a new chancellor in May. One can imagine he wanted to consider his own person as leader of the flagship campus. And one can certainly imagine Hank Foley will thrive in his new job as president of the New York Institute of Technology. Sounds like a good fit for a good person who did a yeoman job at MU during a challenging time.
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