Guns, roads, gerrymandering and transgender sports on agenda for Missouri lawmakers
The Democratic mayors of Missouri’s largest cities thought they were ending the year on a high note, scoring the support of Republican Gov. Mike Parson for a public push for tougher state laws aimed at keeping handguns away from minors, domestic abusers and other violent criminals.
But that optimism was dashed by the cold reception of Missouri’s Republican-dominated legislature, which begins its 2020 session at noon on Wednesday. Parson’s GOP colleagues quickly dismissed the idea of any new law that might infringe on gun ownership rights of Missourians.
While urban gun violence will still be a major point of discussion, it will be one of many issues, ongoing and new, to occupy lawmakers.
There is still no consensus on how to pay for repairs to crumbling roads and bridges around the state, including a longstanding effort to rebuild I-70. The fate of the state’s low-income housing tax credit, eliminated during the Greitens administration, will also return to the agenda.
Those issues will compete for attention with new measures: constitutional amendments to roll back a voter-approved redistricting process; restricting transgender athletes in high school sports; tweaking language on voting rights, and allowing college athletes to profit off their names, images, and likeness.
Hovering in the background is the November election. Parson will seek a full term in office while all 197 House seats and half of the Senate’s 34 seats will be on the ballot.
“We will have a lot on our plate,” said House Speaker Elijah Haahr, R-Springfield. “I’m really looking forward to getting started.”
Gun violence
Kansas City and St. Louis have both been consistently ranked among the nation’s most dangerous cities.
In 2019 Kansas City recorded 151 homicides, nearing an all-time record set two years earlier.
In St. Louis, there were 194 homicides in 2019. On New Year’s Day the killing continued with a wave of shootings across the city that left five people dead.
Parson committed to designating state troopers to police certain interstates in the St. Louis area, as well as assigning troopers to various city task forces on violent gun crimes.
The governor also met privately on several occasions with the mayors of Missouri’s largest cities to discuss ways the state could help combat violent crime in the urban core.
In November, he announced his support for additional funding for witness protection programs, greater access to mental health care and tougher laws to keep firearms out of the hands of violent offenders, domestic abusers and minors.
But it remains to be seen how hard Parson will fight for new gun laws. Meeting privately with legislative leaders in recent weeks, he has downplayed support for gun regulations. Instead, he is reaffirming his commitment to protecting Second Amendment rights.
Kansas City has already passed ordinances that restrict handguns from minors and domestic abusers, mirroring current federal law but allowing county prosecutors to crack down on offenders or place them in diversion programs.
Missouri cities are barred by state law from drafting their own gun restrictions. But Kansas City leaders have argued there is an exception in state law. They contend that it allows local governments to craft their own gun laws if they conform exactly to sections of state law that forbid firearms any place where they are also barred by federal statute.
Without a state law, the local ordinance is at risk.
In 2014, after Kansas City approved a ban on openly carrying firearms. Lawmakers responded by passing legislation undoing the local law and forbidding any future attempts at banning open carry.
Sen. Bill Eigel, a St. Charles County Republican, said he has yet to hear any proposed gun regulation from the governor “that strikes me as something I could support.
“I would be very surprised if anything related to controlling firearms would make it through the Missouri Senate,” Eigel said.
Haahr said he wasn’t a part of the discussion the governor had with Missouri’s mayors, but acknowledged that the GOP-dominated legislature “is obviously going to be very hesitant about any gun restrictions.”
“We are very protective of our Second Amendment rights,” Haahr said. “So anything that is proposed in that space will be looked at extraordinarily closely.”
Instead, Haahr said he hopes lawmakers will continue to focus on criminal justice reform to “find ways to help non-violent offenders re-enter society and not re-offend and end up back in prison. That’s the model we’re trying to follow.”
State Rep. Shamed Dogan, R-St. Louis County, said during an election year it is “very tempting to say ‘yeah, let’s just enhance penalties.’ That’s not reform.”
“Most research shows that increasing penalties for the sake of it does not help reduce crime,” he said. “It doesn’t help solve the underlying causes of why people engage in that behavior in the first place.”
Dogan pointed to enforcement of drug laws, where he hopes lawmakers will work with him to “shift more cases toward drug courts and away from criminal punishments.”
“The rhetoric is around let’s get tough on criminals,” he said. “The reality is we spend an inordinate amount of time going after non-violent people.”
State Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, a Parkville Republican who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, said that while he supports second chances for people who commit non-violent felonies, “we have lost track of how to get violent people off the street. That’s the root cause of the problem for the increases in violent crime in St. Louis and Kansas City.”
Among the bills Luetkemeyer plans to push for in 2020 is legislation restricting judges from granting probation for certain violent offenses.
Roads and bridges
In 2019, the governor successfully pushed for $300 million in bonding to repair or replace 215 bridges across the state, as well as a $50 million cost-share program for other transportation projects.
In July, the state received an $81 million federal grant to build a new I-70 bridge over the Missouri River at Rocheport.
Despite the influx of new cash, Parson acknowledged to St. Louis Public Radio that the need for a permanent funding solution remains.
“The problem doesn’t go away simply because we did a bonding of bridges across the state,” Parson said. “It really helped. But that’s not going to cure the problem for the state of Missouri, so we gotta find other solutions for that.”
The idea of toll roads has been floated repeatedly over the years. But Sen. Doug Libla, a Poplar Bluff Republican and chair of the Senate transportation committee, said toll roads are “dead on arrival.”
Instead, he plans to once again introduce an increase to the gas tax to fund infrastructure repair.
Missouri’s gas tax, at 17-cents per gallon, is the second lowest in the nation after Alaska.
In 2018, voters soundly rejected a gas tax hike that Parson campaigned for, and Haahr said there is little appetite in the House for any discussion of increasing the gas tax in 2020.
NCAA athletes
In November, the NCAA announced it would uphold a postseason ban and all related sanctions against the University of Missouri football, baseball and softball teams. The penalties stem from misconduct by a former athletics tutor who helped student-athletes cheat their way through classes.
Lawmakers were outraged, arguing that Mizzou turned itself in and yet was hit with sanctions far more severe than what other universities faced over similar accusations.
Partly in reaction to the sanctions, a bipartisan group of lawmakers filed legislation to allow college athletes to profit from their name and image — a move aimed at undermining an NCAA ban on players receiving any compensation aside from scholarships.
Joining the push is the National College Players Association, which has hired statehouse lobbyists and publicly voiced support for Missouri legislation.
“We are hopeful that this bill will finally end NCAA rules that impose second class citizenship on Missouri’s colleges,” Ramogi Huma, the NCPA’s executive director, said in a statement.
The NCPA was part of a successful push in California to enact the Fair Pay to Play Act, a law that goes into effect in 2023 and permits college athletes in the state to hire agents and be paid for endorsements.
Gerrymandering, transgender sports and voting
Among the highest priorities for Missouri Republicans is a constitutional amendment to repeal voter-approved changes to the legislative redistricting process.
In 2018, 62 percent of voters approved a wide-ranging constitutional amendment dubbed Clean Missouri.
Among its provisions was a change in how legislative districts are drawn after the Census.
Instead of a partisan commission drawing the maps, a nonpartisan demographer is now tasked with the job. Among the most important factors in drawing the new districts will be ensuring partisan competitiveness.
Missouri is the only state that mandates the use of a specific mathematical formula to try to engineer “partisan fairness” and “competitiveness” in legislative elections.
An Associated Press analysis found that while the new method appears unlikely to impact overall control of the Missouri General Assembly, it will likely increase Democrats’ chances of winning elections and cut into Republicans’ supermajorities in the state House and Senate.
Republicans have vowed to move quickly to put the issue back before voters in 2020 with the hope that they will repeal the redistricting changes before any new districts have been drawn.
State Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelby County, has introduced legislation that would ask voters to amend the constitution to prohibit transgender student athletes from competing in certain statewide events, such as sports.
Instead, students could only participate in “single-gender events” that correspond “to the student’s biological sex.”
In an op-ed explaining her position, O’Laughlin said, “if you are a male, you should be playing male sports, and if you are a female, you should be playing female sports.”
Every student deserves a fair chance to succeed in school and prepare for their future - including students who are transgender, said Shira Berkowitz, communications manager for the LGTBQ advocacy group PROMO.
“School administrators have long been able to accommodate the needs of their students without banning transgender students from student activities and common spaces,” Berkowitz said. “It can be hard to understand what it means to be transgender, especially if you’ve never met a transgender person. Transgender students are part of our school communities, and like other students, they’re there to learn, graduate, and prepare for their future.”
State Rep. Curtis Trent, R-Springfield, hopes to ask voters to make a one-word change to Missouri’s constitution.
Instead of saying “all” citizens can vote, Trent’s amendment changes it to “only” citizens can vote.
In an email to The Star, the secretary of state’s office noted that “you have to be a citizen to register to vote.”
Critics argue Trent’s proposal is simply an attempt to get the hot-button issue of immigration on the ballot in an election year to gin-up the GOP base, and that it would have no practical impact on voting in Missouri.
Trent argues current phrasing leaves a loophole that endangers the “integrity of elections in Missouri.” The change is needed, he says, because cities in other states have allowed non-citizens to vote in local elections.
