Missouri
Effort to place St. Louis police under state control returns in Missouri legislature • Missouri Independent
Missourians voted in 2013 to return control of the St. Louis police department to local officials, ending more than 150 years of state oversight.
And almost immediately, state lawmakers began pushing to get control back.
That effort is back again this year, with proponents arguing the experiment with local control has failed, leaving the city a more dangerous place — a situation with statewide implications.
A Senate committee approved legislation last month sponsored by GOP state Sen. Nick Schroer of Defiance, that would transfer control of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to a Board of Police Commissioners. Under the proposed legislation, the board would be comprised of the president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen and four members appointed by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson.
A similar board controls the Kansas City Police Department. It is currently the only major city in the United States without control of its police force.
The legislation, noting the board would “appoint and employ a permanent police force consisting of not less than 1,313 members,” says the city of St. Louis cannot pass ordinances “interfering with the powers of the state board.”
Attempts to interfere with the board’s authority by the mayor or any city official could result in a $1,000 fine and a ban from holding office.
Schroer argued during last month’s hearing that control should return to the state in order to correct what he called “mismanagement,” including a serious shortage of police officers and inadequate pay for police. Returning to state control, Schroer said, would boost the city’s police department and help St. Louis “rebuild the city as the vibrant gateway to the West.”
Black leaders rally to speak out against bills to take away local control from St. Louis
At a House hearing on similar legislation Thursday, Republican state Rep.Brad Christ of St. Louis said his bill is “not a crime plan.” He said that after the change from state to local control, the city “has seen some of its bloodiest years in its history.”
Opponents counter that crime in the city is in fact at the lowest levels in a decade, and recruitment and retention of St. Louis police is improved, due to more training and significant pay raises for officers.
Jared Boyd, chief of staff for St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, and St. Louis Pollice Commissioner Robert Tracy, testified last month in opposition to the bill, telling a Missouri Senate committee that crime prevention is up, crime is down and efforts to recruit and retain police are underway.
In an interview for The Independent, Boyd argued that the legislature’s rationale for returning control to the state are not based on fact.
“Things were not perfect when the state controlled the police department,” Boyd said, adding that Kansas City, which remains under control of the state of Missouri, “is the only city in the country that is not under local control. It has experienced historic high homicide rates.”
Kansas City reported 180 homicides at the end of December 2023
St. Louis police reported 158 homicides in 2023, 200 in 2022, 200 in 2021, and 263 in 2020. As of Feb. 7, the police reported 23 homicides.
Thus far in 2024, the police report 23 homicides.
Tracy, who assumed the commissioner position in 2022, said last year’s data show a 22% reduction overall for murder, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, felony theft and auto theft. Aiding the crime reduction, city officials have said, are work with other law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, the creation of an Office of Violence Prevention, and strategies such as assigning the same officers to the same areas each time they report for duty.
The Missouri NAACP has publicly supported St. Louis retaining local control of its police department, according to Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis city branch of the NAACP.
Pruitt said the latest data “speak to crime prevention and a reduction in crime.”
He added: “The state has enough departments to run. It needs to concentrate on them.”
The city of St. Louis employs about 900 police officers. Schroer’s office argued in an email to The Independent that the city lacks adequate manpower to solve crime.
“Sen. Schroer’s constituents recognize this as a failed experiment,” the senator’s office said, “and are very vocal in wanting to end the idea that St. Louis is a sanctuary city for crime.”
July 11 (UPI) — One person was found dead and hundreds evacuated in Missouri after an intense day of flash flooding across the state, authorities said Saturday.
More than 350 people were rescued in Iron, Reynolds and Crawford counties on Friday as floodwaters rapidly took over the area.
Officials said 250 of those were staff and children at Camp Taum Sauk, all of whom were safely evacuated. Another 100 were water rescues.
“It was very harrowing,” Jennifer Box, mother of of two you boys at the camp, told The New York Times. “We knew they were safe, but we didn’t know how to get to them, and that’s kind of your worst nightmare.”
One Crawford County woman, Faith Gregory, was found dead a mile downstream from her home in Huzzah Creek, officials said.
Authorities said Gregory was swept away after part of her home collapsed in the floodwaters.
“It’s definitely not the outcome we were hoping for, but it’s a tragic reminder of how strong Mother Nature can be and how forceful it can be,” Missouri State Highway Patrol Sergeant Eddie Young told FOX Weather.
The region was battered by more than 12 inches of rain, leaving many area residents remained strained throughout Saturday.
“But they’re OK,” spokeswoman Kate Moore, of Missouri Region C, told ABC News. “They’re just stranded because the roads are washed away. We have a lot of damage — the trees, buildings, a lot of things have gone and ripped the roads away.”
Driving through the winding roads of Callaway County, often visible in the distance is a massive, 553-foot-tall concrete structure emitting what looks like white clouds.
“A lot of people think that’s smoke coming out of the top; it is not. That is water vapor,” said Travis Hart, manager of the Callaway nuclear power plant that produces 15% of Missouri’s electricity.
“The next structure that you see, this big rounded dome … that is the reactor building itself,” Hart said.
The single nuclear reactor near Fulton was built in the late 1970s and began generating electricity in 1984. Initially, the site was designed with two reactors in mind. But Hart said plans for a second unit came to a halt in the early ’80s due to decreasing electricity demand and rising costs.
Now, more than 40 years later, energy demand is growing due to increased manufacturing, adoption of electric vehicles and the development of AI data centers.
In a scramble for more power, tech companies and utilities are restarting formerly shuttered nuclear power plants, such as Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. In states like Missouri, politicians are eager to find ways to build new ones and expand existing plants like the one in Callaway County.
Debates about how to pay for the multibillion dollar projects resurfaced in the Missouri legislature this spring. While cost is the first hurdle to creating a new fleet of nuclear power plants in America, the actual construction of the facilities is the second.
Early this year, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed an executive order that creates the Advanced Nuclear Energy Task Force to “evaluate and guide” the state’s “strategic approach to nuclear energy development.”
Lost skills
The majority of the nuclear power plants in America were built between the 1960s and 1980s. Construction slowed in response to energy demand leveling out, increased safety regulations and public perception of nuclear power souring after the Three Mile Island accident.
Speaking at the University of Missouri in May, Director-General of the federal Nuclear Energy Agency William Magwood said building nuclear power plants is a skill, and America has gotten rusty.
“We used to be really good at building plants back in the ’60s and ’70s. How do we reconstruct that? That’s going to be a real challenge,” Magwood said.
The only new nuclear power facilities built in America in recent decades are the third and fourth reactors at the Vogtle electric plant near Waynesboro, Georgia. While the reactors came online in 2023 and 2024 and produce more than 1,000 megawatts of power each, the project was billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.
Magwood said a lot of what boggled the Vogtle construction was the lack of institutional knowledge about building nuclear power plants.
“We just didn’t know what we were doing,” he said. “We hadn’t built a nuclear plant in a generation. We didn’t have people who knew how to do it. We didn’t have the infrastructure. We didn’t have the supply chain. The regulator didn’t know what the hell they were doing. I was there, so I know.”
In South Carolina, efforts to construct a new nuclear power plant were abandoned after billions were spent and the company behind the project went bankrupt.
Kurt Schaefer is tasked with ensuring Missouri can avoid similar blunders.
The longtime politician and public servant has been dubbed “the leader of Missouri’s nuclear power renaissance” by UM System President Mun Choi, who has been enthusiastic about advancing nuclear power by hosting national energy leaders on campus in recent years.
In May, Kehoe appointed Schaefer as head of the state’s new nuclear power task force, a group of representatives from utility companies, higher education institutions, politicians, state utility regulators and trades workers all charged with finding a way to make new nuclear power a reality.
Schaefer said the first step to establishing more nuclear power in the state is finding the cash.
“It’s all about money,” he said. “It is expensive up front to build a plant and unless the federal government steps up, I just don’t see it happening.”
In June, the federal Department of Energy announced $17.5 billion in loans for utilities and energy companies to build 10 large-scale commercial nuclear reactors.
Schaefer wants one of those reactors to be in Missouri, ideally near the existing nuclear plant in Callaway County.
“We are really behind the eight ball here in the United States on nuclear power, but you’re seeing a big effort, particularly from the federal government, to move us in that direction,” he said.
As electricity demand continues to climb, Schaefer believes nuclear power is the best way for Missouri to meet that demand. The zero-carbon plants can generate energy around the clock, unlike solar and wind power that need the right conditions to produce power.
Plus, given the longevity of nuclear power facilities, Schafer sees them as a good investment. To him, a robust power supply means a booming economy.
“This is our future, this is what we have to do to keep Missouri economically viable and that’s what we’re gonna do,” Schaefer said.
Who goes first?
The ballooning costs of nuclear power plants isn’t a new issue.
“Any project that big takes years to complete and things may change in the meantime,” said Victor McFarland, University of Missouri energy historian. “The costs of your supplies might go up, the cost of labor might go up.”
Decades ago, when many of America’s atomic energy centers were built, inflation was high and budgets stretched beyond initial figures.
“So the original estimates for the construction of these plants that were true, say, in 1970, they weren’t true anymore in 1975 or 1980,” McFarland said. “There were big cost overruns.”
Now, as the world turns away from fossil fuels, Magwood said nuclear capacity needs to triple to meet the net zero by 2050 goals. Currently, the nuclear power industry does not benefit from economies of scale. Because new nuclear projects are rare, costs are high and supply chains aren’t fully developed, adding to the overall risk of the endeavor.
“One of the big problems is nobody wants to be first … everybody wants to go fourth,” Magwood said. “Believe it or not, that doesn’t work very well. Somebody has to bite the bullet. Somebody has to take the risk. And what I think the industry would really like would be if the government somehow put a safety net under the first projects.”
Ameren Missouri has been clear about its goals to develop additional nuclear power. The company is planning to add 1,500 megawatts of atomic energy to its portfolio by 2045.
Callaway nuclear plant manager Travis Hart is an electrician by trade and first set foot at the facility 25 years ago when he was hired to work on the refueling crew. He said that’s when he fell in love with the place.
“When I walked in here and saw the equipment, how it fits together, how it works, how the design was, it was just extremely interesting to me,” Hart said.
There are a number of reasons the Callaway site is suited for expansion, Hart said. The location has access to the power grid, water from the nearby Missouri River, and a largely supportive local community that fills the plant’s roughly 750 permanent jobs while the company pays $9.8 million in annual property taxes to Callaway County.
The Callaway Energy Center’s current operating license extends through 2044, and Hart is confident the company will receive approval to operate beyond that date.
“I tell my people here all the time, … ‘this is important, so we got to get it right, and we got to do a good job of it, and it’s okay to be proud of it, because it makes a difference,’” Hart said.
In the coming years, the state’s new nuclear power task force will assess Missouri’s readiness to provide the workforce, policies and supply chain needed to create the “nuclear power renaissance.”
This story was originally published by KBIA and shared through the Missouri News Network.
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