Recent Missouri editorials
Posted Sep 3, 2019 11:03:31 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Joplin Globe, Sept. 1
Should state own Missouri State Penitentiary?
Since the May 22 tornado, area residents have debated the question: Should the state pay an estimated $9.4 million to repair the old Missouri State Penitentiary?
Maybe the question should be: Should the state still own the old prison?
Even before the prison closed in 2004, a state law established an MSP Redevelopment Commission and gave it the power to acquire the title to the property. That never happened.
Some would argue maintaining an old prison goes beyond state government’s role of providing essential services to taxpayers. But it’s not unprecedented for government to maintain such historic sites. Alcatraz, once a feared prison, now is operated by the National Park Service and is open for tours.
Likewise, MSP is historic. Known as the “bloodiest 50 acres in America,” it opened in 1836 and was the oldest operating prison west of the Mississippi by the time it closed in 2004. Its history is filled with stories of riots, violence, escapes and famous inmates.
Since 2008, thousands of people have streamed in to tour the historic site.
But should the state continue to own the property? The site needs $9.4 million in repairs from the tornado. Even before the tornado, it needed a good amount of restoration from aging.
Some would argue it makes sense for the state, which could come up with such a sum of money, to keep owning/maintaining the prison.
However, the state hasn’t shown consistent dedication in maintaining MSP as a historic site or giving local entities a good amount of leeway to transform it into a more productive use.
Last year, the state deeded about 32 acres of the prison property to the city. That land didn’t contain the historic buildings on the prison tours. The gas chamber is on the land, but the state retained ownership of it.
City and Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau officials seem happy with their MSP partnership with the state under Gov. Mike Parson. But it hasn’t always been that way. Under former Gov. Jay Nixon’s administration, for instance, some local leaders felt hamstrung with their MSP efforts.
Since the tornado, the state hasn’t come up with a plan to fund repairs to MSP, and the Jefferson City CVB has stopped the prison tours it had operated there. It’s unknown when they will resume.
With declining inmates nationwide, other states are dealing with the issue of how to make past prisons productive again. Many have incorporated public-private partnerships.
That could be a viable solution for MSP. We should reconsider this, as it was the original intent of the post-prison property.
The state could divest itself from the property, which it no longer needs, and let the city, CVB and private businesses take over.
It still could be maintained as a historic property, while using a combination of private capital, tax incentives and possibly public bonding to fund repairs/maintenance.
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug. 29
Bullets are mowing down St. Louis kids. Why won’t Parson take bold action?
This week marked Gov. Mike Parson’s moment to demonstrate bold leadership and prove to Missourians that his rise to the state’s highest office was more than just an accident prompted by his disgraced predecessor’s resignation. Parson knows from having toured St. Louis with Mayor Lyda Krewson how dire the gun situation is here. He knows that the Legislature has the ability to rework existing law so law enforcers can crack down on rampant gun violence.
But Parson refuses to order the Legislature to take up gun violence in the upcoming special session — even when confronted with the grim statistic of 13 dead St. Louis children. What more motivation does he need? How many gallons of spilled children’s blood are enough to make Parson stand up and lead?
On our Friday op-ed page, Superintendent Kelvin Adams expresses in sorrowful detail the crisis management scenes experienced by teachers and administrators as children grapple with the loss of their brothers, sisters and friends.
“I just lost my brother, and now I lost my best friend. I can’t take this . anymore,” one St. Louis student told a St. Louis Public Schools social worker. If ever there was a call for bold responses, this is it.
Rep. William Lacy Clay joined members of the St. Louis aldermanic black caucus Wednesday to appeal for federal and state action. The Board of Education will convene a special work session next Thursday to discuss ways to cope. These are examples of real leadership by people who care. Where are Parson and the Legislature?
What moves Parson is the crushing plight of Missourians burdened by taxes when they sell a vehicle, trailer, boat or outboard motor. The issue is so blindingly urgent that it must be addressed now — immediately! — in a Sept. 9 special session. But children killed or maimed by gunfire don’t rate in his book.
Why should the Legislature engage on this issue? Because lawmakers are responsible for the laws that allowed widespread circulation of guns on the streets. Lawmakers revoked local government control over gun enforcement, severely limiting the ability of police and prosecutors to intervene before bullets mow down more children.
On Parson’s watch, the state is stripping thousands of poor children off Medicaid rolls, putting young lives in danger because parents on the edge of poverty can no longer afford the medicines those kids require.
Parson is willing to exert extraordinary political and legal efforts to shut down abortion clinics in the name of protecting life. But when the call goes out for bold leadership to protect the children we see cowering in fear, right before our eyes, Parson shrinks into the background.
If this is his way of showing Missourians why he deserves to continue as governor, no thanks. We’ve seen all we need to see.
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The Kansas City Star, Aug. 30
‘We got our dream now’: New US citizens at Kauffman Stadium know what we forget ‘ The Kansas City Star
Most recent news on immigration and U.S. citizenship is not what you’d call uplifting. Just in the last few days, we’ve learned that kids with cancer and cystic fibrosis are being kicked out of the country because the Trump administration is ending a humanitarian deferment program for immigrants getting lifesaving treatments.
Children of U.S. service members who are born and live abroad will no longer be automatically considered U.S. citizens — because really, what have their parents ever done for us?
And we’re still wondering where Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, got the gall to reimagine the Emma Lazarus sonnet inscribed on the Statue of Liberty to mean that mostly European and only immigrants who could pay their own way have ever been welcome here. What the poem really meant to say, he insisted, is, “Give me your tired, your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.” You know, the poor who aren’t that poor.
Against that backdrop, it was a particular pleasure to watch 383 people from 84 different countries take the oath of U.S. citizenship at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium on Thursday. The ballpark seemed the perfect spot for the occasion, where new citizens beamed, cried, dug into giant tubs of popcorn and repeated “Let’s go, Roy-als,” as requested by a team official.
They weren’t born on third base, as those of us who didn’t have to work for years for this moment were. And their gratitude was most humbling of all.
Abbas Altaie, a Baghdad-born 49-year-old father of four ambitious daughters, had to have been sweltering in his suit and tie in the full sun, but this was not a day for casual dress, he said.
He and his wife Ghaidaa came here seven years ago, he said, for three reasons: “Freedom, to save my family and education” for now 17-year-old Safa and 15-year-old Sama, both of whom want to become surgeons, 20-year-old Maram, who is studying pharmacology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and 12-year-old Maryam.
Technically, Altaie’s English is not perfect, but what he said could not have been improved upon: “My family and I all consider this action today amazing. It’s a celebration! It’s abnormal!” What he saw when he looked around that stadium, he said, were people from all different cultures and countries and religions “here as human, not looking for difference, and all happy because they could be a citizen.”
Who wouldn’t love it in the United States, he asks, with “everything organizing and clear, so pretty, everything in its place.” And what he’d like to tell the rest of his now fellow Americans, he said, is this: “Thank you for your welcome, for your help, for care of my kids, especially to their teachers. You see, we got our dream now.”
Thank you, too, Mr. Altaie, for bringing us your dreams and beautiful family and for reminding us, no matter what anybody says, of all that we have to live up to.
The Associated Press
