Missouri Chamber of Commerce Archives

CARES Act spending team hears the up-to-date coronavirus needs of Missouri agencies, businesses

May 21, 2020 By Ashley Byrd

The informal advisory group appointed by Gov. Mike Parson heard a wish list from a series of state agency and organization leaders about how to spend CARES Act funding coming into the state.

State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick says Missouri has about $1.5 billion to work with after buying personal protective equipment for state health and frontline workers. As CARES Act money — and mandatory guidelines — come from the federal government, the team will recommend spending priorities to the governor.

Fitzpatrick says the panel is “still in information-gathering mode.’

The team met for more than four hours at the Capitol and remotely on Thursday. In the first hour, Missouri DHSS Director Randall Williams briefed the panel on the state’s approach to testing and how it could be paid for. Williams explained a three-pronged approach to add to current PCR (nasal swab sampling) infection tests given to individuals who ask for it.

“Boxed-in” approach:
Williams says there will be outbreaks and each county needs to be ready to address those flare-ups by testing everyone involved.”We go in and test all the staff, all the residents because we know when this gets into congregated facilities, whether it be prisons or cruise ships or nursing homes or cruise ships, this tends to be very infectious,” Williams said. He said Medicare and Medicaid will pay for this testing and he wants health care facilities to seek this insurance rather than the state pay for it. State Budget Director Dan Haug says the state will reimburse large facilities and agencies through $135 million from coronavirus relief funds recently allocated for testing.
Community sampling:
Williams says communities are asking DHSS to come in to do “snapshot” or random sampling to extrapolate from a small number what a larger number of cases might be. The department sampled 12 counties three weeks ago and found nine COVID-19 cases out of 3,000 tested. They are now testing in Buchanan and Andrew County. St. Louis County will be testing 5,000 people to be paid for locally. Other locations to be tested.
Sentinel testing:
The health department picks areas of high morbidity and mortality or long-term care facilities to do periodic testing. Williams says there is a plan to put these in place around the state, in order to predict outbreaks before large-scale hospitalizations.

Versailles Republican, Rep. David Wood took issue with local health departments having to foot the bill for testing services, relying on local general CARES funding to the county to be allocated to them.

“Basically you have no plans of sending money down, even though they are doing your work and they are funded through you, you’re having them compete for the dollars that are sent to the county? I’ve made that point in budget committee numbers of times that if Health and Senior Services is receiving additional funds from COVID money, whatever pot it’s coming from and they are not passing on to the people doing the work, that to me is … (mumbled expletive).”

Unemployment, tourism, job training needs

Chris Slinkard, Director at Missouri Division of Employment Security discussed the health of the state Unemployment Trust Fund.

“The trust fund at the beginning of this year was at almost $1.1 billion, the largest in state history,” he told the panel. “On May 18, 2020, the UI Trust Fund balance was $858 million; the majority what was given out has come from the U.S. CARES Act.”

Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry President and CEO Dan Mehan

Missouri Chamber of Commerce President Dan Mehan also spoke to the group, seeking more attention for the state’s apprenticeship and internship program for workers who may not get their jobs back.

“If you look at where we would prioritize, it’s about the testing and it’s about the people. It’s about the apprenticeship and internship approach that when people talk infrastructure, the term shovel-ready got kind of a bad connotation, we have shovels in the ground in these apprenticeship programs and they are working,” Mehan said.

Mehan also said that businesses opening up need some help by a temporary law.

“We sent a letter to the governor two days ago asking for a special session to consider lawsuit protection. There are a lot of employers out there that are fearful or reopening their doors for fears being sued for whatever possible reason even though they try to open responsibly, safely, with PPE and try to follow CDC guidelines, guidelines of the state and we’d just like to have some sort of temporary — not global — but temporary immunity from lawsuits that could occur from this. We’ve seen hundreds crop up around the country. The fear of lawsuits is going to hinder our recovery in a big way,” Mehan said.

Stephen Foutes, Director for the Missouri Division of Tourism reported losses compared to the normal brought in by sightseers and visitors.

“Approximately $2.16 billion in tourism-related spending has been lost from February 29 through May 9 of this year as compared to roughly the same time last year, ” Foutes said.

“Since early March both the tourism economy and the industry employment have plummeted,” he added.

One-third of the tourism industry in Missouri has filed for unemployment.

Zora Mulligan released information from a public and private college and university survey on how higher education institutions are trying to cope with budget cuts and the demands of creating online learning.

“If I have one big takeaway from this survey is that institutions worked really hard, as did students, to figure out ways to make this work this spring semester. But if this is to be a longer-term strategy, we’ve got a lot of additional investment that we’re going to need to make in terms of professional development, advising, infrastructure, student capacity, and then the larger broadband system in which this operates,” Mulligan summarized.

Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Jeff Falter agreed with Mulligan that broadband capacity across the state is a major problem.

“Districts report an estimated 23 percent of students are without internet access — or one out of every five students,” he told the panel.

House Committee hears LGBT nondiscrimination bill

March 13, 2014 By Mike Lear

A Missouri House Committee has heard debate on legislation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the state’s Human Rights Statute’s definition of “discrimination.”

Representative Kevin Engler (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The proposal, HB 1930, would specify that the statute covers unfair treatment based on race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age as related to employment, disability or familial status as related to housing. It makes discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity an unlawful discriminatory practice.

The bill, HB 1930, is sponsored by Representative Kevin Engler (R-Farmington), who tells the committee discrimination still happens.

“If you don’t believe that, I’d ask the members when they’re on their spring break this next week, go and ask your friends, “Did you know that Missouri is one of a handful of states that still has it on the book that if you as an employee admit to being a homosexual, you can be fired for just cause. You can’t claim unemployment because it’s for just cause,” says Engler. “They will be shocked.”

Among those testifying against the legislation were the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Missouri.

Chamber General Counsel Jay Atkins tells the committee the Chamber has a number of members whose company policies include protections for the LGBT community and it encourages that to grow among its members.

“But there is a dramatic difference,” Atkins told the committee, “between having such policies as a matter of policy in the workplace, and creating an entire new cause of action that exposes all Missouri employers to further liability under employment law.”

Chamber board member and Governmental Affairs Director for Monsanto, Duane Simpson, says at the board’s last meeting, Chamber Vice President of Governmental Affairs Tracy King said the chamber has no official position on the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act.

AIM President Ray McCarty echoed the concerns Atkins outlined about creating a new statutory protected class and the line of lawsuits that could come with it.

The Missouri Catholic Conference also testified against the legislation. General Counsel Tyler McClay told lawmakers his organization’s objection to the bill is not with how it would apply to housing or employment, but with how it deals with public accommodations.

“There needs to be space in the law,” McClay testified, “There needs to be space for people to say, ‘I can’t, as a matter of conscience, participate in a same-sex wedding ceremony, for example.”

Representative Stephen Webber (D-Columbia) calls McClay’s position “indefensible.”

“I think it’s pretty much impossible to pull out a legal argument that allows what you want to have happen without defending segregation,” Webber tells McClay. “I know you don’t want to support segregation … but your argument does.”

Appearing in favor of the bill were PROMO, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office and Monsanto.

Governor Jay Nixon (D) expressed support for nondiscrimination legislation in his State of the State Address in January, when he observed that such a bill was passed in the Senate in 2013 but didn’t reach his desk.

Nixon said in his address, “Let’s get it done this year.”

Engler tells the committee he wants the language to become part of a larger bill dealing with multiple business issues.

Legislation would give Missouri students more digital education offerings

February 3, 2014 By Mike Lear

The state Chamber says Missouri needs to offer more digital learning opportunities to its K-12 students. It released a study last week that makes that case.

For the state to move in that direction would require changes in policy, funding appropriations and improvements in the state’s broadband infrastructure.

Senator Ed Emery

Senator Ed Emery (R-Lamar) says none of those things are reasons to delay.

“We can do a significant amount of virtual education with the infrastructure that we currently have. Now there may be some things that we can not do, but because there are some things that we can not do is not a reason to not do what we can.”

Emery has proposed again this year legislation that would allow students to enroll in charter schools or school districts in which they do not live to take online courses. He says that fits right into the findings of the study, and Chamber spokespeople noted his bill in presenting those results.

“A discussion of the advantages that specific families or students had received from being able to access virtual schools, whether it was a course or whether it was because it was a lack of an ability to sit in a bricks-and-mortar building.”

Emery says online learning could be a greater benefit to students than traditional classrooms.

“It really does begin to tailor the education process to the individual student probably more effectively and simply than anything else we can do. It’s a whole lot easier to transport data than it is to transport students.”

Representative Kathryn Swan

He says development of digital learning would also spur developments in the areas needed to support it.

“As we get better at this and as we learn the value of it and begin to see that demonstrated, that is a new incentive, or at least a renewed incentive, to expand the infrastructure.”

The Chamber also noted legislation previously filed by Representative Kathy Swan (R-Cape Girardeau) that would let dual-enrollment high school students take online postsecondary courses and remedial and credit recovery courses to be offered online. Swan tells Missourinet she plans to introduce a version of that legislation this session.

Nixon highlights business community support for Medicaid Expansion in State of the State

January 29, 2013 By Mike Lear

Governor Jay Nixon has taken his case for Medicaid expansion to the GOP leadership in the legislature by highlighting support from business organizations.

Governor Jay Nixon delivers the 2013 State of the State address. (Photo courtesy; UPI/Bill Greenblatt)

Nixon welcomed several of them during the State of the State Address.

“The Missouri Chamber of Commerce supports the Medicaid expansion, not because they’re big supporters of this president and his agenda but because it’s the smart thing to do.”

Nixon listed supporters including the chambers of commerce in Kansas City, Independence, Springfield, Lee’s Summit and St. Louis, the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City, Kirksville Regional Economic Development, Inc. and Associated Industries of Missouri.

Nixon urged lawmakers to put the politics of healthcare aside, which drew laughter from the Republican side of the chamber.

In a pre-Address question-and-answer session with the media, Nixon says convincing Republican leadership is an ongoing education process that he thinks is making progress.

“We see a continuing, growing coalition of folks that understand that this is a right business decision to make. Missouri is paying $1.8 billion in taxes. Sending those to Washington and then standing here quietly and allowing those dollars to be spent in other states is not a good business decision.”

Republicans say one reason not to expand Medicaid is a lack of faith that Congress will keep its funding promises, that would make expansion cost-free to Missouri for three years. Nixon suggests including a provision to roll back expansion in that case.

House Speaker Tim Jones is skeptical.

“I’ve never seen a government program that’s increased go back the other way … it’s an entitlement, and entitlements are extremely difficult to ratchet back.”

Nixon’s budget proposal would use $46 million federal dollars from Medicaid expansion. He says proceeding with expansion would bring $5.7 billion to the state over the next three years and create 24,000 jobs in 2014.