Yes, Missourians knew what they were voting for on paid sick time | Opinion
Recently, Missouri state Sen. Mike Cierpiot — someone I consider to be one of the more levelheaded members of the General Assembly — penned a guest commentary in The Kansas City Star so full of conjecture and misreprentations that I confess I doubted he actually wrote it.
In it, he suggested that Missourians are unable to make an adequate assessment of our values, and are somehow now incapable of responsibly exercising our rights under the citizen initiative petition process that has been part of our state’s toolkit of democracy for more than a century. He suggests that the over 210,000 Missourians who signed a petition in support of paid sick leave, and the 1.6 million-plus Missourians who voted for it shouldn’t worry about the fact that Republicans in our legislature — including him — just betrayed us and gutted the law, because they say we didn’t know what it did to begin with.
The arrogance of such a position should infuriate every Missourian, whether they voted for it or not. But the real concern here is that legislators, apparently including him, are now seeking to fundamentally alter and destroy Missouri’s initiative petition process. We cannot let that happen.
State Sen. Cierpiot’s argument begins with a false statement. He wrote, “Proponents of an initiative write language that accomplishes what they want,” to describe the way that ballot summaries are prepared for citizen initiatives. That simply isn’t true. When the Missouri residents propose a law, they are dependent on the secretary of state to write the description of what the law would do, and the state auditor to describe the costs, if any. It should be noted that then-Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft — a Republican who had repeatedly been overruled by judges for writing biased language relating to initiative petitions — is the one who wrote the description of Proposition A. Ashcroft did not support Proposition A. I imagine he voted no for it. But in this case at least, he did write a fair summary of what the law would do. Business groups that opposed the law waited until after we voted to challenge the summary as unfair. They lost unanimously at the state Supreme Court.
The backward thing about a sitting state legislator complaining that regular people who propose initiatives write manipulative summaries is not just that it is wrong — it’s the pot calling the kettle black. There is only one group of Missourians who do get to write summaries when they propose a ballot measure: Missouri legislators.
The General Assembly’s ability to write manipulative ballot summaries is why Missourians are going to be asked if we want to reinstate the abortion ban that we just repealed this last November. Why would we do that? Because that isn’t what the legislature wants us to believe we are voting on. In fact, the words “ban” or “limit” don’t appear in their ballot summary at all, despite being the primary purpose of the proposed amendment. Instead, politicians’ summary focuses on health care for transgender youth — an issue that is not directly tied to abortion at all. They hope that Missourians’ perceived discomfort with gender-affirming health care will trick us into reinstating the near-total abortion ban we just overturned.
Jefferson City Republicans do themselves a grave disservice not respecting the will of their constituents on issues such as paid sick time. Politicians such as Sen. Cierpiot directly betrayed the will of their constituents, who overwhelmingly supported the law. What Missouri needs isn’t restrictions on our freedom to propose and vote on issues with popular support. What we need are lawmakers who won’t betray our votes.
Richard Von Glahn is policy director at the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Missouri Jobs with Justice and served as campaign manager for Proposition A.