The state House has proposed tougher penalties for farmers who intentionally misapply herbicides. Such applications have cost some farmers crops and the money invested in them, as highlighted by incidents in Southeast Missouri last year.
Representative Don Rone said fines had to be great enough to hurt some farmers’ bottom line before they would stop illegal application of herbicides. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
The University of Missouri said 150 or more farmers lost an average of 35-percent of their crops when neighboring operations illegally used an outdated dicamba product. When that product spread onto nearby fields planted with seeds not resistant to dicamba, they were damaged.
Farmers can now be fined $1,000 for applying herbicide to a crop for which it is not labeled. House Bill 662 would let the Department of Agriculture fine a farmer up to $1,000 for every acre herbicide is applied to, off-label. The fine could be doubled for repeat violators.
The bill is sponsored by Portageville Republican Don Rone, who said the current, flat $1,000 fine is not enough to discourage some farmers from using products they think will better serve them.
The money collected in fines would go to the school district local to the affected fields. Rone explained the state’s statutes prevent it from giving that money to farmers who suffered damage.
The House voted to add an emergency clause to the bill, which would make it effective immediately upon being signed into law by the governor. Rone hopes the bill can clear the Senate and be signed into law by mid-March so that it will be in effect for the new planting season.
The Missouri House has again voted to reduce the length of time people can claim unemployment benefits.
House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick again carried unemployment fund reform legislation as he did in 2015. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
House Bill 288, sent to the Senate Thursday, would cut that time period from 20 to 13 weeks if the state’s unemployment rate is less than 6-percent. It could increase if the jobless rate increases, reaching a maximum of 20 weeks if that rate exceeds 9-percent.
Republicans said the measure is meant to keep the state’s unemployment fund solvent when the economy takes a downturn. Missouri has had to borrow money from the federal government to cover benefits in past economic slowdowns, and business owners have had to pay millions of dollars in interest on those loans.
Fitzpatrick said many of those states likely make getting benefits more difficult than does Missouri, allowing them to do more with fewer funds.
Representative Jon Carpenter urged his colleagues to vote against changes to Missouri unemployment benefits. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Representative Bruce Franks, Junior, (D-St. Louis City) said that isn’t true in his district, and said it can often take more than three months for a person to learn the skills or earn the certification needed to take on a new job.
The measure mirrors one the legislature endorsed over the veto of former Governor Jay Nixon in 2015 that the state Supreme Court threw out on a procedural issue.
House lawmakers shocked by what some have called an environment of harassment and retaliation in the Department of Corrections are considering a bill they hope will let the legislature know when such situations are present.
Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty presents House Bill 858 to the House Budget Committee. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
An article on Pitch.com detailed numerous reports of employee-on-employee harassment in Corrections, including cases of retaliation against those who reported it. Some cases resulted in lawsuits that have cost the state millions in settlements and more cases are pending.
House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty (D-Kansas City) has filed a House Bill 858, which would require the Attorney General to report to the General Assembly every month on activity concerning the state’s Legal Expense Fund. That’s the fund from which the state pays all defense costs, including all settlements.
McCann Beatty and others say such reports would inform the legislature when there are problems in state agencies such as those coming to light in Corrections.
As House Communications reported in December, lawmakers say they didn’t know about the repeated incidents of harassment in part because the Legal Expense Fund has for years had an open-ended dollar amount in it. The line included an “E,” for “estimate,” which meant if expenses in that line exceeded what the legislature budgeted, more money could be spent on it.
That meant even though multiple lawsuits stemming from harassment cases in Corrections were being litigated and settled, the Department never had to come before the legislature and explain or justify the additional expense.
Budget makers plan to remove that “E” so that similar situations will have to be explained to the legislature in the future, but McCann Beatty’s proposal would require further accounting.
Lawmakers say such oversight could reveal similar recurring problems in other state agencies. McCann Beatty gave the Budget Committee information from the Attorney General’s Office showing the state had spent about $60-million on settlements in the past five years, though the legislature had only appropriated about $30-million for legal expenses.
In the fiscal year that began July 1, the Attorney General’s Office reports Missouri has expended more than $17-million in 24 settlements and 4 judgments. Those settlements include 16 discrimination or retaliation claims among seven state agencies.
A state House member wants to encourage people to call for help for friends and loved ones having an overdose.
Representative Steve Lynch presents his proposed “Good Samaritan” law, which he believes would save lives of some who would suffer from an overdose. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Waynesville Republican Steve Lynch says his legislation, House Bill 294, is commonly known as a “good Samaritan” law. It would protect a person from arrest or prosecution for charges related to minor possession of drugs or paraphernalia, or being under the influence, if that person calls for emergency medical help for a person suffering a drug or alcohol overdose.
Lynch alternately refers to the bill as “Bailey and Cody’s Law,” for two overdose victims, each of whom had a parent testify in favor of HB 294 in a House Committee on Crime Prevention and Public Safety hearing.
Jim Marshall thinks such a law would have prevented friends of his son, Cody, from leaving where he was found by his father: on the living room floor dying of an overdose.
Supporters told Hill the bill would be part of a series of steps toward addressing the problem. Lynch said another of those steps was taken last year, when the legislature passed and former Governor Jay Nixon signed a bill to make a heroin overdose antidote more readily available.
A House Republican is again proposing that independent investigators be required whenever a law enforcement officer in Missouri is involved in someone’s death.
Representative Shamed Dogan (right) listens as Michael Bell testifies in favor of a bill that would require independent investigations of all deaths involving law enforcement officers. Bell’s son was fatally shot by police in Kenosha, WI, in 2004. Bell later won a lawsuit against police in that case. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
House Bill 232 would require all law enforcement agencies in Missouri to have written policies on how officer-involved deaths would be handled. Those policies would have to utilize at least two investigators, with neither of them being employed by the same agency as the officer involved in the death. In the case of traffic-related deaths, the bill would require that an outside crash reconstruction team participate in the investigation.
The bill would also require the investigators issue a report to the local prosecutor. If that prosecutor decides no prosecution will follow, the investigators would make that report public.
The bill is modeled after legislation that has become law in Wisconsin. It was backed by Michael Bell, whose son Michael was shot and killed by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2004. Bell later won a lawsuit against police over the incident.
Bell said the legislation has been put to the test in the four states where it has been passed and he believes it has worked well and has improved the public’s trust in law enforcement. He said that would also make police safer.
Dogan said after the House last week endorsed legislation that would increase penalties when certain crimes are committed against law enforcement, following up with his legislation makes sense.
The bill would allow the agency an officer involved in a death works for to conduct its own investigation as long as it would not interfere with the independent investigation that the bill requires.
Changes meant to get Amber Alerts out more quickly and ensure they are as effective as they can be would become law under a bill in the House.
Representative Curtis Trent (right) listens as Jim Wood testifies in favor of HB 697, Hailey’s Law. Wood said it is his son, Craig, who abducted and murdered 10-year-old Hailey Owens, for whom the legislation is named. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
House Bill 697 would establish Hailey’s Law, named for 10-year-old Hailey Owens of Springfield, who was kidnapped and murdered in February, 2014.
About two-and-a-half hours passed after Owens’ abduction before an Amber Alert was issued in the case. Though it is now known that an earlier alert would not have saved her, the case prompted lawmakers and others to press for changes to make sure alerts would be issued faster.
The legislation known as “Hailey’s Law” has been offered before in the House but did not become law. Even so, the Highway Patrol has launched implementation of some of the system changes it would require, so that alerts would go out earlier and with fewer steps needed to issue them.
Jim Wood, the father of the man charged with abducting and killing Hailey Owens, urged members of the House Committee on Crime Prevention and Public Safety to advance HB 697.
A House subcommittee appointed to investigate harassment and retaliation in the Department of Corrections thinks how the Department handles allegations is not clear, at best.
Representatives Paul Fitzwater (left) and Bruce Franks listen to testimony during a hearing by the Subcommittee on Corrections Workforce Environment and Conduct. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
The Subcommittee on Corrections Workforce Environment and Conduct was formed in response to an article on Pitch.com that detailed incidents within the department that in some cases led to lawsuits, costing the state millions of dollars.
The subcommittee took testimony from the department’s Inspector General, Amy Roderick, and the Division of Human Services Director, Cari Collins. Representatives asked questions about who handles harassment allegations and who makes decisions about any disciplinary actions that might be the result of those allegations. They weren’t satisfied with what they heard, with members calling the Department’s administrative structure “confusing.”
Collins told the committee staff in her division deals with reports of harassment, and she was not aware of any complaints about how harassment had been handled.
She said decisions about discipline of most prison employees, including terminations, falls on the Director of the Division of Adult Institutions, Dave Dormire, who answers to the Department Director.
Collins told the committee changes have been made in the past five years in her division’s procedures and its number of staff members that conduct investigations. She said some changes also followed meetings involving legal counsel, about the number of harassment complaints and resulting settlements.
Representative Jim Hansen chairs the House Subcommittee on Corrections Workforce Environment and Conduct. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Roderick told the committee her office does not handle harassment, but would investigate anything with a criminal component to it such as assaults. The committee asked her if she was familiar with an incident described in the Pitch.com article in which an employee who had complained about harassment was allegedly poisoned when she returned to work. Roderick said she had read the article, but had no knowledge of the incident.
Roderick said it would have been up to the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), more commonly called the warden, of an institution whether to notify her office of such an incident.
Franks expressed frustration at what the two Department officials explained about how allegations are handled, and passed among different parts of the Department’s organization.
Hansen said one of the subcommittee’s goals is to learn about how the Department is structured. After that hearing he expects one of the subcommittee’s recommendations will be that Corrections’ process of handling all types of complaints be streamlined.
The subcommittee is expected to hold its next hearing Thursday morning.
Some state lawmakers have questioned whether Missouri will soon need another prison, but the prison system’s new director hopes to keep that from being necessary.
Missouri Department of Corrections Director Ann Precythe testifies to the House Budget Committee February 14, 2017. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick told his committee and Corrections Department leaders this week that he’s concerned about the overall trend in recent years, of an increase in Missouri prisons’ populations. Department staff said the state’s prisons are operating at or near capacity, with around 32,000 inmates.
Fitzpatrick referenced a recent case in which a man who molested and exposed himself to his girlfriend’s 14-year-old daughter was sentenced to only a few months in prison.
Precythe, who was chosen in December by Governor Eric Greitens to head the department, said she’s not ready to discuss what policy changes she might ask for in addressing recidivism and prisons’ populations. She expects to be able to tell lawmakers by next year what the future of the state’s prison system looks like.
Precythe said the age of Missouri’s prisons must also be accounted for when considering whether additions are necessary. The state’s oldest, Algoa Correctional Center near Jefferson City, is a minimum-security facility that became a prison in 1932. The new director has toured it and said it appears to be meeting what Missouri needs of it.
Missouri House members were asked this week to consider whether Missouri should continue to have a death penalty.
Representative T.J. Berry said he wanted the House to have a discussion about whether the death penalty should be repealed before he is term-limited out of the chamber next year. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Missouri reinstated the death penalty in 1977 and currently uses lethal injection to carry out executions. It most recently executed Mark Christeson on January 31 for the murders in 1998 of Susan Brouk and her children, ages 9 and 12.
Clay County Republican T.J. Berry offered an amendment that would have repealed Missouri’s capital punishment statute. It would make life without the possibility of parole Missouri’s maximum sentence.
Berry said he favored the death penalty when he first took office in 2011, but said after looking at it objectively he no longer supports it.
Berry cited three reasons he wants to end the death penalty in Missouri: people who are sentenced by courts are sometimes exonerated; it costs the state less to incarcerate a person for life than to sentence that person to death and respond to appeals through the life of the case; and it takes years for a death sentence to be carried out, extending the time victims’ families must deal with offenders’ cases.
Regarding exonerations, she believes DNA evidence and repeated reviews by multiple courts on appeals leave little doubt as to the veracity of modern death penalty cases.
House Minority Floor Leader Gail McCann Beatty opposes the death penalty despite having lost three family members to murder. She hopes the legislature will continue to consider the possibility of repeal. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
House Democratic leader Gail McCann Beatty supports repeal. She agreed with another point Berry made; that some victims’ families don’t want the death penalty for those who harmed their loved ones. She told the chamber she believed this even though her brother and two nephews have been murdered.
Republican Paul Fitzwater (Potosi) told Berry he still supports the death penalty even though one of his best friends was sentenced to death and executed for murdering a couple in 1993.
Conway also told Berry she doesn’t favor replacing the death penalty with a life without parole sentence, because efforts have been made in the legislature to allow some offenders with such a sentence to be paroled when old age or terminal illness is a factor.
Berry withdrew the amendment, saying he hadn’t expected it to pass but he wanted legislators to have a conversation about the issue and give it some thought.
Berry, who is in the first year of his final term, hopes that future legislatures’ attitudes will shift more toward ending the death penalty in Missouri.
The House Republican supermajority advanced another piece of its labor reform agenda, with the passage of HB 126 related to project labor agreements.
Representative Rob Vescovo (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
The bill would bar required union agreements on public works projects. Bill sponsor, Representative Rob Vescovo (R-Arnold) said project labor agreements discriminate against non-union workers and called them, “indefensible.”
The bill goes to the Senate, which has already passed similar legislation.
The House earlier this session joined the Senate in sending Governor Eric Greitens a right-to-work bill, which was signed into law earlier this month. The House also passed a bill supporters call, “paycheck protection,” which requires annual permission from a public union employee before union dues or fees can be taken from his or her paychecks.
Legislation dealing with prevailing wage laws, which make contractors pay a state-set minimum wage for trade workers on public projects, is moving through House committees and could be the next labor reform the chamber will debate.
