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MU Law Professor discusses constitutionality of proposed transfer law (VIDEO)

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The office of Governor Jay Nixon (D) has said the state Constitution prohibits the use of tax dollars to support private schools. Backers of the legislature’s proposed student transfer law fix disagree, and say the Constitution only says tax dollars can’t go to religious schools.

That legislation contains a provision that would allow money generated by local tax levys that support unaccredited districts in Jackson or St. Louis Counties or St. Louis to go to private schools that accept students transferring from those districts’ schools. Such transfers could only happen after approval by local voters, or after three years of the district being unaccredited.

Nixon’s office says that proposal would violate three sections of the Constitution that govern the use of state funds (Article III Section 38), money that goes into the state school fund (Article IX Section 5), and the levying of taxes (Article X Section 3).

Critics of the bill are urging Nixon to veto it and call a special session to create a new one.

An Associate Teaching Professor with the University of Missouri School of Law, Brad Desnoyer, discusses how each of those sections might be interpreted in the debate, and points to one he thinks might make for a better argument for opponents of the legislation.

Desnoyer thinks opponents of the bill would be better served by Article X, Section 11(g), which deals with the operating levy for the Kansas City School District.

“This says that in Kansas City the operating levy is for schools of the district, so I think right there you have a problem,” says Desnoyer, “because you can’t be sending money in Kansas City to private schools.”

Desnoyer says the lawmakers who worked on the proposal went to great lengths to try and make it fit the Constitution. He thinks that’s why it was changed so that it no longer covers the costs to transport students who are transferring.

“One reason to get rid of the bussing is if they included the bussing, then it’s unconstitutional because you can’t bus students to private schools [on public school buses]. We know that,” says Desnoyer. “So, if we’re being cynical, the reason they got rid of that provision was to put in the [private] school choice provision.”

The proposed transfer law is SB 493.

Gov. Nixon withholds more education spending, cites lottery and gaming revenue shortfalls

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Governor Jay Nixon (D) says he will freeze another $35.1-million in education spending due to a continuing decline in revenue from lottery and gaming. Nixon says he will restrict the spending of $10.5-million for four-year higher education institutions and $24.6-million from the K-12 education funding formula.

Lottery and gaming revenue are directed to education by Missouri law.

This latest action is in addition to $22-million he restricted in higher education and K-12 spending in April. Nixon had asked the legislature to provide $44-million in a mid-fiscal-year supplemental budget to make up for lottery and gaming revenue falling short. Legislative budget makers thought $22-million was enough and provided that amount instead. Nixon then withheld $15.6-million from K-12 schools and $3.2-million each from community colleges and four-year universities.

Nixon says he remains concerned that the legislature didn’t account for lottery and gaming revenue trending lower in its fiscal year 2015 budget, sent to the governor less than two weeks ago.

Read the statement from Gov. Nixon’s office

Weighing in on whether to veto the transfer bill and call a special session

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Critics of the bill that proposes change to Missouri’s student transfer law say it doesn’t fix anything, and want Governor Jay Nixon (D) to tell lawmakers to try again.

The bill lawmakers sent to Governor Nixon includes a provision that after three years of a district in St. Louis City or County and Jackson County being unaccredited, would allow its local tax dollars to go to a nearby private school if its students transfer there.

Opponents like Representative Genise Montecillo (D-St. Louis) say that’s all the bill was about, and they want Nixon to veto it.

“I’ve heard from all of my superintendents, I’ve heard from my constituents. I don’t think there’s a superintendent in this state that supports this plan,” says Montecillo. “Those people that understand education and what it takes to improve education outcomes opposed this plan, and yet they continued to refuse to take vouchers off the table. If that’s not about agenda, then explain to me what it is about.”

Nixon has said he opposes any legislation that would let tax dollars go to private schools, but hasn’t said what he will do with this bill.

Some lawmakers say Nixon has indicated to them a veto and special session are coming

He tells reporters he knows he must act soon, with one school district bankrupt and another close to it because of the cost of student transfers.

“We’re going to expedite a review of this bill,” says Nixon. “Obviously I’ll have to make a decision on it relatively quickly because of the fiscal timeframes involved.”

Opponents of the bill want Nixon to call a special session so that a new bill can be created. He has not said whether he will.

House Speaker Tim Jones (R-Eureka) says if that happens, he wants to see more involvement from the Governor in a solution.

“If the governor vetoes this issue, then he owns it and he has to come up with a solution,” says Jones. “I will challenge him to propose and work with us, like he did in the Boeing special session. You saw that when this governor wants to, he can actually engage with the legislature, be a leader and get things done in a short period of time.”

Montecillo says it’s not up to the Governor to propose a plan.

“We have a plan,” says Montecillo. “The problem that [Republicans] have and what they dislike about that, it is a clean transfer fix. It addresses a single problem facing the state. It is void of the agenda that they want to push and promote.”
Opponents of the bill say the Governor has some leverage over what lawmakers might or might not attempt to put into a bill in a special session through the call he would issue for that session.

Budget director: will work with lawmakers on how association dues are paid

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The state’s budget director tells House Republicans the Nixon Administration’s budget office is willing to work with legislative budget makers to change how the state pays dues to organizations its agencies and elected officials belong to.

Republicans called attention this week to the paying of dues to the National Governors Association out of the budget for the Department of Social Services’ administration. For three years that added up to more than $390,000 dollars.

See earlier story

Budget committee members including Representative Caleb Rowden (R-Columbia) feel they appropriated money to be used by that agency, not to pay organization dues.

“We feel like we’ve been duped, I think it what it really boils down to, intentional or not,” Rowden told State Budget Director Linda Luebbering. “It’s absolutely and unequivocally wrong, and there’s no other way to put it.”

Luebbering told the committee she doesn’t have the authority to commit to changing how dues are paid, but said she would talk with others in the Nixon Administration and future legislative budget makers about the issue.

“I have committed that we are willing to work with the House and Senate to see if we can’t come to agreement on how to do this differently in the future.”

Republicans say the appearance is that the paying of the Governors Association dues was being hidden, but Luebbering says that was not the intention.

“There are dues paid in a lot of different places in appropriations. They don’t have specific line items. This is not any different from the other ones,” Luebbering told lawmakers. “Clearly we felt it was appropriate, clearly previous administrations have paid it from various places as well.”

Luebbering notes other expenses such as food are also covered out of administrative appropriations that don’t have specific line items.  She says the expenditures can be found on the Missouri Accountability Portal.

“We think it is just as transparent as any other dues that are paid in state government,” says Luebbering.

Representative Chris Kelly (D-Columbia) disagrees, and calls the expenditures, “clearly not transparent, extremely opaque.”

Representative Robert Ross (R-Yukon) says “incredible” is that the Governors Association dues were paid out of the Social Services budget in September of 2013, three months into the fiscal year’s budget.

“If that’s the case, clearly we have been over appropriating to Children’s Division, Social Services, the whole gamut, if they already know at that point that they have extra money and can say, ‘Hey, let’s pay the Governors Dues on this.'”

Kelly says the only way such expenditures will stop is if future budget committees do a more extensive job of going over the state budget.

“I think we are not doing as good a job managing the budget as Jeremiah Nixon is at spending the money,” says Kelly. “We’ve seen example after example of example of that brilliance, about how he finds ways to spend the money in ways that we don’t authorize.”

Kelly suggested twice the amount spent on dues be removed from the governor’s budget for Fiscal Year 2016.

House Speaker Tim Jones (R-Eureka) in his comments Friday on the end of the regular session of the General Assembly hinted that work to review such expenditures will continue during the legislative interim.

Legislature sends proposed transfer fix to Gov. Nixon

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The state legislature has passed a bill meant to fix the state law that lets students transfer out of failing school districts. The proposal has been a priority for many lawmakers who say that law is bankrupting unaccredited school districts, particularly Normandy and Riverview Gardens in the St. Louis area.

Representative Rick Stream (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Representative Rick Stream (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The bill contains a controversial “private option” for Jackson County, St. Louis and St. Louis County that could result in it being vetoed by Governor Jay Nixon (D). It would have the state accredit school buildings as well as districts. Students in an unaccredited school within an unaccredited district would first have the option to transfer to an accredited building in the same district. If no slots were available in those, one option would be for students to transfer to a nonreligious private school with local tax revenue from the sending district used to pay tuition. 

Nixon has suggested he would veto any bill that includes any mechanism sending tax dollars to private schools, saying that is where he had to “draw a line.” The bill received a strong enough vote in the Senate to overturn a veto, but fell 20 votes short of that mark when the House passed it on Thursday. Neither chamber’s vote followed party lines.

See how House members voted on the legislation

Representative Clem Smith (D-Velda Village Hills) said he was the only lawmaker in either the House or the Senate who represents the Normandy School District, and he opposes the bill. He says it shouldn’t be called a transfer bill, joining other critics who said it was really an attempt to break the barrier keeping tax dollars from going to private schools.

“You’ve got kids in Normandy and Riverview that have been used to push vouchers,” said Smith. “And it’s a forced voucher, because you can vote it down in an unaccredited district but after three years it’s forced, it’s rammed down your throat … in my view, that’s all this bill is about.”

Some Republicans were also opposed to the private option. Representative Jeff Grisamore (R-Lee’s Summit) says he campaigned against using tax dollars in private schools when he first ran for the House, but said he was “torn” on how to vote on the bill.

“Public schools should be publicly funded and private schools should be privately funded, period,” said Grisamore. “And why would we take away funding from public education, give it to private education, when we are not meeting our obligations fully for the formula for public education.”

Proponents argued that the private option was a small piece of the legislation and called the bill a compromise that would stave off disaster in failing schools. Representative Kevin Engler (R-Farmington) says opponents of the bill including Nixon don’t have a plan of their own that would pass the Senate.

Engler argued if the bill does not become law, school districts in danger of becoming bankrupt would have to be supplemented from state General Revenue.

“We’re going to have to put money in the budget that’s going to come from my school district to keep them alive,” says Engler. He says opponents of the bill including Nixon don’t have a plan of their own that would pass in the Senate.

Representative Vicki Englund (D-St. Louis) worked on the conference committee that came up with the final version of the bill. She urged Nixon to sign the bill but said whether he signs or vetoes it, he should act quickly.

“Get it over with, get it done, because then we need to call a special session to fix it,” said Englund. “Because if we are truly about solving these problems we need to come up here and do it.”

See the legislation here

Nixon hints at veto of bill to triple abortion waiting period

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Governor Jay Nixon (D) has offered a statement on the bill that would increase the waiting period for abortions in Missouri from one day to three.

Nixon writes, “House Bill 1307 will get the same comprehensive review given to all bills that reach my desk. However, it is clear that by failing to include an exception for rape and incest, this extreme proposal would separate Missouri from all but one other state in the nation. I have profound concerns about its impact on women and especially the victims of these heinous crimes.”

Nixon has let previous legislation placing restrictions on abortion become law without taking action on them.

The House voted Wednesday night to complete legislative passage of that bill to the governor.

Legislature puts sales tax increase for transportation to MO voters

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The state legislature is asking Missouri voters if they want to raise the state sales tax to support transportation.

The Senate changed the proposal from a 1-cent sales tax increase to a three-fourths-of-one-cent increase and sent it to the House 22-10. The House on Wednesday approved that 105-43, meaning it will go on the statewide ballot in November unless Governor Nixon sets a special election date for it.

If passed it would generate an estimated $534-million dollars annually, running for ten years beginning in 2015.

The proposal is HJR 68

The Missouri Department of Transportation has said it will soon not have the money for road and bridge maintenance. It has already quit adding new projects to its five-year construction program and suspended a cost-share program, in which the Department split the cost of a project with local governments in the area it would impact.

The Department’s Director, Dave Nichols, issued a statement praising passage of the proposed amendment.

Nichols writes, “Today is a great day for the future of transportation in Missouri. I would like to thank the General Assembly for passing this important legislation that gives Missourians the opportunity to improve our economy and keep our families safe by investing in much-needed transportation improvements.

“We are working with planning partners around the state and representatives from every mode of transportation to determine how this new revenue could best improve our total transportation system. We are ready to deliver the projects and services that Missourians expect and deserve.”

Legislature offers voters an early voting ballot measure

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The state legislature has sent voters a proposal to allow six business days of early voting before general elections. The proposal cleared the House on Wednesday, a day after it was approved in the Senate.

Representative Tony Dugger (R-Hartville) sponsored the early voting proposal in the House. (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Representative Tony Dugger (R-Hartville) sponsored the early voting proposal in the House. (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The proposal would change the Missouri Constitution to allow voters to mail in ballots or vote in-person during business hours. Early voting would end on the Wednesday before the election.

Democrats in the House say the proposal is a “sham,” and say it is only meant to distract voters in November from a less restricted form of early voting outlined in an initiative petition that is pending with the Secretary of State. Secretary of State Jason Kander (D) has offered similar criticism.

The plan would not require local election authorities to offer early voting if no money is included in the annual state operating budget to reimburse them for it. Democrats are also critical of that provision, saying it allows future legislatures to block early voting by denying such an appropriation.

Republicans defend the plan as a legitimate early voting proposal that would not put a financial burden on local election authorities.

How they voted: House on sales tax increase for transportation

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The state House has completed the legislature’s vote to ask Missourians whether they want to increase the sales tax by three-quarters of a percent to support transportation.  Because the proposal has already cleared the Senate, it will go on the ballot in November unless Governor Jay Nixon (D) sets a special election date for it.

How they voted - transportation tax 05-14-2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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