Missouri
Campaign to legalize sports betting in Missouri gets help from mascots to haul voter signatures
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s professional sports teams on Thursday turned in more than 340,000 voter signatures to put a ballot proposal to legalize sports betting before voters this November.
The campaign had help from Cardinals’ mascot Fredbird, Royals’ Sluggerrr and St. Louis Blues’ mascot Louie. The oversized bird, lion and blue bear waved enthusiastically as they hauled boxes filled with voter signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office in Jefferson City.
Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft now must validate the voter signatures before the proposal officially makes it on the ballot. The campaign needs roughly 180,000 signatures to qualify.
A total of 38 states and the District of Columbia now allow some form sports betting, including 30 states and the nation’s capital that allow online wagering.
The Missouri initiative is an attempt to sidestep the Senate, where bills to allow sports betting have repeatedly stalled. Missouri is one of just a dozen states where sports wagering remains illegal more than five years after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for states to adopt it.
Teams in the coalition include the St. Louis Cardinals, St. Louis Blues, Kansas City Chiefs, the Kansas City Royals, and the Kansas City Current and St. Louis City soccer teams.
The proposed constitutional amendment would allow each of Missouri’s 13 casinos and six professional sports teams to offer onsite and mobile sports betting. Teams would control onsite betting and advertising within 400 yards of their stadiums and arenas. The initiative also would allow two mobile sports betting operators to be licensed directly by the Missouri Gaming Commission.
Under the initiative, at least $5 million annually in licensing fees and taxes would go toward problem gambling programs, with remaining tax revenues going toward elementary, secondary and higher education. If approved by voters, state regulators would have to launch sports betting no later than Dec. 1, 2025.
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Copyright 2024 KY3. All rights reserved.
Missouri
People Magazine's 'Most Beautiful' Missouri Restaurant is Wrong
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder which is one reason why I will rarely ever criticize what someone else thinks is beautiful, but in the case of People Magazine’s choice for the most beautiful Missouri restaurant they’re dead wrong.
People Magazine (oh, wait…magazines aren’t much of a thing anymore so let’s just call them “People”) says that Grünauer in Kansas City is (in their eyes) the most beautiful Missouri restaurant. Here’s the view of their restaurant if you’re about to walk in.
And here’s the view if you’re standing outside of Grünauer.
No offense intended to Grünauer as I hear it’s a spectacular place to eat, but “beauty” is not a word that comes to mind when you’re staring at a parking lot in downtown Kansas City.
Let me suggest that People could have made a better choice when it comes to “beautiful” Missouri restaurants. How about The Blufftop at Rocheport Les Bourgeois Vineyards with this view.
If you’re sitting at a table at this spectacular Missouri winery, you have this view.
Again I want to emphasize nothing against the People Magazine choice for Missouri’s most beautiful restaurant since that’s a very subjective thing, but don’t you think this would have been a more compelling choice?
HGTV Features Doomsday Missile Silo Home Not Far From Missouri
Gallery Credit: HGTV via YouTube
Missouri
Missouri falls to Omaha in NCAA softball regional opener
Missouri, the overall No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament, opened the Columbia Regional on Friday with a 3-1 loss in nine innings to the Omaha Mavericks at Mizzou Softball Stadium.
The Tigers will have to win four games in the next two days to advance to the Super Regionals.
Missouri
Missouri legislature finishes chaotic session amid paralyzed Senate
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KFVS) – Missouri saw a chaotic end to the 2024 legislative session Friday after a stalled Senate skipped the final day of work.
The hotly-debated resolution to make constitutional amendments more difficult to pass on the ballot upended debate and became a “hot potato” between the House and Senate. Each chamber repeatedly referred the measure to the other, the Senate asking for a conference committee to work out the differences and the House refusing to recede from its position.
Senate leaders on Friday said this session revealed a vast difference between lawmakers who want to find compromises with colleagues and those who want to battle to impose their political will.
In the end, Democrats and the majority of Republicans sent a message that the Missouri General Assembly, particularly the Senate, must remain a place of compromise, where lawmakers find a way to work together.”
“My theory is, if you treat people with respect, you’re willing to listen to them, and you’re willing to work with them, that you can get done the things you need to get done,” said Senate Majority Floor Leader Cindy O’Laughlin.
The five-member “Freedom Caucus” faction of Republicans, led by Harrisonville senator Rick Brattin, called their party’s leaders “cowardly.”
“The Republican party has turned into feckless, spineless, ambassadors of nothing, and not fighting for what’s right,” Brattin said.
Outgoing Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, D-Independence, said decency and democracy ultimately overcame division and distrust.
“I think that decorum won, I think the bullies lost,” Rizzo said. “I don’t think that matters if you have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ by your name. I think the [Senate] pushed back on being pushed around all year in the last throes of session.”
With the senate adjourned, the Missouri House spent Friday finishing several bills including a major public safety omnibus package.
That bill includes tougher penalties for hurting or killing a law enforcement dog, making it a felony to run from police, and outlawing celebratory gunfire.
But some major bipartisan bills failed to pass including open enrollment in public schools, a ban on child marriage, and Governor Parson’s top priority of new child care tax credits.
“Just because we didn’t pass legislation doesn’t mean that the issue has gone away,” said State Sen. Lauren Arthur, D-Kansas City. “If anything, it’s going to get worse, because there hasn’t been legislative action taken.”
Governor Parson declined to say whether he’ll call lawmakers back for a special session this summer, though many lawmakers predict he will do so for the general assembly to craft a supplemental budget.
Copyright 2024 KFVS. All rights reserved.
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