COLUMBIA – Missouri State Rep. Brian Seitz (R-Branson) filed a one web page invoice final week that would offer all college students with free meals.
The federal authorities offered faculties to offer college students free meals through the pandemic, however Congress ended that program in June.
“Now we have confirmed throughout that point interval that authorities can try this for college kids,” Rep. Seitz mentioned. “The time has come that we must always try this on a everlasting foundation.”
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Now that this system is over, households must apply totally free and diminished meals. In response to the U.S. Division of Agriculture, households who make 130% or beneath the poverty line qualify totally free lunch.
Seitz’s invoice would increase free meals to all college students, no matter earnings.
“I believe that this is able to assist them [students] to be taught higher in the event that they’re glad bodily with meal,” he mentioned.
Christine Woody, the meals coverage supervisor with Empower Missouri, acknowledged that her group often would not work with Seitz, a conservative Republican. However she says on this case, Seitz is correct.
“We have been actually excited to see Consultant Seitz file his invoice,” Woody mentioned.
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“It might be vastly helpful not solely to highschool youngsters and their households however faculty districts as nicely,” Woody mentioned. “We all know that youngsters be taught finest once they have good wholesome meals.”
Proper now Missouri faculties can enroll in a federal program that permit faculties in excessive poverty areas to offer free meals to all college students. In response to the Missouri Division of Elementary and Secondary Schooling, faculties that qualify for this system offered greater than $4 million free lunches in October.
Rep. Seitz mentioned he desires to assist households who may not qualify totally free lunch, however nonetheless battle financially.
“I see it as a equity subject,” Seitz mentioned. “Conversely we’re additionally offering incarcerated people with breakfast, lunch, and dinner and so forth. Why can we not try this for a few of the most weak in our society? And that might be our younger youngsters.”
Rep. Seitz mentioned he is not positive how a lot this system would value, however he desires to make use of a few of Missouri’s surplus cash to pay for it.
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State Sen. Angela Mosley (D-Florissant) filed an analogous invoice that might require faculties to offer a free meal to any scholar who asks for one. It might additionally prohibit faculties from publicly figuring out college students who qualify totally free and diminished meals.
Legislators will return to Jefferson Metropolis on Jan. 4 of subsequent yr for the beginning of the brand new session.
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KY3) – Missouri lawmakers are moving forward with efforts to put the St. Louis police force under state control.
Gov. Mike Kehoe said this would improve Missouri’s economy and reputation, but the city’s police chief is against the idea.
Missouri House Speaker Jon Patterson said a bill to put the St. Louis Metropolitan Police under state control will likely be one of the first bills to be voted on. This comes after committees from both chambers approved similar bills this week.
Bills carried by Rep. Brad Christ and Sen. Nick Schroer would allow the state to take over the St. Louis Metropolitan Police this August. If passed, the Missouri Board of Police Commissioners will appoint four citizens to oversee the police department. The bills also outline salary minimums and staffing requirements with which the police force must comply.
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St. Louis Democratic Rep. Marlon Anderson is not open to compromise. He does not approve of any version of state-controlled police. On the other side of the building, he may face a challenge from his party. Senate Democrats said last week that their caucus is split on the issue.
“This is one of the times where I say we’re better off the way it is right now,” State Rep. Anderson said. “Crime is down, the morale is coming up. So, we can look at our counterparts on the western part of the state, Kansas City, and their crime is trending up.”
If this bill passes, St. Louis and Kansas City would be the only two cities in Missouri where the mayor does not control the police force. According to FBI data, Kansas City’s crime rate has increased since it became state-controlled.
St. Louis Police was under state control until residents voted against it in 2012. It took the city about five years to regain its police force. St. Louis Police Chief Robert Tracy says the record should speak for itself since then.
“Everything they asked us to do we have met and made progress now you move the goalpost and now you start saying you don’t trust the crime numbers I stand by those crime numbers,” Tracy said in an in-studio interview with KMOV First Alert 4.
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St. Louis city officials flaunted an 11-year record-low number of homicides earlier this month, but this isn’t enough for state leaders. This week, Gov. Mike Kehoe called for this change in his State of the State address.
“As the economic powerhouse of our state, we cannot continue to let crime kill growth in the region and drive businesses and families to move outside of our state’s borders,” Gov. Kehoe said in his address.
According to the Missouri Economic Research Center, St. Louis is responsible for 45% of Missouri’s economy. It’s also home to the state’s most popular tourism destination: the Gateway Arch.
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Keeping Missouri state government operating through June 30 will cost $2.1 billion more than lawmakers budgeted last year thanks to lowballed spending estimates, sluggish lottery sales and new programs in education and other areas.
The election-year budget plan approved last year totaled $51.6 billion after Gov. Mike Parson was finished with vetoes that fell heavily on earmarked items inserted by legislators. While Parson was paring back on pork, lawmakers slashed spending in the Medicaid program to keep the topline total down.
New Gov. Mike Kehoe on Tuesday delivered his $53.7 billion budget for the coming fiscal year. It came with the supplemental spending request that took up most of a six-hour hearing Wednesday in the House Budget Committee.
Gov. Mike Kehoe dips deeply into surplus as Missouri budget grows to nearly $54 billion
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The Medicaid program spent $12.6 billion on medical services in fiscal 2024 and billions more on mental health and other services. Lawmakers appropriated $13.6 billion for medical services the current year and Kehoe is asking for $15.8 billion in the year starting July 1.
The biggest item in the supplemental spending request is $942 million to cover a Medicaid shortfall. More realistic budgeting last year would have reduced that amount, MO HealthNet Director Todd Richardson told The Independent.
“They took about a 25% core cut last year,” he said.
The supplemental request is larger than last year, which was $580 million, but smaller than each of the three previous years, when federal pandemic aid and state employee pay raises inflated the totals.
Along with the new governor, the budget committee has a new chairman, state Rep. Dirk Deaton, a Republican from Noel. It also has a new vice-chairman, GOP state Rep. Bishop Davidson of Republic, who is also new to the committee.
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Under state budget rules, lawmakers cannot add items to the supplemental budget but they can reduce or eliminate them. Deaton said it is too early to say whether the proposal will see major changes.
“We’re still doing the due diligence, and we certainly need to take a look at it and make sure there’s the justification for it, and run everything through the traps,” Deaton said.
Davidson said he’s working to learn the jargon and the process for setting spending levels.
“We have a really awesome staff that are not only good analysts and good researchers, but they’re good teachers as well,” he said.
Major items in the supplemental request include:
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$142.4 million for the state foundation formula for public schools. Of that amount, $47.4 million is due to increases mandated by a major education bill passed last year. The remaining $95 million is general revenue being used to replace a shortfall in lottery proceeds.
$129.8 million for the Department of Mental Health to eliminate waiting lists for developmental disability and behavioral health services.
$110 million for the mental health agency to pay community providers of services for people with developmental disabilities.
$95 million to cover the expected cost of home and community-based services in the Medicaid program.
$20.7 million to cover a higher rate for health care provided to people in the custody of the Department of Corrections. The department extended the current health care contract with Centurion Health for four years, paying $21.65 per day for each person in custody.
In the early part of the hearing, State Budget Director Dan Haug and department leaders in attendance were often peppered with detailed questions about the budget lines. Later, as the hearing continued through lunch time, the time spent on each shortened.
And when Haug got to the Medicaid request, he even drew laughter.
“This is a page I probably should skip,” Haug joked when he reached the request. “It is only about a billion dollars.”
He received few questions about the request.
Lawmakers wanted to know why the lottery isn’t producing as much as promised last year. The budget included $430 million from the lottery for education programs, a 5% increase over the previous year.
Instead, net proceeds available for education are down more than 15% during the first six months of the year.
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Haug attributed part of the decline to a dearth of major jackpots, which draw ticket purchases from people who rarely play. State Rep. Louis Riggs, a Hannibal Republican, asked if video games that pay out cash prizes, which have infiltrated every corner of the state at convenience stores and other locations, were to blame.
“How much is that attributable to folks sitting there gorked out all day on those machines, which I don’t think we’re getting any tax revenue from, instead of playing the lottery?” Riggs asked.
Haug said there were no studies, so the answer is unknown.
“That could be a possibility but it is hard for us to quantify it,” he said.
Sometimes the questions focused on issues that weren’t addressed in the supplemental budget but are causing pain at home. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has struggled to implement a new payment system for child care vendors and in August promised to clear a staggering backlog by the start of November.
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On Wednesday, Kari Monsees, deputy commissioner of education, said 70% of the backlog has been cleared and the target for clearing it is the end of February.
That wasn’t an answer that pleased the committee.
“When you have providers saying they are taking money out of their child’s savings accounts to keep their business open so we have child care, I have a problem with that,” said state Rep. Stephanie Hein, a Springfield Democrat.
The education agency took over the child care program when Parson reorganized state government and created the Office of the Child in the department. The department changed its software vendor in December of 2023, and both providers and families enrolling in the program began noticing issues tracking and receiving payment. Some child care centers closed and others turned away families using the subsidy program during months of missed payments.
There are backlogs of payments from before the changeover that must be met, said state Rep. Don Mayhew, a Crocker Republican.
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The plan for catching up payments only covers those made through the new software, he noted.
“It didn’t include the providers from the previous year who are stuck in this purgatory of old system versus new system,” Mayhew said.
When the committee finished with the supplemental plan, Haug gave a quick overview of the budget proposal for the coming year.
Kehoe is proposing a $200 million increase in the foundation formula, which covers the extra costs imposed by last year’s legislation, but balked at adding another $300 million that the formula shows would meet the full obligation to schools.
A key factor, the state adequacy target — a measure of how much schools that meet state standard spend — increased, driving the $300 million request.
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“Just to be clear, we are not cutting funding to K through 12 education,” Haug said. “We are increasing funding by $200 million in K through 12 education, the largest increase they have gotten under this current formula, the largest increase we could find back to the 90s.”
Haug also discussed how Kehoe would keep his promise to eliminate the state income tax, which provides about 70% of state general revenue.
“I don’t think anyone here wants to cut 70% of state government,” Haug said. “There would have to be some revenue replacement there.”
MISSOURI CITY, Texas – An Amber Alert has been issued for a missing teenage girl from Missouri City.
According to the Missouri City Police Department, Serenity Turner-Douglas was last seen leaving Elkins High School shortly before noon on Monday and getting into a silver SUV with possible license plate number VTW-6019.
Texas DPS says she was last seen wearing grey jacket, black pants, black shoes, and carrying a pink or rainbow backpack.
Douglas is believed to be with 31-year-old Megan LeCour.
The Missouri City Police Department says the investigation stems from a possible child custody dispute.
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Anyone with any information is urged to call the Missouri City Police Department at 281-403-5832.
KPRC 2 will update this story with any new information we receive.
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