Representative Yolanda Young's Newsletter

Dear Neighbors,

I want to first thank those of you who took the time to attend our town hall on Saturday, June 26. With the help of Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center and Major Kari Thompson of KCDP, we were able to have a productive conversation about policing in Kansas City, bills passed by the legislature this session, and provide an updates on other pressuring issues. If you want to watch the recording of the event, you may do so using this link.

At the town hall, I had the pleasure of recognizing four members of our community as the District 22 Outstanding Citizens. Each of these ladies has served our district for numerous years and I am honored to be able to thank them for all of their hard work through these House Resolutions. Congratulations to Carol White, Virginia Flowers, Evelyn Shelton, and Teresa Perry on your accomplishments! We're lucky to have you in our community! 

Before I traveled back to Kansas City for the town hall, I spent the week on the Freshman Legislators' Tour. Along with several of my newly elected colleagues, I piled onto a tour bus and went around the state to each of the Congressional districts to experience what life is like for Missourians outside of my district. The Freshman Tour has been a bonding experience for legislators for many years and I look forward to strengthen these bonds as we work together in the Capitol. 

Remember, we are always here to help you with anything you may need. For assistance, call my office at (573) 751-3129 or email me at yolanda.young@house.mo.gov. 

Yours in Service,

Yolanda Young

On Wednesday, July 14, Governor Parson signed 13 remaining pieces of legislation into law, concluding bill singings for the 2021 legislative session. He following bills were signed and will become law on August 28, 2021. 

SB 26 (Public Safety)- Modifies several provisions related to public safety, including providing taxpayers with the ability to obtain injunctive relief if a local government decreases its police department’s budget by a prescribed amount and creating additional protections for law enforcement officers. 

Additionally, this bill modifies provisions related to jail time credit for criminals prior to conviction and allows a defendant's behavior during that same period to be considered in sentencing proceedings. 

SB 49 (Public Safety)- Modifies several provisions related to public safety, including establishing new watercraft and waterway regulations and eliminating safety inspections for new vehicles. 

SB 53 (Public Safety)- Modifies several provisions related to public safety, including clarifying the Raise the Age statute, increasing the penalty for doxing a first responder or law enforcement officer, modifying the residency requirement for Kansas City law enforcement officers to assist with recruitment efforts, and creating a judicial procedure that provides a pathway for a prosecuting attorney to correct a miscarriage of justice resulting from a wrongful conviction.

The bill also allows prosecutors to use a witness or victim statement when a defendant engaged in wrongful conduct that prevented the witness or victim from being available to testify in a criminal proceeding.

HB 69 (Certain Metals)- Modifies record keeping requirements for purchasers of gold, silver, or platinum to reduce theft. 

HB 72 (Awareness and Monument Designations)- Establishes Law Enforcement Appreciation Day as the first Friday in May, creates Pioneering Black Women's Day on March 26th, and establishes The Gateway Arch as Missouri's official state monument. 

SB 120 (Military Affairs)- Ensures National Guard service members are granted interviews for state government positions, promotes awareness of the state's resources that are available for veterans, and creates the Purple Star Campus for K-12 schools. 

HB 297 (Higher Education)- Expands the available uses of 529 education savings plans, requires Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to create a state plan for Career and Technical Education, and allows college student-athletes to earn compensation for their name, image, or likeness. 

HB 349 (Empowerment Scholarship Accounts)- Creates Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) that will offer scholarships to qualifying students to attend a K-12 school that is outside of their current school district. 

SB 86 (Public Funds)- Prohibits the contribution or expenditure of public funds for a variety of political causes and updates provisions related to ESAs. 

HB 369 (Land Management)- Provides additional liability protections for Missouri landowners. 

HB 432 (Relating to the Protection of Vulnerable Persons)- Makes statutory changes to implement the Office of Childhood, clarifies wage requirements for sheltered workshops, and establishes a right to unpaid leave for victims of domestic or sexual violence and their caregivers. 

SB 520 (Memorial Highways)- Establishes numerous memorial highways throughout the state. 

HB 557 (Relating to the Protection of Children)- Establishes minimum reporting requirements for license-exempt residential care facilities in an effort to ensure the safety and well-being of children and requires background checks for all facility and agency workers who have contact with children. 

As new COVID-19 cases spike sharply in Missouri, Governor Parson signed legislation into law on July 7 providing businesses, health care providers, nursing homes and religious institutions with blanket immunity from most lawsuits related to exposure to the disease. The new law will take effect Aug. 28.
 
Closing the courthouse doors to most claims relating to COVID-19 exposure has been a top priority for Parson and businesses groups, such as the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, since the pandemic began. Critics of the measure, Senate Bill 51, contend the pandemic is being used as cover to provide businesses with unwarranted legal protections that will apply more generally.
 
On the day before Parson signed SB 51, 1,837 new cases were reported in Missouri – the largest single-day total since Feb. 4, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. At the start of June, Missouri was averaging about 400 new cases a day. According to tracking data compiled by the New York Times, Missouri led the nation with both the highest average number of cases and most hospitalizations per 100,000 residents as of July 7. Missouri had the 11^th worst vaccination rate among the states with just under half of adults age 18 and older fully vaccinated.

 

Missouri Supreme Court Judge Paul Wilson on July 1 began a term as chief justice, a post that rotates every two years among the court’s seven members. Wilson replaces Judge George Draper, who had served as chief justice since July 2019. Draper will remain on the court.
 
Wilson was appointed to the Supreme Court in December 2012 by former Governor Jay Nixon, a Democrat, whom Wilson had worked under for many years in the Missouri Attorney General’s Office. Wilson also served as a Cole County Circuit judge from 2010 through 2012. A Jefferson City native, Wilson earned his law degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
 
In Missouri, the post of chief justice is primarily administrative. Among the court’s other six current members, all but two, one of whom joined the court just over a month ago, have served as chief justice.

 

The 2021 fiscal year ended on June 30 with net state general revenue collections for the year up 25.8 percent compared to FY 2020, going from $8.93 billion last year to $11.24 billion this year. That growth is artificial, however, since the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the delay of last year’s tax filing deadline from the last quarter of FY 2020 to the first month of FY 2021, thus shifting substantial revenue that should have been collected in previous fiscal year to the next.
 
Net general revenue collections for June 2021 increased 40.2 percent compared to June 2020, going from $871 million last year to $1.22 billion this year. The strong June was largely driven sharp jumps in individual and corporate income tax collections.

 

Narrowly staving off a financial disaster, the House of Representatives voted 140-13 on June 30 to grant final approval to legislation renewing a health care provider tax that’s essential to funding Missouri’s Medicaid program. The Senate had approved the bill 28-5 four days earlier.
 
Missouri health care providers voluntarily pay the tax, known as the Federal Reimbursement Allowance, because it allows the state to leverage substantially more federal Medicaid dollars. Lawmakers typically renew the FRA without controversy, but Senate conservatives blocked this year’s effort in an attempt to include unrelated provisions attempting to restrict birth control access and prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funding.
 
As a result, Governor Parson called lawmakers into a special legislative session on June 23 to pass an FRA renewal bill before the start of the new state fiscal year on July 1. If they failed to do so, he had threatened to unilaterally cut $722 million in spending authority from the FY 2022 budget in order account for the tax’s loss.
 
Conservative senators made another run at trying to add the unrelated provisions to the special session bill but were unsuccessful. The renewal measure includes language saying Medicaid funds can’t pay for abortion services, but that already is prohibited by state and federal law.
 
To mollify conservatives, the House voted 109-45 in favor of a stand-alone bill seeking to defund Planned Parenthood. However, the bill died hours later when both chambers adjourned the special session without the Senate taking it up. Senate Republican leaders issued a statement saying they would form a committee over the summer to study the defunding issue. Federal law prohibits states from discriminating against willing providers of non-abortion services.

Governor Parson on June 30 signed the various bills that make up the $35 billion state operating budget for the 2022 fiscal year but issued 51 line-item vetoes to eliminate about $115 million in spending authority approved by lawmakers.
 
With the state experiencing records surpluses, the vetoes weren’t due to lack of revenue. Instead, according to the explanatory messages accompanying them, most were because the governor didn’t request the funding or otherwise didn’t think it necessary. Some of the rejected items include $5 million in maintenance grants for charter schools, $3 million to recruit high school teachers in rural areas, $26.4 million to increase certain health care provider rates and $50 million to insulate hospitals from financial losses from a planned change in billing procedures currently being challenged in court.
 
However, 15 of the vetoes totaling $5.42 million were of items the governor not only requested but fought for three years to get. Those vetoes involved a salary incentive program for high-performing employees. Lawmakers resisted the funding in previous years due to concerns it would provide unconstitutional bonuses but finally relented this year. The reason for Parson’s change of heart is unclear. In the veto messages, Parson simply said his administration is considering “alternative performance-based incentive structures” for employees.


This year’s budget is most notable for what’s missing: full funding of a constitutionally mandated expansion of the state’s Medicaid program that was supposed take effect July 1, making an estimated 275,000 more Missourians eligible. A Cole County judge put the expansion on hold last month, but the Missouri Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on July 13.
 
The budget does include an $8.5 million increase to the $3.56 billion formula for distributing state money to local public schools districts. The relatively slight bump is sufficient to claim “full funding” of K-12 schools, but only because the legislature changed the law a few years ago to drastically reduce the amount of new money required each year to do so. In addition, the budget shortchanges funding for local student transportation costs by about $165 million from what state law says should be allocated.
 
After years of either flat appropriations or deep cuts to higher education, the budget provides increases of at least 3.7 percent to the core operating budgets of Missouri’s public colleges and universities. The budget also includes an additional $3 million to enable the state’s chronically underfunded public defender system to hire 53 additional attorneys to help reduce caseloads.

A Cole County judge issued a temporary restraining order on June 25 prohibiting the Missouri Department of Social Services from implementing changes in how Medicaid providers are reimbursed, saying those challenging the changes appear likely to prevail in a lawsuit claiming the department acted without proper authority. The next hearing in the case is set for July 9.
 
The Missouri Hospital Association filed the lawsuit on June 11, one week after the DSS division that oversees the state’s Medicaid program notified service providers that the policy change would take effect with the start of the new state fiscal year on July 1. The lawsuit contends the division failed to promulgate rules, as required by state law, before implementing the changes. The hospital association said the change would cost its members as much as $45 million in lost revenue for the coming fiscal year.
 
In issuing his restraining order, Circuit Judge Cotton Walker, said the hospital association’s members met their burden of proving they would be harmed if the change took effect and are likely to win the case. Walker also chided the department for asserting that the law requiring it to promulgate rules didn’t apply without offering any evidence or precedent to support that assertion.
 
The case is Missouri Hospital Association v. Missouri Department of Social Services. It is unrelated to a separate lawsuit challenging the refusal of the Parson administration to implement the constitutionally mandated expansion of Medicaid eligibility approved by Missouri voters last year. The Missouri Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in that case July 13.

The Missouri Supreme Court on June 30 unanimously ruled government agencies have no legal authority to charge fees for having their attorneys review public documents prior to fulfilling records requests under the state Sunshine Law. In the case, the court said sufficient evidence was pleaded that Governor Parson’s office “had an intent to violate the law” when it charged excessive fees and committed other alleged violations related to a 2018 records request.
 
Although the Sunshine Law allows public records to be closed under certain circumstances, it doesn’t require the closure of any records. However, it is not uncommon for government agencies to demand fees for time spent by attorneys to determine whether requested records can be closed under the law. In the 6-0 ruling written by Judge Patricia Breckenridge, the court said the law only allows fees for certain purposes related to document retrieval and copying and that attorney reviews aren’t a mandatory part of that process.
 
 “A public records request may be fulfilled without any attorney review time,” Breckenridge wrote. “Therefore, (the Sunshine Law) does not authorize a public governmental body to charge attorney review time as research time required for fulfilling records.”
 
The case was brought by attorney and open government advocate Elad Gross who had filed a records request with the governor’s office in 2018. Parson’s office sought to charge him $3,618.40 to fulfil the request, nearly all of which was for 90 hours of attorney review time at $40 an hour. Gross sued instead, but a Cole County judge ruled in favor of the governor. In reversing that decision, the Supreme Court ordered the case, Gross v. Parson, back to the trial court for further proceedings.

Governor Parson signed legislation into law on June 30 that will enable local governments and the state to more easily collect sales taxes from online retailers, while also authorizing future cuts to state income taxes if certain revenue collection thresholds are triggered. Senate Bill 153 also creates a state-level earned income tax credit to benefit working Missourians.
 
Supporters have pushed for the online sales tax provision for years, saying it’s necessary to level the competitive playing field between local businesses that collect sales taxes and internet retailers, which usually don’t, even though such taxes have always been due under state law. Missouri is the last state in the nation to enact such legislation.
 
To win support for final passage, various tax-cutting provisions were added to the bill that will offset much of the new revenue the state expects to collect from improved collection of online sales taxes. SB 153 passed on final votes of 25-4 in the Senate and 145-6-1 in the House of Representatives.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has sent Governor Parson a letter warning Missouri it could be hit with severe financial sanctions if he signs legislation that would eliminate vehicle emissions testing for residents of Franklin, Jefferson and St. Charles counties, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on June 25. According to the bill’s fiscal note, noncompliance could cost the state about $52 million a year in lost federal highway funding.
 
The three counties, along with St. Louis city and St. Louis County, are the only jurisdictions in the state subject to the vehicle testing requirement due to poor air quality in the St. Louis metropolitan area. In the letter, an EPA official said the vehicle inspection program remains required by federal law in all five Missouri jurisdictions.
 
The vehicle testing provision is included in House Bill 661, a wide-ranging 87-page omnibus bill that includes numerous provisions relating to transportation. The governor has through July 14 to either sign or veto the bill.

Truman Medical Center is offering walk-in vaccinations at their two hospital campuses (2211 Charlotte and 7900 Lee’s Summit Road) 7am to 2pm Monday through Friday.  In addition, you can schedule a vaccine at www.trumed.org or by calling 816-404-CARE. 

ALL Missourians are eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. If you have not been vaccinated, I encourage you to visit the COVID-19 map to find a vaccination site near you. The following places are currently offering vaccines in Kansas City: