February 12, 2012

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Schweich denies he filed suit against Nixon’s disaster withholdings for personal reasons, blasts Post Dispatch editorial (VIDEO)

August 30, 2011 By

Auditor Tom Schweich is blasting an editorial in the St. Louis Post Dispatch that says his lawsuit over the Governor’s budget withholdings to help Joplin rebuild is based on personal vendetta.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ66YUd995E

Schweich says the Post ignores the media’s responsibility to present the facts clearly to the public. He quotes…

“That ‘Mr. Schweich wants the courts and public to believe his budget is more important than helping a city rebuild from one of the worst natural disasters in our state’s history…’”

“That is blatant dishonesty,” Schweich fires back. “It is corrupt, it is dishonest, it is libelous, it is false and it is a tremendous disservice to the people of Missouri who have to read junk like that when the Post Dispatch knows darn well just reading the lawsuit that is not what this lawsuit is about.”

Governor Nixon has cut about $150 million dollars from the state budget for disaster recovery. Schweich says Nixon does not have the authority to make that unilateral decision and has filed a lawsuit to stop him.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters, Flooding, Legislature, Politics & Government Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Chief Justice: too many non-violent offenders sent to prison (AUDIO)

February 9, 2011 By

Chief Justice Ray Price

State Chief Justice Ray Price has two messages of lawmakers in his State of the Judiciary address: the same messages he has delivered before.

Price, chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, tells a joint session of the legislature Missouri is throwing too many non-violent offenders into prison.

“We continue to over-incarcerate nonviolent offenders, while we have failed to expand drug courts and other diversionary and re-entry programs to capacity,” Price tells legislators. “The result is a state that is not as safe as we want it to be and a waste of taxpayer dollars.”

Price says that Missouri has tried to incarcerate its way out of crime and illegal drug use. Price says the state has been tough on crime, but not smart on crime. He points out that prison population has grown from 612,000 in 1982 to 2.3 million today.

The Chief Justice says the failure of the strategy is apparent in the state’s recidivism rate. More than half of the people released from Missouri prisons returned within five years, according to Price. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Crime & Courts, Legislature Tagged With:

Chief Justice urges legislators to consider alternatives to prison (AUDIO)

December 14, 2010 By

Legislators, looking for ways to cut the state budget, have been told that alternatives to prison might be the answer.

Estimates of the budget shortfall legislators might face in the 2011 session have fallen in the range of $400-to-700 million. Chairman of the House Interim Committee on Budget Transparency, Rep. Ryan Silvey (R-Kansas City), estimates lawmakers will have to settle on $700 million in cuts to keep the state budget balanced for the next fiscal year. Silvey will be chairman of the House Budget Committee in the next session. He has been holding hearings with the special interim committee to get a jump on the dire budget talks ahead. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Crime & Courts, Law Enforcement, Legislature Tagged With: ,

Military funeral protest case before court differs from Missouri case (AUDIO)

October 7, 2010 By

A case before the United States Supreme Court could provide clues as to how state lawmakers could re-fashion a law that sought to regulate protests at military funerals.

US Supreme Court Justices have heard the arguments in the case of Snyder versus Phelps. The justices must decide whether to let stand a $10 million judgment awarded to Albert Snyder. Snyder filed suit against Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas after the congregation protested his son’s funeral. Matthew Snyder, a Marine, was killed in Iraq at the age of 20. Snyder claimed the protests invaded his privacy, caused emotional distress and violated his rights to free exercise of religion and peaceful assembly. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Crime & Courts, Legislature, Military, Politics & Government Tagged With:

Changes made to Missouri Plan (AUDIO)

September 30, 2010 By

Changes have been made to Missouri’s non-partisan court plan, the method used to select the state’s appellate judges and judges in certain judicial circuits.

Chief Justice Ray Price says the primary change will be to make public the interviews the Appellate Judicial Commission conducts with candidates. Also, the votes for the three successful candidates forwarded to the governor will be made public and the public will be encourage to nominate candidates.

Price asserts that the Missouri Plan of appointing judges is superior to direct elections, especially since the amount of money poured into judicial elections in other states has doubled the past ten years, with most of the money coming from big contributors. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Crime & Courts, Politics & Government Tagged With:
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