Recent Missouri editorials

The Kansas City Star, June 18

We train and equip our armed forces in the event the nation goes into combat with foreign enemies. Those men and women who volunteer for the job shouldn’t also have to fight their own government, and certainly not for the benefits they have coming to them.

Yet Missouri Air National Guard veteran Heather Henriksen has been engaged in a battle just to receive life-sustaining unemployment insurance since the coronavirus pandemic ended her post-military career at a commercial airline in March.

How many other veterans have been put in the same needless financial pinch for no good reason?

Henriksen, an aerospace ground equipment mechanic, was medically discharged from the Air National Guard. But since she was let go by the struggling airline industry upon the advent of COVID-19, Missouri unemployment officials - at least when she could reach them after weeks of trying - informed her that the Department of Defense hadn’t responded to the state’s straightforward wage verification form. Her Guard pay was a mix of state and federal.

Why not just use a W-2? Missouri officials say they’re “working on that,” Henriksen says. Well, at least someone is working.

Henriksen found community and commiseration in a Facebook group of people facing Missouri unemployment problems. There are at least three such Facebook groups, all of which boast more than 1,000 members.

“Hundreds of people are having the same issues, and the common denominator was previous government and military workers,” she told The Star. “I spoke with one lady who has children and no safety net on the verge of losing everything and who has lived with that fear since the beginning of May. I’m so thankful that the Facebook group was created where we can all network and assist each other. Some people still haven’t been able to get through to the Department of Labor on the phone.”

Veterans shouldn’t have to rely on social media for solace. Where’s the government she and so many others have worked for?

“This is the first we’re hearing of this issue, but we will raise the matter in our discussions with DOD leadership this week,” a spokesperson for the Kansas City-based Veterans of Foreign Wars said in a statement.

Elected officials have been minimally better. After weeks of no or perfunctory responses to Henriksen’s pleas for help, and an inquiry Tuesday by The Star, the office of Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, called her Tuesday to get the wheels of solution spinning.

“We have immediately opened a case file with Heather and are looking into the matter,” Hawley spokesperson Kelli Ford wrote The Star Wednesday. “And if this is happening to other veterans, it needs to be addressed and corrected.”

An official at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service of the Department of Defense said he, too, would look into it.

The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the disgraceful condition of unemployment departments in Missouri and Kansas for workers of all stripes, certainly. Once the systems have their equilibrium, such that it is, they will warrant a top-to-bottom overhaul. In the short term, however, there are far too many of us going without, and unnecessarily so, due to bureaucratic sloth and deficiency.

The question is, how many other veterans and federal workers in Missouri and around the country are in Henriksen’s situation, in which the bewildering lack of verification of employment and income by the federal government - or perhaps a lack of agility by the state government - is denying deserving recipients the benefits they’ve earned?

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 22

There’s a new zeal afoot among local politicians and other prominent St. Louisans to punt various contentious local issues to referendums, letting the people decide when elected leaders don’t want to be saddled with tough or unpopular choices. Politicians love the idea of a referendum when the public mood seems to be going their way, but they’re quick to protest and demand a revote when their side loses, arguing that the voters didn’t know what they were doing. No one should confuse this with leadership.

Governing by referendum has big advantages but also major drawbacks. Just because a movement generates populist enthusiasm doesn’t mean voters are taking all the consequences into consideration. Part of elected leaders’ jobs is to study the pros and cons of divisive issues, then take a stand, unpopular as it might be at the time. When leaders punt the hard choices to voters, the results can be disastrous.

Consider two statewide ballot items Californians passed in 1994. One was called the “three strikes” rule. The answer to rampant crime, voters decided, was to require mandatory sentences of 25 years to life imprisonment for any person convicted of a serious felony after having had two prior convictions. Prison populations, particularly among minorities, skyrocketed. Another referendum called for the denial of public, social, educational and health services to undocumented immigrants.

Both measures passed with overwhelming popular support. But the people were wrong.

Today, the NAACP and the St. Louis-Kansas City Carpenters Regional Council are pressing ahead with a referendum on whether to privatize St. Louis Lambert International Airport. St. Louisans can be certain, given the enormous lobbying push and private funding behind this initiative, that they will hear glowing stories about the wonders of privatization and a billion-dollar windfall that, in theory, would help transform north St. Louis. Voters are being asked this question because elected leaders, funded by megadonor Rex Sinquefield, were unable to ram through a secret privatization plan embraced by Mayor Lyda Krewson.

Another proposed referendum would ask voters whether to rescind the residency requirement for St. Louis police officers. Local elected officials, fully aware of a severe staffing shortage, couldn’t muster the courage to rescind this requirement on their own. The state Legislature also refused to engage on the issue this session. That’s why they want to punt it to the voters.

Sometimes, the people’s will isn’t enough, such as the 2012 decision by voters to cut aldermanic ward representation in half by 2022. Various aldermen who don’t like the 2012 result now want a revote. Similarly, Republican state legislators recoiled when Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved the Clean Missouri political-reform referendum in 2018. Those legislators are now forcing a revote.

Referendums can provide an excellent snapshot of the public mood at a particular moment in time. But, as Californians can attest, moods change. Consequences don’t.

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St. Joseph News-Press, June 17

Senate Bill 600 went through plenty of changes during its march toward final passage in what proved to be an extraordinary and bizarre legislative session. But the overall intent of the Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer’s legislation never wavered: to make Missouri’s streets safer by keeping some of the most violent, repeat offenders behind bars.

At one point, it passed the Senate on a 27-2 vote. The measure gained final approval in the House with a tally of 97-51.

What’s changed is the public’s perception of crime, punishment and law enforcement in the wake of another unarmed black man dying in police custody. The death of George Floyd lit a fuse of protest against injustice and a re-evaluation of policing in the United States.

It generated a much-needed national debate, but it also created an aura of skepticism for a bill that adds second-degree murder to the list of offenses that are not eligible for probation in Missouri. The measure also creates a new offense of vehicle hijacking and enhances the sentences for the use of a weapon while committing a violent crime or for possessing a firearm illegally.

Critics call this measure a flawed approach to criminal justice and urge Gov. Mike Parson to veto it. They would be correct if it was the only approach, but it is not. It does little to reverse reforms approved last year that seek to ease prison overcrowding and acknowledge that non-violent offenders, especially those with drug offenses, are better off being reintegrated into society.

That does not change. This legislation deals with the other side of the coin: the small number of repeat offenders who cycle through the criminal justice system and commit violent crime that impacts quality of life in Missouri’s cities and rural areas.

Some say SB 600 would necessitate the building of new prisons, something Missouri can ill-afford during the coronavirus recession, but that should be subject to future appropriation and the success of last year’s reforms.

In the end, Luetkemeyer’s bill does not address the core issue in the current national debate, which is how police treat people before there’s evidence of a crime being committed, let alone a question of probation eligibility or maximum punishments. This is an issue to deal with in future sessions, but it is outside the scope of what’s on the governor’s desk.

It would be an understatement to say that Luetkeymeyer’s tough-on-crime approach appears out of sync with the zeitgeist. Yet it is possible to square this legislation with the overall mood in the country, to attempt to keep violent criminals off the street and to demand an end to racism and a profound change in the way law enforcement interacts with minorities.

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