Getting it right on legislation:
The veto battle is over, and while Republicans came away with a number of victories — 10 overrides of 33 vetoes — they didn’t have any success with their two top priorities: nullifying federal gun laws and cutting state taxes.
Just as well.
We’re not opposed to reasonable steps to ensure the rights of Missourians to keep and bear arms, but poking a finger in the eye of the federal government is no way to do it. We applaud state Sen. Ron Richard, R-Joplin, for having the courage to pull the trigger on a bill that had the potential to put state and federal law officers at odds, and the first and second amendments in conflict with each other.
Nor are we opposed to tax-cutting measures, but that bill simply became too unwieldy.
In both cases, we believe, it’s better to have scrapped the legislation and to come back next session with narrower, more targeted proposals.
Richard already is working on a new gun bill in conjunction with local, state and federal officials, who will have to uphold whatever the state passes. We also think the provision of the gun bill that would have made it illegal for newspapers to publish pictures or identify gun owners was a mistake and was likely unconstitutional as well.
As for taxes, getting that through will be the tougher trick next year, but we liked the part of the bill that phased in tax cuts only if Missouri revenue hit certain thresholds.
In both cases, we have time to do this right.
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The (Washington) Missourian, Sept. 15
Lessons from the veto session:
Republican lawmakers in the Missouri Legislature made history this week overriding a record 10 vetoes by Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon.
But there was little chest-thumping in the GOP camp after Wednesday’s veto session.
That’s because Republicans, who boast super-majorities in both chambers, failed to muster the necessary votes to thwart vetoes of two of their highest-profile bills.
One of those bills would have enacted Missouri’s first income tax rate reduction in more than 90 years. The other would have made Missouri home to the most far-reaching “hard-core” gun rights laws in the nation.
The Republican failures proved, as The Associated Press pointed out, that single-party legislative dominance is no guarantee of results.
They also proved that a majority may take a poorly drafted bill to the dance, but they may not ask her out again after somebody points out she is ugly.
The real winner in the Capitol this week was Nixon. Ten of his vetoes may have been overturned, but they mainly dealt with less consequential bills. He successfully defended his vetoes on the Republican’s marquee legislation against well-organized and financed opposition. That is the take-away from the veto session.
Nixon called the failed override attempts a “real defining moment.”
That might be a bit of an exaggeration, because when you get right down to it, at least with respect to taxes and guns, nothing has really changed. Missouri was a low-tax state before the tax cut bill was passed and vetoed and will remain a low-tax state.
The same is true of the state’s pro-gun disposition. Our current gun laws reflect that posture. Comparatively speaking, we live in a state that ranks in the top 10 with respect to laws that favor gun owners. Our prediction is that will never change. Despite claims to the contrary, no one is coming to take our guns in the Show-Me state.
The fact is both the gun bill and the tax-cut measure were overreaches — poorly drafted, misguided and riddled with unintended consequences. In the end, that’s why the vetoes weren’t overridden. Nixon called the bills unnecessary and misguided. The outcome of the veto session supported these claims.
That is especially true of the gun bill, which would have prevented the enforcement of federal gun laws in the state.
Some called the measure the most poorly drafted bill the Legislature ever produced. It was clearly unconstitutional because of the way it was written, which many legislators conceded, even though they voted in favor of it originally.
When various groups pointed out the absurdity of some of its provisions, lawmakers claimed that in their haste to pass the bill, they hadn’t read it carefully enough but pledged to fix the problems when they reconvened next session.
But when law enforcement officials started expressing concern that the bill could prevent local and federal law enforcement officials from working together, some lawmakers got nervous.
The veto override was successful in the House, but two top Republicans killed it in the Senate citing the constitutional problems.
The income tax cut bill also had drafting problems. The bill, which would have cut personal income, corporate and business taxes, also contained a provision that would have ended an exemption for sales tax on prescription drugs. That provision cost a few Republican votes. There was also an issue, because of the way the bill was written, as to whether it would trigger tax refunds for the past three years, further depleting state revenues.
But the real opposition to the bill came from the education community. Over 100 school boards across the state, and including some in Franklin County, passed resolutions opposing the bill out of a fear of its potential to reduce education funding.
Republicans blamed Nixon for playing politics with the bill when he withheld an education funding appropriation earlier this summer.
They had a point, but the debate surrounding the potential veto override served to highlight the issues over education funding. Missouri has slipped from 31st to 41st in the nation in per-student expenditure over the past 10 years. The prospect of a further slide influenced the unsuccessful override vote.
GOP lawmakers and the business groups that poured millions into supporting the tax-cut bill pledged to try again next session. Likewise, there will be another gun-rights bill introduced next session.
Going forward, there are lessons to be learned for the GOP in the wake of the veto session. Republicans would be wise to consider a more careful approach to these two issues. A more measured and thoughtfully crafted bill on either front could have overcome Nixon’s veto.
But the other issues aren’t going away either. It’s never an easy sell to reduce taxes when you are already underfunding education and infrastructure. The state has reduced taxes by over a billion dollars over the last 15 years. As Sen. Jolie Justus put it, “If that’s all it took to generate jobs and the economy we’d be there already.” She has a point.
Nixon has demonstrated his willingness to reduce the size of government spending and his Second Amendment bona fides. There is room for compromise on tax cuts, education spending and guns.
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Columbia Daily Tribune, Sept. 14
Paying student athletes:
University of Missouri Athletic Director Mike Alden and head football Coach Gary Pinkel have joined a growing chorus of peers, including Commissioner Mike Slive of the Southeastern Conference, advocating additional compensation for student athletes.
The idea is to pay athletes for costs of attending college beyond the full scholarships they currently receive.
Supporters say athletes work to improve skills year-round and should share in the growing revenue they produce. One need only sit around the table drinking beer with a typical aggregation of self-styled experts to hear what seems like a clear majority favoring payment. They are thinking about the high-profile games that attract big television bucks and underwrite most athletic department costs. Men’s football and basketball pay for non-revenue sports. If money is the way to measure, these players deserve the stipends for underwriting all the others.
However, these financial hangers-on currently receive scholarships, and Alden quickly admits stipends will have to be paid equitably to all athletes. Should the contenders for a national football championship producing millions for the university be paid no more than the lonely laborers on the women’s tennis team?
I think we all know the answer.
All of which leads Pinkel to say the new stipends would not “be a ridiculous amount of money, but it certainly would put a little money in their pockets to make their college life a little easier.” He said scholarship athletes get their education, which is fine. “But I also think that we can give them additional money per semester or per quarter to help them and pay back for their sacrifices.”
He said that in the good old days athletes were given jobs to earn a few extra bucks, but today the demands of sports are full-time. He and Alden favor paying for the “full cost of attendance.” Alden told our Joe Walljasper, “You ought to be doing it for soccer, just like you’re doing it for football, just like you should do it with softball, just like you should do it with men’s basketball. All your kids should benefit from that.”
This is the right sentiment, but he failed to mention swimming and diving, golf, cross country, track and field, volleyball, wrestling … how many have I left out? He didn’t say how he would manage parity, which would be harder with cash than scholarships.
The latest round of stipend talk arose from highly publicized allegations of NCAA rule-breaking by athletes who illegally received extra money for signing autographs or from well-heeled alums. Would paying athletes put an end to these extracurricular deals? Alden accurately says probably not, but it would put the university in a better position to say no. Hmm.
It all boils down to finding a rationale for paying that overcomes the reasons for avoiding this new quagmire.
Public support for paying stems from a growing recognition of college sports as quasi-professional. For years the very idea of the “student-athlete” has seemed empty for the biggest-revenue sports, whose practitioners are in training for the professional leagues. Athletes are students first in many of the lesser sports, but who cares about them? Certainly not enough to constitute a national push for paying extra stipends.
Paying salaries will put the university on perpetually slippery ice. The very act of handing over checks signed by university officials seems full of trouble. Athletic department managers will constantly be under question to reveal and justify amounts paid, which in no way can fairly reflect the basic reason given for doing so in the first place — to reward athletes for producing big bucks for the university. The very idea of rewarding them for “sacrifices” is particularly confusing.
When it gives scholarships, the university is dealing in its natural stock in trade. When it hands over cash, it is dealing in the same commodity as the scofflaw booster. Of course we can trust Pinkel, Alden & Co. to operate from honest intent, but when they start providing stipends, they are in a new ballgame.
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St. Joseph News-Press, Sept. 15
Preserve the pluses of drone technology:
We’re all for encouraging the advancement of technology, but clearly there are limits.
Specifically, limits should come into play in the deployment of drones, the unmanned aerial robotic devices that enable the operators to see and do things that otherwise would not be possible or as efficient.
These devices first came to the public’s attention with the use of drones in military surveillance and on the battlefield. Of late, deployment for news-gathering purposes — the ability to take photographs at public events and gatherings, such as a football game or an assembled crowd of protesters — has been noted.
And then there is the use of drones by people looking into what other people are doing on their personal property. This use of drones for intrusive surveillance is the area of greatest concern, as it should be.
Not long ago we read of a boat owner tagged with not properly registering his craft in the community and state in which he lived. The evidence came from a drone photograph. But it’s reasonable to argue evasion of taxes was not reason enough to justify invading the privacy of this and all other nearby property owners by someone on a fishing expedition, if that is what this was.
We’re not experts in unlawful search and seizure, but the principles are well understood to most people: The government and law enforcement are entitled to drive past your property and inquire into things visible in plain sight. Deploying something similar to a model helicopter to snoop over your back fence — without probable cause — is a step too far.
The pluses of drones surprisingly most clearly are seen in their application for agricultural uses. Our farmers and ranchers are among the nation’s largest owners of property, and they have age-old challenges of tending to their land and monitoring what occurs there.
A recent field day at the Graves-Chapple Research Center outside Corning, Mo., featured a program that touched on several helpful uses for these devices: overhead examination of crop conditions with both high-definition video and still photographs; application of crop sprays; transport of low-cost infrared imagery sensors; and monitoring of waterfowl numbers and habitat.
In each instance, the farmer or rancher would be the one deploying the device, on his or her own property.
Lawmakers and the Federal Aviation Administration are tasked to work together to preserve the positives of drone technology, particularly as it relates to agriculture, while defending property and privacy rights.