Missouri ballot questions voters on cigarettes, voter IDs, campaign money, taxes

How much should a pack of cigarettes cost? Should there be limits on what people can spend on politics? What services or transactions should be taxed — or immune from taxation — down the road?

Statewide ballots in Missouri carry a handful of questions, some confusing, that cover a range of issues and could alter how state government works for years to come.

Two competing measures look to raise the state’s lowest-anywhere tax on cigarettes — but they would hike the fees so little that anti-smoking forces want them to fail.

A proposed amendment to the state constitution would put the first cap on campaign donations for races in Missouri since 2008.

Another ballot question would amend the state’s constitution to require photo IDs to vote.

One proposal would prohibit surcharges on anything the tax man hasn’t already identified for revenue.

And another measure looks to renew a longstanding sales tax that pays for conservation and parks programs.

Smokes and taxes

Here’s what you need to know about the two proposed cigarette tax increases in Missouri. Big Tobacco wants you to vote for Amendment 3. Little Tobacco hopes you’ll back Proposition A. The American Cancer Society wants you to vote no and no.

The dueling small-scale increases in cigarette taxes — phased-in hikes that would leave Missouri smokes among the cheapest in the country — reflect an ongoing battle between two kinds of cigarette makers. The first are companies that have been peddling smokes for generations. The second are upstarts that got into the game after the old gang got hit by penalties for dubious marketing campaigns of decades past.

Big Tobacco argues that Amendment 3 to the Missouri Constitution would bring fairness to cigarette taxes by imposing an “equity fee” on discount brands to bring the taxes on them in line with what smokers of Camel and Winston pay.

Little Tobacco has put its money and energy into fighting Amendment 3 to protect its price edge, and arguing that it shouldn’t pay the same sort of damages as Big Tobacco because it wasn’t around when the industry was marketing to kids and downplaying smoking’s ability to kill.

The American Cancer Society wants no part in that fight, or with cigarette tax hikes it contends are too small to force nicotine fiends to quit smoking or to discourage young folks from starting.

“These are incremental approaches,” said Stacy Reliford, the Missouri government relations director and lobbyist for the American Cancer Society. “It has to be an increase that gets people to put down their cigarettes. These aren’t big enough.”

Today, Missouri’s 17-cents-a-pack cigarette taxes ranks as the lowest in the nation. Next is tobacco-growing Virginia at 30 cents a pack. In New York, each pack carries a $4.35 surcharge. Kansas puts a $1.29 tax on every pack.

Amendment 3 would eventually add 60 cents to Missouri’s cigarette tax, although that would be phased in over four years. It would also require a fee on discount brands that don’t already contribute to a 1998 court settlement. That would eventually add an additional 67 cents per pack for the bargain brands. The amendment, backed by Vote Yes on 3 For Kids, would direct the added revenue toward child health and education programs.

“This increase is the one that polling says will pass,” said Jane Dueker, an attorney working for the Amendent 3 campaign. “The idea that ‘it’s not big enough, so don’t do it at all,’ is so shortsighted.”

Proposition A, backed by the Missouri Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association, which includes makers of discount cigarettes, would bump the tax by a more modest 23 cents a pack and reserve the new revenue for roads and bridges.

“Our main goal is to defeat Big Tobacco’s Amendment 3, which is using children to pass a huge tax increase on the competition,” said Ronald Leone, the executive director of the convenience store group.

It’s unclear what might happen if both measures passed, but those in the campaign say it would likely lead to a series of bruising court challenges to decide whether both taxes would go into effect, or only the one that garnered the most votes, or if they’d nullify each other.

Campaign bucks

Since 2008, campaign contributions in Missouri have been capped at infinity.

That’s made million-dollar checks commonplace in state politics and fed criticism of Jefferson City as a place where ethics take a back seat to money.

Amendment 2 would limit the amount a person could give to a candidate for the General Assembly, statewide office or the judiciary at $2,600 per election cycle. It also would cap donations to a political party at $25,000.

Finally, it would bar direct donations to campaigns by corporations or labor unions and stop political action committees from shifting funds to one another to obscure the original source of money.

A statewide vote in 1994 enacted campaign contribution limits, but the legislature wiped them out in 2008.

Lawmakers argued at the time that the limits worked to shield the true source of campaign funds because they gave contributors a greater incentive to route money through various channels to avoid the limits.

Lifting the limits, they said, made the true source of where campaign dollars came from — and to whom legislators might feel obligated — more obvious.

In the years since limits went away, megadonations started pouring into Missouri campaigns. In particular, St. Louis financier Rex Sinquefield has put millions into various campaigns in his effort to kill the state’s income tax. Likewise, Joplin businessman David Humphreys has donated similar amounts, and found more electoral success, in efforts to curtail the influence of labor unions.

Amendment 2 has been bankrolled by Fred Sauer, a businessman from St. Louis who contends the unchecked campaign money pouring into the state’s politics ultimately corrupts decisions made in Jefferson City. He has said putting limits on how much a candidate can receive from a single source would begin to build trust in state government.

“Reducing the extraordinary rivers of cash flowing from wealthy donors … will better assure that our government is truly representative of the people,” Sauer said earlier this year.

Critics of the change have argued that campaign contributions are a form of free speech and that the state’s existing regulations make it clear where candidates get their campaign money.

They also say it could force more money through dark channels. Unable to support candidates with large donations directly, critics say, contributors will route money through independent expenditure groups. Those organizations, protected by federal law, do not have to disclose where their dollars come from.

“It will guarantee large donors proliferate with dark money,” said Sinquefield spokesman Travis H. Brown. “You will lose transparency.”

Future taxes

Amendment 4 would amend the Missouri Constitution to bar any new state or local taxes on a “service or transaction” that government doesn’t already chase for revenue.

The measure wouldn’t ban increases of existing sales or use taxes, but it would bar imposing taxes on new things.

Backed primarily by the Missouri Association of Realtors, its advocates say the amendment is aimed at preventing taxes on services. They argue service taxes tend to be regressive, hitting working class residents hardest.

Amendment 4 draws opposition from local governments and others that contend it would tie the hands of state legislators and city councils by shutting off potential money sources yet to emerge in a changing, increasingly digital economy.

They say technology could shift commerce in new, unpredictable directions. If tax policy can’t shift with those trends, critics worry, the revenue that pays for roads, police and other government services could evaporate.

“It limits the scope of the sales tax in an uncertain economy,” said Richard Sheets, the deputy director of the Missouri Municipal League. “The way transactions are taking place in our digital world, things may be different five years from now, three years from now, one year from now. We don’t want to close off options.”

Without that flexibility, Sheets said, elected officials will find themselves under added pressure to increase existing sales taxes or property taxes.

“You’ll have to find other revenue sources,” he said, “or cut services.”

Realtors and other groups backing the measure argue the state needs to prevent new taxes on services — real estate fees, rent, accounting, legal work.

“These things hit the people who can least afford it,” said Scott Charton, spokesman for Missourians for Fair Taxation.

The Municipal League also opposes service taxes, but the addition of “or transaction” in the proposed amendment prompted the group to fight the proposal. Charton said the term was added out of fear that the Missouri Department of Revenue might someday begin to define various services as transactions that could be taxed.

“Our intent is that ‘transaction’ only apply to services,” Charton said. “We don’t want that left open to interpretation.”

Voter ID

Democrats see requirements that voters show a photo identification card before casting ballots as a way to squelch turnout. The poor and the elderly, they argue, don’t have access to a driver’s license or other ID that many people take for granted.

Republicans see voter ID rules as a small inconvenience at worst toward keeping voting safer from fraud.

It just so happens that Democrats fare better in elections without voter ID, and Republicans gain an edge when it’s in place.

Amendment 6 would enshrine in the Missouri Constitution that voters must present photo IDs issued by the state, the federal government or the U.S. military. Passing the amendment would put into effect a law passed in September despite Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto requiring the state to pick up the cost of obtaining the cards, including the expense of gathering the necessary documents, for voters who don’t have one.

If the proposal passes, a voter without ID could still cast a ballot after signing an affidavit.

The issue marks one of the most partisan divides across the country. Democrats contend the rules target a problem that doesn’t need fixing, that people almost never risk jail time impersonating others to vote. The effect of the requirement, they say, is to scare some legitimate voters away from polls.

“It’s not fair to make it harder on people just because they’re low-income or they have a harder time getting to the DMV to get that ID,” said Laura Swinford, the executive director of Progress Missouri. “Putting burdens in people’s way is not what democracy is about.”

Republicans say it’s reasonable to expect people to prove who they are before voting, particularly when the state would be required to help them obtain and pay for a photo ID.

“No one would be disenfranchised by this bill,” Rep. Justin Alferman, a Gasconade County Republican backing the proposal, said when the General Assembly overrode Nixon’s veto.

Voter photo ID rules have been passed in several states, and courts in many places have ruled them unconstitutional. Should Missouri voters pass Amendment 6, a court fight is probably inevitable.

Parks tax

Amendment 1 asks voters to renew a 0.1 percent sales tax that’s been in place since 1984.

The tax generates about $90 million a year. It pays into funds that support soil and water conservation and help cover the cost of upkeep on the state’s 88 parks and historic sites.

This story was originally published October 24, 2016 at 6:33 PM with the headline "Missouri ballot questions voters on cigarettes, voter IDs, campaign money, taxes."